Panchatantra

The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. | 2011 | 689 words | Copyright

Panchatantra [Sanskrit,=five treatises], anonymous collection of animal fables in Sanskrit literature , probably compiled before AD 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.AD 750) of the translation into Syriac of the Pahlavi (literary Persian) translation (c.AD 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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