But the sacrifice of the girl to the monster, her rescue by the hero—do I believe that to be of Indian origin?
Why should I believe that Perseus and Andromeda, Heracles and Hesione, were borrowed from India by Greece before or about Homer's time? I have no evidence to show whether Greece borrowed the incident or not, and I believe the incident might be invented wherever people were capable of sacrificing a woman to a wild beast. That coincidence of fancy is as possible as the Rescue from the Bull in modern novels.
Again, I do not say that, if we find nuptial taboos in a story in a given country, therefore that country once practised nuptial taboos. I believe that the nuptial taboo accounts for the origin of the incident in the tale, but the tale may have been borrowed, and the taboo may never have been practised in the country where we find the story.
I cannot guess why I am supposed to lay stress on this theory of independent evolution of tales. In the conclusion of "A Far-Travelled Tale" (in Custom and Myth) I give the three hypotheses, "that all wits jumped, and invented the same sequence of situations by accident"; that all men spread from one centre, and carried a tale of the centre everywhere, or "that the story, once invented, has drifted all round the world". I show how the diffusion might conceivably be accounted for by exogamy, trade, slave-dealing, war, "by all these agencies, working through dateless time." "Much may be due to the identity everywhere of early fancy; something to transmission", as M. Cosquin quotes me (Introduction to Grimm, xlii, xliii). I should have said "much" in both clauses. In fact, I am obliged to say that I know not how the stories are so similar, for transmission to the Western Pacific coast from India, Africa, or Europe is difficult to accept. But the backward of time and the possibilities of migration are infinite. Thus no one can say that I dogmatise. But my fault is not dogmatising against the possibility of independent development. Thus, in Cupid and Psyche, M. Cosquin says: "According to Mr. Lang, a 'fortuitous combination' of fantastic elements might produce, at one moment, in a number of countries, the following
