ПЕРВЫЙ УКАЗАТЕЛЬ КИТАЙСКИХ СКАЗОК (1876)

Abstract

The article examines the sources and specifics of the first attempt at a systematic description of Chinese folklore for comparative purposes. The index of Chinese folk tales in the 12th chapter of NB Dennis’s monograph “The Folklore of China” (1876) was based on a scheme by S. BaringGould, attached to the collection of English folklore by W. Henderson (1866). In turn, Baring-Gould improved the model created by J.-G. von Hahn that was published in the first volume of the Greek and Albanian tales’ collection (1864). The 1876 index is shorter than its predecessors: it has 15 “roots” (approximately corresponding to the tale types), 9 of which Dennis identified himself; von Hahn had 40 such types, and Baring-Gould had 51. If von Hahn and Dennis in their constructions considered the position of migrationists, Baring-Gould proceeded only from the early ideas of the mythological school about a single ancient source of IndoEuropean folklore. Dennis had a broader perspective that allowed him in his book to take into account the parallels between the mythological traditions of all inhabited continents; however, in the index, he compares Chinese tales mainly with Indo-European, which reflects the influence of the “Sino-Aryan” movement, popular among Sinologists in the 1870s