So much so that the Christian missionaries in Japan used them to convert people to Christianity. The Jataka Tales and Panchatantra hold immense sacred value in modern day Japan. The Jataka tales travelled to Central Asia, Tibet, China and Japan with the spread of Buddhism. So influential were the Jataka tales that many Buddhist sects (Mahasamghika Chaitika) accepted them as Buddhist canonical literature. The Jataka Tales, which are the stories of Buddha’s previous lives, is heavily influenced by Panchatantra. Long before the work was translated into foreign languages, it was widely borrowed by people within India. It was perhaps its universal appeal that led to its translation into multiple languages across the world. However, Ryder describes Panchatantra as Niti Shastra, which makes it equally interesting for adults. The stories of Panchatantra are widely read to children as stories with a moral. Many words are therefore necessary to explain what niti is, though the idea, once grasped, is clear, important, and satisfying.” Western civilisation must endure a certain shame in realising that no precise equivalent of the term is found in English, French, Latin or Greek. In the introduction section he further writes, “The word niti means roughly “the wise conduct of life”. He also laments about the lack of vocabulary in western languages for Sanskrit words like niti. In the introduction of his work ( The Panchatantra: Purnabhadra’s Recension of 1199 CE) he said, “The Panchatantra is a niti-shastra, or textbook of niti”.

Indologist Johannes Hertel, in his work The Panchatantra – Text of Purnabhadra (1912), traces the origins of the text to Kashmir.Īrthur William Ryder, a Sanskrit professor at University of California, Berkeley also translated Panchatantra in English from the 12th century manuscript of Purnabhadra. Not much is known about the place of origin of the book. Not many people might know, but the Panchatantra was compiled as a teaching manual for young princes by Vishnu Sharma, at the age of 80 years. The talking lion in The Chronicles of Narnia, an entire jungle full of talking animals in the Ice Age and of course the talking pigs of Animal Farm. The anthropomorphism of Panchatantra strikes a chord of similarity with many modern works. The use of animals, who talk, think and act like humans is a clever play to relate the acts and nature of humans to that of animals. Panchatantra uses metaphors and substitutes to tell a story.

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