Panchatantra

by Vishnu Sharma

  As the monkey dipped the lotus stem into the water and began to drink, there rose up from the lake a fearsome rakshasa wearing a necklace of blood red rubies around his neck. ‘Hey, monkey!’ called the rakshasa. ‘Anyone who steps into this lake becomes my dinner. You are smart—you did not step in but are using a lotus stem to drink the water. I have never met anyone as clever as you before. I am deeply impressed by your quick thinking—and so, as a mark of my favour, ask of me whatever your heart desires, and I will fulfil your wish.’

  Said the monkey, ‘How many people can you eat?’

  ‘In the lake, I can eat a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, even a million people if they enter the water; outside the lake, I cannot even swallow a scrawny jackal,’ replied the rakshasa.

  ‘Well, I have a score to settle with a certain king,’ said the monkey. ‘If you lend me this jewelled necklace of yours, I can tempt the king with it and get him and all his family and followers to enter the lake.’

  The rakshasa nodded and handed his necklace to the monkey without hesitation. ‘Do as you see fit,’ he said.

  The monkey wore the necklace around his neck and, swinging through the trees and over the rooftops, made his way to the king’s palace. The townspeople greeted him with affection and said, ‘O monkey chief, where have you been all these days? We haven’t seen you around. And what a beautiful necklace! Where did you get this? It glitters more brightly than the sun!’

  Replied the monkey, ‘Deep in the forest lies a magical pool, put there by Kubera, the god of wealth himself. Anyone who bathes in that pool at dawn is blessed by Kubera, and emerges with just such a necklace of jewels around his throat.’

  The news of the monkey and his necklace spread throughout the town. When it reached the ears of the king, he called the monkey to him and asked, ‘O monkey chief, is this tale true? Is there really a magic pool somewhere full of jewelled necklaces?’

  The monkey replied, ‘Sire, the ruby necklace around my neck should be proof enough that my story is true. If Your Majesty is in need of such a necklace, send one of your courtiers with me, and I will show him the magic pool.’

  ‘Well, if this is indeed true, then I myself will come with you, taking with me my entire family and all my followers,’ said the king. ‘If so many of us bathe in the pool, I will be able to collect a great many of the jewelled necklaces.’

  ‘Very well, sire, I will lead you to the magic pool,’ replied the monkey.

  And so, the king, accompanied by his queens, his ministers and his entire household, set off for the magic pool. The king in his palanquin seated the monkey fondly in his lap, and all through the journey, fed him choice and delicious fruit. The monkey gazed at the aging king and his followers, all so eager and driven only by greed. ‘It has been truly said,’ he reflected, ‘that with the passing of the years, beauty, strength, and even the mind, decay; men grow weak and can barely walk; they lose their hearing and their sight—but their greed remains unchanged!’

  The monkey, the king and the king’s retinue reached the pool in the forest at dawn. ‘Sire, the sun is about to rise. So ask your followers to jump into the lake all together. Then I will take you to the spot where I had entered the water, so that you may get a necklace as rich and brilliant as mine,’ said the monkey.

  The king did as the monkey suggested. As soon as the king’s household and followers entered the lake, the rakshasa ate them up. The king waited impatiently by the shore, and when his people did not emerge from the lake, he asked the monkey, ‘Why are they taking so long?’

  At this, the monkey climbed up the tallest tree, and once he was safely out of the king’s reach called out to him, ‘O king, the rakshasa has eaten all your people. You killed all my people, and, in revenge, I have killed all your family and followers. You were my king and my master, and so I spared you. Go now the way that you had come.’

  The king, grief-stricken and helpless, turned around and went back to his palace without a word.

  Once the king had left, the rakshasa emerged from the lake and said, ‘That was smartly done! Through your cleverness in drinking water through the lotus stalk you gained me as a friend and destroyed an enemy, and through it all, you did not even lose my ruby necklace! You are a clever monkey!’

  ‘And that is why I say,’ said Suvarnasiddhi, ‘that men, when they fall prey to greed, act without thinking and find themselves in trouble.’ Completing his tale, Suvarnasiddhi said to his friend, ‘And now, give me leave to return home. Though you are wise and learned, you were foolish to disregard my advice. There is nothing I can do to help you. You alone must bear the consequences of your thoughtless action.’

  ‘You are right, my friend, I alone must suffer for my deeds,’ said Chakradhara sadly. ‘Go home.’

  ‘This brings to an end the fifth and last part of your lessons,’ said Vishnusharma.

  And thus ends the work known to the world as the Panchatantra, a treatise in five parts on the art of living wisely and well, composed by the learned scholar, Vishnusharma.

  Translator’s Note

  The fables of the Panchatantra have always been a part of the landscape of my life, and so, when my daughters were born and grew old enough to ask for and listen to bedtime tales, these were amongst the first stories I told them. It was in searching for more Panchatantra tales for my daughters that I realized the absence of a translation for children that maintained the structural integrity of the original work.

  Now, one of the most interesting features of the Panchatantra is its story-within-a-story structure—stories contain stories which contain more stories, somewhat like a Russian matryoshka doll that contains doll within doll within doll. However, in every translation and retelling for children that I could find, though the stories had been charmingly retold and often beautifully illustrated, they had been presented as stand-alone tales without the context or ‘frame story’ within which they occur in the Panchatantra. This, I felt, took away from the tales substantially. I therefore decided to translate the Panchatantra myself, keeping intact its original form and structure. And so I embarked on this translation, almost twenty years ago today, a labour of love for my daughters, my numerous nieces and nephews, and every child I knew who had ever clamoured for a story.

  The translation went much slower than I had expected; the children grew much faster and had soon outgrown these tales. So, for many years, I put this translation aside and became busy writing and translating other books—till a conversation with Sohini Mitra of Puffin India in July 2015 brought me back to it. I looked at the Panchatantra again, with different eyes, and realized its true significance: not only was it a masterly treatise on politics and government and a manual for conducting our daily lives with wisdom and common sense, but, devised to educate the three foolish sons of a king in the ways of the world, it was also a revolutionary, and successful, experiment in teaching young people. Where traditional methods had failed with the princes, the fables of the Panchatantra succeeded—by teaching them practical wisdom, and by awakening in them curiosity about the world. Within six months, the blockhead princes had become wise and knowledgeable young men. Since then, says the Panchatantra in its preface, its stories have been used to educate young people everywhere—a claim that is borne out by the many translations and retellings of this work that are found all over the world even today.

  Storytelling is an ancient tradition in India, and stories, especially those featuring animals that speak, think and behave like humans, have been used since time immemorial for the purposes of teaching and illustrating or explaining a point. Animal stories may be found in works as ancient as the Rig Veda, which, composed sometime between 1700 and 1100 BCE, is one of India’s oldest texts, and in the Upanishads, composed only slightly later, in the first millennium BCE. One of the largest collections of such animal stories from ancient India is the Buddhist Jataka tales. These fables, composed sometime between 300 BCE and 400 CE, relate episodes from the Buddha’s previous lives (in many of wh
ich he was born as an animal) and were used to explain and propagate his teachings. The Panchatantra, composed in Sanskrit around 300 CE, continued this ancient tradition of using stories to fulfil the heavier and more serious purpose of teaching.

  The appeal of the Panchatantra, however, is not limited only to the young. Apart from its wonderful stories and ageless wisdom, it is a work that looks at life head-on. Rather than seeking to present linear solutions where good wins over evil, moral behaviour wins over the immoral or even amoral, it acknowledges that life, love and friendship can be complex, that politics, government, and human interactions are not always straightforward, and even right and wrong, truth and falsehood can often be a matter of circumstance, expediency, or what is practical. As a result, the stories resonate with people of all ages, at different levels, in different ways, everywhere. Today there may be found more than 200 versions of the Panchatantra across the world, in more than fifty languages. The oldest recension is probably the Sanskrit Tantrakhyayika from Kashmir—this predates the Panchatantra version available to us today. The most famous retelling of the Panchatantra is the thirteenth century version by Narayana, known as the Hitopdesa.

  The Panchatantra was first translated in the sixth century CE, into Pahlavi, at the command of the Sassanian ruler Khusru Anushirwan (531–579 CE) by his physician, Barzoi. This translation is now lost, but was the source for the first Syriac translation of the Panchatantra in 570 by the Periodeut Bud. Some two centuries later, Barzoi’s Pahlavi version was translated into Arabic by Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa. From Ibn-al-Muqaffa’s translation there also arose further translations including a later Syriac version, as well as translations into Persian, Hebrew, eastern Turki, Greek and several European languages so that the work became well known in both Muslim and Christian literature. In its Arabic translation, it became famous as Kalila wa Dimna (after the names of two of the principal characters, the jackals Karataka and Damanaka); in Europe, it became known as the Fables of Bidpai. Many of the stories of the Panchatantra can be found in the seventeenth century fables of La Fontaine. Their influence can also be seen in the stories of the Arabian Nights, as well as in the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. The stories also travelled to Indonesia in both oral and written forms.

  We know very little about the author of the Panchatantra, except what the introduction to the work itself tells us—that his name was Vishnusharma, that he was a brahmin, exceptionally learned, a renowned teacher, and eighty years of age at the time he composed this work. Since we have no other evidence regarding Vishnusharma, it is difficult to say whether he really was the author of the Panchatantra or himself a fictional character, invented as a literary device for the purpose of narrating the stories.

  My translation is based primarily on the original Sanskrit text as presented by M.R. Kale,* and on the Sanskrit text with Sanskrit and Hindi commentary as presented by Shyamacharan Pande.† I have also included four additional stories—which I have retold—from the 1199 Purnabhadra recension, as translated by Arthur William Ryder.‡ I have remained as faithful as possible to the spirit of the original work, but have consciously and purposely stepped away from a literal, line by line, translation of the text. Given that the primary purpose of the Panchatantra is instructional, the lesson derived from a particular story is repeated over and over again. Though these repetitions are creatively framed—in different words, and explained through diverse examples—they do become tedious for a modern audience. I have therefore left out many of these repetitions, with a view to making the text crisper and lighter to read.

  The world of the Panchatantra is the world of men, and the image of women in its stories is at best prejudiced and at worst exceedingly misogynistic and repressive. Women, unless married and tied down with home and children, are regarded as destructive, dangerous and untrustworthy. Thus, the virtue that is most greatly valued in a woman is obedience—to her father, her husband, her son. There are very few stories in the Panchatantra where female characters play a major role, and only in two of these do they play a positive role: in both these stories (The Story of the Crow and the Cobra and The Story of the Tittibh Bird and the Sea, both in Part 1), the mother bird is worried about the welfare of her children. In The Story of the Monkey and the Crocodile, the frame story of Part 4, the crocodile’s wife is evil, jealous and scheming, seeking to eat her husband’s best friend and end their friendship—she has every evil quality that the Panchatantra warns us about in women. A woman is truly valued when she becomes a mother; otherwise, even as a wife, she is a threat to men. Though I have retained these particular stories in my translation, I mention them here so that my young readers may become aware of and stay alert to these representations. I have, however, taken the liberty to leave out the more overtly misogynistic tales from my translation—fortunately, these were few in number and leaving them out did not compromise the integrity or structure of the work as a whole.

  This translation has been two decades in the making. My deepest thanks, therefore, to Sohini Mitra, who saw it to publication, and to Mriga Maithel, for her suggestions and patient and meticulous editing.

  My gratitude, too, to my daughters, whose demands for bedtime tales first made me turn to the Panchatantra, and who have, over the years, remained patient listeners to my outpourings on this work. I have, at odd times, pestered them to read the stories, even to illustrate some of them. They have borne all my demands with unfailing patience and good humour, sometimes even agreeing, in recent years, to be prodded awake at night to listen to a particularly amusing or complex tale that could not wait till the morning to be told.

  My daughters, and my nieces and nephews, and all the other children in my life for whom I began this book have grown up now—to these young women and young men, in thanks for all the joy they have given and continue to give me, I dedicate this endeavour of mine.

  Kolkata

  Rohini Chowdhury

  30 November 2016

  Rohini Chowdhury is a widely published children’s writer and an established literary translator. As a children’s writer, she has more than twenty-five books and several short stories to her credit. Her published writing is in English and Hindi, and covers a wide spectrum of literary genres including novels, short fiction, and non-fiction. Her primary languages as a literary translator are pre-modern (Braj Bhasha and Avadhi) and modern (Khari Boli) Hindi and English. Her translations include the seventeenth-century Braj Bhasha text Ardhakathanak, widely regarded as the first autobiography in an Indian language, into modern Hindi and into English. Her literary interests include mythology, folklore, mathematics and history.

  She runs a story website for children at www.longlongtimeago.com.

  Rohini holds a PGDM from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and an honours degree in Economics from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. She is widely travelled and brings in the nuances of the cultures of India, Africa and the West in her writings.

  PUFFIN CLASSICS

  Panchatantra

  With Puffin Classics, the story isn’t over when you reach the final page. Want to discover more about the author and his world?

  Read on . . .

  CONTENTS

  AUTHOR FILE

  ALL ABOUT THE PANCHATANTRA

  SOME THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

  AUTHOR FILE

  Who Wrote the Panchatantra?

  In its opening story, the Panchatantra identifies as its author the brahmin Vishnusharma, an eminent scholar in the court of Amarashakti, the king of Mahilaropya, the city in and around which most of the stories of the Panchatantra are set. He is renowned far and wide for his learning and his skill as a teacher, and is therefore given the task of educating the three dull-witted sons of the king and making them fit to rule. Vishnusharma, who is eighty years old at the time, accepts the challenge, and for the purposes of teaching the princes the rules of kingship and the principles of government, he devises the stories of the Panchatantra. Since we have no other information from any other indepen
dent source, it is impossible to say whether Vishnusharma was a real, historical person or is himself a literary invention for the purpose of the stories.

  Regardless of the author’s real identity, it is clear that he was well versed in politics and the rules of government and kingship, and had either been involved in, or had observed very closely, the workings of royal courts. He was also clearly very learned, with more than a passing familiarity with ancient Indian texts such as the Vedas, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, as is evidenced by the numerous references in the Panchatantra to these works. Given the ideas and principles contained in the stories, scholars believe that he was familiar with contemporary literature on politics and government, and had definitely studied Kautilya’s political–economic treatise, the Arthashastra, in some detail. The stories show that the author of the Panchatantra was also a keen observer of human relationships and human interactions. Though he always endorses the values of truth and honour, he is also a realist, and is aware that sometimes the practical demands of life and government create situations where compromise becomes inevitable.

  It is most likely that he composed the work in Sanskrit, which was the literary as well as the spoken language of the learned in ancient India.

  Some versions of the Panchatantra—from southern India and south-east Asia—give the author’s name as Vasubhaga. Again, there is not enough evidence to confirm his identity or his existence.

  ALL ABOUT THE PANCHATANTRA

  When Was the Panchatantra Composed?

  Scholars trace some of the tales of the Panchatantra to as far back as 1500 BCE—to the ancient Sanskrit text, the Rig Veda, and it is likely that many of its tales were known even earlier. The exact date of its composition is uncertain. We do know, however, that it was translated into Pahlavi in 550 CE. Thus, we know with certainty that the Panchatantra must have been composed before this date—though it is difficult to say exactly how much earlier. Today most scholars agree that it was probably composed around 300 CE.