Note 48 — INTRODUCTION.

The lovely maiden Āmrapālī, the Dryad-like nymph who emerges (p. 85) from the kadalī tree in the āmra grove, closely resembles the tree-maidens who figure in some European popular tales. In the 21st of Hahn’s “Griechische Märchen,” the stem of a laurel opens and forth comes “a wondrously fair maiden.” In the sixth story of Basile’s “Pentamerone,” a fairy comes forth in the same way from a date spray, and in the second from a bilberry twig. The homes of the nymphs of this class are as often flowers as trees. In a Russian story (Afanasief, vi., No. 66), the heroine is transformed after death into a wondrous blossom. At midnight “the blossom begins to tremble, then it falls from its stem to the ground, and turns into a lovely maiden.” In the same way the heroine of the German story of “The Pink” (Grimm, No. 76) becomes a flower at her lover’s wish; and many other similar instances might be quoted. All such ideas as these appear to have been originally connected with the tree-worship which formed so important a part of the religion of our remote ancestors, and on which so excellent a work was written a few years ago by the late Wilhelm Mannhardt.48