Page 19 - Śrī Pañcatantra - Eng

Preface xvii

have also inspired Sinbad and Kipling’s Jungle Books. The long
reach of its influence is found in uncountable Western nursery
rhymes and modern cartoons starring talking lions, birds and
rabbits. In fact, it is said that—apart from books that are strictly
religious—Viṣṇuśarmā may actually be the most widely translated
author in history.

How this great brāhmaṇa has so brilliantly influenced civilization
for millennia, and yet so quietly, is a study in the qualities
of intellectuals that only the Vedic culture of ancient Bhārata
could have produced. The Bhagavad-gītā (18.42) describes what
it means to be a brāhmaṇa, and from this verse it becomes easy
to understand the qualities of Viṣṇuśarmā:

“Peacefulness, self-control, austerity, purity, tolerance, honesty,
wisdom, knowledge, and religiousness—these are the qualities by
which the brāhmaṇas work.” As a perfect brāhmaṇa, Viṣṇuśarmā
presented his Pañcatantra with no motive other than for the
good of the world. He refused his payment from the king in
the form of his paṇḍita-dakṣiṇā which was his right to accept.
And of course there was never any question of copyright or
royalties.

Regarding the Pañcatantra itself, to quote Franklin Edgerton,
a British indologist who translated it in the 1920’s, “There are
over two hundred different versions (of Pañcatantra) known to
exist in more than fifty languages, and three-quarters of these
languages are extra-Indian. As early as the eleventh century
this work reached Europe, and before 1600 it existed in Greek,
Latin, Spanish, Italian, German, English, Old Slavonic, Czech,
and perhaps other Slavonic languages. Its range has extended
from Java to Iceland ... (In India) it has been worked over and
over again, expanded, abstracted, turned into verse, retold in
prose, translated into medieval and modern vernaculars, and
retranslated into Sanskrit. And most of the stories contained in