Inspired by Benfey, M. Cosquin says, "The method must be to take each type of story successively, and to follow it, if we can, from age to age, from people to people, and see where this voyage of discovery will lead us. Now, travelling thus from point to point, often by different routes, we always arrive at the same centre, namely, at India, not the India of fabulous times, but the India of actual history."
The theory of M. Cosquin is, then, that the popular stories of the world, or rather the vast majority of them, were invented in India, and that they were carried from India, during the historical period, by various routes, till they were scattered over all the races among whom they are found.
This is a venturesome theory, and is admitted, apparently, to have its exceptions. For example, we possess ancient Egyptian popular tales corresponding to those of the rest of the world, but older by far than historical India, from which, according to M. Cosquin, the stories set forth on their travels.[1]
One of these Egyptian tales, The Two Brothers, was actually written down on the existing manuscript in the time of Rameses II., some fourteen hundred years before our era, and many centuries before India had any known history. No man can tell, moreover, how long it had existed before it was copied out by the scribe Ennànà. Now this tale, according to M. Cosquin himself, has points in common with märchen from Hesse, Hungary, Russia, modern Greece, France, Norway,
- ↑ See M. Maspero's collection, Contes Populaires de l'Egypte Ancienne, Paris, 1882.
