Note 326 — Chapter IV · KULĀVAKAVAGGA.

This fable forms one of those illustrations of which were carved in bas relief round the Great Tope at Bharhut. There the fair gosling is represented just choosing the peacock for her husband; so this tale must be at least sixteen hundred years old. The story has not reached Europe; but it is referred to in a stanza occurring in, according to Benfey, the oldest recension of the Pañca Tantra contained in the Berlin MS. See Benfey, i. § 98, p. 280; and Kahn, ‘Sagwissenschaftliche Studien,’ p. 69.

The word Haŋsa, which I have here translated Goose, means more exactly a wild duck; and the epithet ‘Golden’ is descriptive of its beauty of colour. But the word Haŋsa is etymologically the same as our word Goose (compare the German Gans); and the epithet ‘golden,’ when applied to a goose, being meaningless as descriptive of outward appearance, gave rise to the fable of the Goose with the Golden Eggs. The latter is therefore a true ’myth,’ born of a word-puzzle, invented to explain an expression which had lost its meaning through the progress of linguistic growth.