Dear Yong Peng and group,

>I wonder if
>authors like C.S.Lewis and Tolkien were in any way directly influenced
>by the Jataka Tales or inspired by Arabic sources, especially the
>Arabic Nights which was in turned influenced by Indian (Hindu and
>Buddhist) sources.

I have also wondered that as well. I've studied Tolkien's letters and iirc he doesn't mention those sources at all, but I strongly suspect that he was influenced _in part_ by the Mahaabharata (possibly in Ganguli's translation) and tried to do something comparable for 'western' culture and then suppressed mention of Indian sources. The only hint he seems to give is that he wanted, with the Silmarillion and LotR, to give Britain a national epic comparable to the Eddas and the Mahabharata.

Among many other things, Lord of the Rings concerns a shift from a third to a less magical fourth age, which fits very well into the setting of the Mahabharata. (transition to kaliyuga after a cataclysmic battle)

Another is that the Elvish alphabet devised by Feanor is arranged in a systematic way that reminds one of the phonetic arrangement of the Sanskrit alphabet.

Tolkien was, after all, a philologist, and must have at least had contact with indological scholars. Sanskrit was foundational to comparative Indo-European philology and was fairly widely studied in Britain at the time. It seems to me unlikely that the Feanorian script system wasn't influenced by Sanskrit (just as it would be uncontroversial to suggest that the Dwarvish runes were influenced by the Futharc)

On a more whimsical note I wonder if the young Tolkien had read TW Rhys Davids' _Buddhist India_ and all but forgotten a certain line that then popped out as he was correcting exams, and idly jotted down the idea of a Mr Baggins who lived under 'The Hill'. Consider page 22 of Rhys-Davids' book, where he lists Khattiya clans beginning with:

"1. The Bhaggas of Sumsumaara Hill."

Sounds almost like Baggins of the Hill to me. Too tenuous for serious literary criticism perhaps, but I like to think that little lines and phrases we read can take a new form many years later without our even remembering where they came from. Especially since Tolkien himself described his writing process as akin to an act of remembering. He couldn't force the story in certain directions, but had to look inwards and recall what 'actually happened'. This suggests a powerful unconscious creative activity taking place, and everything he had read in his youth could possibly be involved in that activity.

Also, consider how the great wizards, like Gandalf the Grey and Saruman the White, as well as Radagast the Brown were essentially incarnated divine powers, avatars. Two of these wizards were said to have 'disappeared into the east' and not only that they were _Blue_. Krishna and Balarama? Again, perhaps too whimsical for an academic study, but somehow Gandalf at the head of an army in the West, and Krishna at the head of an army in the East, in the same legendary, transitional period of history, seems to me like a very productive parallel that the old professor might have toyed with, but never told anyone about. It would've been like him.

In Tolkien the elves reincarnate.

In ancient Indian culture, everything is oriented towards the 'east' which is the most auspicious direction. In Tolkien it's the exact opposite, the 'west' is the direction leading towards heaven.

There's so much more. I'm very inclined to think that the hordes of Southrons and Easterners that march to the final battle outside of Gondor in LotR are essentially Mahabharata era heroes of legendary Indian and Arab background. The only sad thing about it is that he would then be making out the whole ancient culture of the East to be essentially under the sway of evil and darkness, something that I, as a Buddhist and admirer of ancient Indian culture, am not prepared to admit.

best regards,

/Rett