The Pancatantra

by Visnu Sarma

  To fulfil his task of educating the young princes, Viṣṇu Śarma devises a novel method of instruction which uses life and its varied experiences as the textbook. He presents real life situations and problems in the guise of stories that would rouse and sustain the interest of his pupils while teasing them into thought. It is to be presumed that once the princes had been trained to think and use their minds constructively, they were bound to develop an interest in acquiring knowledge. So many texts are referred to and quoted from in the tales that any intelligent person would be possessed by a desire to know more about them and get to read them. It is all a matter of using the right method and opening windows to an intelligent person.

  In a deep sense, storytelling is theatre, with one man or woman playing several roles. The young princes watch how the characters in the tales, both human and non-human think, feel, and act in situations many of which would be similar to situations that they would find themselves in at one time or another, as rulers. They see how they should or should not act when faced by problems arising in their public and private lives. The motivations of those who surround princes—ministers, retainers, attendants, parasites and family—are laid bare. As men and women from all walks of life pass before their mind’s eye, the princes also acquire a knowledge of the conduct and actions of ordinary people, their future subjects. As the frame story of Book I which begins the storytelling session, is set in Mahilāropya, their own city and their father’s capital, it is a familiar scene; and yet not quite familiar because it is distanced from their world by being placed in another time—a story-book time.

  The city is described in a passage that sets it apart from the narrative following, by the use of the ornate style with long compounds and a passive construction that we have already noted. Seven long compound words and two short phrases which, split up, take a whole paragraph in the English rendering, present this fabulous city to the audience. It is a story-book world.

  The Panćatantra is not strictly theatre in the technical sense as it is generally defined and accepted.18 There are differences between formal theatre and the kind of theatre involved in the technique and practices of storytelling. For one thing, this work paces itself in a leisurely and relaxed manner. It pauses at certain points in the narrative, some crucial, to interrupt the narrative flow and introduce a new tale: e.g., the tale of the former captivity of Speckle, the deer, is introduced at the moment he lies trapped and in imminent danger (II. tale 9). A maxim is stated, or a short passage of dialogue with a comment on the power of Fate, as in this case, and a tale is introduced. This is part of the technique of storytelling by which wise counselling is combined with entertaining storytelling and ought not to be regarded as a defect as is sometimes done. No more than the spectacle of a coloratura,19 stabbed to the heart, gasping out her life’s breath in a series of trills and cadenzas and finally dying on a high C that fades gradually into silence, is a defect. It is part of the musical interest in an opera.

  For another, the Panćatantra deploys a vast variety of characters drawn from high life and low, town and country in the human world, and also brings within its ambit a whole new world—the world of nature with its own hierarchy of high and low, strong and weak, predator and prey. In both respects, the Panćatantra is like the Indian epic with which it has a strong and close kinship.

  The work represents society at many levels. But it does something more; and it does it in a highly self-conscious manner. It holds a mirror up to society. The tales are not entertainment, pure and simple. That is one part and an important part of the aims of the work. Edification or instruction is another, equally important. Education in the art of living wisely and well; nīti, is one of its aims. The Pantatantra has a dual perspective.

  The Panćatantra presents two worlds, one mirroring the other. We cannot see ourselves as we really are, truly and completely, except in a mirror as a reflection, flattering or otherwise. We have to stand back to look at ourselves, our conduct and our actions. Since we get overly involved in the daily motions of living, we do not always see a pattern and meaning in events and circumstances until we view it presented before us. And what is more, we see and understand it better when they are presented as happening elsewhere to others. And this the Panćatantra does very effectively. The two worlds—human and non-human—dialogue with each other and/or comment on each other.

  In addition to these two worlds, Book V introduces a third, a twilight world where elements of magic and dream-illusion, of the grotesque and macabre are present to create a tone and atmosphere different from that of the other books. Inhabiting the blurred landscape between reality and fantasy, this twilight world also holds up a mirror, a distorting one that is disturbing. Dreams crumble or turn into nightmares.

  The narrative of the Panćatantra moves constantly back and forth, from one world into the other. The frame story of Book 1 is the clearest illustration of this movement. Abandoned by man in his hour of distress, Lively, the noble bull, hobbles painfully to the lush meadows by the sacred river, Yamunā. Freed from man’s yoke, he is soon restored to health and vigour and he roams joyously resembling ‘Śiva’s bull’, with not a single human being in sight. The meadows bordering the sacred river, lush and ‘emerald-green’, is a place of freedom, joy and plentitude. It is paradisal. There are other similar paradisal ‘spaces’ in the work; for example in the frame stories of Books II and IV. In the former we have the idyllic haunts of the four friends, the mole, the crow, the tortoise and the deer, in shady groves by the shores of a great lake deep in the heart of a ‘dense forest’, far from the human world with its drought, famine and slaughter that Goldy, the mole, and Lightwing, the crow, flee from. In Book IV there is another idyllic spot, where a mighty rose-apple tree grows by the seashore, bearing a profusion of delicious ambrosial20 fruit the year round. The ape, Redface, lives there until the wife of his friend, the crocodile, disrupts the peace and happiness of his world.

  Lively’s brief sojourn in the meadows by the sacred river is a blissful interregnum between his two stays in the forest-world. He has already been there once and met with the accident that left him limp and broken. He is drawn again into the forest-world where he finally meets his death. As we enter this ‘other’ world with Lively, we notice immediately that the two worlds of man and nature are astonishingly alike. The world of nature is a mirror-world.

  Relationships between the two worlds are established by means of certain links. The social and political organization they have in common is notable as a link. There is a court in the forest, with a king and a hierarchy of office and of duties—the Four Circles or Mándalas. ‘It is said,’ speaks the narrator, ‘in any city or capital… or any sort of community of people, there can be only one occupant of the lion’s post.’ (I. 5.-45 to -43) The lion’s post is the seat of sovereignty surrounded by the other three circles or orders of hierarchy in a state. What these are is not quite clear. The three orders could be ministers, courtiers or retainers, and attendants or menials. Or they could stand for court, city and country. The passage cited clearly draws an analogy between the human community and the natural community in the forest. The court of Pinṇgalaka (Tawny), King of the Forest is like any other royal court. It is a paramount state with ‘ministers, and others who were in his (the king’s) secret counsels’; a royal retinue, assembly (sabhā—I. 234. 1, 2: ‘Once acclaimed in the open Assembly as “Behold, here is a man of merit,”’), doorkeeper or chamberlain and attendants. The ‘state’ in the forests also has its share of power politics and the motivations lying behind the play of power politics: envy, greed, ambition, jockeying for royal favour and high position.

  Another link between the two worlds and their societies is effected through projection. Human beings tend to project their own emotions (or the lack of it) on to the world of nature; to attribute to other forms of life traits of character and behaviour, and qualities noble or vicious, good or bad, that are essentially human; and quite mistakenly. This might be a way of enter
ing into a relationship with ‘the other’; of escaping from a solipsist world into an exploration of a different world. Expressions such as, ‘brave as a lion’, ‘mean as a jackal’, ‘wise as an owl’, ‘vicious as a snake’, come to mind. The tales of the Panêatantra belie such confident and complacent assumptions that human beings make, often wrongly. The ‘people’ of woods and waters are not quite like us; but the point that the Panêatantra tales make is that they are people. Tawny, when he is first introduced to us in the frame story of Book I, is presented as standing, frozen in his tracks, shaken and ‘deeply troubled at heart’ on hearing the tremendous bellowing of Lively, the bull. The King of Owls (Book III) is scarcely wise. The snake (I. The Grateful Beasts and the Ungrateful Man) is not vicious but actually grateful, wise and helpful.

  The non-human characters in the Panêatantra merely appear to be creatures of the world of nature, of woods and waters and hills. In fact they are human actors wearing masks. The masks are fairly transparent. They have to be for the text to fulfil the objectives it has set itself: education in the broadest sense of the term. The text exploits human perceptions of the non-human world, sometimes correct and frequently wrong, together with certain superficial similarities in behaviour—an animal reacts to something unusual like a sudden sound, it may be a light rustling or deafening bellowing, to become alert and wary as Tawny does when he hears Lively letting out thundering peals of sheer delight—to make identification of ‘us’ with the ‘other’ possible. Without this identification, the learning process for the princes and all others who listened to the storytellers of the past, and the readers who still ‘listen’ to the text as they read it, will not get off the ground. Viṣṇu Śarma requires that the princes look at the world of nature, at the same time bringing to bear on the tales, their culture-conditioned perceptions—the jackal is mean, the bull is noble, the turtle-dove is constant, and so on—as people and learn from it.

  The world of nature functions as a metaphor for the human world. It is the basic image in the text and is employed consistently to sustain and convey the message. The natural world wears two faces: the jungle, where nature is red in tooth and claw and each one looks out for himself; and the community where co-existence prevails and each looks out for the other, as in the frame story of Book II, and in some of the sub-tales (Book I. The Lapwing who defied the Ocean and Book II. The Mice that freed the Elephants). In certain other subtales the members of a species band together against a common threat, or, several species work together to outwit a common enemy (Book I. The Crow and the Serpent, Dim Wit and the Hare, The Sparrow and the Tusker and Book II. The Mice that freed the Elephants). These are no doubt human perceptions. The stories are not about animals and their behaviour, their ways of bonding or banding together, or of their fighting. This is not to say that there is not close observation of animals and other non-human forms of life; for there is. And there is ample evidence in the stories of the understanding and the sympathy for them that flows out of close observation. It forms part of the characterizations of these extraordinary creatures, and accounts for the charm of the Pancatantra tales. But the main purpose of the work, or rather its avowed purpose, is something else; it is to inculcate nīti in the young princes and in others who come after them. ‘Since then, this work on nīti (practical wisdom) has become celebrated as an excellent means of awakening and training young minds’(Preamble, stanza 3. -2).

  The natural world is human society transposed and thereby distanced. For example, Wily, the jackal in the frame story of Book I, is an ambitious, callously opportunistic politician out for what he can get. Longlegs, the lapwing (I. The Lapwing who defied the Ocean) is a person with an overweening sense of self-importance who pays for it; the eggs of the lapwing pair are stolen by the ocean. But the ocean is also humbled for acting with such arrogance as it does, pitting its tremendous power against a pitifully small bird standing on its shores, puffing out his puny chest in defiance. The donkey who claims to be a musicologist and wishes to sing under the moonlight, is simply a ‘pompous ass’. He knows everything in the texts on music that a good singer ought to know; he lacks only one thing—a good voice (V. tale 5). On the other hand, no bird worth its salt would bother to pursue a vendetta with such determination as the sparrow does (I. tale 19); for that indeed, is a human trait.

  Not for a single moment is the reader permitted to forget that this fabulous work by Viṣṇu Śarma is all about human beings; about human society and political organization; about human virtues, vices and foibles. It points to the nobility in man and to his baseness; to the heights he can scale and the depths to which he falls.

  The text sets up prominent signposts at various points in the narrative to remind us of this. For instance, Lively, the bull is described as learned in many branches of knowledge and possesses a store of wisdom gained through his studies. And he is a good teacher too (I. 110.-12 to -6). Goldy, Lightwing, Slowcoach and Speckle, the four friends in the frame story of Book II, are also scholars with a fund of learning; the right kind of learning that is a judicious blend of book-learning with sound practical sense. They also have the right attitude to living. Each leads his separate life; but they meet daily under the pleasant shade of trees beside the lake to discuss matters relating to the Law, economics, polity and other allied subjects (dharma, artha, etc.). Theirs is a community modelled on the forest-hermitages of ancient sages. Some of the dwellers of forest and lake have a keen wit and can turn a neat phrase. So well-educated are they with the ability to converse on a variety of subjects, quoting chapter and verse with such facility, that they could be the envy of many a specialist in the human world who cultivates his/her little patch of scholarship with assiduity, not looking over the hedge at other fields.

  Talking animals and birds are present in Indian literature from earliest times. In the Ṛg-Veda (10: 108) Saramā, the hound of heaven, goes over the wild wastes of water as an ambassador to negotiate a trade deal for her masters (devas) with the Paṇts (merchants), and fails. The golden wild goose in the Mahābhārata story of King Nala and Princess Damayanū carries love-messages between the two which lead to their marriage. A bull, a wild goose and a diver instruct the Brahmana pupil, Satyakāma, in matters relating to the nature of Reality (Ćandogya Upaniṣad, IV: 5, 7,8). In many ancient cultures, non-human forms of life, birds, animals and even trees were believed to have suprahuman abilities and powers; to possess a special kind of wisdom and to bear a special relationship to the sacred. Further, Indian thought and belief does not make a stark distinction between human and non-human orders of being. All are parts of a whole; all possess that spark of divinity that is in man.

  In a literary tradition that springs from a world view such as the one outlined above, it is natural to put words of wisdom into the mouths of non-human characters. It is easy for the human and natural worlds to interact as smoothly as they do and comment on each other. Viṣṇu Śarma has a precedent in the examples cited to use animals, birds and other creatures of the world of nature as vehicles for instruction, both in the context of realpolitik and the larger ethical context. The concept of nīti, as discussed earlier is comprehensive and applies to the whole range of human action.

  The Panćatantra is even-handed in its criticism of the conduct and motives of people; merchants, tradesmen, monks, scholars, judges; the uxorious husband and deceitful wife, the gluttonous or feckless Brāhmana and the cruel hunter, the rash and imprudent and the cold and calculating; everyone gets a fair share of criticism. Fools and knaves, the too-trusting and the conniving person, are castigated equally sharply. The pompous and garrulous are held up to ridicule. Princes and women, however, come in for some trenchant criticism, perhaps only apparently. There is a long and sharply-worded diatribe against women in general in I. 138 to 146.

  This whirlpool of suspicion, this mansion of immodesty, this

  city of audacity

  this sanctuary of errors, this home of a hundred deceits,

  *

  �
�� this casket entire of tricks:—

  Who created this contraption called Woman?…

  To set Virtue and the Law at naught?

  (I. 142)21

  But the effect of this passionate castigation of the female sex is somewhat changed by the fact that it forms part of a story told by the villainous jackal, Wily, to illustrate his maxim that the ends justify the means (I. The Weaver’s Unfaithful Wife) and by the further fact that it is put into the mouth of a holy man who is worldly but not wise. A piece of moral criticism depends for its efficacy on who the speaker is and what kind of a person he/she is. As against this outburst against women, we have the stories of the girl who is married to a snake (I. The Maiden wedded to a Snake) and the princess who is married to the sick prince whose life is being sucked out gradually by a snake in his belly (III. The Snake in the Prince’s belly) both of whom accept the husbands chosen for them cheerfully and care for them; and of the female turtle-dove who is a model of constancy and forgiveness (III. The Dove who sacrificed himself).

  Never put your trust in creatures with horns or claws, men who bear arms, women, flowing streams ‘and the whole cursed lot of princes’, says Wary. For princes are like serpents,

  formed coil

  upon coil, encased in smooth, sinuous scales,

  cruel, tortuous in movement,

  menacingly fierce, savage…

  (I. 49)

  and they are like mountains, ‘with ups and downs and hearts of stones’ (I. 50. 1, 2). Their minds are houses full of hidden serpents, forests swarming with predators and beautiful pools where crocodiles lurk under the lotuses. The castigation of princes is surprisingly candid considering that this is a work written primarily for them.