Panchatantra (redirected from The Morall Philosophie of Doni)

Panchatantra (pŭn'chətŭn`trə) [Sanskrit,=five treatises], anonymous collection of animal fables in Sanskrit literature, probably compiled before A.D. 500 (see Bidpai). The work, derived from Buddhistic sources, was intended as a manual for the instruction of sons of the royalty. The fables are in prose, with interspersions of aphoristic verse. The stories in the Panchatantra appear to have entered European literature circuitously through an Arabic version (c.A.D. 750) of the translation into Syriac of the Pahlavi (literary Persian) translation (c.A.D. 550) from the original. A variant spelling is Pancatantra.

Bibliography

See the translation from the Sanskrit by A. W. Ryder (1925, repr. 1956).

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Panchatantra

(Sanskrit; “Five Treatises” or “Five Chapters”)

Collection of Indian beast fables written in Sanskrit that has had extensive circulation throughout the world. The original work, now lost, may have been written down between 100 BC and AD 500. A textbook for instructing three sons of a king, it contained aphorisms that glorify shrewdness and cleverness over altruism. As early as the 11th century one version reached Europe, where it was known as The Fables of Bidpai (for the narrator, an Indian sage).

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Panchatantra 

a monument of Sanskrit narrative literature dating from the third or fourth century A.D.

The books of fables and didactic short stories comprising the Panchatantra belong to the frame-story genre. The work, with its beast fables and folkloric plots, allegorically depicts Hindu society, satirically mirroring social relations.

Because of its popular orientation, the Panchatantra was widely distributed and had an important influence on world literature. In the mid-sixth century it was translated into Old Persian. This translation, which has not survived, was the basis for an Arabic version, known as Kalila and Dimna (about A.D. 750). Through the intermediary of a Hebrew translation completed between the 13th and 16th centuries, the Arabic version in turn was the basis of numerous translations into European languages. A Greek adaptation of the Arabic version entitled Stephanites kai Ichnelates (1081) gave rise to versions in the Slavic languages.

There are approximately 200 translations of the Panchatantra in existence in over 60 European and Asian languages, including numerous versions in modern Indian languages. There also exist late Sanskrit recastings of the work, among them the 12th-century collection of fables the Hitopadesa.

EDITIONS

Panchatantra. Moscow, 1958. (Translation from Sanskrit and commentary by A. Ia. Syrkin.)
The Panchatantra Reconstructed: Text, Critical Apparatus, Introduction and Translation by F. Edgerton, vols. 1–2. New Haven, Conn., 1924.
Pañcatantra: Traduit du sanscrit et annoté par E. Lanceren. [Paris] 1965.

REFERENCES

Grintser, P. A. Drevneindiiskaia proza. Moscow, 1963.
Hertel, J. Das Pañcatantra, seine Geschichte und seine Verbreitung. Leipzig-Berlin, 1914.
Ruben, W. Das Pañcatantra und seine Morallehre. Berlin, 1959.

V. G. ERMAN