Panchatantra Stories In Kannada Pdf

Kannada Moral Stories: Read all kids moral stories in kannada, ಕನ್ನಡ ನೈತಿಕ ಕಥೆಗಳು, kids panchatantra stories in kannada & many more in Vijaya Karnataka. It is one of the most popular collections of stories from the ancient Indian civilization. The tales, most of which are based on animals, come with a strong moral message. Panchatantra stories for kids have a strong plot with different characters, making them interesting. Use the MomJunction collection of 25 stories to read out to your children. The Great Panchatantra Tales (For more than two and a half millennia, the Panchatantra tales have regaled children and adults alike with a moral at the end of every story. Some believe that they are as old as the RigVeda. There is also another story about these fables. According to it, these are stories Shiva told his consort Parvati.

The first page of oldest surviving Panchatantra text in Sanskrit[1]
An 18th-century Pancatantra manuscript page in Braj dialect of Hindi (The Talkative Turtle)
A Panchatantrarelief at the Mendut temple, Central Java, Indonesia

The Panchatantra (IAST: Pañcatantra, Sanskrit: पञ्चतन्त्र, 'Five Treatises') is an ancient Indian collection of interrelated animal fables in Sanskrit verse and prose, arranged within a frame story.[2] The surviving work is dated to roughly 200 BCE, based on older oral tradition.[3][4] The text's author is unknown, but has been attributed to Vishnu Sharma in some recensions and Vasubhaga in others, both of which may be pen names.[3] It is classical literature in a Hindu text,[3][5] and based on older oral traditions with 'animal parables that are as old as we are able to imagine'.[6]

It is 'certainly the most frequently translated literary product of India',[7] and these stories are among the most widely known in the world.[8] It goes by many names in many cultures. There is a version of Panchatantra in nearly every major language of India, and in addition there are 200 versions of the text in more than 50 languages around the world.[9] One version reached Europe in the 11th century.[2] To quote Edgerton (1924):[10]

...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.

The earliest known translation into a non-Indian language is in Middle Persian (Pahlavi, 550 CE) by Burzoe.[2][9] This became the basis for a Syriac translation as Kalilag and Damnag[11] and a translation into Arabic in 750 CE by Persian scholar Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa as Kalīlah wa Dimnah.[12] A New Persian version by Rudaki in the 12th century became known as Kalīleh o Demneh[13] and this was the basis of Kashefi's 15th-century Anvār-i Suhaylī (The Lights of Canopus),[14] which in turn was translated into Humayun-namah in Turkish.[2] The book is also known as The Fables of Bidpai (or Pilpai in various European languages, Vidyapati in Sanskrit) or The Morall Philosophie of Doni (English, 1570).[15][16][2] Most European versions of the text are derivative works of the 12th-century Hebrew version of Panchatantra by Rabbi Joel.[2] In Germany, its translation in 1480 by Anton von Pforr has been widely read.[17] Several versions of the text are also found in Indonesia, where it is titled as Tantri Kamandaka, Tantravakya or Candapingala and consists of 360 fables.[2][18] In Laos, a version is called Nandaka-prakarana, while in Thailand it has been referred to as Nang Tantrai.[18][19][20]

  • 2Content
  • 4Origins and function
  • 5Cross-cultural migrations
  • 9Editions and translations

Author and chronology[edit]

The prelude section of the Panchatantra identifies an octogenarian Brahmin named Vishnu Sharma (IAST: Viṣṇuśarman) as its author.[3][17] He is stated to be teaching the principles of good government to three princes of Amarasakti. It is unclear, states Patrick Olivelle, a professor of Sanskrit and Indian religions, if Vishnu Sharma was a real person or himself a literary invention. Some South Indian recensions of the text, as well as Southeast Asian versions of Panchatantra attribute the text to Vasubhaga, states Olivelle.[3] Based on the content and mention of the same name in other texts dated to ancient and medieval era centuries, most scholars agree that Vishnu Sharma is a fictitious name. Olivelle and other scholars state that regardless of who the author was, it is likely 'the author was a Hindu, and not a Buddhist, nor Jain', but it is unlikely that the author was a devotee of Hindu god Vishnu because the text neither expresses any sentiments against other Hindu deities such as Shiva, Indra and others, nor does it avoid invoking them with reverence.[21][22]

Various locations where the text was composed have been proposed but this has been controversial. Some of the proposed locations include Kashmir, Southwestern or South India.[3] The text's original language was likely Sanskrit. Though the text is now known as Panchatantra, the title found in old manuscript versions varies regionally, and includes names such as Tantrakhyayika, Panchakhyanaka, Panchakhyana and Tantropakhyana. The suffix akhyayika and akhyanaka mean 'little story' or 'little story book' in Sanskrit.[23]

The text was translated into Pahlavi in 550 CE, which forms the latest limit of the text's existence. The earliest limit is uncertain. It quotes identical verses from Arthasastra, which is broadly accepted to have been completed by the early centuries of the common era. According to Olivelle, 'the current scholarly consensus places the Panchatantra around 300 BCE, although we should remind ourselves that this is only an educated guess'.[3] The text quotes from older genre of Indian literature, and legends with anthropomorphic animals are found in more ancient texts dated to the early centuries of the 1st millennium BCE such as the chapter 4.1 of the Chandogya Upanishad.[24] According to Gillian Adams, Panchatantra may be a product of the Vedic period, but its age cannot be ascertained with confidence because 'the original Sanskrit version has been lost'.[25]

Content[edit]

What is learning whose attaining,
Sees no passion wane, no reigning
Love and self-control?
Does not make the mind a menial,
Finds in virtue no congenial
Path and final goal?
Whose attaining is but straining
For a name, and never gaining
Fame or peace of soul?

—Panchatantra: Smart, The Jackal
Book 1: The Loss of Friends
Translator: Arthur William Ryder[26]

The Panchatantra is a series of inter-woven fables, many of which deploy metaphors of anthropomorphized animals with human virtues and vices.[27] According to its own narrative, it illustrates, for the benefit of three ignorant princes, the central Hindu principles of nīti.[28] While nīti is hard to translate, it roughly means prudent worldly conduct, or 'the wise conduct of life'.[29]

Apart from a short introduction, 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.[30][31] 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.[32]

The five books have their own subtitles.[33]

Panchatantra
Book subtitleRyder's translation[33]Olivelle's translation[34]
1. Mitra-bhedaThe Loss of FriendsOn Causing Dissension among Allies
2. Mitra-lābhaThe Winning of FriendsOn Securing Allies
3. KākolūkīyamOn Crows and OwlsOn War and Peace: The story of the crows and the owls
4. LabdhapraṇāśamLoss of GainsOn Losing What You have Gained
5. AparīkṣitakārakaṃIll-Considered ActionOn Hasty Actions

Book 1: Mitra-bheda[edit]

If loving kindness be not shown,
to friends and souls in pain,
to teachers, servants, and one's self,
what use in life, what gain?

—Panchatantra, Book 1
Translator: Arthur William Ryder[35]

The first treatise features a jackal named Damanaka, as the unemployed minister in a kingdom ruled by a lion. He, along with his moralizing sidekick named Karataka, conspire to break up alliances and friendships of the lion king. A series of fables describe the conspiracies and causes that lead to close and inseparable friends breaking up.[36]

The Book 1 contains over thirty fables, with the version Arthur Ryder translated containing 34: The Loss of Friends, The Wedge-Pulling Monkey, The Jackal and the War-Drum, Merchant Strong-Tooth, Godly and June, The Jackal at the Ram-Fight, The Weaver's Wife, How the Crow-Hen Killed the Black Snake, The Heron that Liked Crab-Meat, Numskull and the Rabbit, The Weaver Who Loved a Princess, The Ungrateful Man, Leap and Creep, The Blue Jackal, Passion and the Owl, Ugly's Trust Abused, The Lion and the Carpenter, The Plover Who Fought the Ocean, Shell-Neck Slim and Grim, Forethought Readywit and Fatalist, The Duel Between Elephant and Sparrow, The Shrewd Old Gander, The Lion and the Ram, Smart the Jackal, The Monk Who Left His Body Behind, The Girl Who Married a Snake, Poor Blossom, The Unteachable Monkey, Right-Mind and Wrong-Mind, A Remedy Worse than the Disease, The Mice That Ate Iron, The Results of Education, The Sensible Enemy, The Foolish Friend.[33]

It is the longest of the five books, making up roughly 45% of the work's length.[37]

Book 2: Mitra-samprāpti[edit]

The second treatise is quite different in structure than the remaining books, states Olivelle, as it does not truly embox fables. It is a collection of adventures of four characters: a crow (scavenger, not a predator, airborne habits), a mouse (tiny, underground habits), a turtle (slow, water habits) and a deer (a grazing animal viewed by other animals as prey, land habits). The overall focus of the book is the reverse of the first book. Its theme is to emphasize the importance of friendships, team work, and alliances. It teaches, 'weak animals with very different skills, working together can accomplish what they cannot when they work alone', according to Olivelle.[38] United through their cooperation and in their mutual support, the fables describe how they are able to outwit all external threats and prosper.[38]

The second book contains ten fables: The Winning of Friends, The Bharunda Birds, Gold's Gloom, Mother Shandilee's Bargain, Self-defeating Forethought, Mister Duly, Soft, the Weaver, Hang-Ball and Greedy, The Mice That Set Elephant Free, Spot's Captivity.[33]

Book 2 makes up about 22% of the total length.[37]

Book 3: Kākolūkīyam[edit]

A Panchatantra manuscript page

The third treatise discusses war and peace, presenting through animal characters a moral about the battle of wits being a strategic means to neutralize a vastly superior opponent's army. The thesis in this treatise is that a battle of wits is a more potent force than a battle of swords.[39] The choice of animals embeds a metaphor of a war between good versus evil, and light versus darkness. Crows are good, weaker and smaller in number and are creatures of the day (light), while owls are presented as evil, numerous and stronger creatures of the night (darkness).[39] The crow king listens to the witty and wise counsel of Ciramjivin, while the owl king ignores the counsel of Raktaksa. The good crows win.[39]

The fables in the third book, as well as others, do not strictly limit to matters of war and peace. Some present fables that demonstrate how different characters have different needs and motives, which is subjectively rational from each character's viewpoint, and that addressing these needs can empower peaceful relationships even if they start off in a different way.[39] For example, in the fable The Old Man the Young Wife, the text relates a story wherein an old man marries a young woman from a penniless family.[40] The young woman detests his appearance so much that she refuses to even look at him let alone consummate their marriage.[41] One night, while she sleeps in the same bed with her back facing the old man, a thief enters their house. She is scared, turns over, and for security embraces the man. This thrills every limb of the old man. He feels grateful to the thief for making his young wife hold him at last. The aged man rises and profusely thanks the thief, requesting the intruder to take whatever he desires.[40][41][42]

The third book contains eighteen fables in Ryder translation: Crows and Owls, How the Birds Picked a King, How the Rabbit Fooled the Elephant, The Cat's Judgment, The Brahmin's Goat, The Snake and the Ants, The Snake Who Paid Cash, The Unsocial Swans, The Self-sacrificing Dove, The Old Man with the Young Wife, The Brahmin the Thief and the Ghost, The Snake in the Prince's Belly, The Gullible Carpenter, Mouse-Maid Made Mouse, The Bird with Golden Dung, The Cave That Talked, The Frog That Rode Snakeback, The Butter-blinded Brahmin.[33]

This is about 26% of the total length.[37]

Book 4: Labdhapraṇāśam[edit]

The book four of the Panchatantra is a simpler compilation of ancient moral-filled fables. These, states Olivelle, teach messages such as 'a bird in hand is worth two in the bush'.[43] They caution the reader to avoid succumbing to peer pressure and cunning intent wrapped in soothing words. The book is different from the first three, in that the earlier books give positive examples of ethical behavior offering examples and actions 'to do'. In contrast, book four presents negative examples with consequences, offering examples and actions 'to avoid, to watch out for'.[43]

The fourth book contains thirteen fables in Ryder translation: Loss of Gains, The Monkey and the Crocodile, Handsome and Theodore, Flop-Ear and Dusty, The Potter Militant, The Jackal Who Killed No Elephants, The Ungrateful Wife, King Joy and Secretary Splendor, The Ass in the Tiger-Skin, The Farmer's Wife, The Pert Hen-Sparrow, How Supersmart Ate the Elephant, The Dog Who Went Abroad.[33]

Book 4, along with Book 5, is very short. Together the last two books constitute about 7% of the total text.[31]

Book 5: Aparīkṣitakārakaṃ[edit]

The Book 5 of Panchatantra includes the mongoose and snake story, an inspiration for the 'Rikki-Tikki-Tavi' story by Rudyard Kipling.[44]

The book five of the text is, like book four, a simpler compilation of moral-filled fables. These also present negative examples with consequences, offering examples and actions for the reader to ponder over, avoid, to watch out for. The messages in this last book include those such as 'get facts, be patient, don't act in haste then regret later', 'don't build castles in the air'.[45] The book five is also unusual in that almost all its characters are humans, unlike the first four where the characters are predominantly anthropomorphized animals. According to Olivelle, this may be by design where the text's ancient author sought to bring the reader out of the fantasy world of talking and pondering animals into the realities of the human world.[45]

The fifth book contains twelve fables about hasty actions or jumping to conclusions without establishing facts and proper due diligence. In Ryder translation, they are: Ill-considered Action, The Loyal Mungoose, The Four Treasure-Seekers, The Lion-Makers, Hundred-Wit Thousand-Wit and Single-Wit, The Musical Donkey, Slow the Weaver, The Brahman's Dream, The Unforgiving Monkey, The Credulous Fiend, The Three-Breasted Princess, The Fiend Who Washed His Feet.[33]

One of the fables in this book is the story about a woman and a mongoose. She leaves her child with a mongoose friend. When she returns, she sees blood on the mongoose's mouth, and kills the friend, believing the animal killed her child. The woman discovers her child alive, and learns that the blood on the mongoose mouth came from it biting the snake while defending her child from the snake's attack. She regrets having killed the friend because of her hasty action.

Links with other fables[edit]

The fables of Panchatantra are found in numerous world languages. It is also considered partly the origin of European secondary works, such as folk tale motifs found in Boccaccio, La Fontaine and the works of Grimm Brothers.[46][47] For a while, this had led to the hypothesis that popular worldwide animal-based fables had origins in India and the Middle East.[46] According to Max Muller,

Sanskrit literature is very rich in fables and stories; no other literature can vie with it in that respect; nay, it is extremely likely that fables, in particular animal fables, had their principal source in India.

— Max Muller, On the Migration of Fables[48]

This monocausal hypothesis has now been generally discarded in favor of polygenetic hypothesis which states that fable motifs had independent origins in many ancient human cultures, some of which have common roots and some influenced by co-sharing of fables. The shared fables implied morals that appealed to communities separated by large distances and these fables were therefore retained, transmitted over human generations with local variations.[46][49] However, many post-medieval era authors explicitly credit their inspirations to texts such as 'Bidpai' and 'Pilpay, the Indian sage' that are known to be based on the Panchatantra.[48]

According to Niklas Bengtsson, even though India being the exclusive original source of fables is no longer taken seriously, the ancient classic Panchatantra, 'which new folklore research continues to illuminate, was certainly the first work ever written down for children, and this in itself means that the Indian influence has been enormous [on world literature], not only on the genres of fables and fairy tales, but on those genres as taken up in children's literature'.[50] According to Adams and Bottigheimer, the fables of Panchatantra are known in at least 38 languages around the world in 112 versions by Jacob's old estimate, and its relationship with Mesopotamian and Greek fables is hotly debated in part because the original manuscripts of all three ancient texts have not survived.[51] Olivelle states that there are 200 versions of the text in more than 50 languages around the world, in addition to a version in nearly every major language of India.[9]

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'.[52] 'The Broken Pot' is similar to Aesop's 'The Milkmaid and Her Pail',[53] '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)[54] 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.[55][56] The Panchatantra has been a source of the world's fable literature.[57]

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'.[58]

The Panchatantra is the origin also of several stories in Arabian Nights, Sindbad, and of many Western nursery rhymes and ballads.[59]

Origins and function[edit]

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'[29] 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 DharmaandArthaśāstras, quoting them extensively.[60] 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'.[29]

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.'[60] Many scholars believe the tales were based on earlier oral folk traditions, which were finally written down, although there is no conclusive evidence.[61] 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.[62]

Panchtantra illustration in Nalanda Temple, 7th century CE (Turtle and the Geese)

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.'[52] Other scholars dismiss this assessment as one-sided, and view the stories as teaching dharma, or proper moral conduct.[63] Also:[64]

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[.]

According to Olivelle, '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'.[60] Konrad Meisig states that the Panchatantra has been incorrectly represented by some as 'an entertaining textbook for the education of princes in the Machiavellian rules of Arthasastra', but instead it is a book for the 'Little Man' to develop 'Niti' (social ethics, prudent behavior, shrewdness) in their pursuit of Artha, and a work on social satire.[65] According to Joseph Jacobs, '... if one thinks of it, the very raison d'être of the Fable is to imply its moral without mentioning it.'[66]

The Panchatantra, states Patrick Olivelle, tells wonderfully a collection of delightful stories with pithy proverbs, ageless and practical wisdom; one of its appeal and success is that it is a complex book that 'does not reduce the complexities of human life, government policy, political strategies, and ethical dilemmas into simple solutions; it can and does speak to different readers at different levels.'[9] In the Indian tradition, the work is a Shastra genre of literature, more specifically a Nitishastra text.[9]

The text has been a source of studies on political thought in Hinduism, as well as the management of Artha with a debate on virtues and vices.[67][68]

Metaphors and layered meanings[edit]

The Sanskrit version of the Panchatantra text gives names to the animal characters, but these names are creative with double meanings.[69] The names connote the character observable in nature but also map a human personality that a reader can readily identify. For example, the deer characters are presented as a metaphor for the charming, innocent, peaceful and tranquil personality who is a target for those who seek a prey to exploit, while crocodiles are presented as a symbolism for those with dangerous intent hiding beneath welcoming ambiance (waters of a lotus flower-laden pond).[69] Dozens of different types of wildlife found in India are thus named, and they constitute an array of symbolic characters in the Panchatantra. Thus, the names of the animals evoke layered meaning that resonates with the reader, and the same story can be read at different levels.[69]

Cross-cultural migrations[edit]

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,[70] and thus became the source of versions in European languages, until the English translation by Charles Wilkins of the SanskritHitopadesha in 1787.

Early cross-cultural migrations[edit]

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.[71] Buddhist monks on pilgrimage to India took the influential Sanskrit text (probably both in oral and literary formats) north to Tibet and China and east to South East Asia.[72] These led to versions in all Southeast Asian countries, including Tibetan, Chinese, Mongolian, Javanese and Lao derivatives.[59]

How Borzuy brought the work from India[edit]

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 into the Middle East, through Iran, during the Sassanid reign of Anoushiravan.[73][74] Around 550 CE his notable physician Borzuy (Burzuwaih) translated the work from Sanskrit into the Pahlavi (Middle Persian language).[73] He transliterated the main characters as Karirak ud Damanak.[75][76]

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.'[77] 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, and the visiting physician Borzuy translated the work with the help of some Pandits (Brahmins).[77] According to Hans Bakker, Borzuy visited the kingdom of Kannauj in north India during the 6th century in an era of intense exchange between Persian and Indian royal courts, and he secretly translated a copy of the text then sent it to the court of Anoushiravan in Persia, along with other cultural and technical knowledge.[78]

Kalila wa Demna: Mid. Persian and Arabic versions[edit]

A page from Kelileh o Demneh depicts the jackal-vizier Damanaka ('Victor')/ Dimna trying to persuade his lion-king that the honest bull-courtier, Shatraba(شطربة), is a traitor.

Borzuy's translation of the Sanskrit version into Pahlavi arrived in Persia by the 6th century, but this Middle Persian version is now lost. The book had become popular in Sassanid, and was translated into Syriac and Arabic whose copies survive.[74] According to Riedel, 'the three preserved New Persian translations originated between the 10th and 12th century', and are based on the 8th-century Arabic translation by Ibn al-Muqaffa of Borzuy's work on Panchatantra. It is the 8th-century Kalila wa Demna text, states Riedel, that has been the most influential of the known Arabic versions, not only in the Middle East, but also through its translations into Greek, Hebrew and Old Spanish.[74]

The PersianIbn 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.'[79]

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].
A page from the Arabic version of Kalila wa dimna, dated 1210 CE, illustrating the King of the Crows conferring with his political advisors

The introduction of the first book of Kalila wa Demna is different than Panchatantra, in being more elaborate and instead of king and his three sons studying in the Indian version, the Persian version speaks of a merchant and his three sons who had squandered away their father's wealth. The Persian version also makes an abrupt switch from the story of the three sons to an injured ox, and thereafter parallels the Panchatantra.[80]

The two jackals' names transmogrified into Kalila and Dimna in the Persian version. 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)).

The Arabic classic by Ibn al-Muqaffa[edit]

101 Panchatantra Stories Pdf In Kannada

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[81] under the Arabic title, Kalīla wa Dimna.[82] 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.[83] Ibn al-Muqaffa's work is considered a model of the finest Arabic prose style,[84] and 'is considered the first masterpiece of Arabic literary prose.'[79]

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[edit]

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 (as Stephanites and Ichnelates) in 1080 by the Jewish Byzantine doctor Simeon Seth,[85] into 'modern' Persian by Abu'l Ma'ali Nasr Allah Munshi in 1121, and in 1252 into Spanish (old Castilian, Calila e Dimna).

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.[86]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.[59]

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).[15] La Fontaine published The Fables of Bidpai in 1679, based on 'the Indian sage Pilpay'.[59]

Modern era[edit]

It was the Panchatantra that served as the basis for the studies of Theodor Benfey, the pioneer in the field of comparative literature.[87] 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).[59] 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.[88][89] In the 1990s two English versions of the Panchatantra were published, Chandra Rajan's translation (like Ryder's, based on Purnabhadra's recension) by Penguin (1993), and Patrick Olivelle's translation (based on Edgerton's reconstruction of the ur-text) by Oxford University Press (1997). Olivelle's translation was republished in 2006 by the Clay Sanskrit Library.[90]

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.[91] 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,[92] 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[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^Johannes Hertel (1915), The Panchatantra : a collection of historic Hindu tales in its oldest recension, the Kashmirian, entitled Tantrakhyayika, Harvard University Press, page 1
  2. ^ abcdefgPanchatantra: Indian Literature, Encyclopaedia Britannica
  3. ^ abcdefgPatrick Olivelle (1999). Pañcatantra: The Book of India's Folk Wisdom. Oxford University Press. pp. xii–xiii. ISBN978-0-19-283988-6.
  4. ^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.'
  5. ^Paul Waldau; Kimberley Patton (22 May 2009). A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics. Columbia University Press. pp. 186, 680. ISBN978-0-231-13643-3., Quote: 'Pancatantra (Hindu text)...'
  6. ^Doris Lessing, Problems, Myths and Stories, London: Institute for Cultural Research Monograph Series No. 36, 1999, p 13
  7. ^Introduction, Olivelle 2006, quoting Edgerton 1924.
  8. ^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.'
  9. ^ abcdePatrick Olivelle (2009). Pañcatantra: The Book of India's Folk Wisdom. Oxford University Press. pp. ix–x. ISBN978-0-19-955575-8.
  10. ^Edgerton 1924, p. 3. 'reacht' and 'workt' have been changed to conventional spelling.
  11. ^Falconer 1885
  12. ^Knatchbull 1819
  13. ^Wood 2008
  14. ^Eastwick 1854, Wollaston 1877, Wilkinson 1930,
  15. ^ abJacobs 1888
  16. ^The Fables of Pilpay, facsimile reprint of the 1775 edition, Darf Publishers, London 1987
  17. ^ abKonrad Meisig (2006). Vera Alexander (ed.). Peripheral Centres, Central Peripheries: India and Its Diaspora(s). LIT Verlag Münster. pp. 157–161. ISBN978-3-8258-9210-4.
  18. ^ abA. Venkatasubbiah (1966), A Javanese version of the Pancatantra, Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Vol. 47, No. 1/4 (1966), pp. 59-100
  19. ^Anthony Kennedy Warder (1992). Indian Kāvya Literature: The art of storytelling. Motilal Banarsidass. pp. 77–84. ISBN978-81-208-0615-3.
  20. ^Francisca Cho (2017). Seeing Like the Buddha: Enlightenment through Film. State University of New York Press. pp. 53–54. ISBN978-1-4384-6440-4., Quote: '(...) the Thai collection of stories called the Nang Tantrai features, which are based on the third century BCE Indian collection of animal fables known as the Pancatantra (...)'
  21. ^Patrick Olivelle (1999). Pañcatantra: The Book of India's Folk Wisdom. Oxford University Press. pp. xii–xiii, 5–6, 54, 122–123, 135, 166–167. ISBN978-0-19-283988-6.
  22. ^Johannes Hertel (1915), The Panchatantra, Harvard University Press, Editor: Charles Lanman (Harvard Oriental Series Vol. 14), page ix, Quote: 'This volume contains the Sanskrit text of the Tantrakhyayika or Panchatantra, a collection of ancient Hindu tales in its oldest extant form. (...) The Panchatantra, he adds, is not only the oldest extant work of Hindu artistic fiction, but it is (...)'.
  23. ^Patrick Olivelle (1999). Pañcatantra: The Book of India's Folk Wisdom. Oxford University Press. pp. xiii–xiv. ISBN978-0-19-283988-6.
  24. ^Patrick Olivelle (2009). Pañcatantra: The Book of India's Folk Wisdom. Oxford University Press. pp. xi–xii. ISBN978-0-19-955575-8.
  25. ^Gillian Adams (2004) and Ruth Bottigheimer (2004), International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature, page 233
  26. ^Arthur William Ryder (1925), The Panchatantra, University of Chicago Press, pages 10, 170
  27. ^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
  28. ^For this reason, Ramsay Wood considers it an early precursor of the mirrors for princes genre.
  29. ^ abcRyder 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.'
  30. ^Edgerton 1924, p. 4
  31. ^ abPatrick Olivelle (2009). Pañcatantra: The Book of India's Folk Wisdom. Oxford University Press. pp. xiv–xv. ISBN978-0-19-955575-8.
  32. ^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.'
  33. ^ abcdefgArthur Ryder (1925), The Panchatantra, Columbia University archives, Book 1
  34. ^Patrick Olivelle (2009). Pañcatantra: The Book of India's Folk Wisdom. Oxford University Press. pp. vii–viii. ISBN978-0-19-955575-8.
  35. ^Arthur William Ryder (1925), The Panchatantra, University of Chicago Press, page 26
  36. ^Patrick Olivelle (2009). Pañcatantra: The Book of India's Folk Wisdom. Oxford University Press. pp. xviii–xix. ISBN978-0-19-955575-8.
  37. ^ abcOlivelle 2006, p. 23
  38. ^ abPatrick Olivelle (2009). Pañcatantra: The Book of India's Folk Wisdom. Oxford University Press. p. xix, 71-104. ISBN978-0-19-955575-8.
  39. ^ abcdPatrick Olivelle (2009). Pañcatantra: The Book of India's Folk Wisdom. Oxford University Press. p. xx, 105-145. ISBN978-0-19-955575-8.
  40. ^ abArthur William Ryder (1925), The Panchatantra, University of Chicago Press, pages 341-343
  41. ^ abD.L. Ashliman (2007). Donald Haase (ed.). The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales. Greenwood. p. 21. ISBN978-0-313-04947-7.
  42. ^Patrick Olivelle (2009). Pañcatantra: The Book of India's Folk Wisdom. Oxford University Press. pp. xxxviii, 126–127. ISBN978-0-19-955575-8.
  43. ^ abPatrick Olivelle (2009). Pañcatantra: The Book of India's Folk Wisdom. Oxford University Press. p. xx-xxi, 146-154. ISBN978-0-19-955575-8.
  44. ^Jan Montefiore (2013). In Time's Eye: Essays on Rudyard Kipling. Manchester University Press. pp. 132–134. ISBN978-1-5261-1129-6.
  45. ^ abPatrick Olivelle (2009). Pañcatantra: The Book of India's Folk Wisdom. Oxford University Press. p. xx-xxi, 155-159. ISBN978-0-19-955575-8.
  46. ^ abcKonrad Meisig (2006). Vera Alexander (ed.). Peripheral Centres, Central Peripheries: India and Its Diaspora(s). LIT Verlag Münster. pp. 157–160 with footnotes. ISBN978-3-8258-9210-4.
  47. ^Dan Ben-Amos (2010), Introduction: The European Fairy-Tale Tradition between Orality and Literacy, Journal of American Folklore, Volume 123, Number 490, Fall 2010, pp. 373-376
  48. ^ abMax Muller (2008). Charles Dudley Warner (ed.). A Library of the World's Best Literature - Ancient and Modern - Vol.XXVI (Forty-Five Volumes); Moli Re-Myths. Cosimo. pp. 10429–10432. ISBN978-1-60520-216-7.
  49. ^Niklas Bengtsson (2002). Roger D. Sell (ed.). Children's Literature as Communication. John Benjamins. pp. 29–32. ISBN978-90-272-9729-7.
  50. ^Niklas Bengtsson (2002). Roger D. Sell (ed.). Children's Literature as Communication. John Benjamins. pp. 29–30. ISBN978-90-272-9729-7.
  51. ^Gillian Adams (2004) and Ruth Bottigheimer (2004), International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature, pages 233, 271-272, 314
  52. ^ abThe Panchatantra translated in 1924 from the Sanskrit by Franklin Edgerton, George Allen and Unwin, London 1965 ('Edition for the General Reader'), page 13
  53. ^They are both classified as folktales of Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 1430 'about daydreams of wealth and fame'.
  54. ^They are both classified as folktales of Aarne-Thompson type 285D.
  55. ^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.'
  56. ^Anne Mackenzie Pearson (1996), 'Because it gives me peace of mind': Ritual Fasts in the Religious Lives of Hindu Women, SUNY Press, p. 279, ISBN978-0-7914-3037-8
  57. ^Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore Mythology and Legend (1975), p. 842
  58. ^('Je dirai par reconnaissance que j’en dois la plus grande parties à Pilpay sage indien') Avertissement to the Second Compilation of Fables, 1678, Jean de La Fontaine
  59. ^ abcdeVijay Bedekar, History of the Migration of PanchatantraArchived 20 August 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Institute for Oriental Study, Thane
  60. ^ abcOlivelle 2006, p. 18
  61. ^Bedekar: 'Its probable relation to early folk and oral tradition of storytelling 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.'
  62. ^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.
  63. ^Falk, H. (1978), Quellen des Pañcatantra, pp. 173–188
  64. ^Roderick Hindery (1996), Comparative ethics in Hindu and Buddhist traditions, Motilal Banarsidass Publ., p. 166, ISBN978-81-208-0866-9
  65. ^Konrad Meisig (2006). Vera Alexander (ed.). Peripheral Centres, Central Peripheries: India and Its Diaspora(s). LIT Verlag Münster. pp. 160–161 with footnotes. ISBN978-3-8258-9210-4.
  66. ^Jacobs 1888, p.48
  67. ^Prakash Sethi, S.; Steidlmeier, Paul (2015), 'Hinduism and Business Ethics', Wiley Encyclopedia of Management, Volume 2, John Wiley & Sons, pp. 1–5, doi:10.1002/9781118785317.weom020119, ISBN978-1-118-78531-7
  68. ^Vicki A. Spencer (2016). Visions of Peace: Asia and The West. Routledge. pp. 54–55. ISBN978-1-317-00133-1.
  69. ^ abcPatrick Olivelle (2009). Pañcatantra: The Book of India's Folk Wisdom. Oxford University Press. pp. xxi–xxv, 180–186. ISBN978-0-19-955575-8.
  70. ^Kalilah and Dimnah; or, The fables of Bidpai; being an account of their literary history, p. xiv
  71. ^Edgerton 1924, p. 9
  72. ^[1]Archived 27 December 2006 at the Wayback MachineTarquin 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. 'Archived copy'. Archived from the original on 27 December 2006. Retrieved 10 October 2006.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown (link)
  73. ^ abSalim Ayduz; Ibrahim Kalin; Caner Dagli (2014). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Science, and Technology in Islam. Oxford University Press. p. 369. ISBN978-0-19-981257-8.
  74. ^ abcDagmar Riedel (2010), KALILA WA DEMNA i. Redactions and circulation, Encyclopaedia Iranica
  75. ^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
  76. ^Abdolhossein Zarrinkoub, Naqde adabi, Tehran 1959 pp:374–379. (See Contents 1.1 Pre-Islamic Iranian literature)
  77. ^ abThe 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
  78. ^Hans Bakker (2014). The World of the Skandapurāṇa. BRILL Academic. pp. 64–65 with footnote 180. ISBN978-90-04-27714-4.
  79. ^ abLane, 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
  80. ^François de Blois (1990), Burzōy's voyage to India and the origin of the book of Kalīlah wa Dimnah, Routledge, pp. 22–23 with footnotes, ISBN978-0-947593-06-3
  81. ^The Fables of Kalila and Dimnah, translated from the Arabic by Saleh Sa'adeh Jallad, 2002. Melisende, London, ISBN1-901764-14-1
  82. ^Muslim Neoplatonist: An Introduction to the Thought of the Brethren of Purity, Ian Richard Netton, 1991. Edinburgh University Press, ISBN0-7486-0251-8
  83. ^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
  84. ^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.
  85. ^L.-O. Sjöberg, Stephanites und Ichnelates: Überlieferungsgeschichte und Text (Uppsala, 1962).
  86. ^Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). 'Bidpai, Fables of' . Encyclopædia Britannica. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
  87. ^Harvard Oriental Series. Books.google.com. Retrieved 14 April 2013.
  88. ^Ahsan Jan Qaisar; Som Prakash Verma, eds. (2002), Art and culture: painting and perspective, Abhinav Publications, p. 33, ISBN978-81-7017-405-9: 'it became the most popular and easily accessible English translation, going into many reprints.'
  89. ^Murray, M. A. (1 June 1956). 'review'. Folklore. 67 (2): 118–120. doi:10.2307/1258527. ISSN0015-587X. JSTOR1258527.
  90. ^Rajan (1993), Olivelle (1997), Olivelle (2006).
  91. ^Kalila wa Dimna or The Mirror for Princes by Sulayman Al-Bassam, Oberon Modern Plays, London 2006
  92. ^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[edit]

(Ordered chronologically.)

Sanskrit texts[edit]

Critical editions
  • Hertel, Johannes (1908), The Panchatantra: a collection of ancient Hindu tales, in the recension called Panchakhyanaka, and dated 1199 A.D., of the Jaina monk, Pūrṇabhadra, critically edited in the original Sanskrit (in Nâgarî letters, and, for the sake of beginners, with word-division), Harvard University Press, Harvard Oriental Series Volume 11
  • Hertel, Johannes (1912), The Panchatantra-text of Pūrṇabhadra : critical introduction and list of variants, Harvard Oriental Series Volume 12
  • Hertel, Johannes (1912), The Panchatantra-text of Pūrṇabhadra and its relation to texts of allied recensions as shown in parallel specimens, Harvard Oriental Series Volume 13
  • Hertel, Johannes (1915), The Panchatantra: a collection of ancient Hindu tales in its oldest recension, the Kashmirian, entitled Tantrakhyayika, Harvard Oriental Series Volume 14
  • Edgerton, Franklin (1924), The Panchatantra Reconstructed (Vol.1: Text and Critical Apparatus, Vol.2: Introduction and Translation), New Haven, Connecticut: American Oriental Series Volumes 2–3
  • Edgerton, Franklin (1930). The Pancatantra Ⅰ–Ⅴ: the text in its oldest form. Poona: Oriental Book Agency (Poona Oriental Series No. 32). (reprinting in Devanagari only the text from his 1924 work)
Others
  • Kāśīnātha Pāṇḍuraṅga Paraba, ed. (1896). The Pañchatantraka of Vishṇusarman. Tukârâm Jâvjî., Google Books
  • Pandit Guru Prasad Shastri (1935). Panchatantra with the commentary Abhinavarajalaxmi. Benares: Bhargava Pustakalaya. (Text with Sanskrit commentary)
  • Shayamacharan Pandey (1975). Pañcatantram. Vārāṇasī: Motilal Banarsidass. ISBN9788120821583. (Complete Sanskrit text with Hindi translation)

Translations in English[edit]

The Panchatantra
  • Ryder, Arthur W. (transl) (1925), The Panchatantra (Purnabhadra's Recension of 1199 CE), University of Chicago Press, ISBN81-7224-080-5 (also republished in 1956, reprint 1964, and by Jaico Publishing House, Bombay, 1949). The Panchatantra, Columbia University archives; (Translation based on Hertel manuscript.)
  • Rajan, Chandra (transl.) (1993), Viṣṇu Śarma: The Panchatantra, London: Penguin Books, ISBN978-0-14-045520-5 (reprint: 1995) (Translation based on Hertel manuscript.)
  • Olivelle, Patrick (transl.) (1997), The Pancatantra: The Book of India's Folk Wisdom, Oxford University Press, ISBN978-0-19-283988-6 (Translation based on Edgerton manuscript.)
  • Dharma, Krishna (transl.) (2004). Panchatantra – A vivid retelling of India's most famous collection of fables. Badger CA, USA: Torchlight Publishing. ISBN978-1-887089-45-6. (Accessible popular compilation derived from a Sanskrit text with reference to the aforementioned translations by Chandra Rajan and Patrick Olivelle.)
  • Olivelle, Patrick (2006), The Five Discourses on Worldly Wisdom, Clay Sanskrit Library, ISBN978-0-8147-6208-0
Kalila and Dimna, Fables of Bidpai and other texts
  • Knatchbull, Rev Wyndham (1819), Kalila and Dimna or The Fables of Bidpai, OxfordGoogle BooksGoogle Books (translated from Silvestre de Stacy's 1816 collation of different Arabic manuscripts)
  • Eastwick, Edward B (transl.) (1854), The Anvari Suhaili; or the Lights of Canopus Being the Persian version of the Fables of Pilpay; or the Book Kalílah and Damnah rendered into Persian by Husain Vá'iz U'L-Káshifí, Hertford: Stephen Austin, Bookseller to the East-India College Also online at Persian Literature in Translation
  • Wollaston, Arthur N. (transl.) (1877), The Anwar-I-Suhaili Or Lights of Canopus Commonly Known As Kalilah And Damnah Being An Adaptation By Mulla Husain Bin Ali Waiz-Al-Kashifi of The Fables of Bidapai, London: W H Allen
  • Falconer, Ion Keith (1885), Kalilah and Dimnah or The Fables of Bidpai, Cambridge University Press, reprinted by Philo Press, Amsterdam 1970
  • Jacobs, Joseph (1888), The earliest English version of the Fables of Bidpai, LondonGoogle Books (edited and induced from The Morall Philosophie of Doni by Sir Thomas North, 1570)
  • Tales Within Tales – adapted from the fables of Pilpai, Sir Arthur N Wollaston, John Murray, London 1909
  • Wilkinson (1930), The Lights of Canopus described by J V S Wilkinson, London: The Studio Limited
  • Wood, Ramsay (2008), Kalila and Dimna, Fables of Friendship and Betrayal, Introduction by Doris Lessing, Postscript by Dr Christine van Ruymbeke, London: Saqi Books, ISBN978-0-86356-661-5
  • Wood, Ramsay (2008), Kalila and Dimna, Fables of Friendship and Betrayal (Vol. 1: Books 1 & 2) Introduction by Doris Lessing (US Kindle edition), Edinburg: Zirac Press, ISBN0-86356-661-8
  • Wood, Ramsay (2010). Kalila and Dimna, The Panchatantra Retold – Book One, Introduction by Doris Lessing. Noida: Random House India.
  • Wood, Ramsay (2011). Kalila and Dimna, Fables of Conflict and Intrigue (Vol. 2: Books 4 & 5), Introduction by Michael Wood (US Kindle edition). Edinburg: Zirac Press. ISBN0-9567081-0-2.

Further reading[edit]

  • Weiss, H. B. (1 December 1925). 'The Insects of the Panchatantra'. Journal of the New York Entomological Society. 33 (4): 223. doi:10.2307/25004101. ISSN0028-7199. JSTOR25004101.
  • 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
  • Ferial Ghazoul (1983), Poetic Logic in The Panchatantra and The Arabian Nights, Arab Studies Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Winter 1983), pp. 13-21
  • Burzoy's Voyage to India and the Origin of the Book of Kalilah wa DimnahGoogle Books, Francois de Blois, Royal Asiatic Society, London, 1990
  • On Kalila wa Dimna and Persian National Fairy TalesTransoxiana.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[edit]

  • Works related to The Panchatantra at Wikisource
  • Quotations related to Panchatantra at Wikiquote
  • The dictionary definition of panchatantra at Wiktionary
  • Media related to Panchatantra at Wikimedia Commons
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Panchatantra, is perhaps the oldest collection of Indian Fables still surviving. It is written around 200BC by the great Hindu Scholar Pandit Vishnu Sharma. Panchatantra means 'the five books'. It is a 'Nitishastra' which means book of wise conduct in life. The book is written in the form of simple stories and each story has a moral and philosophical theme which has stood...more
Published 1991 by Rupa & Co. (first published -300)
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Huda AweysDid you mean that it is expensive or not?
Or what do you mean .. the value and worth to buy it?
Well it is not expensive, priced appropriately and can…moreDid you mean that it is expensive or not?
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Well it is not expensive, priced appropriately and can be downloaded for free on some sites
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Jan 30, 2014Huda Aweys rated it liked it
Shelves: childrens, philosophy, cultural, classics, watched-its-series, fantasy, academic
We learned a lot about ethics and values through these tales when we were kids ! .. :) It's really nice,And I was like it !...more
Feb 16, 2018Orient rated it really liked it

Panchatantra story of a monkey and a crocodile.Stories in stones, Tripurantakesvara Temple
It all started with Sreyas and me discussing tales and creatures in them. I presented him some of Lithuanian tale and myth heritage and he offered me to have a taste of his country’s folklore. “The tales of Panchatantra”. Nāndi, my friend 😉He cautioned me in advance that there are no dragons there.
“The Tales of Panchatantra” contains five books (“pancha” means “five” and “tantra” means “part”), each...more
Jul 31, 2018Marquise rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: fairy-and-folk-tales, bonus-points-for-creativity, best-liked-reads, character-is-non-human, beauty-and-the-beast-theme, 5-stars, charming-story, mythology-from-other-lands
Insanely fun book collecting a myriad tales of animals and people, that can be read in just moments and that leaves you laughing and pensive. It's strikingly similar to Aesop's Fables, so similar that even if you lack the Indian cultural context for a lot of the tales (as I did), you'll still understand the general thrust of the story, both because they're very easy to understand and because you're likely to get the point from the Western animal fables you were taught growing up. There's also ha...more
Sep 09, 2014James Violand rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Aesop on steroids. Instead of the moral at the end of a fable, the characters recite morals throughout a fable, which may be within a fable, which is inside another fable, only then to reach a conclusion and a new moral. It reminds me of the movie 'Inception' only not nearly as entertaining. There's only so much a black snake, lion, fish, turtle, crow or one of a myriad of animals can teach us without ennui settling in.
Jun 25, 2007Brad rated it really liked it · review of another edition
These animal fables within the five books (pancha tantra) of a frame story collectively constitute nitishastra or scriptures on the wise conduct of life, not for the ascetic but for the person in the world. Apart from being the recognizable source for versions of fables later recounted by Aesop and others, the narratives are entertaining for their humor and social calculus. One of my favorite sections is the fourth book, Crows and Owls. After a parliament of the birds has decided to make owl the...more
Aug 10, 2018Ashish Iyer rated it it was amazing
The Panchatantra means five codes of conduct is an ancient Indian collection of interrelated animal fables. Originally narrated in Sanskrit. The Panchatantra illustrates the primary Hindu principles of niti - the wise conduct of life – through stories largely based on animal characters. It is one of the surviving work is dated to about 300 BCE, but the fables or stories are likely much more ancient. The text's author is unknown, but has been attributed to Vishnu Sharma. These stories of India is...more
I really wanted to read this book because it is a very early record of the art of the fable, using animals for moral and/or philosophical teaching purposes. I think that having grown up learning and reciting one Lafontaine fable after another, year after year, has made me sensitive to the genre. So after Lafontaine and Aesop, the natural progression is the Panchatantra, I thought. It may well be so, and I am glad I read those fables for that very reason. However, I did not derive much enjoyment...more
Jul 14, 2015Rikkert Kuijper rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Panchatantra Short Stories In Kannada Pdf

The title and description are slightly misleading if you expect everyday folk wisdom. Without spoiling anything, the work consists of five 'books' that are narrations by a wise man (Visnusárman), trying to educate three young stupid princes in the art of governance and general social conduct. The stories are riddled with their own sub-stories and fables, making it a very diverse read.
Basically, at any given point, you could be reading a story about a Brahmin and his Mongoose, which a snake is...more
Sep 15, 2017Mae Winter added it · review of another edition
I would have preferred growing up on these tales rather than the ones of Brothers Grimm.
Jan 22, 2009Mourya Biswas rated it it was amazing
Recommended to Mourya by: father
I learned so many things from ythis book, and yes this book is really superb.
Sep 01, 2013Robert Sheppard rated it it was amazing

Panchatantra Stories In Kannada Pdf 2017

Shelves: iranian-persian-literature, african-literature, history-of-world-literature, archetype, archetypes-in-world-literature, asian-literature, classics-of-indian-literature, book-reviews-by-robert-sheppard, indian-literature, british-literature
FOLKTALES AND FABLES IN WORLD LITERATURE--THE PANCHATANTRA, THE INDIAN AESOP, LA FONTAINE'S FABLES, THE PALI JATAKAS, THE BROTHERS GRIMM, CHARLES PERRAULT'S MOTHER GOOSE, THE CHINESE MONKEY KING, JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS' TAR-BABY & THE AMERINDIAN COYOTE AND TRICKSTER TALES ----FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECES SERIES VIA GOODREADS—-ROBERT SHEPPARD, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Folk tales, folk song, folk legend and and folk lore have been with us since time immemorial and...more
Jul 03, 2014Abhishek rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
This book is perhaps the greatest self-help / practical wisdom book that I've ever come across. Before I get to the book, I must express my sincere homage to the translator. Hats off to Arthur W Ryder for producing this masterful English translation of the ancient Indian text. He has been as true to the original Sanskrit version, as is humanly possible. Especially commendable is the great care he took to translate the Sanskrit verses (in addition to the prose) to English counterparts (quite poet...more
Sep 01, 2008Dave rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Indian stories whose authorship is generally attributed to Visnu Sarma in Sanscrit. Originally part of the Indian oral tradition these stories where compiled by Sarma as a means to educate a King's dolt sons in the art of good government. Generally believed to be the original source of Aesop's Fables the stories use animals as the main characters to make a point on how to govern.
These stories can be suitable for children as well as adults, and even though violent ends come to some of the charac...more
Nov 22, 2012Swamy Gorrela rated it really liked it
These stories were not new to indians.One way or other, everyone must have listened to these stories at some point of time. Naturally, they are/were best moral stories i have ever read/heard. <3
May 27, 2014Greg rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
In the preamble, the genesis of the book and its lasting influence is described. “With the aid of these tales, he instructed the princes. They too, learning through these stories, became in six months what Visnu Sarna had promised they would. Since then, this work on practical wisdom has become celebrated as an excellent means of awakening and training young minds.” (5) It is in this spirit that this great book of Sanskrit fables proceeds. Designed to train young minds, they are as a collection...more
Jun 15, 2011Pawan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
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All of us have read or heard tales of “Panchatantra” at some point of time or other in our life. These are classic animal fables attributed to have written by “Vishnu Sharma” more than two thousand years ago in Sanskrit. The origin of stories must have been still older and probably they were passed on from generations to generations through the art of story telling. I wanted to get hold of complete book and read it in Hindi and luckily found the book in recent book...more
Mar 12, 2009lynne naranek rated it really liked it · review of another edition
This was a long read. Amusing, educational, and entertaining too.
The premise is simple: a King at wit's end about how to awaken the intelligence of his sons engages the services of Visnu Sarma, who proceed to educate the princes via tales, not unlike Aesop's fables.
What I enjoyed was how the stories were structured. Each of the five (panca) have a large frame within which many many MANY smaller tales appear. You'll have two characters in a situation, one wants to do something, the other either...more
It has been a while since I've read this, but only now am I taking the time to review it. Panchatantra, credited to Vishnu Sharma, is a very comprehensive book on correct Indian practices during the 3rd century BCE through mostly fables. One of the best parts of this book is the sort of matryoshka-ish storytelling that delves deeper into itself while explaining those practices and really immerses the reader into an interesting experience of learning.
Besides that, another interesting aspect of i...more
Apr 14, 2016Ila rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
I read and re-read and re-read this book while growing up. Had already known quite a few of the tales from the text-books, newspaper/magazines and listening as bed-time stories. They had tremendous impact on that kid in me.. and there it began.. my love for 'short stories'.
I was reading this book again 2-3 years back (the grown-up me), and realized I wasnt as thrilled as used to be.. it can be partly attributed to these were 'known by heart' tales and partially that I had grown up.
therefore cou...more
Jun 14, 2016Sunitha Prabhu rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
A king, worried that his three sons are not wise enough for this world of wile and guile, asks a learned man named Vishnu Sharman to teach them the ways of the world. Since his students were truly dim, Vishnu Sharman decides to pass on wisdom to them in the form of stories.
The Panchatantra tales have regaled children and adults alike with a moral at the end of every story for over two millennia. The stories have been translated into nearly every language in the world that has a script.
Sep 28, 2013Digendra Sharma rated it it was amazing
really interesting and amazing stories linked to each other witch makes this book more interesting to read.........and the best part is that every story in the book teaches a lesson for life to you in a nice way......geniously written for reader to feel that each story is written for his age group but the genious part is that the book is written irrespective of any age group ...incredible recommended to every age group.......:D
Jan 28, 2014Emily added it · review of another edition
Stories I read:
The Foolish Friend.
Dharmabuddhi and Pâpabuddhi.
The Bullock's Balls.
The Gold-Giving Snake.
The Dog That Went Abroad.
The Brahman's Wife and the Mongoose.
The Fish That Were Too Clever.
The Two-Headed Weaver.
The Broken Pot.
The Enchanted Brahman's Son.
Dec 17, 2018John Trident rated it really liked it
Panchateertha
As the name describes, Panchateertha is an onomatopoeia which derives from the process of onomastics based on a linguistic language called 'sanskrit.' It refers to the five pilgrimages which enables & helps the soul seek salvation, freedom from all the shackles of materialistic life. It also helps it to reach the destination of enlightenment where all the living beings long for eternal peace.
Cover is okay. I feel it could have been better designed. It doesn't integrate much with...more
One of the best stories for children. I personally like them as i grew up reading panchatantra tales.
Written in forest-animal backdrop these stories teaches us how to be a good king and ruler. What is the code of conduct and also tells us what happens when one overlooks them. These tales were composed for young princes to teach them lessons of morality, to impart knowledge and wisdom and to prepare them for future kingship.
It also holds good in today's scenario and young children should read t...more
Dec 05, 2017Steve Browne rated it it was ok · review of another edition
So pessimistic! These fables and proverbs annoyed me. The animal fables were mainly about betrayal and murder, and were written for those who would be rulers instead of those who want general guidance in life though 'Don't crush your testicles' would be a good moral for one story. For the rest of the stories: 'You should kill and eat your friend before they kill and eat you.'
There are too many proverbs like this:
Sacrifice a man to save the family;
Sacrifice a family to save the village,
Sacrifice
...more
Panchatantra stories are classic stories and very old. It's been told by scholar Vishnu Sharma to teach lessons to the sons of the king he is living with.
I love the stories, narrations and morals embedded in the simple telling style.
Few of the stories at following links.
Vishnu Sharma - Panchatantra Tales
Jun 30, 2018Kartikeya rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Panchatantra Stories In Kannada Pdf Full

Ancient wisdom by a genius teacher.
Very good to develop people skills even today and not as juvenile or childish as one might think. It can be a little sexist in few lessons but most of the teachings imparted are timeless. Wouldn't recommend it to children in its entirety but for adults it is unmatched.
Apr 14, 2015Parantap Bhatt rated it really liked it
The 'inception' of storyline and morals. Probably the first example of an intricate plot within a plot concept. I feel sad for those who have read Panchatantra as individual stories rather than as it is.
Apart from the plotline, the stories are simple to comprehend but can be understood much more deeply. Most of all, its fun to read.
Sep 28, 2018Vijay Peddada rated it liked it · review of another edition
Bought this for my kid but difficult to read and explain....
Wonderful stories that gives insights when you read it again and again. Every story can be interpreted in different ways according to your exposure, thought processes and wisdom. Deep values but simple narration..
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Vishnu Sharma (Sanskrit: विषणुशरमन / विषणुशरमा) was an Indian scholar and author who is believed to have written the Panchatantra collection of fables. The exact period of the composition of the Panchatantra is uncertain, and estimates vary from 1200 BCE to 300 CE.Some scholars place him in the 3rd century BCE.
Panchatantra is one of the most widely translated non-religious books in history. The Pa...more
“Some things a man should tell his wife, Some things to friend and some to son; All these are trusted. He should not Tell everything to everyone.” — 2 likes

Panchatantra Stories In Kannada Pdf Hindi

“A friend in need is a friend indeed, Although of different caste; The whole world is your eager friend So long as riches last.” — 1 likes

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