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Jonathan Pageau is an iconographer in the Orthodox Christian Church. He has done a lot of work in the area of introducing the symbolism of fairy tales to the modern mind. This playlist[1] is a collection of his exegesis of many popular myths, fairy tales, and folk tales. His channel is called the Symbolic World.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg5RDZ7mMKo&list=PLVX4HUUPrI...
Tolkien's lecture/essay from 1939 (ominous!), "On Fairy Stories", remains a delight.
They're about enlightenment: overflowing energy (magic porridge pot), sleeping beauty, snow White, the princess and the pea... many have a connection with 7 things (the chakras) or in the case of the last one having the sensitivity to feel into the root chakra.
Many also have something that's woken up. Jack and the beanstalk is about climbing up a magic stalk (the enlightened central channel) to speak to giants/the gods.
And don't even get me started on the symbols associated with royalty...
The princess and the pea is pretty obviously an observation on how upper-class ladies tended towards high maintenance... It's pretty funny as an adult, I thought it was pretty lame as a kid.
I highly doubt that fairly tales from the West, which had a strong Christian tradition and no Indian influence (as far as I know) until the 1600s at the earliest, would have any Indian spiritual ideas, though.
A lot of archetypal Western stories originated in India and Persia and entered Europe by way of Muslim Spain in the middle ages, through collections like Kalīla wa-Dimna. For example the taming of the shrew (I think) first appears in written form in The Thousand and One Nights.
Ya. The story collection [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Thousand_and_One_Nights] dates back at least to the 10th century and the 'Islamic Golden Age'... and many probably go back 1000 years before that (said to have entertained kings) ... unknown in the West until translated by Richard Burton.
Aside: a stash of 500 more tales (many new) pulled together in the early 1800s and forgotten was discoverd in 2012. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/mar/05/five-hundred-f...
India doesn't have a monopoly on spirituality. The Holy Spirit corresponds to kundalini, and many ancient cultures around the world have their own methods of awakening.
I think you misinterpret the meaning. It was a test for royalty, not just any old upper class women. And royalty is also associated with enlightenment. Wearing crowns (crown chakra), sitting on thrones (traditionally with a lode stone in to stimulate the root chakra), that long stick thing they carry (enlightened central channel), etc.
Indian influence wasn't unknown before then; Marco Polo traveled to India in the late 13th century, and he may not have been the first.
He certainly wasn't the first. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles at the time, Alfred the Great (9th Century English King), sent a delegation to India.