Panchatantra

A 'Panchatantra' relief at the Mendut temple, Central Java, Indonesia.

The Panchatantra (IAST: Pañcatantra, Sanskrit: पञ्चतन्त्र, 'Five Principles or Techniques') is an ancient Indian collection of interrelated animal fables in verse and prose, arranged within a frame story. The original Sanskrit work, which some scholars believe was composed around the 3rd century BCE,[1] is attributed to Vishnu Sharma. It is based on older oral traditions, including "animal fables that are as old as we are able to imagine".[2]

It is "certainly the most frequently translated literary product of India",[3] and these stories are among the most widely known in the world.[4] To quote Edgerton (1924):[5]

...there are recorded over two hundred different versions known to exist in more than fifty languages, and three-fourths of these languages are extra-Indian. As early as the eleventh century this work reached Europe, and before 1600 it existed in Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, German, English, Old Slavonic, Czech, and perhaps other Slavonic languages. Its range has extended from Java to Iceland... [In India,] it has been worked over and over again, expanded, abstracted, turned into verse, retold in prose, translated into medieval and modern vernaculars, and retranslated into Sanskrit. And most of the stories contained in it have "gone down" into the folklore of the story-loving Hindus, whence they reappear in the collections of oral tales gathered by modern students of folk-stories.

Thus it goes by many names in many cultures. In India, it had at least 25 recensions, including the Sanskrit Tantrākhyāyikā[6] (Sanskrit: तन्त्राख्यायिका) and inspired the Hitopadesha. It was translated into Middle Persian in 570 CE by Borzūya. This became the basis for a Syriac translation as Kalilag and Damnag[7] and a translation into Arabic in 750 CE by Persian scholar Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa as Kalīlah wa Dimnah[8] (Arabic: كليلة ودمنة‎). A New Persian version from the 12th century became known as Kalīleh o Demneh[9] (Persian: کلیله و دمنه‎) and this was the basis of Kashefi's 15th century Anvār-e Soheylī[10] (Persian: انوار سهیلی‎, 'The Lights of Canopus'). The book in different form is also known as The Fables of Bidpai[11][12] (or Pilpai, in various European languages) or The Morall Philosophie of Doni (English, 1570).

Content

For lists of stories in the Panchatantra, see List of Panchatantra Stories.

The Panchatantra is a series of inter-woven fables, many of which involve animals exhibiting animal stereotypes.[13] According to its own narrative, it illustrates, for the benefit of three ignorant princes, the central Hindu principles of nīti.[14] While nīti is hard to translate, it roughly means prudent worldly conduct, or "the wise conduct of life".[15]

Apart from a short introduction — in which the author, Vishnu Sharma, is introduced as narrating the rest of the work to the princes — it consists of five parts. Each part contains a main story, called the frame story, which in turn contains several stories "emboxed" in it, as one character narrates a story to another. Often these stories contain further emboxed stories.[16] The stories thus operate like a succession of Russian dolls, one narrative opening within another, sometimes three or four deep. Besides the stories, the characters also quote various epigrammatic verses to make their point.[17]

The five books are called:

Original Indian version

Mitra-bheda, The Separation of Friends

In the first book, a friendship arises between the lion Piṅgalaka, the king of the forest, and Sañjīvaka, a bull. Karataka ('Horribly Howling') and Damanaka ('Victor') are two jackals that are retainers to the lion king. Against Karataka's advice, Damanaka breaks up the friendship between the lion and the bull out of jealousy. This book contains around thirty stories, mostly told by the two jackals. It is the longest of the five books, making up roughly 45% of the work's length.[18]

Mitra-samprāpti, The Gaining of Friends

Seeing the favour the rat performed to free the dove (or pigeon) and her companions, a crow decides to befriend the rat, despite the rat's initial objections. The storyline evolves as their friendship grows to include the turtle and the fawn. They collaborate to save the fawn when he is trapped, and later they work together to save the turtle, who falls in the trap. This makes up about 22% of the total length.[18]

A page from the Arabic version of Kalila wa dimna, dated 1210 CE, illustrating the King of the Crows conferring with his political advisors.
From a Syrian painting. The owls are burned to death by the crows.
Kākolūkīyam, Of Crows and Owls

Traditional enemies, the crows and the owls are at war. One of the crows pretends to be an outcast from his own group to gain entry into the rival owl group; he learns their secrets and vulnerabilities. He later summons his group of crows to set fire to all entrances to the cave where the owls live and the creatures suffocate to death. This is about 26% of the total length.[18]

Labdhapraṇāśam, Loss of Gains

The story tells of a symbiotic relationship between the monkey and the crocodile. The crocodile risks the liaison by conspiring to acquire the heart of the monkey to heal his wife. When the monkey finds out the plan, he avoids the grim fate.

Aparīkṣitakārakaṃ, Hasty Action

A Brahman leaves his child with a mongoose friend. When he returns, he sees blood on the mongoose's mouth, and kills his friend, believing the animal killed his child. The Brahman discovers his child alive, and learns that the mongoose defended the child from a snake. He regrets having killed his friend.

A page from Kelileh o Demneh, depicts the jackal-vizier Damanaka ('Victor')/ Dimna trying to persuade his lion-king that the honest bull-courtier, Sañjīvaka/Schanzabeh, is a traitor.
From the same 1429 Persian manuscript. Sañjīvaka/Schanzabeh, the innocent bull courtier, is murdered unjustly by King Lion. The scheming jackal vizier [left] Damanaka ('Victor')/Dimna watches in full view of his shocked brother Karataka ('Horribly Howling')/Kalila [right].

Mid. Persian and Arabic versions

The Persian Ibn al-Muqaffa' translated the Panchatantra (in Middle Persian: Kalilag-o Demnag) from Middle Persian to Arabic as Kalīla wa Dimna. This "is considered the first masterpiece of Arabic literary prose."[19] By the time the Sanskrit version migrated several hundred years through Pahlavi (Middle Persian) into Arabic, some important differences arose.

The introduction and the frame story of the first book changed.[20] An initial introduction explains how the book was first composed at the time of Alexander the Great's (called ذو القرنين in the book — he with two horns) attempt to reach India. In it an Indian King repents past misdeeds and requests an Indian sage (called Bidaba) to compose a body of work with wisdom and fables that are to be passed down for the future generations. This is then stored in the great vault of kings as a national treasure. In the second part a Persian emperor hears of a great book of wisdom in the vaults of treasures in the land of the Indian kings. He sends one of his trusted aides who spends years winning the trust of the inner circle in the castle before he is able to access the book and return with it to Persia. The Persian emperor then rewards him and allows him to translate the book into the Persian language to be read by everyone. Ibn Al-Muqaffa then follows this long introduction, interjected with many sayings of wisdom, fables and noteworthy morals, with the actual fables of Kalila and Dimna.[21]

The two jackals' names transmogrified into Kalila and Dimna. Perhaps because the first section constituted most of the work, or because translators could find no simple equivalent in Zoroastrian Pahlavi for the concept expressed by the Sanskrit word 'Panchatantra', the jackals' names, Kalila and Dimna, became the generic name for the entire work in classical times.

After the first chapter, Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ inserted a new one, telling of Dimna's trial. The jackal is suspected of instigating the death of the bull “Shanzabeh", a key character in the first chapter. The trial lasts for two days without conclusion, until a tiger and leopard appear to bear witness against Dimna. He is found guilty and put to death.

Ibn al-Muqaffa' inserted other additions and interpretations into his 750CE "re-telling" (see Francois de Blois' Burzōy's voyage to India and the origin of the book Kalīlah wa Dimnah). The political theorist Jennifer London suggests that he was expressing risky political views in a metaphorical way. (Al-Muqaffa' was murdered within a few years of completing his manuscript). London has analysed how Ibn al-Muqaffa' could have used his version to make "frank political expression" at the 'Abbasid court (see J. London's “How To Do Things With Fables: Ibn al-Muqaffas Frank Speech in Stories from Kalila wa Dimna," History of Political Thought XXIX: 2 (2008)).

Al-Muqaffa' also changed the characterisation of some animals, perhaps to have local types which his readers would recognise. For instance, the crocodile in the fourth chapter is changed to a tortoise, and the mongoose into a weasel. The Brahman is described as a "hermit".

He begins each chapter of Kalila wa Dimna with a guiding frame-story theme that suggests key aspects of leadership:

  1. One should always be wary if one friend accuses another of crime;
  2. (Added chapter) Truth will be revealed, sooner or later;
  3. Cooperation among friends is vital to their survival;
  4. Mental strength and deceit are stronger in warfare than brute force;
  5. One must be careful not to betray friends, especially guarding against one's own tendencies towards foolishness; and
  6. One should be wary of hasty judgements.

Links with other fables

Scholars have noted the strong similarity between a few of the stories in The Panchatantra and Aesop's Fables. Examples are 'The Ass in the Panther's Skin' and 'The Ass without Heart and Ears'.[22] "The Broken Pot" is similar to Aesop's "The Milkmaid and Her Pail",[23] "The Gold-Giving Snake" is similar to Aesop's "The Man and the Serpent" and "Le Paysan et Dame serpent" by Marie de France (Fables)[24] Other well-known stories include "The Tortoise and The Geese" and "The Tiger, the Brahmin and the Jackal". Similar animal fables are found in most cultures of the world, although some folklorists view India as the prime source.[25][26] India is described as the "chief source of the world's fable literature" in Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore Mythology and Legend.[27]

The French fabulist Jean de La Fontaine acknowledged his indebtedness to the work in the introduction to his Second Fables:

"This is a second book of fables that I present to the public... I have to acknowledge that the greatest part is inspired from Pilpay, an Indian Sage".[28]

The Panchatantra is the origin also of several stories in Arabian Nights, Sindbad, and of many Western nursery rhymes and ballads.[29]

Origins and function

The evil jackal Damanaka meets the innocent bull Sañjīvaka. Indian painting, 1610.

In the Indian tradition, The Panchatantra is a nītiśāstra. Nīti can be roughly translated as "the wise conduct of life"[15] and a śāstra is a technical or scientific treatise; thus it is considered a treatise on political science and human conduct. Its literary sources are "the expert tradition of political science and the folk and literary traditions of storytelling". It draws from the Dharma and Artha śāstras, quoting them extensively.[30] It is also explained that nīti "represents an admirable attempt to answer the insistent question how to win the utmost possible joy from life in the world of men" and that nīti is "the harmonious development of the powers of man, a life in which security, prosperity, resolute action, friendship, and good learning are so combined to produce joy".[15]

The Panchatantra shares many stories in common with the Buddhist Jataka tales, purportedly told by the historical Buddha before his death around 400 BCE. As the scholar Patrick Olivelle writes, "It is clear that the Buddhists did not invent the stories. [...] It is quite uncertain whether the author of [the Panchatantra] borrowed his stories from the Jātakas or the Mahābhārata, or whether he was tapping into a common treasury of tales, both oral and literary, of ancient India."[30] Many scholars believe the tales were based on earlier oral folk traditions, which were finally written down, although there is no conclusive evidence.[31] In the early 20th century, W. Norman Brown found that many folk tales in India appeared to be borrowed from literary sources and not vice versa.[32]

An early Western scholar who studied The Panchatantra was Dr. Johannes Hertel, who thought the book had a Machiavellian character. Similarly, Edgerton noted that "The so-called 'morals' of the stories have no bearing on morality; they are unmoral, and often immoral. They glorify shrewdness and practical wisdom, in the affairs of life, and especially of politics, of government."[22] Other scholars dismiss this assessment as one-sided, and view the stories as teaching dharma, or proper moral conduct.[33] Also:[34]

On the surface, the Pañcatantra presents stories and sayings which favor the outwitting of roguery, and practical intelligence rather than virtue. However, [..] From this viewpoint the tales of the Pañcatantra are eminently ethical. [...] the prevailing mood promotes an earthy, moral, rational, and unsentimental ability to learn from repeated experience[.]

As Olivelle observes:[30]

Indeed, the current scholarly debate regarding the intent and purpose of the 'Pañcatantra' — whether it supports unscrupulous Machiavellian politics or demands ethical conduct from those holding high office — underscores the rich ambiguity of the text.

In the first frame story, the evil Damanaka ('Victor') wins, and not his good brother Karataka. The persistent theme of evil-triumphant in Kalila and Dimna Part One, frequently outraged readers among Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious leaders who encountered the work in translation. Some scholars believe that Ibn al-Muqaffa inserted a chapter at the end of Part One, which puts Dimna in jail, on trial and eventually to death, in an effort to assuage religious opponents of the work.

The pre-Islamic original, The Panchatantra, contains no such dogmatic moralising. As Joseph Jacobs observed in 1888, "... if one thinks of it, the very raison d'être of the Fable is to imply its moral without mentioning it."[35]

Cross-cultural migrations

See also: Hitopadesha
Early history based primarily on Edgerton (1924).
Adaptations and translations from Jacobs (1888); less reliable for early history.

The work has gone through many different versions and translations from the sixth century to the present day. The original Indian version was first translated into a foreign language (Pahlavi) by Borzūya in 570CE, then into Arabic in 750. This Arabic version was translated into several languages, including Syriac, Greek, Persian, Hebrew and Spanish,[36] and thus became the source of versions in European languages, until the English translation by Charles Wilkins of the Sanskrit Hitopadesha in 1787.

Early cross-cultural migrations

The Panchatantra approximated its current literary form within the 4th–6th centuries CE, though originally written around 200 BCE. No Sanskrit texts before 1000 CE have survived.[37] According to Indian tradition, it was written by Pandit Vishnu Sharman, a sage. Buddhist monks on pilgrimage took the influential Sanskrit text (probably both in oral and literary formats) north to Tibet and China and east to South East Asia.[38] These led to versions in all Southeast Asian countries, including Tibetan, Chinese, Mongolian, Javanese and Lao derivatives.[29]

How Borzuy brought the work from India

The foolish carpenter of Sarandib, hiding under the bed on which lie his wife and her lover. She notices his foot and contrives a story to prove her innocence. Persian illustration of the Kalileh and Dimneh, 1333.

The Panchatantra also migrated westwards, during the Sassanid reign of Khosru I Anushiravan. Around 570 CE his notable physician Borzuy translated the work from Sanskrit into the Middle Persian language, and transliterated the main characters as Karirak ud Damanak.[39][40]

According to the story told in the Shāh Nāma (The Book of the Kings, Persia's late 10th century national epic by Ferdowsi), Borzuy sought his king's permission to make a trip to Hindustan in search of a mountain herb he had read about that is "mingled into a compound and, when sprinkled over a corpse, it is immediately restored to life."[41] He did not find the herb, but was told by a wise sage of

"a different interpretation. The herb is the scientist; science is the mountain, everlastingly out of reach of the multitude. The corpse is the man without knowledge, for the uninstructed man is everywhere lifeless. Through knowledge man becomes revivified."

The sage pointed to the book Kalila, and Borzuy obtained the king's permission to read and translate the book, with the help of some Pandits.[41]

The Arabic classic by Ibn al-Muqaffa

An illustration from a Syrian edition dated 1354. The rabbit fools the elephant king by showing him the reflection of the moon.

Borzuy's 570 CE Pahlavi translation (Kalile va Demne, now lost) was translated into Syriac. Nearly two centuries later, it was translated into Arabic by Ibn al-Muqaffa around 750 CE[42] under the Arabic title, Kalīla wa Dimna.[43] After the Arab invasion of Persia (Iran), Ibn al-Muqaffa's version (two languages removed from the pre-Islamic Sanskrit original) emerged as the pivotal surviving text that enriched world literature.[44] Ibn al-Muqqaffa's work is considered a model of the finest Arabic prose style,[45] and "is considered the first masterpiece of Arabic literary prose."[19]

Some scholars believe that Ibn al-Muqaffa's translation of the second section, illustrating the Sanskrit principle of Mitra Laabha (Gaining Friends), became the unifying basis for the Brethren of Purity (Ikwhan al-Safa) — the anonymous 9th century CE encyclopedists whose prodigious literary effort, Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Sincerity, codified Indian, Persian and Greek knowledge. A suggestion made by Goldziher, and later written on by Philip K. Hitti in his History of the Arabs, proposes that "The appellation is presumably taken from the story of the ringdove in Kalilah wa-Dimnah in which it is related that a group of animals by acting as faithful friends (ikhwan al-safa) to one another escaped the snares of the hunter." This story is mentioned as an exemplum when the Brethren speak of mutual aid in one risaala (treatise), a crucial part of their system of ethics.

The bird lures fish and kills them, until he tries the same trick with a crab. Illustration from the editio princeps of the Latin version by John of Capua.

Spread to the rest of Europe

Almost all pre-modern European translations of the Panchatantra arise from this Arabic version. From Arabic it was re-translated into Syriac in the 10th or 11th century, into Greek in 1080, into 'modern' Persian by Abu'l Ma'ali Nasr Allah Munshi in 1121, and in 1252 into Spain (old Castilian, Calyla e Dymna).

Perhaps most importantly, it was translated into Hebrew by Rabbi Joel in the 12th century. This Hebrew version was translated into Latin by John of Capua as Directorium Humanae Vitae, or "Directory of Human Life", and printed in 1480, and became the source of most European versions.[46] A German translation, Das Buch der Beispiele, of the Panchatantra was printed in 1483, making this one of the earliest books to be printed by Gutenberg's press after the Bible.[29]

The Latin version was translated into Italian by Antonfrancesco Doni in 1552. This translation became the basis for the first English translation, in 1570: Sir Thomas North translated it into Elizabethan English as The Fables of Bidpai: The Morall Philosophie of Doni (reprinted by Joseph Jacobs, 1888).[11] La Fontaine published The Fables of Bidpai in 1679, based on "the Indian sage Pilpay".[29]

Modern era

It was the Panchatantra that served as the basis for the studies of Theodor Benfey, the pioneer in the field of comparative literature.[47] His efforts began to clear up some confusion surrounding the history of the Panchatantra, culminating in the work of Hertel (Hertel 1908, Hertel 1912, Hertel 1915) and Edgerton (1924).[29] Hertel discovered several recensions in India, in particular the oldest available Sanskrit recension, the Tantrakhyayika in Kashmir, and the so-called North Western Family Sanskrit text by the Jain monk Purnabhadra in 1199 CE that blends and rearranges at least three earlier versions. Edgerton undertook a minute study of all texts which seemed "to provide useful evidence on the lost Sanskrit text to which, it must be assumed, they all go back", and believed he had reconstructed the original Sanskrit Panchatantra; this version is known as the Southern Family text.

Among modern translations, Arthur W. Ryder's translation (Ryder 1925), translating prose for prose and verse for rhyming verse, remains popular.[48] In the 1990s two English versions of the Panchatantra were published, Chandra Rajan's translation (based on the Northwestern text) by Penguin (1993), and Patrick Olivelle's translation (based on the Southern text) by Oxford University Press (1997). Olivelle's translation was republished in 2006 by the Clay Sanskrit Library.[49]

Recently Ibn al-Muqaffa's historical milieu itself, when composing his masterpiece in Baghdad during the bloody Abbasid overthrow of the Umayyad dynasty, has become the subject (and rather confusingly, also the title) of a gritty Shakespearean drama by the multicultural Kuwaiti playwright Sulayman Al-Bassam.[50] Ibn al-Muqqafa's biographical background serves as an illustrative metaphor for today's escalating bloodthirstiness in Iraq — once again a historical vortex for clashing civilisations on a multiplicity of levels, including the obvious tribal, religious and political parallels.

The novelist Doris Lessing notes in her introduction to Ramsay Wood's 1980 "retelling" of the first two of the five Panchatantra books,[51] that

"... it is safe to say that most people in the West these days will not have heard of it, while they will certainly at the very least have heard of the Upanishads and the Vedas. Until comparatively recently, it was the other way around. Anyone with any claim to a literary education knew that the Fables of Bidpai or the Tales of Kalila and Dimna — these being the most commonly used titles with us — was a great Eastern classic. There were at least twenty English translations in the hundred years before 1888. Pondering on these facts leads to reflection on the fate of books, as chancy and unpredictable as that of people or nations."

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Jacobs 1888, Introduction, page xv; Ryder 1925, Translator's introduction, quoting Hertel: "the original work was composed in Kashmir, about 200 B.C. At this date, however, many of the individual stories were already ancient."
  2. ↑ Doris Lessing, Problems, Myths and Stories, London: Institute for Cultural Research Monograph Series No. 36, 1999, p 13
  3. ↑ Introduction, Olivelle 2006, quoting Edgerton 1924.
  4. ↑ Ryder 1925, Translator's introduction: "The Panchatantra contains the most widely known stories in the world. If it were further declared that the Panchatantra is the best collection of stories in the world, the assertion could hardly be disproved, and would probably command the assent of those possessing the knowledge for a judgment."
  5. ↑ Edgerton 1924, p. 3. "reacht" and "workt" have been changed to conventional spelling.
  6. ↑ Hertel 1915
  7. ↑ Falconer 1885
  8. ↑ Knatchbull 1819
  9. ↑ Wood 2008
  10. ↑ Eastwick 1854, Wollaston 1877, Wilkinson 1930,
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Jacobs 1888
  12. ↑ The Fables of Pilpay, facsimile reprint of the 1775 edition, Darf Publishers, London 1987
  13. ↑ Ryder 1925, Translator's introduction: "Thus, the lion is strong but dull of wit, the jackal crafty, the heron stupid, the cat a hypocrite. The animal actors present, far more vividly and more urbanely than men could do, the view of life here recommended—a view shrewd, undeceived, and free of all sentimentality; a view that, piercing the humbug of every false ideal, reveals with incomparable wit the sources of lasting joy." See also Olivelle 2006, pp. 26–31
  14. ↑ For this reason, Ramsay Wood considers it an early precursor of the mirrors for princes genre.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 Ryder 1925, Translator's introduction: "The Panchatantra is a niti-shastra, or textbook of niti. The word niti means roughly “the wise conduct of life." Western civilization must endure a certain shame in realizing that no precise equivalent of the term is found in English, French, Latin, or Greek. Many words are therefore necessary to explain what niti is, though the idea, once grasped, is clear, important, and satisfying."
  16. ↑ Edgerton 1924, p. 4
  17. ↑ Ryder 1925, Translator's introduction: "These verses are for the most part quoted from sacred writings or other sources of dignity and authority. It is as if the animals in some English beast-fable were to justify their actions by quotations from Shakespeare and the Bible. These wise verses it is which make the real character of the Panchatantra. The stories, indeed, are charming when regarded as pure narrative; but it is the beauty, wisdom, and wit of the verses which lift the Panchatantra far above the level of the best story-books."
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 Olivelle 2006, p. 23
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Lane, Andrew J. (2003), Review: Gregor Schoeler's Écrire et transmettre dans les débuts de l’islam, Cambridge: MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies, archived from the original on 6 March 2008
  20. ↑ François de Blois (1990), Burzōy's voyage to India and the origin of the book of Kalīlah wa Dimnah, Routledge, pp. 22–23, ISBN 978-0-947593-06-3
  21. ↑ http://www.al-hakawati.net/arabic/Civilizations/75.pdf
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 The Panchatantra translated in 1924 from the Sanskrit by Franklin Edgerton, George Allen and Unwin, London 1965 ("Edition for the General Reader"), page 13
  23. ↑ They are both classified as folktales of Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 1430 "about daydreams of wealth and fame".
  24. ↑ They are both classified as folktales of Aarne-Thompson type 285D.
  25. ↑ K D Upadhyaya, The Classification and Chief Characteristics of Indian (Hindi) Folk-Tales: "It is only in the fitness of things that Professors Hertel and Benfey should regard this land as the prime source of fables and fiction."
  26. ↑ Anne Mackenzie Pearson (1996), 'Because it gives me peace of mind': Ritual Fasts in the Religious Lives of Hindu Women, SUNY Press, p. 279, ISBN 978-0-7914-3037-8
  27. ↑ Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore Mythology and Legend (1975), p. 842
  28. ↑ ("Je dirai par reconnaissance que j’en dois la plus grande partie à Pilpay sage indien") Avertissement to the Second Compilation of Fables, 1678, Jean de La Fontaine
  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 29.2 29.3 29.4 Vijay Bedekar, History of the Migration of Panchatantra, Institute for Oriental Study, Thane
  30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 30.2 Olivelle 2006, p. 18
  31. ↑ Bedekar: "Its probable relation to early folk and oral tradition of story telling in India has been suggested by many. Rather, it is fashionable to make such statements that 'Panchatantra' and allied Katha literature in India had their origin in early folk stories. However, not a single credible evidence has been produced till this date, other than lengthy discussions on hypothetical assumptions."
  32. ↑ Brown, Norman W. 1919. "'The Panchatantra' in Modern Indian Folklore", Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol 39, pp 1 &17: "It is doubtless true that in the remote past many stories had their origin among the illiterate folk, often in pre-literary times, and were later taken into literature. It is also just as true that many stories that appear in literature existed there first and are not indebted to the folklore for their origin. But leaving aside questions concerning the early history of Hindu stories and dealing strictly with modern Indian fiction, we find that folklore has frequently taken its material from literature. This process has been so extensive that of the 3000 tales so far reported, all of which have been collected during the past fifty years, at least half can be shown to be derived from literary sources. [...] This table affords considerable evidence in support of the theory that it is the folk tales and not the literary tales that are borrowed.
  33. ↑ Falk, H. (1978), Quellen des Pañcatantra, pp. 173–188
  34. ↑ Roderick Hindery (1996), Comparative ethics in Hindu and Buddhist traditions, Motilal Banarsidass Publ., p. 166, ISBN 978-81-208-0866-9
  35. ↑ Jacobs 1888, p.48
  36. ↑ Kalilah and Dimnah; or, The fables of Bidpai; being an account of their literary history, p. xiv
  37. ↑ Edgerton 1924, p. 9
  38. ↑ Tarquin Hall "Review: Colin Thubron, Shadow of the Silk Road, London: Chatto & Windus, 2006, New Statesman, 25 September 2011, Review includes description of how some of the monks likely traveled in ancient times.
  39. ↑ IIS.ac.uk Dr Fahmida Suleman, "Kalila wa Dimna", in Medieval Islamic Civilization, An Encyclopaedia, Vol. II, p. 432-433, ed. Josef W. Meri, New York-London: Routledge, 2006
  40. ↑ Abdolhossein Zarrinkoub, Naqde adabi, Tehran 1959 pp:374–379. (See Contents 1.1 Pre-Islamic Iranian literature)
  41. ↑ 41.0 41.1 The Shāh Nãma, The Epic of the Kings, translated by Reuben Levy, revised by Amin Banani, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1985, Chapter XXXI (iii) How Borzuy brought the Kalila of Demna from Hindustan, pages 330 – 334
  42. ↑ The Fables of Kalila and Dimnah, translated from the Arabic by Saleh Sa'adeh Jallad, 2002. Melisende, London, ISBN 1-901764-14-1
  43. ↑ Muslim Neoplatonist: An Introduction to the Thought of the Brethren of Purity, Ian Richard Netton, 1991. Edinburgh University Press, ISBN 0-7486-0251-8
  44. ↑ See fourteen illuminating commentaries about or relating to Kalila wa Dimna under the entry for Ibn al-Muqqaffa in the INDEX of The Penguin Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature by Rober Irwin, Penguin Books, London 2006
  45. ↑ James Kritzeck (1964) Anthology of Islamic Literature, New American Library, New York, page 73:
    On the surface of the matter it may seem strange that the oldest work of Arabic prose which is regarded as a model of style is a translation from the Pahlavi (Middle Persian) of the Sanskrit work Panchatantra, or The Fables of Bidpai, by Ruzbih, a convert from Zoroastrianism, who took the name Abdullah ibn al-Muqaffa. It is not quite so strange, however, when one recalls that the Arabs had much preferred the poetic art and were at first suspicious of and untrained to appreciate, let alone imitate, current higher forms of prose literature in the lands they occupied. Leaving aside the great skill of its translation (which was to serve as the basis for later translations into some forty languages), the work itself is far from primitive, having benefited already at that time 750 CE from a lengthy history of stylistic revision. Kalilah and Dimnah is in fact the patriarchal form of the Indic fable in which animals behave as humans — as distinct from the Aesopic fable in which they behave as animals. Its philosophical heroes through the initial interconnected episodes illustrating The Loss of Friends, the first Hindu principle of polity are the two jackals, Kalilah and Dimnah. It seems unjust, in the light of posterity's appreciation of his work, that Ibn al-Muqaffa was put to death after charges of heresy about 755 CE.
    See also pages 69 – 72 for his vivid summary of Ibn al-Muqaffa's historical context.
  46. ↑  Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Bidpai, Fables of". Encyclopædia Britannica 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
  47. ↑ Harvard Oriental Series. Books.google.com. Retrieved 14 April 2013.
  48. ↑ Ahsan Jan Qaisar; Som Prakash Verma, eds. (2002), Art and culture: painting and perspective, Abhinav Publications, p. 33, ISBN 978-81-7017-405-9: "it became the most popular and easily accessible English translation, going into many reprints."
  49. ↑ Rajan (1993), Olivelle (1997), Olivelle (2006).
  50. ↑ Kalila wa Dimna or The Mirror for Princes by Sulayman Al-Bassam, Oberon Modern Plays, London 2006
  51. ↑ Kalila and Dimna, Selected fables of Bidpai, retold by Ramsay Wood (with an Introduction by Doris Lessing), Illustrated by Margaret Kilrenny, A Paladin Book, Granada, London, 1982

Editions and translations

(Ordered chronologically.)

Sanskrit texts

Critical editions
Others

Translations in English

Further reading

  • N. M. Penzer (1924), The Ocean of Story, Being C.H. Tawney's Translation of Somadeva's Katha Sarit Sagara (or Ocean of Streams of Story): Volume V (of X), Appendix I: pp. 207–242
  • Burzoy's Voyage to India and the Origin of the Book of Kalilah wa Dimnah Google Books, Francois de Blois, Royal Asiatic Society, London, 1990
  • On Kalila wa Dimna and Persian National Fairy Tales Transoxiana.com, Dr. Pavel Basharin [Moscow], Tansoxiana 12, 2007
  • The Past We Share — The Near Eastern Ancestry of Western Folk Literature, E. L. Ranelagh, Quartet Books, Horizon Press, New York, 1979
  • In Arabian Nights — A Search of Morocco through its Stories and Storytellers by Tahir Shah, Doubleday, 2008.
  • Ibn al-Muqaffa, Abdallah. Kalilah et Dimnah. Ed. P. Louis Cheiko. 3 ed. Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1947.
  • Ibn al-Muqaffa, Abd'allah. Calila e Dimna. Edited by Juan Manuel Cacho Blecua and María Jesus Lacarra. Madrid: Editorial Castalia, 1984.
  • Keller, John Esten, and Robert White Linker. El libro de Calila e Digna. Madrid Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1967.
  • Latham, J.D. "Ibn al-Muqaffa` and Early `Abbasid Prose." `Abbasid Belles-Lettres. Eds. Julia Ashtiany, et al. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989. 48–77.
  • Parker, Margaret. The Didactic Structure and Content of El libro de Calila e Digna. Miami, FL: Ediciones Universal, 1978.
  • Penzol, Pedro. Las traducciones del "Calila e Dimna". Madrid,: Impr. de Ramona Velasco, viuda de P. Perez,, 1931.
  • Shaw, Sandra. The Jatakas — Birth Stories of the Bodhisatta, Penguin Classics, Penguin Books India, New Delhi, 2006
  • Wacks, David A. "The Performativity of Ibn al-Muqaffas Kalîla wa-Dimna and Al-Maqamat al-Luzumiyya of al-Saraqusti." Journal of Arabic Literature 34.1–2 (2003): 178–89.

External links

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