The Panchtantra & Aesop’s fables
What fables tell us and where did they come from

By Dr Shradha Kaul
Writers through the ages have used various tools to convey their message. One of the oldest forms of story telling stays the fable. Fables come from the oral custom of storytelling found in folklore around the world. A fable is a short tale used to teach a moral lesson, often with animals or inanimate objects as characters through anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphism is the attribution of uniquely human characteristics to non-human creatures and beings, natural and supernatural phenomena, material states and objects or abstract concepts. Characters commonly include animals depicted as creatures with human motivation able to reason and converse, forces of nature such as winds or the sun, components in games, unseen or unknown sources of chance, etc.

The word fable is derived from fabula, which is Latin for ‘discourse', and is used in ‘literary criticism to refer to the actual events that take place in a narrative.

The Panchtantra, which is believed to have been composed in the 3rd century BC, is attributed to Vishnu Sharma. The Panchtantra means the five devices; pancha means five, and tantra means device. The stories in five different heads cover all aspects of administration, personal life and cunning that one has to encounter in life.

How Vishnu Sharma came to write these stories is an account in itself. The foreword of the Panchtantra tells us that there was once a king called Amarashakti who had three dull sons. Sumati, one of the courtiers, reflected that the princes should not be taught the scriptures but only the wisdom in them. The man, who he believed could make this happen, was Vishnu Sharma. Vishnu Sharma worked his way through the fables to achieve this marvel. The fables taught the princes about life along with the lessons or morals that each situation taught. In fact, the fables are considered to be teachings in politics too.
The first part of the Panchtantra deals with Mitrabhedha (Loss of friends), which illustrates a situation where friends are separated by a cunning third person. The second part deals with Mitra Laabha (The winning of friends), the third with Suhrudbheda (Causing Dissension Between Friends), the fourth with Vigraha (Separation) and the fifth with Sandhi (Union).

The Panchtantra has been translated into 50 different languages with 200 different versions. According to sources, even Grimms fairy tales and Aesop's fables have been influenced by them. But, of course there conflicting claims to this.

Aesop's Fables are a compilation of fables written by Aesop, a slave and storyteller from Greece in the 6th century BC. These fables have now become almost synonymous with moral education of children nowadays. Most of the characters in the stories are animals, some of which take on human characteristics and are personified in ways of speech and emotions. However, the majority of the characters retain their animalistic qualities; tortoises are slow, hares are quick, tigers eat bird, etc. Aesop uses these qualities and natural tendencies of animals to focus on human traits and wisdom. Each fable has an accompanying moral to be learned from the tale, quite similar to the Panchtantra fables.

Many stories included in Aesop's Fables, such as The Fox and the Grapes, The Tortoise and the Hare, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, The Ant and the Grasshopper are well-known throughout the world.The beauty of the tales is in the fact that the stories are so ingenuous and charming that no one ever doubts what is being
said because they are so simplistic and true to life.

I feel that the complete faith reposed in whatever is being preached through these fables can be attributed to the almost childish or may I say naïve way of putting things through. One could have never thought, as a child, that the Panchtantra had such a deep seated meaning.

Come to think of it, who could have imagined that the very famous story of the monkey and the crocodile who become friends and then one day the crocodile's wife wants to taste his heart which she feels must be very sweet could be a part of the discourse to the princes who were being taught the pearls of wisdom through these very unaffected and natural forms of stories.

Fables are meant to be heard time and time again. At first, you enjoy the story, the next time you can study the characters and find the message.

—The author is an academic & writes on varied issues