Note 22 — Chapter VIII · Conclusion.

Probably the first combination of the theme was with The Poison Maiden, which the valuable evidence of Tobit enables us to date as taking place as early as the middle of the first century and in western Asia. The Poison Maiden probably came originally from India by way of Persia,22 and was certainly widely distributed. Among the Semites it would naturally first meet any tale which had other than Indian origin, so that the existence of Tobit at so early a date is only what one would expect, looking at the matter in this retrospective fashion. The amalgamation of these two themes, when once they had come into the same region, was natural. They had the necessary point of contact in the treatment of the hero’s wife by a helpful friend, who played an important part in each. In The Poison Maiden she received short shrift, being possessed of a poisonous glance or bite, or of snakes ready to destroy the man who married her.23 In The Grateful Dead she was innocent, but had to be divided to satisfy the claims of a being who had helped her husband.24 The part of the friend was less well motivated in The Poison Maiden than in The Grateful Dead, so that it was natural for the themes to unite at a common point and produce a compound at once more complete and more thrilling than were the simpler forms. This combination must have been made not by a conscious literary worker, for, had it been, Tobit would surely stand less independent of the later versions than is actually the case, but by the tellers of folk-tales, in a manner quite unconscious and altogether unstudied. The stories combined of themselves, so to say.