Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/89

Rh same feelings, we must conclude either that these legends were passed from the one tribe or clan to the other, or that before these tribes separated from their common home they not only possessed in mythical phrases relating to physical phenomena the germs of the future epics of Europe and Asia, but had framed a number of stories which cannot be traced back to such phrases, which seem to point rather to a storehouse of moral proverbs, and which cannot be accounted for on any hypothesis of conscious borrowing by one distinct people from another. It would, indeed, be safer to affirm of any given story that it has not been thus borrowed than to say that it cannot be traced back to the one source from which have sprung the great epic poems of the world.

The story of the Master Thief is a case in point. It looks at first sight as though it had nothing to do with the legends of the great Norse or Hellenic heroes, and the resemblance of some of its incidents to those of a story told in the Hitopadesa suggests the conclusion that it found its way into Europe through the Arabic translation known as the Kalila and Dimna. Professor Max Müller, plainly avowing this belief, says that "the story of the Master Thief is told in the Hitopadesa." The Sanskrit tale is that of the Brahman who, on hearing from three thieves in succession that the goat which he carried on his back was a dog, throws the animal down and leaves it as a booty for the rogues who had hit upon this mode of cheating him. "The gist of the story," adds Professor Müller, "is that a man will believe almost anything, if he is told the same by three different people." But, while a far greater resemblance to the Egyptian tale is exhibited by the Hindu version of the Master Thief as told by Somadeva Bhatta, presently to be noticed, it may fairly be asked whether this is either the story or the moral of the European "Master Thief." In the Teutonic version we find no incidents resembling those of the Sanskrit tale. The Norse story exhibits some points of likeness, together with differences which rather force us to think that it cannot have been suggested by the Eastern fable.

In the latter the Brahman is directly deceived by others; in the Norse legend the peasant deceives himself, and the moral seems to be, not that a man can be brought to believe anything if he hears it asserted by several seemingly independent witnesses, but that experience is thrown away on one who will put his hand into the fire after he has been burnt. In the Norse tale, the farmer intends to drive one of his three oxen to market, and the youth, who is a postulant for the novitiate in the worshipful order of