Panchatantra

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The Panchatantra^[1][2][3][4] (IAST: Pañcatantra, Sanskrit: पञ्चतन्त्र, 'Five Principles') was originally a canonical collection of Sanskrit (Hindu) as well as Pali (Buddhist) animal fables in verse and prose. The original Sanskrit text, now long lost, and which some scholars believe was composed in the 3rd century BCE,^[5] is attributed to Vishnu Sarma. However, based as it is on older oral traditions, its antecedents among storytellers probably hark back to the origins of language and the subcontinent's earliest social groupings of hunting and fishing folk gathered around campfires.^{[6][not in citation given]} It is "certainly the most frequently translated literary product of India" and there are over 200 versions in more than 50 languages.^[7]

Versions of it have also been known as the Tantrākhyāyikā^[8] (Sanskrit: तन्त्राख्यायिका) and in other cultures as Kalīlah wa Dimnah (Arabic: كليلة و دمنة) or Kalila and Dimna ^[9] (Persian: کلیله و دمنه) Kalīleh o Demneh or Anvār-e Soheylī ^[10][11][12] (Persian: انوار سهیلی, 'The Lights of Canopus') or Kalilag and Damnag ^[13] (Syriac) or Kalīlah wa Dimnah ^[14] (English, 2008) or The Fables of Bidpai ^[15][16] (or Pilpai, in various European languages) or The Morall Philosophie of Doni (English, 1570)

Origins, content and function

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

A page from Kelileh o Demneh dated 1429, from Herat, a Persian translation of the Panchatantra derived from the Arabic version — Kalila wa Dimna — depicts the manipulative jackal-vizier, Dimna, trying to lead his lion-king into war.

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

The work is an ancient and vigorous multicultural hybrid that to this day continues an erratic process of cross-border mutation and adaptation as modern writers and publishers struggle to fathom, simplify and re-brand its complex origins.^{[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]}

In the Indian tradition, the Panchatantra is a nītiśāstra, a treatise on political science and human conduct, or nīti. One of the early Western scholars on the Panchatantra was Dr. Johannes Hertel, who viewed the book as having a Machiavellian character. Other scholars dismiss this assessment as one-sided, and even view the stories as teaching dharma, or proper moral conduct.^[26]

It illustrates, for the benefit of princes who may succeed to a throne, the central Hindu principles of Raja niti (political science) through an inter-woven series of colorful animal tales. These operate like a succession of Russian dolls, one narrative opening within another, sometimes three or four deep. It consists of five books, which are called:

• Mitra Bhedha (The Loss of Friends)
• Mitra Laabha, also called Mitra Samprāpti (Gaining Friends)
• Kākolūkīyam (Crows and Owls)
• Labdhapraṇāśam (Loss Of Gains)
• Aparīkṣitakārakaṃ (Ill-Considered Action / Rash deeds)

Each distinct part of the book contains (as Professor Edgerton noted in 1924) "at least one story, and usually more, which are 'emboxed' in the main story, called the 'frame-story'. Sometimes there is a double emboxment; another story is inserted in an 'emboxed' story. Moreover, the [whole] work begins with a brief introduction, which as in a frame all five . . . [parts] are regarded as 'emboxed'". Vishnu Sarma's idea was that humans can assimilate more about their own habitually unflattering behavior if it is disguised in terms of entertainingly configured stories about supposedly less illustrious beasts than themselves.^[27]

Another observation that Professor Edgerton makes challenges our persistent assumption that animal fables function mainly as adjuncts to religious dogma, acting as indoctrination devices to condition the moral behaviour of small children and obedient adults. Not the Machiavellian Panchatantra: "Vishnu Sarma undertakes," Edgerton notes, "to instruct three dull and ignorant princes in the principles of polity, by means of stories . . . .[This is] a textbook of artha, 'worldly wisdom', or niti, polity, which the Hindus regard as one of the three objects of human desire, the other being dharma, 'religion or morally proper conduct' and kama 'love' . . . . The so-called 'morals' of the stories have no bearing on morality; they are unmoral, and often immoral. They glorify shrewdness, practical wisdom, in the affairs of life, and especially of politics, of government."

This realistic practicality explains why the original Sanskrit villain jackal, the decidedly jealous, sneaky and evil vizier-like Damanaka ('Victor') is his frame-story's winner, and not his goody-goody brother Karataka who is presumably left 'Horribly Howling' at the vile injustice of Part One's final murderous events. In fact, in its steady migration westward the persistent theme of evil-triumphant in Kalila and Dimna, Part One frequently outraged Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious leaders — so much so, indeed, that Ibn al-Muqaffa carefully inserts (no doubt hoping to pacify the powerful religious zealots of his own turbulent times) an entire extra chapter at the end of Part One of his Arabic masterpiece, putting Dimna in jail, on trial and eventually to death.

Needless to say there is no vestige of such dogmatic moralising in the collations that remain to us of the pre-Islamic original — The Panchatantra. Technically, from the perspective of a more subtle and flexible functionality, Joseph Jacobs in 1888^[15] offers a less coercive interpretation of how the Panchatantra/Kalila and Dimna stories might work more effectively to modify human behaviour: ... if one thinks of it, the very raison d'être of the Fable is to imply its moral without mentioning it.

In short the learning opportunity is interactive, voluntary, dynamic, reflective, open, frustrating and risky — compared to the simplified, fixed and often terrifyingly authoritative lessons delivered from priestly heights that briefly excite and amuse, then are soon forgotten, like electric shocks. In such circumstance (which is the norm) the human animal is conditioned to respond to the approved socialising, tagline 'message' of a local time-and-culture-bound 'moral', and prevented from glimpsing anything objective beyond it at an individual pace.

Basic plot of each chapter

Throughout its history, the book has been translated into many languages and several new chapters were added. Here, all chapters included in the subsequent translations from the Arabic version are listed. It must be also noted that the Arabic titles were included, and where appropriate, the Sanskrit ones too between brackets.

Chapter 1: The Lion and the Bull (Mitra Bhedha)

The first chapter deals with the jackal Damna gaining favor with the lion (pictured as the king of all animals) and climbing the ranks rapidly, and the subsequent plot by the jackal to bring down the bull who also grew very close to the king, out of pure jealousy. The plot succeeds and the bull is murdered by the lion unjustly.
Moral: One must not accuse others falsely, and strive to preserve friendships.

Chapter 2: Investigating Damna

This chapter, which was later included by Ibn El-Mougafa’, tells of the trial of Damna the jackal after he is suspected of intentionally leading to the death of the bull “shatrba” who is mentioned in the first chapter. The trail lasts for 2 days to no avail, until the tiger and the leopard come forward and accuse Demna. He is subsequently put to rest.
Moral: Truth is bound to be revealed, sooner or later.

Chapter 3: The Captured Pigeon (Mitra Laabha)

One of the original chapters, it is the second chapter in the original book. It tells of the story of the crow who upon seeing the favour the rat performed to free the pigeon and her companions, decides to befriend the rat despite the latter's initial objections. The storyline evolves as this friendship grows to include the turtle and the fawn. They collaborate to save the fawn when he is trapped, and later they work together to save the turtle, who herself, falls in the trap.
Moral: Friends are an integral part of life.

Chapter 4: The Owl and the Crows (Kākolūkīyam)

The third chapter in the original book, and not unlike chapter 1 deals with deceit and glorifies it to a certain extent as it deals with the crow who pretends to be an outcast from his own group to gain entry into the rival owl group, and by doing so gains access to their secrets and learns of their vulnerabilities. He later summons his group of crows to set fire on all entrances to the cave where the owls live and suffocate them to death.
Moral: Mental strength and deceit are stronger than brute force.

Chapter 5: The Monkey and Alghlim (Labdhapraṇāśam)

It deals with the artificially-constructed symbiotic relationship between the monkey and the Alghlim. Alghlim risked the relationship by conspiring to acquire the heart of the monkey to heal his wife, the monkey finds out about this about this and avoids this grim fate.
Moral: One must never betray friends, and should stay vigilant at all times.

Chapter 6: The hermit and the weasel (Aparīkṣitakārakaṃ)

Originally the last chapter of the book, it deals with hermit who leaves his child with a weasel friend of his, and upon returning and finding blood on the weasel's mouth, he kills it. He later finds out that the weasel actually defended his son, and killed a snake that attempted to kill the boy.
Moral: One must never rush in making judgments.

Early cross-cultural migrations

The Panchatantra approximated its current literary form within the 4th — 6th centuries CE. No Sanskrit texts before 1000 CE have survived.^[28] According to Indian tradition, it was written around 200 BCE by Pandit Vishnu Sarma, a sage. One of the most influential Sanskrit contributions to world literature, it was exported (probably both in oral and literary formats) north to Tibet and China and east to South East Asia by Buddhist monks on pilgrimage.^[29]

According to the Shahnameh (The Book of the Kings, Persia's late 10th century national epic by Ferdowsi)^[30] the Panchatantra also migrated westwards, during the Sassanid reign of Khosru I Anushiravan around 570 CE when his famous physician Borzuy translated it from Sanskrit into the Middle Persian language, transliterated for Europeans as Karirak ud Damanak ^[31] or Kalile va Demne.^[32]

How Two Jackals (in Part One) Branded This (five-part) Book

Karataka ('Horribly Howling') and Damanaka ('Victor') are the Sanskrit names of two jackals in the first section of the Panchatantra. They are retainers to a lion king and their lively adventures as well as the stories they and other characters tell one another make up roughly 45% of the book's length. By the time the Sanskrit version has migrated several hundred years through Pahlavi into Arabic, the two jackals' names have transmogrified into Kalila and Dimna, and — probably because of a combination of first-mover advantage, Dimna's charming villainy and that dominant 45% bulk — their single part/section/chapter has become the generic, classical name for the whole book. It is possible, too, that the Sanskrit word 'Panchatantra' as a Hindu concept could find no easy equivalent in Zoroastrian Pahlavi.

The Shāh Nāma, Chapter XXXI (iii): How Borzuy brought the Kalila from Hindustan

Initially 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."^[30] The Shah gave his permission, equipped Borzuy fully for the journey and handed over to him a number of gifts, together with a letter for the Rãy of India, whom he requested to assist the physician in his search. On his arrival in Hindustan he was received with high honor and granted all facility for his task, including a retinue of local physicians to guide him on his way.

But when Borzuy locates and prepares the miraculous mountain herb and sprinkles it over various corpses provided for his experiments, alas — the magic potion does not work. He is distressed at his failure and angry at the false information that has led him so far astray, not to mention afraid of the shame which will descend upon him if he returns empty-handed to Persia and faces his king's displeasure. In desperation he asks the Indian physicians accompanying him what to do. Do they know anyone who can help him?

"With one voice they replied: 'There is an ancient sage here who surpasses us in years and wisdom and who in his science is superior to any of the great.'

"They guided Borzuy to this man, whose mind was filled with contemplation and whose lips were ever ready for speech. Borzuy laid all his trials before him, speaking of the book which he had discovered and the words which he had heard from men expert in knowledge. When the ancient sage began to speak he discoursed on every branch of science.

'Kalila is the herb you seek'

'I too have found this thing in books,' he said, 'and have moved eagerly, led by the same hopes. When nothing came to light after my travails, I had perforce to listen to 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. Happy is he who submits himself steadfastly to labor. In the king's treasury there is a book which the well-qualified call Kalila. When people become weary of their ignorance, the herb for them is Kalila, knowledge being the mountain. If you seek this book in the king's treasury you will find it, and it will be your guide to knowledge.'

"Borzuy rejoiced to hear this and all his past toil appeared in his eyes as empty wind. He blessed the sage and departed for the king's court, and, traversing the road like fire, he arrived in the Rãy's presence and lavished compliments upon him.

'May you occupy your throne as long as India exists!' he said. 'Rāy, you whose triumphs are widespread, there exists a certain book whose title in Hindu is Kalila. In your majesty's treasury it is sealed as precious and it contains guidance mingled with discernment and wisdom. That herb is a metaphor for this Kalila, nought else. I beg that your majesty, lord of India, may bid your treasurer consign the book to me, if you will not hold that to be irksome.^[30]

"The Rāy's spirit was rendered unhappy by this request and his body was agitated where he sat.

'Borzuy,' he said, 'no one has ever sought this of me, either recently or in times past. Yet were the emperor Nushirvān to demand my body and soul I would not withhold them from him, nor anything else. I have not any person noble or humble here. But read it in my presence here, lest some malevolent person hostile to me should claim that the book was written by a mortal. Read, understand and investigate it from every point of view.'^[30]

The book's cultural migration after Borzuy's Pahlavi translation

Borzuy's 570 AD Pahlavi translation (Kalile va Demne) was translated nearly two centuries later into Syriac and Arabic — the latter by Ibn al-Muqaffa around 750 CE ^[33] under the Arabic title, Kalīla wa Dimma.^[34]

The Brethren of Purity and part 2 of the Kalila wa Dimna

Scholars aver that the second section of Ibn al-Muqaffa's translation, illustrating the Sanskrit principle of Mitra Laabha (Gaining Friends), became the unifying basis for the Brethren of Purity — the anonymous 9th century CE Arab 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. The story concerns a ring-dove and its companions who have become entangled in the net of a hunter seeking birds. Together, they left themselves and the ensnaring net to a nearby rat, who is gracious enough to gnaw the birds free of the net; impressed by the rat's altruistic deed, a crow becomes the rat's friend. Soon a tortoise and gazelle also join the company of animals. After some time, the gazelle is trapped by another net; with the aid of the others and the good rat, the gazelle is soon freed, but the tortoise fails to leave swiftly enough and is himself captured by the hunter. In the final turn of events, the gazelle repays the tortoise by serving as a decoy and distracting the hunter while the rat and the others free the tortoise. After this, the animals are designated as the Ikwhan al-Safa.

This story is mentioned as an exemplum when the Brethren speak of mutual aid in one rasa'il (treatise), a crucial part of their system of ethics that has been summarized thus:

"And their virtues, equally, are not the virtues of Islam, not so much righteousness and the due quittance of obligations, as mildness and gentleness towards all men, forgiveness, long-suffering, and compassion, the yielding up of self for others' sake. In this Brotherhood, self is forgotten; all act by the help of each, all rely upon each for succour and advice, and if a Brother sees it will be good for another that he should sacrifice his life for him, he willingly gives it. No place is found in the Brotherhood for the vices of the outside world; envy, hatred, pride, avarice, hypocrisy, and deceit, do not fit into their scheme, — they only hinder the worship of truth."^[35]

The crucial Abbasid classic by Ibn al-Muqaffa

After the Muslim invasion of Persia (Iran) Ibn al-Muqaffa's 750 CE Arabic version (by now two languages removed from its pre-Islamic Sanskrit original) emerges as the pivotal surviving text that enriches world literature^[36].

From Arabic it was transmitted in 1080 to Greece and in 1252 into Spain (old Castilian, Calyla e Dymna) and thence to the rest of Europe. However it was the circa 1250 Hebrew translation attributed to Rabbi Joel that became the source (via a subsequent Latin version done by one John of Capua around 1270 CE, Directorium Humanae Vitae, or "Directory of Human Life") of most European versions. Furthermore in 1121 a complete 'modern' Persian translation from Ibn al-Muqaffa's version flows from the pen of Abu'l Ma'ali Nasr Allah Munshi.

It seems that any pre-Arabic or post-Arabic format the Kalila and Dimna animal fables take is relative. This loose collection is an oral and literary oddity that flows on, forward and yet also backward into the mists before anything was written down. One simply cannot pin these stories down like butterflies under glass in a tidy Victorian museum display drawer. They exist cross-culturally virtually in perpetual flux, like the 1001 Nights, adapting even now to current conditions to remain fresh and employable, freighting some vestige of an ancient message to new generations. They are alive as conduits of traditional wisdom, of a durable and vital survivalist psychology that requires no formal schooling or even, as remains true to vasts swaths of humanity, literacy.[7]

Modern adaptions and difficulties in establishing a fixed attribution

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.^[37] 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 civilizations on a multiplicity of levels, including the obvious tribal, religious and political parallels.

Al-Bassam's imaginative modern work entitled Kalila wa Dimna, while provocative and educational, is technically a misnomer. There is only one brief play-within-a-play tableau that genuflects towards the actual telling any of the animal fables found in the Arabic original. Understandably this contradictory nuance (where are al-Muqaffa's classic fables?), obvious and even irritatingly puzzling to any literate Middle Easterner, appears to have been intellectualized away by some Eurocentric commentators. [8] The English literary equivalent would be attending a play called Hard Times expecting to see something of the characters Grandgrind and Bounderby only to find yourself immersed in an imaginary biography of Charles Dickens and the social turmoil of his day, with only a three minute confrontational drawing-room scene alluding to a certain Mr Grandgrind and his part in the horrors of Victorian factory conditions and child labor.

Yet in the prevailing belief system of the Western post-modernist world, anything goes. Every expression achieves legitimacy. This tolerant climate is ideally suited to the book's sui generis flexibility. Any attempt to re-brand the Panchatantra or Kalila and Dimna or The Fables of Bidpai for the utilitarian Western consciousness, while at the same time avoiding cultural chauvinism, proves elusive and fanciful.

The persistent trend, for more than a hundred years and often encouraged by scholars defending their fields of literary expertise, is to select and promote a single ancient 'source text' as the 'true classic material', whether it be in Sanskrit, Syriac, Arabic or Persian, and ignore, even denigrate, the other three sources. Such behaviour can reach the extreme of one expert within a single language seemingly dismissing the contribution of another, as occurred in the 1990s when two English versions of the Panchatantra translated from separate Sanskrit manuscripts (both, incidentally, dated significantly after al-Muqaffa's 750 AD Arabic version) were published independently as 'classics' of Indian Wisdom by (a) Penguin (1993) and (b) Oxford University Press (1997).^[38] To literate outsiders such prejudicing of texts can appear absurd, even deliberately confusing. "So which translated Sanskrit manuscript," one might ask, "offers the true Panchatantra classic?" And the answer, entering the purest realm of literary quantum reality, must be "Both!". And if we include the many Arabic, Syriac and Persian versions known under the various guises of Kalila and Dimna or Fables of Bidpai and the derivatives thereof, then we can immediately add a couple hundred more versions, all of them also 'classics', yet each with an individual treatment and arrangement in the voice of a different "singer of the song", delivering the goods somewhere in the last 2000 years.

The regional difficulty, as the novelist Doris Lessing says at the start of her introduction to Ramsay Wood's 1980 "retelling" of only the first two (Mitra Bhedha—The Loss of Friends & Mitra Laabha—Gaining Friends) of the five Panchatantra principles,^[39] is 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."

Ibn al-Muqaffa's influence

Professor James Kritzeck, in his 1964 Anthology of Islamic Literature^[40], confronts the book's matrix of conundra:

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.

La Fontaine's debt

The French fabulist Jean de La Fontaine famously 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" ^[41]

Two links with Aesop

A strong similarity exists between two stories ('Ass in Panther's Skin' and 'Ass without Heart and Ears') in The Panchatantra and Aesop's fables^[42]. Similar animal fables are found in most cultures of the world, although some folklorists view India as the prime source.

Notes

See also

• Hitopadesa
• Jataka tales
• Ion Keith-Falconer — translator (1885) (detail on Note 8 above)
• Kathasaritsagara
• Ramsay Wood — author (details on Notes 10, 18 & 23 above)
• The Manuscript Found in Saragossa — (detail on Note 24 above)
• The Tortoise and The Geese
• The Tiger, the Brahmin and the Jackal
• The Jungle Book
• Wildlife of India, Panchatantra tales depict characters based on local wild animals from the Jungles of India including the Asiatic / Indian lion.

References

• Jacobs, Joseph (1888), The earliest English version of the Fables of Bidpai, London, http://www.archive.org/details/earliestenglishv00doniuoft  (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
• The Anvar-i Suhaili; or The Lights of Canopus; being the Persian version of The Fables of Pilpay; or The Book "Kalilah and Dimnah," rendered into Persian by Husain Vaiz Ul-Kashifi: literally translated into prose and verse Edward B Eastwick, Stephen Austin, Hertford, 1854 (also an Elibron Classic Replica unabridged edition from www.elibron.com)
• The Jatakas — Birth Stories of the Bodhisatta [9], Sandra Shaw, Penguin Classics, Penguin Books India, New Delhi, 2006
• Burzoy's Voyage to India and the Origin of the Book of Kalilah wa Dimnah [10], Francois de Blois, Royal Asiatic Society, London, 1990
• On Kalila wa Dimna and Persian National Fairy Tales [11], 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. This is a book that explores the ancient living tradition of storytelling that bridges East and West, yet somehow seems to survive at much more pervasively vibrant levels in contemporary Moroccan culture. [12]

Versions

• Hertel, Johannes (1915), The Panchatantra: a collection of ancient Hindu tales in its oldest recension, the Kashmirian, entitled Tantrakhyayika, Harvard University Press, http://books.google.com/books?id=-x0YAAAAYAAJ&printsec=titlepage#PPR3,M1 
• The Panchatantra Reconstructed by F. Edgerton (Vol.1: Text and Critical Apparatus, Vol.2: Introduction and Translation), American Oriental Series 2-3., New Haven, Connecticut: 1924.
• 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, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1402186193 
• 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 
• Wilkinson (1930), The Lights of Canopus described by J V S Wilkinson, London: The Studio Limited 
• Falconer, Ion Keith (1885), Kalilah and Dimnah or The Fables of Bidpai, Cambridge University Press , reprinted by Philo Press, Amsterdam 1970
• Knatchbull, Rev Wyndham (1819), Kalila and Dimna or The Fables of Bidpai, Oxford  (translated from Silvestre de Stacy's laborious 1816 collation of different Arabic manuscripts)
• Wood, Ramsay (2008), Kalila and Dimna, Fables of Friendship and Betrayal, Introduction by Doris Lessing, London: Saqi, http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0863566618/ 

English Translations

• Rajan, Chandra (transl.) (1993), Viṣṇu Śarma: The Panchatantra, London: Penguin Books, ISBN 9780140455205  (reprint: 1995) (This translation is from the Jain monk Purnabhadra's 1199 CE so-called North Western Family Sanskrit text that blends and rearranges at least three earlier versions.)
• Ryder, Arthur W. (transl) (1925), The Panchatantra, University of Chicago Press  (also republished in 1956, reprint 1964, and by Jaico Publishing House, Bombay, 1949). (also from the 1199 CE North Western Family text.)
• Olivelle, Patrick (transl.) (1997), The Panachatantra, The Book of India's Folk Wisdom, Oxford University Press, ISBN 9780192839886  (This translation is from the so-called Southern Family Sanskrit text, as is Franklin Edgerton's equally esteemed 1924 version.)
• Dharma, Krishna (transl.) (2004), Panchatantra - A vivid retelling of India's most famous collection of fables, Badger CA, USA: Torchlight Publishing, ISBN 9781887089456  (Accessible popular compilation derived from a Sanskrit text with reference to the aforementioned translations by Chandra Rajan and Patrick Olivelle.)
• Kalila and Dimna, Fables of Friendship and Betrayal by Ramsay Wood, Introduction by Doris Lessing, Postscript by Dr Christine van Ruymbeke, Saqi Books, London, 2008. [13]
• Olivelle, Patrick (2006), The Five Discourses on Worldly Wisdom, Clay Sanskrit Library 
• Various tales depicted in the Amar Chitra Katha comics

Further reading

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Panchatantra

Look up panchatantra in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Panchatantra Stories in English
• Stories from Panchatantra
• Tales from the Panchatantra
• An example of comparison with an Aesop's fable
• Buddhist Birth Stories (Jataka Tales), T. W. Rhys Davids, London 1880 [14]
• Excerpt from Wood's 2008 update of Kalila and Dimna - Fables of Friendship and Betrayal