Indian Fairy Tales Joseph Jacobs by Joseph Jacobs instant download after payment.

First published 1912FROM the extreme West of the Indo-European world, we go this year to the
extreme East. From the soft rain and green turf of Gaeldom, we seek the garish
sun and arid soil of the Hindoo. In the Land of Ire, the belief in fairies, gnomes,
ogres and monsters is all but dead; in the Land of Ind it still flourishes in all the
vigour of animism.
Soils and national characters differ; but fairy tales are the same in plot and
incidents, if not in treatment. The majority of the tales in this volume have been
known in the West in some form or other, and the problem arises how to
account for their simultaneous existence in farthest West and East. Some--as
Benfey in Germany, M. Cosquin in France, and Mr. Clouston in England--have
declared that India is the Home of the Fairy Tale, and that all European fairy
tales have been brought from thence by Crusaders, by Mongol missionaries, by
Gipsies, by Jews, by traders, by travellers. The question is still before the
courts, and one can only deal with it as an advocate. So far as my instructions
go, I should be prepared, within certain limits, to hold a brief for India. So far as
the children of Europe have their fairy stories in common, these--and they form
more than a third of the whole--are derived from India. In particular, the
majority of the Drolls or comic tales and jingles can be traced, without much
difficulty, back to the Indian peninsula.