A History of Sanskrit Literature c18.s2.5

c18.s2.5

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.