The Pancatantra Read online

  The Arabic version is the parent of nearly all the European versions of the Panāatantra known generally in medieval Europe as The Fables of Bidpai. Between AD eleventh and eighteenth centuries, versions of the Panćatantra had been made in Greek, Latin, German, Spanish, French, English, Armenian and Slavonic languages; and Hebrew and Malay. A more or less complete table of the Panćatantra versions in medieval Europe can be found in the 1938 reprint of the Elizabethan version by Sir Thomas North (published by David Nutt, Strand, London—Bibliotheque de Carabas).

  Immediately after the invention of printing, the German version, Das der Buch Beyspiele (1483), was published, making the Panćatantra one of the earliest works to be printed. An Italian version in two parts by one Doni2 (La Moral Philosophia,1552) caught the eye and the imagination of Sir Thomas North (the translator of Plutarch’s Lives). He made a version of the first part in fine Elizabethan English. This was published in 1570, a full thousand years after Viṣṇu Śarma’s famous book of moral and political instruction through stories, left its native land to travel to the Persian court. North’s translation (of Doni) was entitled The Fables of Bidpai: The Morall Philosophie of Doni.

  The initial phase of the Panćatantra’s ‘triumphal progress’ over the globe, is itself a ‘story’; a miniature romance in fact. The Panćatantra was the earliest work to travel outside India. Individual stories that this work had in common with the Jātaka Tales had already spread far beyond the shores of India, long before the Panćatantra set out on its travels. The Jātaka Tales is a collection of tales about the Buddha’s nativity and his many incarnations as Bodhisattva, some in non-human forms. The Buddha is believed to have come down to earth many times, to redeem mankind by teaching the dhamma,(Pali for dharma), the Law or the Right Path. In the ancient world, stories and legends migrated, carried like silks, spices, ivory, gems and other rich commodities, from port to port and caravanserai to caravanserai by merchants and travellers, soldiers and sailors.

  The story of the ‘book of stories’ probably formed part of the lost Pehlevi redaction of the Panćatantra by Burzoë (AD 570), perhaps as a prologue. It was carried over into the Arabic version of the Pehlevi text, Kalilah wa Dimnah, and into the European versions based on it. It forms part of Sir Thomas North’s The Fables of Bidpai: The Morall Philosophie of Doni (1570), as ‘The Argument of the Booke’3. The following is a brief account of the story.

  Once, Khosro Anushirvan (Anestres Castri, in North), King of Iran (Edon) was presented a book which contained among other things the secret to raise the dead by means of an elixir (rasāyana4 in Sanskrit). The book explained how the elixir was extracted from herbs and trees growing on the high mountains of India. The king, eager to find out the truth about this elixir sent his chief minister and treasurer, Burzoë, to India, providing him with a great deal of gold and silver to defray the expenses of the long and arduous journey, and with letters to the courts of many monarchs in India, requesting their help. Burzoë, on reaching India, received all the help he needed and with the wisest and most learned sages began combing the mountains for the herbs and trees mentioned in the book. But to no avail, for no extract had the power of restoring the dead to life. Burzoë and the learned Indian sages were driven to the conclusion that everything that had been written about the elixir in the book, ‘was false and untrue’.

  Burzoë, greatly distressed, consulted the learned sages as to what he could do to not return empty-handed to his king. Then ‘a famous philosopher’, who had also searched long and in vain for the Elixir of Life only to discover in the end that the elixir was in truth a book, showed Burzoë a copy of it. This philosopher also explained the allegory contained in the first book, the one presented to the King of Iran, which started Burzoë on his travels, as follows: The high mountains were the wise and learned men of lofty intellect; the trees and herbs their various writings and the wisdom extracted from these writings the Elixir of Life that revived the dead intelligence and buried thoughts of ‘the ignorant and unlearned’.

  Burzoë asked for a copy of that book which was ‘alwayes in the handes of those Kings, for that it was ful of Morall Philosophy’ and permission to translate it into his own tongue for his king. And so ‘with the helpe and knoledge of all those learned philosophers’, Burzoë rendered the famous book into Pehlevi and returned home with it.

  King Khosro Anushirvan studied the book deeply and was so impressed by the wisdom it contained that he began to collect books with great diligence and sought out learned men to come and live in his court. Then he built a great library in his palace, in which the book he esteemed so highly—the Panćatantra—was given the place of honour, ‘being of examples and instructions for man’s life, and also of Justice and the feare of God….’

  Burzoë is reported to have asked as his sole reward, the honour of having his life and exploits form part of the book he had brought back from India; which it certainly has. A happy ending indeed, to Burzoë’s travels and travail; the pity is that his own version of the original Sanskrit text he used (also lost), is lost to posterity.

  Judging from the English versions of the Panćatantra, that of Sir Thomas North which is several removes from the Arabic version, Kalilah wa Dimnah, and the recent translation of the same text by Thomas B. Irving5, it would appear that Burzoë or al-Moqaffa6 was much more of a moralist than the venerable Indian sage Bidpai whom we know as Viṣṇu Śarma. Indeed, we might suspect that the Persian and Arab and their medieval European successors in the transmission of the Panćatantra were attracted to the work by the ‘moral philosophy’ that it contained. The tales might have been regarded as incidental to the message. Whereas, in fact, what makes the Panćatantra a unique work and fascinating to study, is the intricacy of its structure: the art and artistry with which the tales are interwoven with the discourse; the skilful blend of narrative and dialogue with maxim and precept; the over-arching frame in which the tales and everything else are set, as we shall see later in the introduction. Another interesting feature of this very ancient work is the presence of a dual perspective—entertainment and edification. And an element of inconclusiveness in Book I which takes up almost half of the text, further adds to its literary merits.

  The Panćatantra has not only been enormously popular as an entertaining (and instructive) work of fiction, it has also had great influence on world literature as no other work of Indian literature has had. Arthur Macdonell points to its ‘extraordinary influence on the narrative works of the whole Middle Ages’ in Europe, and to the enrichment it brought into the literature of the those languages in which versions of the work were made (India’s Past; p. 122). Because of its great antiquity and its extensive migrations, traces of its influence might be detected in works of literature so widely separated in time and place as The Arabian Nights, the Gesta Romanorum, Boccacio’s Decameron and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, The Fables of La Fontaine, some stories of Grimm, and in the most unlikeliest of places, the Br’er Rabbit stories7 current in the southern United States. However, if we are to pick the two works that display an unmistakable and notable influence of the Panćatantra, they would be The Arabian Nights and La Fontaine’s Fables. La Fontaine acknowledges his debt to our text when he expressly states in his preface to the second edition of The Fables (1678), that the greater part of the new material was ‘derived from the Indian sage Pilpay’, whose work is regarded ‘as earlier than Aesop’s’.

  As we have seen, the name of ‘the Indian sage’ appears in some European versions as Bidpai. Strange indeed are the ways in which Indian names of places and persons appear metamorphosed in other languages in other lands. It is not easy to detect the original form of this name, Pilpay-Bidpai under its linguistic disguises. A. B. Keith8 and Thomas B. Irving9 (translator of the Kalilah wa Dimnah), suggest that it is a corruption of the Sanskrit name Vidyāpati. But it might just as well be the odd transformation of Vājapeyi,10 an honorific title assumed by Brāhmanas who had successfully performed the great vājapeya sacrifice of the
Vedas.

  Within the country the popularity of the Panćatantra down the centuries has been unsurpassed, as the many recensions of the work in Sanskrit (Hertel lists twenty-five), and the numerous translations into other Indian languages indicate.

  Individual stories belonging to it which might have originally come out of folklore have passed back into that vast body of folktales current to this day, often without any knowledge of the work (the Panćatantra) that the specific story or stories were once a part of. Works of fiction written later, such as Dandin’s Dasakumāracharitam (The Tale of Ten Princes) and Sukasaptati (Seventy Tales Told by The Parrot), employ the frame structure of the Panćatantra.

  Like the great epic11 the Mahābhārata, the Panćatantra belongs to the rich, age-old oral literature of India. Even after it was committed to writing at some point in its transmission the work retains some of the characteristics of its origin as an oral text. We find certain formulaic phrases: ‘as it is told’; ‘as we have heard’; ‘and then he said’. The use of two or three and sometimes several maxims or illustrations to make a point as in 1.69, might also be a feature of patterns of speech rather than writing.

  Because it belongs to the oral tradition of storytelling, the Panćatantra has undergone continuous and constant revision. For it has been narrated repeatedly, countless number of times over the long period of nearly two millennia. In the quadrangles and pillared corridors of temples, in the palaces of princes and mansions of wealthy merchants, in fairgrounds and market squares under makeshift awnings and under the spreading banyan tree in villages, wherever skilled and celebrated storytellers gathered a group of eager listeners round them, this very popular work must have been narrated. Kālidāsa mentions ‘village-elders/well-versed in the Udayana-tales’, and ‘skilful storytellers’ who ‘entertain their visiting kin’, ‘recounting old tales’. (Meghadūtam)

  Music might have been a part of the narration: singing, drums and a primitive lute like the one still used by wandering minstrels and performers in the oral tradition. Miming and dance might also have been part of a storytelling session, as they still do in the country, forming part of the performances of contemporary storytellers such as the fabulous Teejan Bai and others. These have always been part of the storytelling tradition.12 An example in the West of a story told to the accompaniment of music is that of the narration of Peter and the Wolf, with music by Prokofiev.

  Since a text in the oral tradition is not fixed as a printed text is, a storyteller has some scope for inventiveness and a certain freedom to exercise his imagination. Working within certain given parameters, he can introduce changes by varying the details of narrative and dialogue; by expanding or condensing the discourse; by altering the point of view and so on. A skilled storyteller is both creator and narrator. By making revisions in the oral text handed down to him he exercises his rights as a creator while preserving the continuity of the tradition.

  It might be assumed that revisions in an oral text are made with an eye to relevance to the place and time of narrator and audience.13 The narrator or storyteller has a relationship with his audience and establishes a rapport with it that are denied the storywriter. He can improvise on the spur of the moment, adding something, leaving out something else because he has an instant feedback.

  Any retelling of a work so popular in the country as the Panóatantra would inevitably be different from ‘the original’, the Ur-Panćatantra (which we do not have),14 in ways both subtle and substantive. The revisions lend an air of contemporaneity to the happenings of a distant past and introduce freshness into the telling of old tales, giving them new life. This is the way of all oral transmission.

  Some of the retellings of the Panćatantra would have been committed to writing, giving rise to the many recensions of the text that we now have. The various recensions do not present a uniform text. They do not all have the same stories. The stories they have in common are not always placed in the same order, or even in the same book. A few stories are transposed from one book into another. Maxims and illustrations vary. The reasons for the changes that we see in the different recensions of the text can be explained by the fact that a talented storyteller would not be content to tell a story as it has been told before; as it has been handed down to him. He revises. He leaves the impress of his sensibility and imagination, his observations of the manners and morals of men and women, and his comments on the vicissitudes of life.

  We see the process of revision at work in the Pūrṇabhadra recension15 on which the translation of this volume is based. This is a relatively late text of the Panćatantra and is dated AD 1199. It was edited by Johannes Hertel and published as vol. XI of the Harvard Oriental Series, in 1915.

  Pūrṇabhadra’s text is longer because it includes stories not found in some other recensions; e.g. the pathetic tale of the pair of turtle-doves (III. The Dove who sacrificed himself). The discourses on ethics and policy are wide-ranging and elaborate. It has a number of lyrical and elegiac verses not found, for example, in very popular editions of the Panćatantra.16 To give a couple of examples, we have the following verse which is a part of the lamentation of Lively, the bull, whose world has crumbled faced with the treachery of his friend and lord:

  Where Yamunā flows with deep blue water and sapphire-

  sparkles of glittering sands,

  there, in those depths, lies submerged the dark blue snake;

  coiling mass glossy as collyrium.

  Who would track him down there? Unless…

  he is betrayed by gleams of brilliant star-gems clustered in the

  circlets of his hoods?

  By virtues raised to lofty heights,

  by those same virtues the noble fall.

  (1.289)

  And in Book II, we have Goldy’s litany of sorrows which concludes his parodic paean to Lust (Tṛṣṇā, consuming thirst); I quote the second of two verses:

  Of foul stinking water I have drunk;

  of clumps of mown grass I have made my bed;

  grievous parting from my beloved I have endured;

  with pain rising from deep down in my loins,

  I have cringed and spoken humbly to strangers;

  Footweary I have trudged and even crossed the seas;

  a half-a-skull-bowl I have carried around.

  Is there anything else you’d have me do, O, Desire.

  Then for God’s sake command me quickly

  and be done with me.

  (11.101)

  There is a poignancy in these utterances. A strong personal note is struck and we forget that these lines are spoken by a poor bull facing certain death, and a humble mole burrowing in the ground who having lost his winter’s store of food, bewails his lot. For a mole, food stored away is wealth; it is precious. These passages also indicate the sympathy felt by whoever introduced them into the text, for the lowliest of creatures. This sympathy (or empathy) is a distinctive feature of the Panćatantra.

  If we glance at the extra-Indian versions of the Panćatantra, the manner in which revisions are carried out in them with an eye to relevance is seen very clearly. Though these versions are often described as ‘translations’, it is clear that they are by no means ‘faithful’ translations. They are more in the nature of adaptations. The Arabic version (Kalilah wa Dimnah) on which most of the European versions are based makes substantive changes to the original text as we have it in India and introduces changes suited to the mores of another culture and religion. Since both the original Sanskrit text of the work and Burzoë’s Pehlevi version, the first extra-Indian version—to the best of our knowledge—are lost, it is hard to tell at which point in the transmission changes came in. Therefore, the Arabic version of the AD eighth century has to be taken as the point of reference.

  A sizeable part of the Panćatantra in an early form (or recension) is embedded in the Kalilah wa Dimnah within material drawn from other sources: stories, parables, homilies and the like. Since the Sanskrit text of which Burzoë made his Pehlevi
version in AD 570 is lost, we cannot tell whether it was the original or a recension. In the case of a text in the oral tradition it is hard to fix on the original, pristine form in which it emerged from the hand of its author. The parts taken in and translated are mainly Book I, Estrangement of Friends, and a number of stories from the other four books. Names of the characters human and non-human, and of the locale, are changed, which is to be expected. For instance the bull, Sanjīvaka, Lively, is called Shatrabah (Arabic), Senestra (Latin), Chiarino (Italian and North); Piñgalaka, Tawny, remains anonymous; the two jackals, Karataka, Damanaka are Kalilag-Kalilah, Dimnag-Dimnah (old Syriac-Arabic), Celile-Dimna (Latin), Belile-Dimna (Spanish). Then strangely enough in the Italian and North they are changed into an anonymous ass and mule. There are numerous other changes of names and place names. But there are some drastic changes. For example. Book I has a sequel entitled The Trial of Dimnah. Dimnah is the treacherous jackal, Damanaka, Wily in our translation. The trial proceedings are initiated by the Queen Mother, the lion’s mother, and a leopard minister is the chief witness in the court. Dimnah, the villain is tried, sentenced and executed. In North, the villainous mule is flayed alive, its flesh fed to the ravens and the bones offered up as a sacrifice in pious memory of the noble bull who was slain unjustly. Crime is punished and justice meted out in a cruel manner. But what is interesting to note, is that no blame attaches to the gullible lion. The minister pays dearly, but the prince goes scot-free with not a word of censure spoken at any point in the narrative. These changes have been carried over into the European versions where further changes and adaptations seem to have been made at more than one level of transmission of the Panćatantra text. The line of descent of the Fables of Bidpai is as follows: Arabic to Hebrew then into Latin; from Latin into other languages, mainly Spanish, from which Doni’s Italian version and North’s translation of it derive.