gheseggen, soo lietse het yver toestellen om daer in te springen.  Op’t uyterste ghekomen zijnde, ontwaeckte Dewendre, ende seyde, dat hy hem hadde ghelaten doot te zijn, alleenlijck om te ondervinden hare trouwe; ende hy seyde haer toe, tot een loon van hare ghetrouwigheyt, dat sy met hem na Dewendrelocon (dat is een der platsen der gelucksaligheyt) gaen soude.  Ende ghelijck den Bramine seyde, ist alsoo gheschiet."[89]

It will be seen that Goethe has changed the story considerably and for the better.  How infinitely nobler is his idea of uniting the maiden with her divine lover on the flaming pyre from which both ascend to heaven!  It may also be observed that Goethe substitutes Mahadeva, i.e.  Siva, for Dewendre[90] and assigns to him an incarnation, though such incarnations are known only of Visnu.

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The “Paria,” a trilogy consisting of “Gebet,” “Legende” and “Dank des Paria,” was begun in 1816, but not finished until December, 1821.  Even then it was not quite complete.  The appearance of Delavigne’s Le Paria and still more of Michael Beer’s drama of the same name, spurred Goethe to a final effort and the poem was published in October, 1823.

The direct source is the legend which Sonnerat tells of the origin of the Paria-goddess Mariatale.[91] Indirectly, however, the sources are found in Sanskrit literature.  Two parts may be distinguished:  The story of the temptation and punishment, and the story of the interchange of heads.[92] The former story is that of the ascetic Jamadagni and his wife Renuka, who was slain by her son Rama at the command of the ascetic himself, in punishment for her yielding to an impure desire on beholding the prince Citraratha.  Subsequently at the intercession of Rama she is again restored to life through Jamadagni’s supernatural power.  The story is in Mahabharata iii. c. 116 seq.[93] and also in the Bhagavata Purana, Bk. ix. c. 16,[94] though here the harshness of the original version is somewhat softened.[95]

The second story is found in the Vetalapancavims’ati, being the sixth of the “twenty-five tales of a corpse-demon,” which are also found in the twelfth book of the Kathasaritsagara.[96] It relates how Madanasundari, whose husband and brother-in-law had beheaded themselves in honor of Durga, is commanded by the goddess to restore the corpses to life by joining to each its own head, and how by mistake she interchanges these heads.

The two stories were fused into one and so we get the legend in the form in which Sonnerat presents it.  Goethe followed this form closely without inventing anything.  He did, however, put into the poem an ethical content and a noble idea.  Both the Indic ballads are a fervent plea for the innate nobility of humanity.

* * * * *

Here the influence of India on Goethe’s work ends.  The progress of Sanskrit studies could not fail to excite the interest of the poet whose boast was his cosmopolitanism,[97] but they did not incite him to production.  For India’s mythology, its religion and its abstrusest of philosophies he felt nothing but aversion.  Especially hateful to him were the mythological monstrosities: