ABSTRACT
Working from Stith Thompson's The Folktale (which has already surveyed the classic collections of fairy tales), we find that perhaps the oldest literary collection that includes some fairy tales comes to us from Indian tradition, specifically in the collection entitled the Panchatantra.8 For example, the Panchatantra includes a version of "The Magician and His Pupil" (AT 325; Thompson, 69). A father apprentices his son to a magician in order to learn his art, but part of the bargain is that the father must recognize the boy at the end of a year. The hero learns the magic secretly and then must flee when his master discovers his abilities. The son then has his father sell him in a magically disguised form (as a horse or an ox) to various buyers from whom
he then escapes. Finally, the father inadvertently sells his son as a horse to the magician, and he mistakenly includes the bridle that keeps the son enchanted. The son manages to strip off the bridle and conquer the magician in a battle of magical transformations. Frequently, the hero tricks the magician into becoming a cock whose head he then bites off when the hero assumes the form of a fox.
