Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/99

Rh where the glistening form of Prokris first met the eye of Kephalos as he stepped forth on the shore, and the young Delian learnt to be proud of the rugged island, where the nymphs bathed the infant Phoibos in pure water and swathed him in broad golden bands. Clearly we have to thank old crones for the story of Narkissos who died for love of his own fair face, and of Selênê gazing on Endymion as he slept on the hill of Latmos.

Among these Hindu tales we find a large class of stories which have little or nothing in common with the epic poems of the Aryan popular nations, but which exhibit a series of incidents in striking parallelism with those of the corresponding Teutonic versions. These incidents are in themselves so strange, and the result is brought about by turns so unexpected, that the idea of their independent developement among separated tribes who had carried away with them nothing but some proverbial sayings as the groundwork of these stories becomes a wild extravagance. Whatever the consequences may be, the conclusion seems irresistible that these stories had been wrought out into some detail, while these tribes or nations still continued to form a single people; and if these tales can scarcely be resolved into phrases denoting physical phenomena, they are perhaps more wonderful even than the epic poems, the growth of which from common germs would be inevitable if the theory of comparative mythologists be regarded as established. The resemblances between these stories may perhaps bring down the time of separation to a comparatively late period; but the geographical position of Hindu and German tribes must still throw that time back to an indefinitely distant past; and close as the parallelism may be, the differences of detail and colouring are such that we cannot suppose these Aryan emigrants to have carried away vith them to their new abodes more than the leading incidents grafted on the leading idea. The fidelity with which the Hindu and the German tales adhere to this framework is indeed astonishing.

One of the most remarkable of these coincidences is furnished by the story of the "Dog and the Sparrow," in Grimm's collection, as compared with an episode in the "Wanderings of Vicram Maharaja," In both a bird vows to bring about the ruin of a human being; in both the bird is the helper and avenger of the innocent against wanton injury, and in both the destruction of the guilty is the result of their own voluntary acts. There are other points of likeness, the significance of which is heightened by points of singularly subtle difference. In the German story, the sparrow is offended