Aryan tribes, "the inhabitants of Mardin in Mesopotamia and the Kariaines of Birmanie."[1] Well, if there was no borrowing, how did the non-Aryan peoples get the story?
M. Cosquin concludes that the theory he attacks is untenable, and determines that, "after having been invented in this place or that, which we must discover" [if we can], "the popular tales of the various European nations (to mention these alone) have spread all over the world from people to people by way of borrowing."
In arriving at this opinion, M. Cosquin admits, as is fair, that the Grimms, not having our knowledge of non-Aryan märchen (Mongol, Syrian, Arab, Kabyle, Swahili, Annamite—he might have added very many more), could not foresee all the objections to the theory of a store common to Aryans alone.
Were we constructing an elaborate treatise on märchen, it would be well in this place to discuss the Aryan theory at greater length. That theory turns on the belief that popular stories are the detritus of Aryan myths. It would be necessary then to discuss the philological hypothesis of the origin and nature of these original Aryan myths themselves; but to do so would lead us far from the study of mere popular tales.[2]
Leaving the Aryan theory, we turn to that supported by M. Cosquin himself—the theory, as he says, of Benfey.[3]
- ↑ Cosquin, I, xi., xii., with his authorities in note I.
- ↑ It has already been attemped in our Custom and Myth ; Introduction to Mrs. Hunt's Grimm; La Mythologie, and elsewhere.
- ↑ For M. Benfey's notions, see Bulletin de l'Académie de Saint Petersbourg, September, 4–16, 1859, and Pantschatantra, Leipzig, 1859.
