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  THE PANĆATANTRA

  Tradition ascribes the Panćatantra to Viṣṇu Śarma whose existance has not been conclusively established. Legend has it that Viṣṇu Śarma was one of the names of Viṣṇugupta Cāṇakya, the author of the Arthaśāstra. However, there is no evidence to show that the author of the Arthaśāstra also wrote a Nitiśāstra, the term used to describe the Panćatantra. Viṣṇu Śarma was apparently a celebrated teacher living in Mahilāropya. At the age of eighty, he undertook to educate three very refractory princes, in six months, in the art of governance. The stories he used as teaching aids form the Panćatantra.

  CHANDRA RAJAN studied Sanskrit from the age of nine, in the time-honoured manner, with a pandit in Madras. She went to St Stephen’s College, Delhi, where she had a distinguished academic record and took degrees in English and Sanskrit. Trained early in Carnatic music, she studied Western music in New York. She has taught English at Lady Sri Ram College, Delhi University, and at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada. Her publications include Winged Words; Re-Visions, a volume of verse; and Kālidāsa: The Loom of Time published by Penguin India in 1989. Chandra Rajan is currently working on a children’s version of the panćatantra and a translation and critical study of Bāna’s famous prose romance, Kādambari, and a series of tales belonging to the Vikramaditya cycle: The Goblin Tales, also known as the Vetālapanćavimśati. She is also involved in a long-term project for the Sahitya Akademi – a translation of the complete works of Kālidāsa.

  VIṢṆU ŚARMA

  The Panćatantra

  Translated from the Sanskrit with an Introduction by

  CHANDRA RAJAN

  PENGUIN BOOKS

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  First published by Penguin Books India 1993

  Published in Penguin Classics 2006

  1

  Copyright © Chandra Rajan,1993

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject

  to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,

  re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s

  prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in

  which it is published and without a similar condition including this

  condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  EISBN: 978–0–140–45566–3

  To Tangerina,

  a great lady of elegance,

  sensitivity and intelligence,

  and to her delightful family,

  special in individual ways:

  I have learnt much from them.

  Key to the Pronunciation of Sanskrit Words

  Vowels:

  The line on top of a vowel indicates that it is long.

  a (short) as the u in but

  ā (long) as the a in far

  i (short) as the i in sit

  ī (long) as the ee in sweet

  u (short) as the u in put

  ū (long) as the oo in cool

  ṛ with a dot is a vowel like the i in first or u in further

  e is always a long vowel like a in mate

  ai as the i in pile

  o is always long as the o in pole

  ow as the ow in owl

  Consonants:

  k, b and p are the same as in English

  kh is aspirated

  g as in goat

  gh is aspirated

  ć is ch as in church or cello

  ćh is aspirated as in chhota

  j as in jewel

  jh is aspirated

  ṭ and ḍ are hard when dotted below as in talk and dot

  ṭṭ is the aspirated sound

  ḍḍ is aspirated

  ṇ when dotted is a dental; the tongue has to curl back to touch the palate.

  ṅ as in king

  t undotted is a th as in thermal

  th is aspirated

  d undotted is a soft sound—there is no corresponding English sound, the Russian ‘da’ is the closest.

  dh is aspirated

  ph and bh are aspirated

  The Sanskrit v is an English w

  There are three sibilants in Sanskrit: S as in song, as in shover and a palatal Ś which is in between, e.g. Ćiva.

  Contents

  Key to the Pronunciation of Sanskrit Words

  Foreword

  Introduction

  The Panćatantra : Preamble

  Book I : Estrangement of Friends

  Frame Story: Lively and Tawny

  The Monkey and the Wedge

  The Jackal and the Battle-drum

  Fine Tooth and the Palace Sweeper

  The Holy Man and the Swindler and The Weaver’s Unfaithful Wife

  The Crow and the Serpent

  The Crab and the Crane

  Dim Wit and the Hare

  The Weaver and Princess Charming

  The Grateful Beasts and the Ungrateful Man

  Crawly, the bedbug and Drone, the wasp

  The Blue Jackal

  The Owl and the Wild Goose

  The Camel, the Crow and Others

  The Lion and the Chariot-maker

  The Lapwing who defied the Ocean

  The Turtle and the Geese

  The Three Fishes

  The Sparrow and the Tusker

  The Ancient Wild Goose and the Fowler

  The Lion and the Lone Ram

  The Jackal who outwitted the Lion

  Strong and the Naked Mendicant

  The Maiden wedded to a Snake

  Death and Little Blossom

  The Tailor-bird and the Ape

  Fair Mind and Foul Mind

  The Foolish Heron

  The Preposterous Lie

  The Twin Parrots

  The Three Friends and the Noble Robber and Faithful but Foolish

  Book II : Winning of Friends

  Frame Story: The Crow, the Mole, the Deer and the Tortoise

  Bharunda Birds

  Goldy’s Sorrows

  Mother Śāndilee

  The Greedy Jackal

  The man who received what was his

  Little Simple, the weaver

  Hangballs and the Vixen

  The Mice that freed the Elephants

  Speckle’s Captivity

  Book III : Of Crows and Owls

  Frame Story: Of Crows and Owls

  How the birds picked a king

  The Hare who fooled the Elephant-King

  The Cat’s Judgement

  The Brāhmana and his Goat

  The Ants who ki
lled the Snake

  The Serpent who paid in gold

  The Golden Geese of Lotus Lake

  The Dove who sacrificed himself

  Old Man, Young Wife

  The Brāhmana, the Robber, and the Demon

  The Snake in the Prince’s belly

  The Chariot-maker cuckolded

  The Mouse-Maiden who wed a mouse

  The Bird who dropped golden turd

  The Talking Cave

  The Frogs that rode snakeback

  The Brāhmana’s revenge

  Book IV : Loss of Gains

  Frame Story: The Ape and the Crocodile

  The Frog-King who overreached himself

  Long Ears and Dusty

  The Potter who played the hero

  The Jackal mothered by the Lioness

  The Ungrateful Wife

  Two Henpecked Husbands

  The Ass in tiger-skin

  The Unfaithful Wife

  The Officious Sparrow

  The Smart Jackal

  The Dog who went abroad

  Book V : Rash Deeds

  Frame Story: The Barber who slaughtered the Monks

  The Brāhmani and the faithful Mongoose

  The Four Treasure-seekers

  The Scholars who brought a dead lion to life

  Thousandwit, Hundredwit, Singlewit

  The Singing Ass

  The Dull-witted Weaver

  The Day-dreaming Brahmin

  The Ape’s Revenge

  The Credulous Ogre

  The Three-breasted Princess

  The Brāhmana who asked

  Notes and References

  Foreword

  The authorship, dates and provenance of ancient Sanskrit texts have always been problematic. The Panćatantra is no exception. And in this case the problem is further complicated by the fact that the work belongs to the age-old oral tradition of which storytelling is an important part.

  Storytelling has its origins in pre-literate societies of the distant past, where it was a communal activity. No story is ever ‘told’ the same way twice; no song is ever ‘sung’ the same way twice. Names and dates are difficult to pin accurately and securely to works in the oral tradition.

  The author of the PanĆatantra is a storyteller of hoary antiquity, an almost legendary figure like Vyāsa (a word that literally means ‘compiler’ or ‘editor’) whom tradition declares to be the author of the Mahābhārata. In fact we know a little more about the author of the Mahābhārata than we do about the author of the Panêatantra. Tradition ascribes this fabulous work to one Viṣṇu Śarma. But we know nothing about this gifted author who, judging from the artistry displayed in the text he is credited with having composed, brought storytelling to such heights of sophistication; who in fact created a literary genre of storytelling; who had many imitators over the centuries, none of them his equal.

  Sometimes the name Viṣṇu Śarma is given as one of the names of Viṣṇugupta Ćāṇakya (son of Ćaṇaka), the author of the Arthaśāstra. But there is no evidence to show that the author of the Arthaśāstra also wrote a Nitiśāstra, the term used to describe the Panćatantra; there is nothing to prove the contrary either.

  Who then is Viṣṇu Śarma? His name occurs in the Preamble to the text, nowhere else. He is a celebrated teacher living in Mahilāropya, a place unidentified except by H. H. Wilson who suggests that it might be Mayilāpura, Peacock City, now part of the capital of Tamil Nadu. As he says of himself, he is eighty years of age, has no worldly desires and concerns; and he is successful in educating three very refractory princes in six months time through storytelling, so that they become expert in the art of government. Then he fades away leaving behind an impersonal voice. This is not much to go upon. And what little there is about Viṣṇu Śarma is all in the text; it is part of the story-book world.

  We are therefore left with two possibilities to consider in relation to the identity of the author of the Panćatantra. Viṣṇu Śarma might have been the name of the storyteller/author who had the imagination and the artistry to first shape a floating body of tales—popular and moral tales, fairytales and folklore—into the artistic whole with the complex and unique structure and well-defined purpose that the Panćatantra is. The names of the storytellers who went before him and who come after have perhaps been subsumed under his revered name—not an uncommon practice in India, as in the case of the Mahābhārata and of the Nātya Śāstra of Bhāratamuni. It is reasonable therefore, to consider a multiple authorship for the Panćatantra.

  The other possibility is that Viṣṇu Śarma is himself a fictional character like the numerous characters, human and nonhuman in the Panćatantra that have delighted children of all ages in all places at all times, and still continue to do so. It is noteworthy that there is an anonymous narrator in the Preamble to the text, who introduces Viṣṇu Śarma, the first of a series of narrators, (perhaps an archetypal storyteller) and the three princes, the very first audience (see pp. xlviii–il of the introduction). Who this anonymous narrator was we shall never know. And we have been pushed into a region of anonymity.

  Anonymity is a distinctive feature of much of Indian art in the past. We have therefore to rest content with the realization that we do not know who the author of the Panćatantra is, where he lived and composed his great work, and when. Tradition is important in oral transmission. But tradition says little here; it merely provides an ascription, a name.

  What’s in a name, one might ask: a great deal if they are the names of the delightful characters in the Panćatantra. Nearly all the names in this work are descriptive of some essential trait, physical or otherwise of the characters. For instance, Piṅgalaka, Tawny, the lion in the frame story of Book I, is so named because of the reddish-brown coat of lions, but another lion is named Mandamati, Dimwit (I. Dimwit and the Hare), because he meets his end on account of his stupidity. Sūćīmukha, Needlebeak (IV. The Officious Sparrow) aptly describes a weaver bird, and so on. The choice of names is deliberate, as in some of the novels of Thomas Hardy, and adds to the total meaning of the story. I have therefore translated most of them. In a few cases, the Sanskrit names have been retained, because they are untranslatable, for example, Nāduka in the tale of ‘The Preposterous Lie’, (I. tale 29); or because the name sounds silly or cumbrous in English—Mahilāropya, City Ornamented with women, Yajnadatta, Gift of Sacrifice (I. The Grateful Beasts and the Ungrateful Man).

  The names of the two jackals, Karataka and Damanaka, in the frame story of Book I form a special case of some interest. I have called them Wary and Wily; these are not translations of the Sanskrit names. In English these two names would be Little Crow and Little Tamer, neither of which convey what the Sanskrit names express so well. Karata is one of the many words in Sanskrit for a crow. It is a common belief that the crow is the most intelligent of birds, wise, shrewd, cautious, with good judgement; just the qualities we see in the first jackal whom I have named Wary. (The suffix ‘ka’ denotes the diminutive form of a word). Whether the second jackal, Damanaka, is a ‘tamer’ is highly doubtful; but wily he certainly is; a mean and conniving rascal. And the name Wily seemed appropriate, in contrast to Wary.

  Dharma and nīti are two all-embracing words that cannot be translated by a single English word. In most contexts where the word occurs I have translated dharma as the Law; the moral law of the universe in its physical and ethical aspects which implies the existence of order at all levels. Nīti, I have rendered by the phrase, ‘living wisely and well in the truest sense of these terms’. These two important terms have been fully explained in the introduction, on pp. xlii, xliii and xlv.

  I conclude this foreword with a few words on the jacket design. It is a reproduction of an illustration in a manuscript copy of the original Kalila wa Dimnah, the Arabic version of the Panćatantra done in Iran in AD870 (see p.xv of the introduction for details). This manuscript in Arabic script dates from 897 H (AD 1491) and has recently been acquired by the National Museum, New Delhi. It was
inscribed and illustrated somewhere in India. The illustration is for the frame story of Book III of the Panćatantra—Of Crows and Owls.

  I take this opportunity to express my thanks to Dr Naseem Akhtar, Keeper, Manuscripts Section, the National Museum, New Delhi, for showing me this manuscript copy of the original Kalila wa Dimnah and for arranging to provide the slide for the jacket design.

  Makara Samkrānti, Vikrama 2050

  (14 January 1993)

  New Delhi.

  Chandra Rajan

  Introduction

  Since then, this work on wise conduct (nītiśāstra1) has become celebrated as an excellent means of awakening young minds. It has travelled far and wide over this earth.

  This is how the Preamble (Kathamukha) of the Panćatantra speaks of itself before it closes with the traditional phalasruti (Preamble.3)*, the declaration of benefits that are gained by the proper study of a text. And this is no idle claim, but a claim amply justified. For this work, the product of the genius of Viṣṇu Śarma, has indeed travelled far and wide over the globe in many guises—translations, transcreations and adaptations.

  As Johannes Hertel who spent many years in the study and editing of the textual corpus of the Panćatantra writes in the Preface (p. vii) to his Das Panchatantra (1914):

  This book treats of the history of a work which has made an unparalleled triumphal progress from its native land over all the civilized parts of the globe and which for more than fifteen hundred years has delighted young and old, educated and uneducated, rich and poor, high and low, and still delights them. Even the greatest obstacles—whether of language or customs or religion— have not been able to check that triumphal progress.

  That is a fair and accurate assessment of the extraordinary

  popularity of this fabulous work. According to Hertel, there are more than 200 versions of the Panćatantra in fifty languages, most of them non-Indian. Carried by scholars from the land of its origin to other lands and peoples, as many Indian texts were during the early centuries AD, the Panćatantra started on its ‘triumphal progress’ before AD 570, initially as a version in Pehlevi (Middle Persian) during the reign of Khosro Anushirvan (AD 550–578), Emperor of Iran. This version was executed under the Emperor’s orders by his court physician, Burzoë. The original Pehlevi version was unfortunately lost, but not before a Syriac version by a priest named Bud, in AD 570, had been done entitled Kalilag wa Dimnag, followed by one in Arabic, the Kalilah wa Dimnah by Abdallah Ibn al-Moqaffa, a Zoroastrian convert to Islam, AD 750. The two words in the titles, Kalilag-Kalilah and Dimnag-Dimnah are Arabizations of the names of the two jackals in the Sanskrit original—Karaṭaka and Damanaka—in the frame story of Book I, Estrangement of Friends; Wary and Wily in our translation.