courts, and one can only deal with it as an advocate. So far as my
instructions go, I should be prepared, within certain limits, to hold a
brief for India. So far as the children of Europe have their fairy
stories in common, these--and they form more than a third of the whole
--are derived from India. In particular, the majority of the Drolls or
comic tales and jingles can be traced, without much difficulty, back to
the Indian peninsula.

Certainly there is abundant evidence of the early transmission by
literary means of a considerable number of drolls and folk-tales from
India about the time of the Crusaders. The collections known in Europe
by the titles of _The Fables of Bidpai, The Seven Wise Masters, Gesia
Romanorum_, and _Barlaam and Josaphat_, were extremely popular
during the Middle Ages, and their contents passed on the one hand into
the _Exempla_ of the monkish preachers, and on the other into the
_Novelle_ of Italy, thence, after many days, to contribute their
quota to the Elizabethan Drama. Perhaps nearly one-tenth of the main
incidents of European folktales can be traced to this source.

There are even indications of an earlier literary contact between
Europe and India, in the case of one branch of the folk-tale, the Fable
or Beast Droll. In a somewhat elaborate discussion [Footnote: "History
of the Aesopic Fable," the introductory volume to my edition of Caxton's
_Fables of Esope_ (London, Nutt, 1889).] I have come to the
conclusion that a goodly number of the fables that pass under the name
of the Samian slave, Aesop, were derived from India, probably from the
same source whence the same tales were utilised in the Jatakas, or
Birth-stories of Buddha. These Jatakas contain a large quantity of
genuine early Indian folk-tales, and form the earliest collection of
folk-tales in the world, a sort of Indian Grimm, collected more than