version is somewhat softened.[95]

The second story is found in the _Vētālapañcaviṃs'ati_, being the sixth
of the "twenty-five tales of a corpse-demon," which are also found in
the twelfth book of the _Kathāsaritsāgara_.[96] It relates how
Madanasundarī, whose husband and brother-in-law had beheaded themselves
in honor of Durgā, is commanded by the goddess to restore the corpses to
life by joining to each its own head, and how by mistake she
interchanges these heads.

The two stories were fused into one and so we get the legend in the form
in which Sonnerat presents it. Goethe followed this form closely without
inventing anything. He did, however, put into the poem an ethical
content and a noble idea. Both the Indic ballads are a fervent plea for
the innate nobility of humanity.

* * * * *

Here the influence of India on Goethe's work ends. The progress of
Sanskrit studies could not fail to excite the interest of the poet whose
boast was his cosmopolitanism,[97] but they did not incite him to
production. For India's mythology, its religion and its abstrusest of
philosophies he felt nothing but aversion. Especially hateful to him
were the mythological monstrosities:

Und so will ich, ein für allemal,
Keine Bestien in dem Göttersaal!
Die leidigen Elephantenrüssel,
Das umgeschlungene Schlangengenüssel,
Tief Urschildkröt' im Weltensumpf,