Panchatantra

01Three dull princes

In the southern country stood the city of Mahilaropya, ruled by King Amarashakti. His three sons, Vasushakti, Ugrashakti and Anekashakti, would not learn. His ministers told him grammar alone takes twelve years, and after it come Manu for dharma, Chanakya for artha and Vatsyayana for kama. The minister Sumati proposed a short road instead, and named an old Brahmin, Vishnu Sharma. Offered a hundred land grants, Vishnu Sharma refused: he would not sell learning. But if the princes did not know niti in six months, he said, he would give up his own name.

02Author and date

The book names its own author in its second verse: Vishnu Sharma looked over the essence of every arthashastra in the world and made this shastra in five tantras. The opening homage bows to Manu, Brihaspati, Shukra, Parashara with his son, and Chanakya, the makers of the science of conduct. Nothing else is known of Vishnu Sharma. The original is generally placed between the 3rd century BCE and the 3rd century CE. It must be older than c. 570 CE, when it was already being translated in Persia.

03How the book is built

Each tantra has a frame katha announced in a single verse. Inside the frame the characters argue, and to prove a point one says, ‘How was that?’ and tells another katha, which may hold a third. Prose carries the action and verses carry the teaching, often quoted from the Mahabharata, Manu and the niti collections. The common printed text, the one Chowkhamba and M. R. Kale publish, has about 460 verses in the first tantra alone and some 1,100 in all. Children hear the kathas; grown readers are meant to remember the verses.

04The lion and the bull

The first tantra begins with a merchant, Vardhamana, whose bull Sanjivaka breaks down on the road and is left in the forest. The bull grows strong and bellows, and Pingalaka, king of the lions, is frightened. Two jackals, Karataka and Damanaka, sons of the lion’s old ministers, see their chance. Damanaka brings the lion and the bull together as friends, then grows jealous of the friendship and poisons it with whispers until the lion kills the bull. Inside this frame sit the monkey who pulled out the wedge, the crane and the crab, and the hare who drowned a lion.

05The hare at the well

The lion Bhasuraka kills without pause, so the animals of the forest agree to send him one beast a day. When the hare’s turn comes he walks slowly and arrives late. Another lion stopped me, he says, and claims this forest as his own. Bhasuraka demands to see the rival. The hare leads him to a deep well, and the lion looks down, sees his own reflection roaring back, leaps in and drowns. The verse that closes it is one every Indian schoolchild once knew: whoever has wit has strength; the witless have none.

06Friends, crows and owls

The second tantra watches the crow Laghupatanaka see the pigeon king Chitragriva lead his flock up into the sky, net and all, to the mouse Hiranyaka, who gnaws them free. The crow wants that mouse for a friend. Soon Mantharaka the tortoise and Chitranga the deer join them, and four weak creatures rescue one another from hunters again and again. The third tantra is darker. The crow king Meghavarna is losing a war with the owl king Arimardana, until the old minister Sthirajivin pretends to be cast out, lives among the owls, and at last sets their cave on fire.

07The monkey and the mongoose

In the fourth tantra the monkey Raktamukha lives in a rose-apple tree by the sea and feeds the crocodile Karalamukha with its fruit. The crocodile’s wife wants to eat the heart of anyone who eats such sweet fruit. Halfway across the water the crocodile lets the secret slip. The monkey says calmly that he left his heart up in the tree, and must fetch it. Once ashore he climbs out of reach. The fifth tantra warns against acting without looking. A Brahmin’s wife leaves her baby with the family mongoose, comes back to find its mouth red with blood, and kills it. Then she sees the dead cobra by the cradle.

08West by way of Persia

Around 570 CE the physician Burzoy carried the book to the Persian king Khusrau Anushirvan and put it into Pahlavi. From that came a Syriac version and, about 750, Ibn al-Muqaffa’s Arabic Kalila wa Dimna, named for the two jackals Karataka and Damanaka. From Arabic it passed into Greek in the eleventh century, into Hebrew, and into Latin as John of Capua’s Directorium humanae vitae. Thomas North’s English version appeared in 1570. In Persia it was retold again as the Anvar-i Suhayli. La Fontaine named an Indian sage, Pilpay, as a source for his later books of verse tales.

09Many Panchatantras

Inside Bharat the book never stood still. The Tantrakhyayika of Kashmir, which Johannes Hertel edited in 1910, is the oldest form known in Sanskrit. The Jain monk Purnabhadra made a widely copied recension in 1199 CE. The text most Indians read today is a shorter vulgate, the basis of the Chowkhamba and Kale editions. Franklin Edgerton tried to rebuild the lost original from all of them in 1924. Every Indian language has its own Panchatantra, and the Hitopadesha grew directly from it.

What it contains

1. 1
   Kathamukha कथामुखम्

   The preface: King Amarashakti of Mahilaropya, his three unlettered sons, and Vishnu Sharma’s vow to teach them niti in six months. It ends with the promise that whoever studies this book will never be defeated, not even by Indra.

2. 2
   1. Mitrabheda मित्रभेदः

   The breaking of friends: the jackals Karataka and Damanaka, the lion Pingalaka and the bull Sanjivaka. The longest book, with the monkey and the wedge, the jackal and the drum, the crane and the crab, and the hare and the lion.

3. 3
   2. Mitrasamprapti मित्रसम्प्राप्तिः

   The winning of friends: the crow Laghupatanaka, the mouse Hiranyaka, the tortoise Mantharaka and the deer Chitranga. Weak alone, together they outwit every hunter; the book shows how trust between unlike creatures is earned.

4. 4
   3. Kakolukiya काकोलूकीयम्

   Of crows and owls: the war of the crow king Meghavarna and the owl king Arimardana, won by the minister Sthirajivin’s false defection. Its opening verse warns never to trust an old enemy who comes as a friend; it also holds the hare who fooled the elephants with the moon.

5. 5
   4. Labdhapranasha लब्धप्रणाशः

   Loss of what was gained: the monkey Raktamukha and the crocodile Karalamukha. Here too is the donkey who came back to the lion a second time and lost his life.

6. 6
   5. Aparikshitakaraka अपरीक्षितकारकम्

   Rash action: the frame of a barber who copies what he does not understand, the Brahmin’s wife and the mongoose, and the four Brahmins who brought a lion back to life. Its lesson is to look, ask and test before acting.

Famous verses

मनवे वाचस्पतये शुक्राय पराशराय ससुताय। चाणक्याय च विदुषे नमोऽस्तु नयशास्त्रकर्तृभ्यः॥

Homage to Manu, to Vachaspati, to Shukra, to Parashara with his son, and to the learned Chanakya, the makers of the science of conduct.Panchatantra, Kathamukha, verse 1

वर्धमानो महान्स्नेहः सिंहगोवृषयोर्वने। पिशुनेनातिलुब्धेन जम्बुकेन विनाशितः॥

The great and growing friendship of a lion and a bull in the forest was destroyed by a jackal, a greedy talebearer.Panchatantra 1.1 (opening verse of Mitrabheda)

यस्य बुद्धिर्बलं तस्य निर्बुद्धेस्तु कुतो बलम्। वने सिंहो मदोन्मत्तः शशकेन निपातितः॥

Whoever has intelligence has strength; where is strength for the witless? In the forest a lion mad with pride was brought down by a hare.Panchatantra 1.237 (Mitrabheda)

समुत्पन्नेषु कार्येषु बुद्धिर्यस्य न हीयते। स एव दुर्गं तरति जलस्थो वानरो यथा॥

One whose wits do not desert him when trouble arises crosses the hard place, like the monkey in the water.Panchatantra 4.1 (opening verse of Labdhapranasha)