The penetration of these tales into the islands lying southeast of Asia has been going on for a very long time and has been dependent upon the spread of religions, Buddhist and Mohammedan, as well as upon actual migration. A very considerable number of folktales has certainly traveled from India to the islands of Sumatra, Java, and Borneo, and to the Celebes and the Philippines. All these islands, and hundreds of others in the area, have a considerable uniformity in native tradition. Sometimes they have made over [p. 283] the tales which they have borrowed from the west into the regular native

pattern, but most often the tales have remained foreign, exotic.

Much folklore has appeared from these islands within very recent years, but even so the very excellent synoptic study made nearly twenty years ago by Jan de Vries [453] will serve as a good indication of the degree to which such borrowed tales were even then known and recognized. Something over a hundred, or about one-seventh of the traditional tales current in western Asia and Europe have been reported from Indonesia. It is not certain that all of these have actually entered into the folklore, because some of them are taken from ancient priestly manuscripts—a good indication of the importance of religion in transplanting these tales from India and countries farther west.

It is natural that these Indonesian tales should show a greater resemblance to those of India than to those of European countries. The old literary Hindu collections and the Buddhist writings are the direct source of a considerable number of stories in Java, Sumatra, and Borneo. In the Philippine Islands, however, the question of foreign influences is less simple. In addition to the unmistakable contact with India and especially with the religions of India from an early time, the Filipinos have had four centuries of association with Spanish culture and with Christianity. This latter has affected their folklore very considerably, as contrasted with the Dutch islands where European influence is decidedly less. Indonesia is of course exceptional as compared to the larger Oceanic area, for almost none of this material we are considering has entered into the folklore of Micronesia, Melanesia, or Polynesia. It is therefore of interest to the student of the folktale to see just which tales have been taken over by the East Indians and which of them appear to be particularly popular. A tabulation of these is given at the end of this chapter.