The Bag of Holding has been a staple of D&D since the game started. The idea of a bag that can hold more than it's physical capacity (and weight less than the it holds) can also be seen in other places, like Santa's toy bag.
Where did the original designers of Dungeons & Dragons (Gygax, Arneson, etc.) get their idea of a Bag of Holding come from? Please provide evidence of your answer by citing a source that ties it back to the game designers.
In Playing at the World, historian Jon Peterson suggests that the bag of holding was adapted from Jack Vance's Dying Earth:
Dungeons & Dragons offers the over-encumbered adventurer some respite in the form of a Bag of Holding, which can contain 10,000 gold pieces worth of weight while only requiring 300 gold pieces worth of strength to carry; a likely inspiration for this item comes from the strange “bronze ring” (a metal circle large enough to fit a man through, rather than just a finger) containing its own private space belonging to Liane the Wayfarer in Vance’s Dying Earth.
Even without a source, the Bag of Holding is a necessary tool for D&D characters. Like Voltaire's view of God, "if [it] did not exist, it would be necessary to invent [it]."
Figuring out how to get hundreds of pounds of treasure home from the dungeon is fun at most once. The Bag of Holding lets the game abstract away encumbrance for items not in active use.
It seems likely that the aesthetics of the Bag of Holding are inspired by trope examples like Felix the Cat's magic bag, Santa Claus's sack, or Gurgi's wallet from Prydain. However, the impetus for its invention is probably Gygax or another early GM going, "Screw it, I'll give them a magic bag so we stop wasting time on the logistics of cargo."
