White Elephant, and Other Tales From India

Indian folk tales as old as the Ganges

Well, maybe not that old, but as the compiler points out in her introduction "some have come down to us from the early days of Buddha, and were taken from a book, called the Jataka Tales." That’s the 4th century BC. As she also points out, you would certainly have come across some of these before in Westernised versions.

The title story is an Indian equivalent of Androcles and the lion. "The Bear’s Bad Bargain" contains shades of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. (Goodreads)