Other Versions
The appearance of other tellings of the story, with local variations, from Nigeria, Thailand and Tibet, seems to call in question the purely Greek origin of the story. The Thai account claims to originate from a Buddhist Jataka tale but gives no source for a comparison to be made. Since the main lines of the story in all three are the same as in Aesopic versions, one might infer that, whatever their original form, they have since been influenced by the European model.
A certain kinship has also been observed between the fable and the account of the miraculous recovery of an axe from a river in the Jewish Bible. There the prophet Elisha was travelling with some members of a religious community 'and when they came to the Jordan, they began cutting down trees; but it chanced that as one man was felling a trunk, the head of his axe flew off into the water. "Oh master," he exclaimed, "it was a borrowed one." "Where did it fall?" asked the man of God. When he was shown the place, he cut off a piece of wood and threw it in and made the iron float.' (NEB, Kings II, 6.4-6)
Read more about this topic: The Honest Woodman
Famous quotes containing the word versions:
“The assumption must be that those who can see value only in tradition, or versions of it, deny man’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances.”
—Stephen Bayley (b. 1951)