ABSTRACT
Originally composed in Sanskrit approximately in the third century BCE, and based on oral sources, this beast fable comes together in one of its definitive versions in Purnabhadra’s Panćatantra (CE 1199). An earlier version was translated to Pahlavi in CE 570 by Burzöe and served as the source text for the Syriac translation known as Kalilag and Dimnag. Some European translations are based on the Arabic translation, Kalilah wa Dimnah (CE 750). Overall, there are nearly twenty-five recensions of Panćatantra in India alone, and nearly 200 different versions of this text in at least fifty languages (Olivelle 1997: xliii). Johannes Hertel’s Das Panchatantra, a German translation of 1914, appeared in the Harvard Classics Series in 1915. The most surprising perhaps is that Thomas North, the Elizabethan translator of Plutarch, made an English translation, The Fables of Bidpai: The Morall Philosophie of Doni, in 1570. In a modernized children’s literature genre, selected stories have been widely disseminated through the series, Amar Chitra Katha in Hindi. Animated versions of Panćatantra tales in English can be found in the Appu Series on YouTube; some of these are also available in Indian languages too, such as the animated “The Boy Who Was a Snake” in Telegu.
