Interesting paper in that it claims to have found a common theme of the "Smith and the Devil" story using statistical techniques keyed on particular features of folk tales.

It should also be pointed out that there are many transparently shared story-lines among the IE languages that have previously been discovered just by traditional comparative literature methods.

The most well known of these is the "hero vs the dragon/serpent", which is observed in works as geographically and time separated from each other as Beowulf vs Wyrm in Anglo Saxon legends and Indra vs Vrtra in the Vedas.

Finding vertically transmitted ancient storylines is interesting and even more compelling than the long known vertically transmitted language components like grammar and lexicon.

Do you have any links you can share? Thanks

Check out "How to Kill a Dragon" by Calvert Watkins (1995)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Kill_a_Dragon

Anyone interested in this topic might enjoy this website discussing proto-indo-European religion: http://www.piereligion.org/

I had some Indian children’s stories that seemed obviously to have been European stories translated into Marathi (e.g. wicked stepmother forces daughter to separate mixed sand and rice). But maybe that is not what happened.

That story is strange - its pretty easy to separate mixed sand and rice. Toss it in a sieve for instance. Or just toss it - they are different densities and will naturally separate.

Or heat the sand! The rice pops and will trivially be separable.

It’s a children’s story and I think most kids are used to seemingly pointless tasks

Yeah but folks have been popping rice in hot sand for millennia. Its apparently the oldest recipe known! So children should have seen it done daily. Hm.