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.

About Aesop's Fables

    Generally fables are close to the imaginative atmosphere of fairy tales about animals. Observing the life and characteristics of animals, the fabulists makes a comparison between them and the moral characteristics of men.
    The images of animals have a parabolic meaning. The donkey is use to express the characteristics of a hard working and stupid man, the sheep - of the gentle and harmless, the snake - of the evil, wicked and unkind, and the wolf exposes the nature of an evil and cruel man.
         In that sense Aesop reviews the essential morals of his time, giving them a humorous evaluation. Aesop often relates people with animals and plants. This particular sense of expression has been combined with Aesop's fables throughout the centuries. This was started from ancient Greece, going into Rome, Byzantium and reaching the civilizations to civilizations and surviving until today. Since the time of Aesop, the fable was a powerful tool to expose and ridicule our characteristics and vices as people and as a society.
     In ancient Greek and Roman education, the fable was one of the exercises in prose composition and public speaking—wherein students would be asked to learn fables, increase upon them, formulate their own and finally use them as convincing examples in their speeches. Plato wrote in "Phaedo" that Socrates whiled away his jail time turning some of Aesop's fables "which he knew" into verses.
     Aesop's fables may be short, but it offers a wise lesson in the end. It helps us to discover ourselves. It helps us to find out the hidden lesson behind the images presented by the author.

Aesop

A Little is known about the life of Aesop. According to historical facts he was a slave, who lived in the sixth century BC in ancient Greece. Some legends suggest Aesop was an ugly hunchbacked slave, although his real appearance is a mystery. One thing is known for sure - Aesop was a very smart, creative and imaginative man... 

Aesop was a fabulist or story teller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as Aesop's Fables. His existence remains uncertain and no writings by him survive, many tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a storytelling tradition that continues to this day. Many of the tales are characterized by animals and non-living objects that speak, solve problems, and generally have human characteristics.

The earliest Greek sources, including Aristotle, specify that Aesop was born around 620 BC in Thrace at a site on the Black Sea coast which would later become the city Mesembria. In the Roman imperial period Phaedrus, who adapted the fables into Latin, say that Aesop was born in Phrygia. 

What is fable

Fable is among the oldest forms of folk literature. Fables can be found in the literature of almost every country all over the world. The word "fable" comes from the Latin "fabula" ("little story"). In general, a fable consists of a story and a short moral conclusion at the end. The main characters in most fables are animals. The purpose of these stories is to mock negative human behavior.

Sometimes these fables are passed down from generation to generation and from place to place. Sometimes these fables are constructed by a literary tale-teller and its purpose is to impart a lesson or a value. The last sentence of that usually tells what lesson you can conclude from the fables.

Many collections of fables exist in the world: such as the Panchatantram from ancient India, Aesop's from ancient Greece, Phaedrus' from ancient Rome, La Fontaine's fables composed in France in the 17th century, and Joel Chandler Harris's African American fables, the Uncle Remus stories.

There are some famous Fable authors:
   Aesop (mid-6th century BCE), author of Aesop’s Fables.
   Vishnu Sarma (ca. 200 BCE), author of the anthropomorphic political treatise and fable collection, the Panchatantra.
   Phaedrus (15 BCE – 50 CE), Roman fabulist, by birth he is a Macedonian
   Jean de La Fontaine (French, 1621 – 1695).
   Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (German, 1729–1781).
   Ivan Krylov (Russian, 1769 – 1844)