The Panchatantram

      The Panchatantram or Panchatantra is one of the earliest collections of fables, written in India more than two thousand five hundred years ago. The Panchatantra means “Five Principles”, it is known in Europe as the Fables of Bidpai. The original Panchatantram were in Sanskrit language and it is an ancient Indian organized collection of animal fables in verse and prose, in a story format.

      Some of the tales in the Panchatantra can be traced as far back as 1500 BC to the ancient Sanskrit text from the Rig Veda. The original Sanskrit work, which some scholars believe was composed in the 3rd century BCE, is attributed to Vishnu Sharma.

      The introduction attributes the work to Vishnu Sharma, a learned Brahmin, who used these tales to teach the art of kingship and mature wisdom to the sons of a king. The work is divided into five parts ( pancha: five and tantram: parts), each part dealing with a particular aspect of life and living.   It is based on older oral traditions, including "animal fables that are as old as we are able to imagine".   It is definitely the most frequently translated literature of India and these stories are among the most widely known in the world. 

      Travelers carried these stories from India to Persia, Arab and rest of the world.  As early as the eleventh century this work reached Europe, and before 1600 it was already existed in Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, German, English, Slavonic and Czech language.


               It has been worked over and over again, expanded, turned into verse, retold in prose, translated into other languages and re-translated into Sanskrit. In India and all over the world these stories are still told to children by their parents and grandparents.