112 Reviews.
love of outwitting as a fine art. These stories contain much of the universal machinery of folklore, mixed with popular wisdom and philosophy such as that shown in No. xxviii., a riddling story, or No. vii., the highly moral tale of the disappointments and death of Alexander the Great.^ This latter story is also interesting as bringing in the Water of Life, and the Talking Birds and Trees. Helpful beasts come into No. xiv., a curious and apparently incomplete story, which begins with a holy Musalman and his generosity, but ends in a pure fairy-tale, where the grateful snake and jackal bring the hero respectively to worldly honour and to an under-water Paradise unknown to the Quran. The snake, as usual, gives gold and the knowledge of healing plants, the jackal a magic flower, with the usual prohibition to show it. When it is lost the hero goes in search of another, and follows the Panj Pir under water, where he remains. But his second wife is left under the spell of the magic flower. Helpful beasts and a prohibition appear in No. vi. also, monkeys in this case ; and the hero is forbidden to cross his own boundaries. No ill seems to result from his doing so, however. The jackal in India often takes the place of the wise fox in Europe, and in No. viii. he appears as arbitrator in a crocodile variant of the " Tiger who returned to his cage " story, and also as the cunning wit who escapes all snares. This story reminds one of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby. Besides Alexander, whose presence was to be expected near Atak, there are stories of Akbar and Birbal, and other local legends, such as that which accounts for the heat of Miiltan.
' Compare the ballad of " Proud Lady Margaret," and others.
