Note 56 — INTRODUCTION.

The story of “The Grateful Animals and the Ungrateful Man” (No. 26) is one that is very widely spread throughout Asia, and has made its way into many parts of Europe. The merits of the lower animals were, in Eastern stories, frequently contrasted with the demerits of man, so far at least as gratitude is concerned, many centuries before such ideas as have in modern times led to the formation of societies for the protection of animals had exercised any influence over European thought. In the present instance a hunter, who draws out of a pit a lion, a snake, a mouse, a falcon, and a man, is rewarded by the two beasts, the bird, and the reptile, and by their aid is enabled to escape from prison, after having been thrown into it in consequence of the machinations of the man he had saved. In the “Panchatantra” (Appendix to Book i. story 2) a Brahman rescues a tiger, a monkey, a snake, and a man, with similar results. From the work of which the “Panchatantra” is the Sanskrit representative, the story made its way, about 750 A.D., into the Syriac “Kalilag and Damnag,” and the Arabic “Kalilah and Dimnah,” and thence, about 1080 A.D., into Symeon Seth’s Greek translation from the Arabic, and the Latin translation (through the Hebrew) by Joannes of Capua in the second half of the thirteenth century, and so into the Spanish, German, French, Italian, and English translations of different versions of the Arabic work.56 It occurs also in other works of Buddhistic origin. In a story from the Rasavāhinī, quoted by Spiegel in his “Anecdota Pālica,” an inhabitant of Benares rescues from a hole a dog, a snake, and a man. The dog and the snake are grateful, and by their means their rescuer is enabled to escape the impalement to which he had been condemned in consequence of the malice of the ungrateful man he had rescued along with them. There can be little doubt that it was from Indian, and probably Buddhistic, sources that such grateful animals made their way into European folk-tales—as the ants, fish, and birds of the “White Snake” (Grimm, No. 17); the lions, bears, wolves, foxes, and hares of “The Two Brothers” (No. 60); the ants, ducks, and bees of “The Queen Bee” (No. 62); the horse, ducks, stork, and bees of “The Two Wanderers” (No. 107); and the bear, mouse, and monkey of “The Faithful Beasts” (Grimm, 104 of first edition, afterwards omitted); not to speak of the numberless counterparts of these grateful creatures in the folk-tales of every European land.