Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

that!

refers to one of the Kings of Gujarat who had so ins saturated himself with poisons and drugs that it was desaid of him that if a fly settled on him and stung him

it immediately fell dead; and that on account of his qu poisonous breath his wives perished from his embraces. It has also been suggested that he indulged in these to poisons in order to make himself immune from attempts her to poison him, and if we go a step further, and suppose that one of his wives had tried to poison him, we seem Ow to arrive at the origin of the Bluebeard legion.

yund

tob

wak

[ocr errors]

listre In connexion with this topic Mr Penzer has congitributed to Volume Two a most interesting appendix Dun which he entitles Poison-Damsels,' and, in the course of thirty-seven pages, has brought together stories bearing on this motif from all over the world. One of the most interesting is the famous story of Alexander the Great and the warning he received from Aristotle regarding the danger of death from the embraces of a beautiful esmaiden who had been brought up on poison until her nature had become as poisonous as that of a snake.* The story occurs originally in the famous 'Secretum Secretorum,' a Latin work, translated from the Arabic, which appeared in European literature about the very time that Somadeva wrote. It purported to be a collection of the most important and secret communications sent by Aristotle to Alexander the Great when he was too aged to attend his pupil in person.

Turning from the actual contents of the 'Ocean of Story' we may now briefly describe the additional matter n: which has been brought together in the six volumes that have appeared up to date in this sumptuous edition. The first volume contains a foreword by Sir Richard Temple, to which reference has already been made,

[ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small]

On Tuesday, the 30th of November, 1926, the London papers contained the following remarkable story which seems to refer to a 'Poison-Damsel' in the making: For allowing his child Joan, aged 4 years and 10 months, to be in a public place for the purpose of performing, Allan Boscoe, a conjurer, was fined 10%. at Nuneaton, Warwickshire, yesterday. The girl was found by the police on a pedestal on Nuneaton fair ground after 8 in the evening. In her mouth was a small live snake. Boscoe afterwards produced larger snakes, which he described as dangerous and deadly. Three of these he put round the child, who later put the head of one snake in her mouth. She was described as the youngest snake-charmer in the world. She kept yawning and her lips twitched. No doubt she was feeling

the taste of the snakes.'

Vol. 248.-No. 491.

K

dealing with the origin and nature of Somadeva's great collection more especially with regard to the Aryan or non-Aryan origin of the tales and of the possibility of migration of some of these stories from Europe to India. In the second volume Sir George Grierson treats of the stories in their bearing on the popular tales and customs of the peoples of the Ganges valley with which he has so long and intimate an acquaintance. Dr Gaster, whose name is familiar to all folk-lorists, contributes the foreword to Volume Three, and discusses the manner in which popular tales have grown out of old literary originals, showing that they are very often but replicas of ancient stories stripped of their geographical limitations and historical personages. He disputes the mythological theory of Grimm which recognises in the persons and incidents found in the fairy-tales remnants of ancient Teutonic myths and also the much wider anthropological theory according to which the popular tales are the depositories of primæval culture and primitive civilisations, and that the incidents related are only survivals carried unconsciously by the people who have lost every knowledge of their origin and character. Dr Gaster says: 'I see in these alleged survivals nothing else but some of the archaic details found in the written literature. The anthropological interpretations must fail when we find the very same story among nations that are almost of yesterday, and are divided from one another by race, faith, and tradition.'

Dr F. W. Thomas, in a learned foreword to the fourth volume, discusses rather the medium through which these stories were conveyed to the Indian public than the subject-matter of the collection itself and the class of supernatural beings with which the stories in this volume are chiefly concerned, namely, the Vidyadharas, or knowledge-holders, who are for the most part spirits of the air. The foreword to the fifth volume deals with the origin and dissemination of the 'Kalila and Dimna' literature, and in addition to the foreword there is an appendix by Prof. Franklin Edgerton giving a genealogical table of the Panchatantra' in which all the versions derived from the 'Kalila and Dimna' in the various languages of Asia and Europe are discussed, including a table of all the versions set out in

[blocks in formation]

th

78's

Ary

ibility

urope

Ga

trib

MAM

liters

tre

genealogical form. The foreword to the sixth volume is from the pen of Mr A. R. Wright, President of the Folk-Lore Society.

Our debt to Mr Penzer is not, however, confined to what we owe him for republishing Tawney's translation ales in its present worthy form, but is greatly increased by the thirteen appendices he has added to this edition. We cannot in this place do more than enumerate the main topics of these appendices; but this will suffice to show how wide the editor has cast his net. They deal, for example, with the Use of Collyrium or Kohl, Sacred Prostitution, Umbrellas, Poison-Damsels, Sneezing Salutations, Widow-burning, the well-known Rhampsinitus story, and the Vetāla or Vampire tales. All these appendices bear witness to an immense amount of research in the vast field of folk-lore literature, and we feel confident that Mr Penzer in the four remaining volumes will preserve the high standard he has hitherto attained.

repli

lim

myt

persy

ants

anth

art

imit

[ocr errors]

E. DENISON Ross.

[ocr errors]

Art. 10.-THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN CHINA.

THE bewilderment with which Englishmen have long contemplated the chaotic conditions of modern China has deepened since the unfortunate shooting incident at Shanghai on May 30, 1925; for it was immediately after that event, and as a direct consequence of it, that the activities of the politically-minded section of Young China began to take a definitely anti-British direction.

While Western knowledge of China was till recently almost stationary, or advancing only by almost imper ceptible degrees, Chinese knowledge of the West has been progressing with great rapidity. This is less surprising than it may seem at first sight. It is hardly too much to say that Chinese students, even those who have no knowledge of any European language, have better opportunities of forming accurate ideas about what is going on in the various countries of the European and American continents than the average Englishman has of learning the true facts about China. And they make good use of the opportunities offered; for it must be confessed that the Chinese student is, as a rule, far more keenly observant of the West than the average European or American is of China.

This in itself is not surprising, though the results may be mortifying to Western pride. The West is only beginning to take the Chinese and their problems seriously. China has stood too long outside the main current of Western life and thought to be regarded by the West as other than an object of curiosity, interesting mainly as being a land of quaint surprises, in which everything is done topsy-turvily. The study of things Chinese was till recently regarded as a hobby; and there was a tendency to deprecate too ardent a devotion to this hobby, on the ground that it was likely to result in an incurable if amiable form of dementia. The Chinese, on the other hand, know and have long known that they cannot afford to treat the West merely as an object of amused interest. They take it very seriously indeed, because they know that the fate of their country depends upon their ability to understand the West and to learn and apply the lessons that it has to teach.

thi

INA

In the course of their investigations, the Chinese have made some discoveries that have surprised them are very much. They used to think that the superiority of n the West-which sundry painful experiences forced cide them reluctantly to admit was confined to material ely things only: iron ships, engines of many kinds, wonderthat ful mechanical contrivances for the mass-production of I articles of commerce, singularly efficient appliances for ectio the convenient and expeditious slaughter of human ree beings. As their knowledge grew, they found that the tin West also possessed art, literature, poetry, philosophies, Test music, architecture, and other constituents of a high is civilisation, which were at least comparable with, and hpossibly superior to, those of China. Some of them even found a temporary refuge from the world's bewilderments and discouragements, if not a spiritual home, in the religion professed by the peoples of the West, though the appeal of Christianity to the educated classes was never very strong.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

There is still a strong tendency in some quarters in China to regard Western civilisation as one which rests on a material basis and is therefore inferior to the civilisations of China and India, which are understood to be primarily spiritual; and this notion has been fostered not only by great Oriental writers like Rabindranath Tagore, but also by many European writers who have fallen under the potent sway of Eastern mysticism. One of the intellectual leaders of Young ed China, recently a visitor to England-Dr Hu Shihrefuses to endorse this view; and in some ably-written Chinese essays which appeared lately in the Hsien Tai P'ing Lun' (a Peking periodical) and other publications, he has insisted that it is totally wrong to regard Western civilisation as primarily materialistic, in spite of its superb developments and achievements on the materialistic plane. He points out that it is the very activity of the Spirit which has produced these developments and made these achievements possible, and that even on the spiritual level the West has excelled the East. He refuses to accept the view that science itself is unspiritual; and in recommending his countrymen to devote themselves to scientific study and to seek through science to provide the toiling millions of China with the amenities

men

it t

[ocr errors]

erst

t

[ocr errors]
« VorigeDoorgaan »