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A History of Sanskrit Literature c18: XI. The Didactic Fable

A History of Sanskrit Literature c18

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English

Contents

XI. The Didactic Fable

1. The Origin of the Fable

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WE may safely assume that from the earliest times of the life of the Vedic Indians in India tales of all sorts passed current among the people, however useless it may be to discriminate them as fairy tales, Märchen, or myths or fables in the earlier stages of their development. It was, however, a distinct and important step when the mere story became used for a definite purpose, and when the didactic fable became a definite mode of inculcating useful knowledge. We do not know at what date this took place; we could not expect to find fables in the *Ṛgveda*, but we have there something which reminds us how easy it was for Indian thought to transfer to men's neighbours the habits of men. Whatever be the purpose of a famous hymn in the *Ṛgveda*¹ in which Brahmins are compared to croaking frogs as they sing at their sacrifice, it is clear that we have a recognition of a certain kinship between men and animals, which comes out clearly in the Upaniṣads,² where we have the allegory or satire of the dogs who search out a leader to howl food for them, the talk of two flamingoes whose remarks call attention to Raikva, and the instruction of the young Satyakāma first by a bull, then by a flamingo, then by an aquatic bird. Granting that we have not here the didactic fable, in which the actions of beasts are made the means of advising men, still we can realize how easy it was to pass to this form of instruction, and in fact we find in the epic³ clear recognition of fables, and that not merely in the late didactic book xii but elsewhere. Not only do we hear of the bird that provided the equivalent of the golden eggs, but of the naughty cat which deceived the little mice by an appearance of virtue so that they delivered themselves into her power, and we have a *motif* which certainly is strongly suggestive of the material whence developed the *Pañcatantra*. The Pāṇḍavas, it is suggested, are to be treated as the intelligent jackal treated his allies the tiger, the mouse, the ichneumon, and the wolf, when he smartly cheated them out of any share in the booty he had won with their aid. About the same time,¹ as the monumental evidence at Bharhut proves, the Buddhists were already making another use of the common belief in the close relationship of animals and man, now accentuated by the adoption by Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains alike of the doctrine of transmigration into animal as well as human forms. They chose by relating beast stories to illustrate the deeds and greatness of the Buddha and his contemporaries in past births.

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¹ vii. 103.

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² *Chāndogya Upaniṣad*, i. 12; iv. 1; 5; 7 f.

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³ Holtzmann, *Das Mahābhārata*, iv. 88 ff.

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¹ *Mem. Arch. Surv. India*, i (1919), 15. On the question of dates cf. R. C. Majumdar, JPASB. 1922, pp. 225 ff.

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We may confidently assume from the epic and from allusions to proverbs in Patañjali² that the beast fable was thus current, but we cannot say with any certainty whether fables had yet come to be reduced to literary form of any kind. The answer may be in the negative, for the fable as we have it in the *Pañcatantra* is indeed an elaborate production despite its seeming lack of art. It is essentially didactic, and thus must consist in part of a tale, but in part also of a moral or maxim of practical life—which may, of course, not be moral in the higher sense of the term. The fable, indeed, is essentially connected with the two branches of science known by Indians as the *Nītiçāstra* and the *Arthaçāstra*, which have this in common as opposed to the *Dharmaçāstra* that they are not codes of morals, but deal with man's action in practical politics and conduct of the ordinary affairs of every-day life and intercourse. We must not, however, exaggerate the contrast between these Çāstras, for in the *Arthaçāstra* and the *Nītiçāstra* alike there is much common sense, and that is often in accord with practical morality; at no time can we regard the didactic fable as intended merely to extol cleverness without regard to morality; there lingers around the work a distinct influence of the *Dharmaçāstra*, as was only to be expected, seeing that the *Pañcatantra* was intended for the instruction of the young and the instructors were Brahmins. But the youthful pupils were evidently not intended to be Brahmin boys either solely or mainly; tradition enshrined in the *Pañcatantra* itself asserts its composition for the instruction of the sons of a prince, and with this accords the use of Sanskrit, for at the probable time of its first production, Sanskrit was already essentially the language of the Brahmins and of the high official classes in the royal *entourage*. A work of this sort, it is evident, was a very definite creation, something vastly different from mere tales regarding beasts or even the simple fable as it may have passed current orally.

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² On Pāṇini, ii. 1. 3; v. 3. 106 f.; Weber, IS. xiii. 486.

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The form of the fable is essentially dictated by its origin. The story is naturally related in prose, but the moral is fixed in the memory by being put in verse form, and it is natural that other didactic verses should be strewn in the tales; such an employment of gnomic stanzas is found in the *Aitareya Brāhmaṇa*.¹ The maxim embodying the truth or point of the tale naturally stands in a different position from the more general didactic stanza; it must be capable of serving as an identification label, or Kathāsaṁgrahaçloka, a verse that sums up the tale. It must, however, have been natural on the basis of such stanzas to insert in the narrative itself stanzas which are not maxims, but, like the label, refer definitely to the tale itself, and thus we achieve the use of Ākhyāna or narrative verses, but primarily at any rate as a minor feature. It is only slowly and late that the didactic fable comes to be written wholly or largely in verse.

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¹ vii. 13 ff.

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Yet another peculiarity marks the form of the fable. It was a distinctly artistic touch to complicate and enlarge the theme, not merely by combining a number of fables to form a book, but to interweave the fables so that the whole would become a unity. This involved making the characters in the fables support their maxims by allusions to other fables, which they necessarily are asked to tell, resulting that in a fable others are normally inserted, while the process may even be carried so far as to include in such an inserted fable another inserted fable. There is, of course, nothing simple or popular in such a form; indeed, it is highly inconvenient for merely practical purposes, as the thread of the main narrative may be so interrupted as to render return to it difficult; it must have been the invention of some definite person or persons. For models we can only refer vaguely to the love of direct speech shown in the epics where, if possible, the actor is made to relate his own deeds, as does Odysseus among the Phaiacians. Nor would it be reasonable to doubt that those who introduced these important changes into the form of the fable, as contrasted with the simpler form we must presume it once had, were responsible for inventing many of the fables which they tell. From the popular fable they may well have borrowed a good deal in substance, but in adapting it for very definite didactic ends they must have vitally changed it. We can support this view by the wholesale alterations evidently made in the conception of fables by the Buddhists in the Jātaka bock.

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In view of these facts it is clear that it is not possible to speak of a Prākrit fable literature as being the precursor of the *Pañcatantra*. We have no reason whatever to suppose that any real parallel to the structure of the *Pañcatantra* ever existed, and we cannot even say that the substance of the individual tales was current among the people until much later, when the popularity of the *Pañcatantra* led to the wholesale effort to appropriate them for the humbler ranks of society much as apparently happened in the case of Aesop's fables. We may go further and hold that the fable was far more of an independent creation in Sanskrit than the popular tale or Märchen, which is free from the didactic aim of the fable and expresses much more directly the religious feelings of the people, their myth-making capacity, their belief in magic in all aspects, and the native ingenuity of humble narrators. It is in entire harmony with this obvious distinction that Indian tradition is as positive regarding the Prākrit original of the great collections of Märchen as it is silent on the existence of any Prākrit source of the *Pañcatantra*.

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Clear distinctions in literature, as in everything else, are not common in Sanskrit, and no terminology was invented by writers on poetics to discriminate between the fable and the tale, though as regards the tale itself some efforts were made to discriminate the species of Kathā or Ākhyāyikā, though without success.¹ The stories in the several books of the *Pañcatantra* are styled Kathās, while in one version the title is *Tantrākhyāyika*. The terms themselves merely denote, Ākhyāyikā, narrative, sometimes minor narrative, Kathā, conversation, story, and it was hardly possible to discriminate them seriously. Nor are in fact in the *Pañcatantra* fables, tales, and narratives of actual or possible human events rigidly discriminated; it differs from the tales in that the fable element with its didactic stanzas decidedly prevails over other elements, while the tale includes the fable merely as a lesser constituent. Both profit by this absence of rigidity, which permits either a richer content and more elaborate development. Even so late a work as the *Hitopadeça* knows how to seek variety by blending the beast fable with Märchen and spicy narratives of human life.

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¹ Cf. S. K. Dé, *BSOS.* iii. 507 ff.

2. The Reconstruction of the Pañcatantra and its Origin

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The original of the numerous works which have come down to us, usually under the style of *Pañcatantra* or something equivalent, is now lost. But we can unquestionably find our way back to the substance of the original and even to a considerable measure of its form by the examination of the chief of its representatives.¹ Of these we can certainly discern four main groups. The first is the Pahlavi version of the *Pañcatantra* made before A. D. 570, but now lost, which itself can be reconstructed in substance from an Old Syrian and an Arabic version with the later texts based on the latter. The second is a version produced in north-west India, which was interpolated in the version of Guṇāḍhya's *Bṛhatkathā* which formed the basis of the *Bṛhatkathāmañjarī* of Kṣemendra and the *Kathāsaritsāgara* of Somadeva in the eleventh century. The third is represented by two Kashmir versions styled *Tantrākhyāyika*, and by two Jain recensions which derive their matter from a text akin to, but not that of, the *Tantrākhyāyika*, namely the Simplicior well known through Bühler and Kielhorn's edition *in usum tironum*, and the text of Pūrṇabhadra (1199), who used also the *Tantrākhyāyika* and some other unknown version. Fourthly, we have the common ancestor of the Southern *Pañcatantra*, the Nepalese *Pañcatantra* and the popular *Hitopadeça*; the latter two are derived from a version sister to the Southern *Pañcatantra* now lost, and the *Hitopadeça* is in considerable measure derived from another source altogether.

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¹ See F. Edgerton, *The Panchatantra Reconstructed* (1924).

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This is the limit of our certainty. Hertel's² unrelenting and fruitful labours led him to conclude that all these sources went back to a defective original (styled by him *t*), but it is clear that this is unproved. Further, he held that these four sources ought to be reduced to two, the *Tantrākhyāyika* original and ‘K’, the source of the other three groups, and in part of version β of the *Tantrākhyāyika* itself. This again is implausible, and the result is important, because it follows that the occurrence of any story in any two of the four versions is a strong reason for assigning it to the original text, whereas on Hertel’s view significance of this kind only applies to occurrence both in the *Tantrākhyāyika* and one of the ‘K’ version. Nor is there any adequate ground for Hertel’s further assumption of another intermediate archetype, ‘N.-W.’, from which the Pahlavi, the Southern *Pañcatantra* group, and the Simplicior are descended. Further, the priority of recension of the *Tāntrākhyāyika* is implausible; its omissions, which Hertel held of great importance in re-establishing the original text, are frequently not a proof of fidelity to the ultimate source, but are secondary; the recension which makes them good is thus as valuable, if not more so, than recension *a*. Fortunately, despite these divergences of opinion, we can be assured of the possibility of reconstructing the substance of the original. Edgerton accepts all of the stories held original by Hertel as genuine, and of those which he adds Hertel merely holds five doubtful and two certainly unoriginal. His grounds in no case are convincing, and the disputed tales are, probably enough, to be ascribed to the primary *Pañcatantra*.

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² *Das Pañcatantra* (1914).

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The name of this original was almost certainly *Pañcatantra*, but the sense of the term is uncertain; does *Tantra* merely mean book, or does it indicate trick, specimen of sharp conduct, or didactic or authoritative treatise? Similarly, does *Tantrākhyāyika* denote a Nītiçāstra in the form of tales arranged in (five) books; or an authoritative text-book (for policy) in the shape of an Ākhyāyikā; or a text-book composed of instructive or didactic tales? We do not know, but it is perhaps more likely that *Pañcatantra* meant originally five subject-matters; as a title, a treatise dealing with five subject-matters. Of the state of the original we cannot say more with certainty than that it must have existed before the Pahlavi version was made, and probably for some time. That it was written long after 200 B. C., Hertel’s first suggested date, is not doubted by himself; it knows the *Mahābhārata* well, and the use of *dīnāra*, the Latin *denarius*, points definitely to a time after the Christian era, though it is not sufficient to assign it to the second century A. D. at earliest.¹ Everything, however, suggests that it fell in the period of the Brahmanical restoration and expansion under the Guptas or just before their empire, with which well accords the use of Sanskrit for the instruction of princes and the distinctly Brahmanical character of the work, even if the evidence for the author having been a Vaiṣṇava is inadequate. We may reasonably accept the author as a Brahmin, but the name Viṣṇuçarman given doubtless in the prototype cannot be relied on, though it is impossible to dismiss it as certainly feigned; the author might very well have wished thus to secure remembrance of his personality. If so, then some weight may attach to the fact that Viṣṇuçarman is described as relating the tales to the sons of king Amaraçakti of Mahilāropya or Mihilāropya in the Deccan as a sign of southern origin; with this it agrees that the *Tantrākhyāyika* with the Jain versions mentions a mount Ṛṣyamūka, apparently in the western Deccan. The frame story of Book v is placed in Gauḍa, Bengal, but this is of no importance, especially as of the later versions only the *Hitopadeça* is connected with that land. Hertel's view that the work was composed in Kashmir because neither the tiger nor the elephant plays a part in the original, while the camel is known, is inconclusive in view of the late origin of the work, which would render it possible for persons in a very wide area in India to know all about the camel. The places of pilgrimage mentioned are common-place, Puṣkara, Gaṅgādvāra, Prayāga, and Vārāṇasī, so that we must leave the place of composition open.

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¹ Keith, JRAS. 1915, pp. 504 .

3. The Subject-Matter of the Pañcatantra

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The reconstructed text is unquestionably a text-book for the instruction of kings in politics and the practical conduct of everyday life, but it is also a story-book, and the author was not inclined to cut down his stories merely to the bare minimum necessary for his task of instruction. This is true to human nature, and it doubtless accounts for the insertion of stories which are rather Märchen than fables, as the tale¹ of the strand bird which menaced the sea and the narrative in Book ii of the experiences of the mouse, Hiraṇya. Nor was the intention of the author unmoral; he had no desire to establish the doctrine that dishonesty was the best policy; his concern was to give advice of a useful character, and it is by no means essential that such advice should be immoral. Indeed, in one important case, the story of Evil-wit and Honest-wit, we have a long account simply intended to prove that honesty is the best policy, and the point is emphasized by the fact that it is Karaṭaka, a minister of the bull, who reproves his colleague Damanaka and insists that he will live to repent successful villainy. We are in fact right in the midst of the normal Brahmanical society. The ministers of the king are normally Brahmins, Brahmins are essential for sacrifices, the Brahmanical consecrations and sacraments are observed, at the new and the full moon Brahmins are fed. It is quite a mistake to regard as signs of hostility to Brahmanism such facts as allusions to the false ascetic or the greed of the priests, a distinction which they share with women and kings. The Brahmins were not a close corporation, blind to defects of individual members; they were as ready to see the defects of one another as medieval monks. Of Buddhist tendencies there is no trace whatever; Benfey’s view that the original of the *Pañcatantra* was a Buddhist book was natural at the time when he could find parallels for the tales only in Buddhist books whose age he over-rated, and when it was imperfectly realized how essentially Indian in many regards Buddhism was. We now can be certain that several of the Jātaka tales are merely derived from the original *Pañcatantra* as in the case of Nos. 349 and 361 which rest on the frame story of Book i of that text. For the large and sometimes indigestible masses of political information regarding kings, ministers, and royal government, the means to win allies and alienate confederations of enemies, and to wage war, we have a parallel in the *Arthaçāstra* handed down under Kauṭilya’s name; it is quite possible that it was actually known as we have it to the original *Pañcatantra*, but that cannot be proved by internal evidence, and the utterly uncertain date of the *Arthaçāstra* renders it out of the question to assert that it is older than the *Pañcatantra*. What is clear is that the *Pañcatantra* derived its information from a similar source to the *Kauṭilīya*.

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¹ i. 9. Cf. St. Martin’s bird, Wesselski, *Mönchslatein*, p. 172.

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The frame story of Book i is preceded by a legend of the wickedness of the sons of king Amaraçakti, who entrusts them to Viṣṇuçarman on his promise in six months to teach them polity. Then we are introduced to the topic of the separation of friends, the frame story relating how a wicked jackal brought about the estrangement of the lion, Piṅgalaka, from the bull, Saṁjīvaka, who had been rescued by the lion and then was treated as his dear friend, to the disgust of the jackals, Karaṭaka and Damanaka, the lion's trusted ministers. By cunning the lion is made to distrust the bull, and finally to slay him; he repents when he sees his blood-stained paws, but Damanaka consoles him and remains his premier. The book gives ample room for political discussions, but it contains also a set of interesting fables. The fate of the ape who pulled out a wedge and was split up by it is recounted to prove the folly of interfering with what does not concern one. The necessity of investigating in lieu of mere looking at surface appearances is shown by the tale (2) of the jackal who learned by investigation that the drum whose sound had terrified was merely skin with emptiness within.

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Then we learn of three cases of evils brought on oneself in the tales (3 a–c) of the foolish monk who took a thief as pupil and had his cash stolen, of the jackal who ran in between and was killed by the impact of two butting rams, and of the procuress who took the place of a weaver's wife in order to further her intrigue with a patron, and suffered in consequence the loss of her nose. Tale 4 shows the advantage of guile over force; the female crow to punish the serpent who slew her offspring put the prince's gold chain in his hole and thus had him killed. Next we hear of the error of over-greed, illustrated by the heron who deceived the fish into trusting him to remove them to another lake, and so being eaten by him, but who met his just fate from a wise crab. Tale 6 proves that folly leads to ruin, as the lion was destroyed by the clever hare who caused him to leap into a well to attack his counterfeit presentment in the water. The result of cleverness inducing combined action is next illustrated by the tale of how the retainers of a lion by offering themselves to their sick master as food and being refused in turn induced the foolish camel, who was living under the lion's protection, to do likewise, whereupon the lion devoured him. Next comes a warning against attacking an enemy without knowing his prowess, illustrated by Tale 9 of the strand birds.

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The male bade the hen lay her eggs at the ocean's edge, but she derided the project, defending her thesis by two tales (10 and 11) emboxed in Tale 9. The first explains how the foolish tortoise lost his life by not heeding the advice of the geese, who were carrying him on a stick held in their claws, not to open his mouth while in the air; the second explains how the fish Forethought and Ready-wit escaped the fishers but Come-what-will was caught. The husband, however, insists on her acting as he bids; the sea takes away the eggs, but the bird successfully invokes, through Garuḍa, Viṣṇu's aid, and the ocean on pain of an assault by fire gives back the eggs. The tale (12) of the bird which would not take a telling, but insisted on explaining to a foolish monkey that he could not warm himself by the light of a glowworm and so irritated the monkey that he killed him, proves the truth that some people will not learn. Tale 13 tells how Honest-wit and Evil-wit disputed over a sum of money which they had together buried but which the latter had secretly dug up. In court he declares that the tree will prove as witness of the scene that his adversary was a thief, and, when it is arranged to go to the tree, he tells his father to go into its hollow and pretend to be the tree spirit. The father remonstrates, telling Tale 14, how the foolish heron induced a mungoose to eat a snake which devoured her young only to find that mungooses are connoisseurs in young birds.

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None the less he does his son's bidding, declares from the tree that Honest-wit is a thief, only to be burned in the tree by that outraged youth, his crime being thus exposed. The last tale is that of the merchant's son whose balance of 1,000 pounds of iron was stolen by the friend with whom he deposited it in his absence. When he asks it back he is told that mice had eaten it; he therefore steals the son of his friend, and declares that a falcon has carried him away; brought before the judge, he easily persuades him to secure the return of the balance for the son.

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Book ii of the winning of friends is perhaps more attractive. It opens with the tale of the clever king of the doves, Bright-neck, who saves his retinue from the hunter's net by making them all fly up with it and then has the bonds cut by the mouse, Goldy, being careful to have his cut last. We learn next how the crow, Lightwing, makes friends with Goldy, and is introduced to his old friend, the tortoise Sluggish. Goldy then explains why he left his first home; his tale (1) explains that he used to eat the alms begged by a monk despite the efforts of the unfortunate to put it out of his reach; a friend comes and tells the monk that the strength of the mouse must have some cause, just as there was a reason for mother Çāṇḍilī exchanging husked rice for husked rice. The allusion is explained in Tale 2; a Brahmin bade his wife prepare to feed Brahmins at the change of moon, and to override her objections on the score of economy, tells Tale 3, the story of the over-greedy jackal who, having as food a boar, deer, and hunter, nibbled the end of the bowstring which killed him by splitting his throat. The Brahmin's wife yields, but a dog snuffs and defiles the sesame prepared, so she sends the pupil of her husband to exchange it for other husked rice, evoking from the master of the house where the effort to exchange is made the adage alluded to. The monk then proceeds to search for the cause of the mouse's might and finds it in a store of gold in the mouse's home which gave him magic power. This taken away, the mouse is rendered weak, and, unable to feed his followers, is abandoned by them and gives up the delusion of desiring power and riches. A fourth friend is now added in the shape of a deer; but, wandering one day, it is caught in a snare, and, inappropriately it may be admitted, while waiting to be freed gratifies its curious friends by telling how, when young, it had been kept in captivity by a prince, until one day urged to human utterance by desire for freedom it so startled the prince that he fell afevered and only recovered when he was told the truth of the voice he had heard and released the deer. The comrades now release the deer, but the tortoise is surprised by the hunter's advent, and has to be rescued by a clever ruse on the part of the deer who pretends to be dead.

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Book iii illustrates war and peace by the tale how the stronghold of the owls was burned by the crows. The origin of the war is explained as due to an error in speech, and this elicits the tale (1) of the ass in the panther's skin, which by braying lost its life;

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then a second tale is adduced, the election by the birds of a king; the crow objects to the owl as hideous¹ and not fit even for a bluff, and to illustrate the use of bluffing tells Tale 3, how the clever hare by pretending to have a commission from his patron the moon—in which the Indians saw a hare instead of a face—frightened away an elephant which was destroying with its herd all the animals round a certain lake. Further, he denounces the meanness of the owl and by Tale 4 illustrates the danger of a mean king as judge by the case of the cat, Curd-ears, who ate up the foolish hare and partridge who had come to him to settle a dispute. The birds are now induced to desert the owl who remains alone, vowing vengeance on the crows. The next tale (5) shows how by deceit the crows may win, as the Brahmin was cheated out of his sacrificial goat, as he was carrying it home, by rogues who assured him that he was carrying an unclean dog. The crow minister, therefore, contrives to present himself to the owls as a suppliant who, for his good advice to the crow king, has been cast out; his friendly reception is advised and defended by two parallels. Tale 6 explains that even a thief received a kind welcome from the old man whose young wife is terrified by his intrusion into embracing warmly her spouse; Tale 7 extols the advantage of having enemies divided; the ogre who came to carry off a Brahmin and the thief who wished to steal his cows quarrelled over priority in evil-doing, so that the Brahmin woke up, drove off the ogre by a spell and the thief by his club. Only the owl, Red-eye, warns his foolish sovereign by the tale (8) of the silly carpenter who allowed his wife to dishonour him, but was deceived by her saying that she would not have any evil happen to him for the world. Red-eye also sees through the statement of the wily crow that he wishes to burn himself and be reborn an owl, proving that no such change of nature is possible by Tale 9. An ascetic rescued a mouse and made her a maiden, when she became ripe for marriage he sought a meet husband; the sun declined the proposals as the cloud was stronger than he, the cloud admitted inferiority to the wind, the wind to the mountain, and it to the mouse, so that the sage turned the maid to a mouse again. The owl king, however, persisted in permitting his enemy within the gates and is repaid by the destruction by fire of his home. The crow king warmly rewards his minister, and on questioning him how he could bear to associate with foes is told the tale of the serpent who pretended to the frogs that he had been cursed by a Brahmin to act as their carrier; the frog king enjoys riding on him, and finding his pace diminish owing to lack of food allows him to eat up the young frogs, which he does so energetically as to devour them all.

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¹ Cf. *Jātaka* 270.

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Book iv illustrates the loss of one's gettings by the tale of the ape and the crocodile¹ who lived in such amity that the crocodile's wife became jealous, and falling sick would be content with nothing save her rival's heart. The crocodile, though sad, seeks to entice the ape to visit him, but the ape finds out his plan and saves himself by saying that his heart is kept on a fig-tree, escaping when the crocodile seeks to obtain it from the tree. The crocodile seeks to renew the friendship, but is told instead that the ape is not like the ass who came back. This constitutes the one Tale: an ass's heart and ears are demanded by a sick lion; the jackal induces an ass to come by pretending he is taking him to a she-ass; the lion springs too soon and the ass escapes, but is deluded by the jackal into a second and fatal visit. The lion then departs to perform due ceremonial before partaking of the remedy; the jackal eats heart and ears, and, when the lion demands them, asserts as irrefutable that the ass had neither heart nor ears, or else he would never have come back. Book v warns against inconsiderate action. A Brahmin is dreaming of the son to be born; his wife warns him of day-dreams by the case of Somaçarman's father; he was a Brahmin who dreamed that he would sell for twenty rupees the groats he had to buy goats, have in five years a flock sufficient to obtain 100 cows, and so become rich until he had a son born; the child would come home, and the busy mother would neglect him, whereon the chivalrous father would beat her, an action he accomplished in his dream, destroying at one stroke all hope of the riches he coveted. In point of fact a boy is born, and the wife goes to wash, leaving the child to her husband's care as they had no maid. A summons arrives from the queen and the Brahmin goes to the palace, leaving his pet mungoose in charge of the babe. On his return he finds the mungoose rushing to meet him with bloody paws and mouth; in a rage he deems his son killed and slays the beast, only to find that the blood was that of a cobra which the faithful guardian had destroyed. His wife shares his grief, and reminds him by Tale 2 of hasty action. A young merchant is bidden in a dream to slay three monks who shall present themselves, as they are treasures stored by his father in this odd form and will become when slain *dīnāras*. He obeys, carrying out the rite with a barber's aid; the barber foolishly tries to repeat the trick, but his murdered monks do not become *dīnāras*, and he perishes at the hands of outraged justice. The tone of this book, as becomes its themes, is decidedly sombre. The brevity of the two books is remarkable, but it is just as likely to have been original as to have been the product of rehandling.

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¹ *Jātaka* 208; *Mahāvastu*, ii. 246 ff.

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Of the many maxims cited only about a quarter can be assigned to moral, religious, or philosophical thought, the rest deal with royal policy and general rules of life. The latter are far from always unmoral; the hero of Book ii is a fine character of the heroic type, proud but ever ready to sacrifice himself for his folk and his friends; the mouse also, when he ruled his subjects, worked desperately for them, and in the sphere of private life the householder is expected to be loyal, generous, and upright. There is no suggestion of approval of a low moral standard in domestic life; violators of marriage ties are clearly not admired, and lack of sensitiveness to dishonour is disapproved and ridiculed.

4. The Style and Language of the Pañcatantra

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There can be no doubt that the work was the production of an artist. The complex emboxment of the stories, which can be seen from the analysis above, is a very different thing from the epic simplicity, and not less characteristic is the intermingling of prose with gnomic stanzas and with title stanzas giving the moral inculcated in each tale with a hint of its characters, as when the tale of the bird who annoyed an ape regarding a glow-worm is introduced with 'You cannot bend wood that is unbendable; you cannot use a knife on a stone. Know from the fate of the bird Needlebeak that you cannot teach one who will not learn.' A model for the intermingling of prose and verse has been seen in the *Jātakamālā*; but, as we have seen, the character of that work is distinctly different; the verses there carry on the narrative, as is done but very seldom in the *Pañcatantra*, and usually where the emotion demands a finer expression than prose, or where a reported verse is essentially demanded by the narrative. Thus in the deer’s tale of his former captivity the verse he cites as uttered by himself is an essential factor of the story, serving the purpose of attracting the prince’s ear:

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*vātavṛṣṭividhūtasya mṛgayūthasya dhāvataḥ*
*pṛṣṭhato ’nugamiṣyāmi kadā tan me bhaviṣyati?*

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‘Ah, when will it be that I shall follow my herd as hither and thither the wind and the rain blow it on?’ Emotion, on the other hand, renders appropriate among other verses clearly gnomic the use by the hypocritical crocodile of stanzas in his address to the ape:

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*ekaḥ sakhā priyo bhūya upakārī guṇānvitaḥ*
*hantavyaḥ strīnimittena kaṣṭam āpatitam mama.*

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‘My one true friend, who hath done me so much of good, must now be slain for the sake of a woman. Woe is me.’ This may even be a quoted line from another context. In the following case that explanation is less likely, nor indeed is there any reason to suppose that the author might not add to his narrative some verses of immediate relevance to the matter in hand:

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*prayojanavaçāt prītiṁ lokaḥ samanuvartate*
*tvaṁ tu vānaraçārdūla niṣprayojanavatsalaḥ.*

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‘The world shows affection from self-interest. But thou, noblest of apes, art loving without such cause.’ But verses such as these are very few, and, apart from the title-verses, the poet’s effort has been devoted to finding or writing effective maxims. How far these were original we cannot possibly say in those cases in which we have no other early authority for them; but when they do not occur outside of the *Pañcatantra* we can fairly credit him with them. Some unquestionably he derived from the epic, and he may have taken thence¹ the hint for the construction of Book iii as a reminiscence of the omen, given to the defeated Kauravas by the crows who attack and destroy the owls by night, of the victory which they can win over the Pāṇḍavas by a night onslaught on their camp, and the idea of the doves carrying off the net of their captor. We are, however, in these matters of originality reduced to conjectures.

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¹ *Mahābhārata* x. 1 and v. 64.

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The fact that the author was probably carrying out an original piece of work doubtless accounts for various blemishes—of which, however, later redactors remove but a few. Even in the original there seems to have been an attempt to accumulate an undue number of maxims to the same purpose, and occasionally the tales do not fit in very well, indicating that the author desired to have the tale on record even if he could not find quite an effective mode of inserting it. This is clearly the case with the interesting tale (ii. 4) of the former captivity of the deer; it has no moral, properly speaking, but it is clearly a Märchen which the author and we would ill spare; to doubt its valid ascription to the original is clearly unnecessary; though it seems rather absurd for the deer to talk when he is anxious to be set free, we find that the mouse goes on cutting as the narrative proceeds, and in Book iii there are equally irrational delays while the owls debate; the delay is excused by the intention to give political instruction, as in modern opera the musical interest excuses delays in themselves ridiculous.

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The language of the author is distinctly elegant, and especially in the verses we find plays on words, *double entendres*, and other marks of polished style combined with polished and elaborate metre. Some of the verses contain rather longer compounds than are usual in the simpler style of Kāvya; but there are few, if any, cases where real complexity of sense can be ascribed to the original. It is obvious that the author had taste, and realized that over-elaboration in style was out of place in a work destined for the use of young princes, and there is a decided humour in the decision to use a more elevated style for the story (i. 7) of the louse and the flea, which tells how by permitting a flea to assault the royal person the louse, which had long enjoyed a monopoly of that privilege, lost its life, through the over-haste of the flea to savour the extremely rich ichor of the royal person. The adoption of the same style in the story of the jackal which fell into an indigo vat and passed itself off as wearing the royal purple, an interpolation (i. 8) in the original text, shows that the nuance of style had been noted early. The prose has already, though not in exaggerated form, the signs of the nominal style noted above. The past is denoted either by participles, active or passive, or the historic present; the regular use of the aorist is one of the signs of the spuriousness of the tale of the wicked procuress found in the *Tantrākhyāyikā* (iii. 5). The passive construction is clearly coming to be preferred, resulting, as it does, in nominal verbal forms in lieu of finite forms, and thus according with the growing fondness for compounds. The employment of gerunds and adjectival participles is carried to excess.

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Amusing as the stories are and well as they are told, though the practice of emboxment is, to tell the truth, rather irritating than otherwise in the more complex cases, the finest thing in the work is unquestionably the many excellent stanzas. Thus the virtues of magnanimity are expounded as follows:

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*ājīvitāntaḥ praṇayaḥ kopaç ca kṣaṇabhaṅguraḥ*
*parityāgaç ca niḥsaṅgo na bhavanti mahātmanām?*

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‘Is it not the way of the magnanimous to love as long as life lasts, to be wroth but for a moment, to make sacrifices without reserve?’ The might of fate is admitted:

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*çaçidivākarayor grahapīḍanam: gajabhujaṅgamayor api bandhanam*
*matimatāṁ ca nirīkṣya daridratām: vidhir aho balavān iti me matiḥ.*

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‘When I contemplate the eclipsing of sun and moon, the taking alive of elephants and snakes, and the poverty of the wise, I recognize the might of fate.’ The folly of accepting bad advice is expressed in a stanza which effectively matches sound and sense:

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*narādhipā nīcamatānuvartino: budhopadiṣṭena pathā na yānti ye*
*viçanti te durgamamārganirgamam: samastasambādham anarthapañjaram.*

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‘Kings who obey the advice of the low and walk not in the path set by the wise enter a maze of misfortune, in which trouble arises upon trouble and whence no exit presents itself.’ The relation of fortune to master and minister is cleverly described in verse which has found its way into the *Mudrārākṣasa*:

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*atyucchrite mantriṇi pārthive ca: viṣṭabhya pādāv upatiṣṭhate çrīḥ*
*sā strīsvabhāvād asahā bharasya: tayor dvayor ekataraṁ jahāti.*

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‘When a minister and a king have become too elevated, fortune, planting firm her feet, strives to support them, but unable to bear the burden as being a woman she deserts one or other of the two.’ There is a fine eulogy of right:

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*eka eva suhṛd dharmo nidhane 'py anuyāti yaḥ*
*çarīreṇa samaṁ nāçaṁ sarvam anyad dhi gacchati.*

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‘Righteousness is the one friend who accompanieth man even in death, for all the rest perisheth together with the body.’ The limits of possibility are asserted:

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*yad açakyaṁ na tac chakyaṁ yac chakyaṁ çakyam eva tat*
*odake çakaṭaṁ yāti na nāvā gamyate sthale.*

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‘What is impossible is not possible, what is possible that indeed is possible; the cart cannot go on sea, nor the ship on dry land.’

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A more elaborate style is not rare, as in the description of the sufferings of the Pāṇḍavas at Virāṭa’s court, including the fate of Draupadī:

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*rūpeṇāpratimena yauvanaguṇair vaṅçe çubhe janmanā*
*yuktā çrīr iva yā tayā vidhivaçāt kālakramāyātayā*
*sairandhrīti sagarvitaṁ yuvatibhiḥ sākṣepam ājñaptayā*
*Draupadyā nanu Matsyarājabhavane ghṛṣṭaṁ ciraṁ candanam.*

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‘Draupadī, like Çrī herself, had peerless beauty, youthful grace, birth in a noble house; yet by decree of fate the passage of time brought her to such a pass that for many a day she had to pound sandal in the palace of the Matsya king at the haughty bidding of maidens who insolently called her handmaid.’

5. The Derivative Forms of the Pañcatantra

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Of the versions derived from the *Pañcatantra* that into Pahlavi will be considered later. Of the Indian texts the *Tantrākhyāyika*¹ may be given first rank by reason of its comparative closeness to the original. It may be granted that this relation has been exaggerated by Hertel, but, after all allowances are made, it remains still the nearest approach to the reconstructed text. Its date is uncertain and probably indeterminable. Already it had added certain stories which may be dismissed as not original. These include probably in both recensions that of the blue jackal (i. 8), the outwitting by a jackal of a camel and a lion (i. 13), the weaver Somilaka (ii. 4), king Çibi (iii. 7), the old Haṅsa (iii. 11), and the punishment¹ of the onion thief (iv. 1). In the *a* recension we have the clearly later tale of the wicked procuress (iii. 5), in recension β those of the jackal and the wary fox (iii. 11) and the sham warrior (iv. 3). The relation of the recensions is disputed; Hertel's view is that recension β was interpolated from use of the original 'K' source, whence all but the original of recension *a* are derived. It seems impossible to accept his proofs as establishing the existence of any such 'K', and, if so, the superiority of recension is open to serious doubt. Moreover, though in substance the *Tantrākhyāyika* seems original, its language appears to have been a good deal varied; we find also some attempts in recension *a* at rhythmical prose² unknown to the other versions.

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¹ Ed. J. Hertel, Berlin, 1910; trans. Leipzig, 1909.

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¹ Zachariae, *Kl. Schriften*, pp. 170 ff.

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² See pp. 8, 69, 118.

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The *textus simplicior* was composed somewhere in western India by a Jain at an uncertain date, but doubtless before Pūrṇabhadra (1199) and after Māgha and Rudra Bhaṭṭa,³ from whom verses are taken, perhaps, therefore, *c.* 1100. It is substantially altered from the original. The five books are made more approximately equal; several stories from iii are placed in iv, to which new matter is also added. A continuation is appended to Book v, the framework of which is altered by making the story of the barber who killed the monks the main story in which the tale of the ichneumon is inserted. The frameworks of Books iii and iv are also rehandled, and new tales added also to Books i–iii. Of the quite original matter seven tales are Märchen, one a witty anecdote, two intrigues, and one a story of a fool. The most remarkable addition is the tale (i. 5) of Viṣṇu and the weaver; the latter gains access to a princess by pretending to be Viṣṇu and mounting a wooden Garuḍa, and, when the fraud is being disclosed through the folly of the king who, proud of his divine connexion, wars unsuccessfully on his neighbours and is beleaguered in his city, Viṣṇu, to save his reputation, has to come down and save the city. This story itself would hardly prove Jain origin, but there is better evidence in the mention of Jain monks in lieu of Brahmin ascetics and the occurrence of Jain terms like *kṣapaṇaka*, *digambara*, *nagnaka*, *vyantara*, a species of spirit, and *dharmadeçanā*, teaching of the law. A very large number of new stanzas is found, while perhaps of the original stanzas not more than one-third was retained. The original of the text appears to have been a text akin to the *Tantrākhyāyika*; like that text the Simplicior contains the unoriginal tales of the blue jackal, the jackal outwitting camel and lion, and the weaver Somilaka.

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³ Not Rudraṭa as Hertel, *Pañcatantra*, p. 72; see *Çrṅgāratilaka*, i. 68.

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A second Jain revision was undertaken to please a minister Soma by a monk Pūrṇabhadra in 1199.¹ The work is marked by the appearance of twenty-one new stories, including a famous one of the gratitude of animals and the ingratitude of man (i. 9), while from the *Mahābhārata* hints are taken for the story of the pious pigeon and the hunter (iii. 8). Pūrṇabhadra's version appears to rest in part on our *Tantrākhyāyika*, in part on the prototype of the Simplicior rather than on that text, and in part on some other unknown version. In this connexion it may be noted that the Jains evidently took to study of the Nītiçāstra as they became important at courts; the Āvaçyaka legends, perhaps of the seventh century, have parallels to *Pañcatantra* tales, perhaps derived from one of the older forms of that text. Some of Pūrṇabhadra's matter may have arisen in Jain circles, though his work has no special Jain touches. Its language is marred by Gujarātī and Prākrit intrusions. But, like the author of the Simplicior, he is by no means a bad writer. In his case the title appears as *Pañcākhyānaka*, a name also applied sometimes to the Simplicior. From the two Jain versions are derived various contaminations; one of these, the *Pañcākhyānoddhāra* of Meghavijaya (1659–60), is noteworthy, as it contains many fables of special interest to the investigators of connexions with the west.

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¹ Ed. J. Hertel, HOS. 11–13, 1908–12; trans. R. Schmidt, Leipzig, 1901.

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The north-western version of the *Pañcatantra*, which gave rise to the reproductions of the work in the *Bṛhatkathāmañjarī*² and the *Kathāsaritsāgara*, seems to have been before the authors of these works in the form of a section of the prototype on which they founded their poems. This prototype was not, as will be seen, the original *Bṛhatkathā* of Guṇāḍhya, but a version made much later in Kashmir, and in it apparently the five books of the original were separated by other matter. It omitted the introduction and Tale 3 of Book i, perhaps nothing more. Its language is uncertain. Kṣemendra, however, made use also of recension β of the *Tantrākhyāyika*, whence he derives five unoriginal tales, and perhaps also the plan of keeping the books consecutive. His brevity diminishes the value of his work, but Somadeva's treatment is clear and effective in his wonted manner. He omits our other original tales, probably for reasons of his own.

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² Ed. L. von Mańkowski, Leipzig, 1892.

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The Southern *Pañcatantra*¹ exists in at least five recensions, representing the text which won currency in southern India. It is essentially in most of these versions an abbreviated account, in which, while nothing essential has been omitted, a good deal of shortening has been done; Edgerton estimates the amount preserved as three-quarters of the prose and two-thirds of the verses. It is later than Bhāravi. One tale (i. 12) of the cowherdess and her lovers is clearly unoriginal. There is no doubt that it goes back to a common original with the Nepalese version and the *Hitopadeça*, and, as these versions save the last quote a stanza of Kālidāsa, the original cannot have been older than A.D. 500. There exists a much expanded version of this text, based in part on Tamil sources with ninety-six tales in all; from this was derived in substance the Abbé Dubois' *Le Pantcha-Tantra ou les cinq ruses* (1826).

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¹ Ed. J. Hertel, Leipzig, 1906.

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A Nepalese manuscript of the *Pañcatantra* gives only the stanzas with one prose piece mistaken for a stanza; other manuscripts give also a prose accompaniment in Sanskrit or in Newārī. The recension in this case is clearly derived from an original which was before the compiler of the *Hitopadeça*; in both alone do we find the transposition of Books i and ii.

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In addition to these sources many mixed versions of the text can be found in Sanskrit; moreover, it was rendered into old and modern Gujarātī, old and modern Marāṭhī, Braj Bhākhā, and into Tamil, and it was used freely by Çivadāsa in his *Vetāla-* *pañcaviñçatikā*, the Sanskrit texts of the *Çukasaptati*, and the *Dvātriñcatputtalikā*, while its fate in western lands has been still more brilliant.

6. The Hitopadeça

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Of the various descendants of the *Pañcatantra* the *Hitopadeça*¹ reigns in Bengal. The author gives his name as Nārāyaṇa, whose patron was Dhavalacandra, and, as one manuscript of the work is dated 1373, must have lived before then. His mention of the term Sunday, Bhaṭṭārakavāra, as a day when work should not be done is against an early date, as not until about 900 is the use of this terminology customary;² otherwise it is only certain that he is later than Māgha and Kāmandaki. That he wrote in Bengal is made probable by the tale in which he describes the worship of Gaurī as involving sexual relations with the wife of another man as part of the ritual, a practice notoriously approved by the Tāntrikas of Bengal. His purpose is given frankly as instruction in conduct and in Sanskrit, and his sources are stated to be the *Pañcatantra* and another anonymous book. The political interest of the *Pañcatantra* is fully maintained, for, though Nārāyaṇa adds much, he is specially fond of bringing together large selections from the *Kāmandakīya Nītisāra*. The other book, however, is not this text, but evidently some book of stories, for Nārāyaṇa has many new tales. Of the seventeen not found in other versions seven are fables, three Märchen, five tales of intrigue, and two edifying stories. Of these, one telling of the loyal Vīravara who is willing to sacrifice himself and his family to Çivā to benefit his master, taken in conjunction with the reference to the worship of Gaurī alluded to above, and the fact that each book closes with a benediction invoking Çiva's favour, shows that the writer was a Çaiva, not, as his name would suggest, an adorer of Viṣṇu.

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