LAUFER] RELATIONS OF CHINESE TO THE PHILIPPINES 283 



the great zeal of these authors in collecting the material in question, 

 I have found several versions myself not recorded by any of them. 

 Two ways for the migration of the tradition from Europe into Asia 

 are discernible — a land route and a sea route. From Byzance, 

 where it was well known, it seems to have wandered into Russia, 

 and from the Russians to the Ugrians and the Turkish tribes of 

 Siberia. Among both Ugrians and Turks, the tricksters are the 

 Russians. The Syryan tell of the foundation of Moscow in the 

 same way as the Chinese that of Manila, and explain the name of 

 the city by the word "Mosku," which in their language means "a 

 cowhide." 1 The Cheremiss also have it in regard to the Russians, 

 and the Russian farmers themselves relative to a wealthy land- 

 owner of their own. Three Turkish versions have been noted by 

 W. Radloff f others are known from among the Kirghiz and Yakut, 

 and from Tashkend and Hami. 3 Through the medium of European 

 nations, the story seems to have spread over the regions around the 

 Indian Ocean in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In India 

 the foundation of Calcutta is connected with it. 4 In Burma, Adolf 

 Bastian 5 has recorded it. In this case the trickster is a female slave 

 of the Burmese king Dwattabong. When the Portuguese pene- 

 trated into Cambodia, in 1553, they employed the same trick of cut- 

 ting a buffalo hide, according to the tradition of the Cambodians. 6 

 Finally we find it current among the Chinese, as already stated. 



There are two points of interest in the dissemination of this story : 

 First, it affords one of the few examples of a Western tale spread- 

 ing to the extreme East, while as a rule the stream of folk-lore 

 flowed from east to west in the old world; secondly, it shows that 

 the transmission of folk-lore still goes on, even in recent times, 

 1}y mere oral accounts. While in almost all cases where folk-lore 

 is handed over from Asia to Europe we have been able to trace the 

 fact of migration back to written sources transferred from nation to 



2 J. A. Sjogren, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1 (Historisch-ethnographische 

 Abhandlungen iiber den finnisch-russischen Norden [Petersburg, 1861], p. 



301). 



' Proben der Volkslitteratur der tiirkiscben Stamme Siid-Sibiriens, vol. IV 

 (Petersburg, 1872), pp. 11-12, 139-141, 179-181. 



3 See Katanoff, loc. cit. 



4 J. Todd, Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan (London, 1832), vol. II, 

 T>. 235. Regarding a Tibetan legend containing tbe same motive see Sylvain 

 Levi, Le Nepal, vol. 11 (Paris, 1905), p. 7. 



5 Die Volker des ostlichen Asiens, vol. v (Die Geschicbte der Indochinesen, 



V- 25)- 



c H. Cordier, loc. cit. 



