in European märchen to speak of specially Indian influence.[1] But polygamy is not peculiar to India, nor is monogamy a recent institution in Europe.
Thus each "peculiarly Indian" idea supposed to be found in märchen proves to be practically universal. So the whole Indian hypothesis is attacked on every side. Contes are far older than historic India. Nothing raises even a presumption that they first arose in prehistoric India. They are found in places where they could hardly have travelled from historic India. Their ideas are not peculiarly Indian, and though many reached Europe and Asia in literary form derived from India during the Middle Ages, and were even used as parables in sermons, yet the majority of European folk-tales have few traces of Indian influence. Some examples of this influence, as when the "framework" of an Oriental collection has acquired popular circulation, will be found in Professor Crane's interesting book, Italian Popular Tales pp. 168, 359. But to admit this is very different from asserting that German Hausmärchen are all derived from "Indian and Arabian originals, with necessary changes of costume and manners," which is, apparently, the opinion of some students.
What remains to do is to confess ignorance of the original centre of the märchen, and inability to decide dogmatically which stories must have been invented only once for all, and which may have come together by the mere blending of the universal elements of imagination. It is only certain that no limit can be
- ↑ Cosquin, op. cit., i. xxx.
