Fables and Parables

FABLES AND PARABLES

MORAL ENTERTAINERS

From time immemorial men and women everywhere have been fascinated by stories narrated to them in their childhood by their grannies or other elders. To cater to children’s inquisitive faculty these stories presented life-like situations sprinkled with fantasy, adventure and the heroics of the main protagonists. In addition, they carried explicit or implicit lessons in wisdom and morality.

Besides some supernatural characters like fairies, demons, gnomes and elves, the stories included animals and birds behaving like human beings with their typical as well as peculiar fads and foibles and actions and reactions.

Various interesting tales, mostly mystical or mythological in form and content, culled from ancient Indian epics and other literature, especially the famous Sanskrit classics, the Panchatantra and the Hitopadesha have entertained umpteen generations of children as well as adults since their inception. Such stories in which the main actors were beasts and birds and which also imparted some valuable moral lessons were classified as fables and parables.

The Panchatantra, meaning five systems or parts, was authored by the renowned sage Pandit Vishnu Sharma around 200 B.C., while the Hitopadesha (good instructions) was written by the astute scholar, Narayan Pandit in about 1300 A.D. The Hitopadesha drew heavily from the Panchatantra.

The Panchatantra comprised five books: on loss of friends; the winning of friends; crows and owls; loss of gains; and ill-conceived actions, whereas the Hitopdesha had four chapters dealing with acquisition of friends and cognate matters. Both the books had beasts and birds as the main characters in their fables, which were written in the story-within-a-story format.

Garbled and spiced versions of these tales went to many foreign countries, at first orally through itinerant mendicants, gypsies and other travellers and later through translations into different languages via Iran, where a Persian version of the Panchatantra first reached. But, thereby hangs a tale.

In about 570 A.D., Emperor Naushervan of Iran (formerly Persia) heard of an Indian “elixir” made from certain rare roots, herbs and leaves, which ensured for human beings a holistically healthy longevity and which could even delude death and revive the dead. He, therefore, sent his chief physician, Borzuy to India to obtain at any cost this magic potion as also its ingredients and the recipe used for its preparation. He gave him enormous funds and gifts and other help.

The Iranian physician scouted for the “elixir” extensively and intensively in India, but failed to find it and was therefore sorely dejected at the sad prospect of returning to his Emperor empty handed. Coincidentally, however, he was led to a saint who explained to him that the “elixir” had been described metaphorically as it was the distinguished book, the Panchatantra and its tales as roots, herbs and leaves, the juices and essence of which, if absorbed intelligently, acted like a veritable elixir for living a long, healthy and successful life. It also put life of crucial knowledge and profound wisdom into those who were almost dead being devoid of sparkling intellectual faculties.

After obtaining the necessary permission, the physician had the book translated into Persian and gave it the title, “Kalia- O- Damna”.When he presented it to his Emperor, the latter was charmed and delighted with its wise and witty contents. The book then reached many other countries through translations of translations with the addition of some twists and turns, both intended and unintended. The book has already been translated and commented upon in more than fifty non-Indian languages.

There is also another interesting story about the origin of the Panchatantra. An Indian king needed to train his three simple-minded sons as competent future rulers. He, therefore, entrusted them to the highly learned octogenarian sage, Vishnu Sharma, who succeeded in equipping them within six months with the requisite knowledge and wisdom. At the very outset, as the princes were apathetic to studies, the ingenious teacher employed the medium of the absorbing Panchatantra tales invested with useful instruction, which makes a man’s life richer, happier and fuller.

The Panchatantra and the Hitopadesha parables as also the Jataka Tales, which relate to the life of Lord Buddha and his previous incarnations, led to adoptions and adaptations or inspired creations of fables in the same mould in several other countries in their own languages with the legendary Aesop emerging as the most prolific fabulist in the West.

Many religious preachers take support of the fables and parables referred to above to keep the audience interest riveted to their discourses.

Interestingly, the idea of stories with animals as central players led to the creation, in the twentieth century, of cartoons and animation films, particularly by Walt Disney with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera with Tom and Jerry. Now, of course there is a plethora of animated cartoon films with a variety of animals as the lead players. With vastly improved technology, some movies even show artificially created animals speaking their dialogues like human beings with their lip movements in sync with the dubbed sound. Such contrived characters now also act along with real human actors as in films like Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and the Stuart Little series.

The story-within-a- story format was also adopted in the book, “The Arabian Nights” aka “The Thousand and One Nights”, which inter alia describes the well-known tales of  Sindbad the Sailor, Alladin’s Lamp and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. This world- famous book also has a story about its origin.

A women-hater Sultan used to marry a girl one day and had her killed the next day. When Shehrzad aka Scheherazade, an intelligent young girl married him, she narrated to him deeply interesting stories so skillfully that she would stop at a crucial suspenseful juncture, as the tele-serials do, to arouse his curiosity and continue the story the next night. The Sultan was duly beguiled and thus listened to more stories for nearly a thousand nights. Pleased, he let Shehrzad live as his queen and never again harmed any woman. The stories in this entrancing book too are studded with both direct and indirect lessons.

The time-tested instructions contained in the above- mentioned Indian classics and their foreign counterparts are also valid in our present troubled times, in which trickery, roguery and thuggery are spreading their tentacles, while virtuous and humane conduct is shrinking and withdrawing its limbs like the proverbial tortoise. In such a vicious

environment is it not wise to be on one’s guard against enemies in the guise of friends, just to cite one example?