Early Cinderellas: A Few More

It's Saturday. No one wants too much info to read today, do they? How about I provide a short list of other potential ancient Cinderellas, although they do not appear in my book beyond a list?

From my book, Cinderella Tales From Around the World:

Inarguably, there are several ancient myths and stories which include a few Cinderella motifs, but there are not many easily recognizable Cinderellas in the mix. At this time, one of the best published discussions about Cinderella in antiquity can be found in Graham Anderson’s book, Fairytale in the Ancient World (2000). His chapter on Cinderella offers several ancient stories with Cinderella motifs, for which there is not sufficient space to discuss in detail here, including:

• Sakuntala, a Sanskrit play by Kalidasa, from the fifth century AD/CE adapted from a tale in the Mahabarata (India);
• Pherecydes and the Io myth (Greece);
• The Inanna Cycle (Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer).

Many of these stories require compositing to find more than a few Cinderella motifs within them.

Because these are overall very long and are less strong Cinderellas than the ones I've already discussed--and those are loose versions themselves--I didn't include them in my book. But they are out there for your discussion and further research if you so desire.

And when I say compositing, I mean creating the stories from several sources to get one story and enough elements to consider the story a Cinderella.