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“To Inform or Delight”

29 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by in Art, Literature

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— Kalīlah wa-Dimnah (BnF Bibliothèque nationale de France)
 

Sacred Texts and Epics

This may seem strange, but our fundamental texts are not limited to sacred texts, such as the Bible and the Quran. The Talmud and the Torah are also to be taken into consideration as are the great Epic poems or Epics: the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, Homer’s Odyssey, the Iliad, also attributed to Homer (Greek), Virgil’s (Latin) Greco-Latin Aeneid and so many other texts. Rome borrowed Greece’s mythology, just as Christianity situated its feasts according to the seasons or to the varying degree of light and darkness the days possessed, which had been the case from time immemorial in a “pagan” world. Interestingly, Christians entered into a ritualistic darkness yesterday, but will burn candles beginning late Saturday night. Easter is a feast of lights, among Christians, as is Hanukka, in Rabbinic Judaism. Last week, Jews celebrated Passover, a feast closely related to the Christian Easter: Pâques. The First Council of Nicæa (325 CE) established the date of Easter as the first Sunday after the full moon (the Paschal Full Moon) following the March equinox. (See Easter, Wikipedia)

Kalīlah wa-Dimnah, MS. Pococke 400, fol. 75b (Bodleian libraries, Oxford)

Kalīlah wa-Dimnah, MS. Pococke 400, fol. 75b (Bodleian libraries, Oxford)

The Panchatantra and Kalīlah wa-Dimnah

Fables and fairy tales are also fundamental texts, but belong to another strand, a worldly strand.  India is the birthplace of the Panchatantra, Pañcatantra, which features animals. It is a text we cannot ignore. Nor can we sweep away its Persian version, Kalīlah wa-Dimnah There is a Middle Persian version of the Panchatantra, written in 570 CE, by Borzūya.That version has been lost, but Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa was ordered to write the Persian and ultimately Arabic version of the Panchatantra, entitled Kalīlah wa-Dimnah and written in 750 CE. This version has come down to us.

As well, many genres are its progeny or developed at the same time as the Panchatantra. The most notable are the Buddhist Jātaka tales. Buddhism advocates moral wisdom and asceticism, but its Jātaka tales teach a wordly form of wisdom. Personally, I do not think that one precludes the other. They are simply different of a multilayered reality.  

Jātaka tales are about the former lives of Buddha and could be compared to the formulaic “Once upon a time” of fairy tales, an hypnotizing magic carpet that takes the reader or listener to the past. Most, if not all, cultures have a Golden Age, a Paradise, a Promised Land…  Humans give themselves a glorious past and look upon themselves as the descendants of giants. This glorious past is mostly fictional, but it has shaped, to a lesser or greater extent, the collective mind of various civilizations and has therefore attained a form of permanence and truth, a poetical truth. In a sense, we are the authors of these texts.

The Panchatantra as nītiśāstra

The Panchatantra is a nītiśāstra.[ii] In other words, it contains advice for the “wise” conduct of a prince’s life. In his 1924 translation, from the Sanskrit, of the Panchatantra stories, Franklin Edgerton writes that:

The so-called ‘morals’ of the stories have no bearing on morality; they are unmoral, and often immoral.  They glorify shrewdness and practical wisdom, in the affairs of life, and especially of politics, of government.[iii]

Shrewdness and practical wisdom are not necessarily Machiavellian. In Machiavelli‘s world, the end may justify the means, but the third son of the miller (Puss in Boots) is unlikely to find himself ruling a corrupt city-state. Moreover, all humans have to deal with other humans, beginning with members of their family, and may find excellent advice in such books as the Panchatantra and Kalīlah wa-Dimnah, its Arabic version.

A nītiśāstra could be described as a political science textbook and, as we know, Machiavelli is on that reading list. Baldassare Castiglione‘s Il Cortegiano (1528, begun in 1508) would be its courtly counterpart and very civilized. It is salon literature. However Reynard the Fox is a beast counterpart of Nicolló Machiavelli‘s Prince, distributed in 1513 and published in 1532. In short, we have salons, but we also have parliaments, or other forms of government and we have the religious and the secular. For a list of books and treatises on the education of the prince, see Wikipedia’s Mirrors for Princes.

The Fabliaux

With respect to secularism, I should mention the fabliaux, brought to France from the Orient by returning crusaders. These “fables” and characterized by their frequently scatological obscenity. And the same is true, to a lesser extent, of certain Reynard stories.  Yet, the Roman de Renart and fabliaux are available as children’s literature. As for the Panchatantra, it may advocate worldly wisdom, but it is not offensive. Nor is Ramsay Wood‘s translation of Kalīlah wa-Dimnah. My readers who know French may wish to visit the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Roman de Renart  Earlier versions of Puss in Boots would not have been acceptable to précieuses, no more than fabliaux, but Perrault‘s Puss in Boots and other fairy tales were extremely popular in salons and have become the reference.

(Please click on the images to enlarge them.)
 
arab_3465_048arab_3465_05123
— Kalīlah wa-Dimna
 

At any rate, the Panchatantra was extremely popular. It was, in fact, a medieval bestseller, which points to a significant degree of moral acceptability, a secular acceptability  Edgerton writes that:

“…there are recorded over two hundred different versions known to exist in more than fifty languages, and three-fourths of these languages are extra-Indian. As early as the eleventh century this work reached Europe, and before 1600 it existed in Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, German, English, Old Slavonic, Czech, and perhaps other Slavonic languages. Its range has extended from Java to Iceland… [In India,] it has been worked over and over again, expanded, abstracted, turned into verse, retold in prose, translated into medieval and modern vernaculars, and retranslated into Sanskrit. And most of the stories contained in it have “gone down” into the folklore of the story-loving Hindus, whence they reappear in the collections of oral tales gathered by modern students of folk-stories.” (Quoted in Wikipedia’s Panchatantra entry.)

In the Introduction to his first volume of Fables (1668), La Fontaine compares fables to parables. Given their worldliness, the lessons of fables are not the lessons of parables, but both are stories illustrating a moral. Fables inform or/and delight, in which they are consistent with the Horatian ideals.

“The aim of the poet is to inform or delight, or to combine together, in what he says, both pleasure and applicability to life. In instructing, be brief in what you say in order that your readers may grasp it quickly and retain it faithfully. Superfluous words simply spill out when the mind is already full. Fiction invented in order to please should remain close to reality.”

Conclusion

I marvel at the degree to which East meets West on so many levels, i.e. from the lofty spiritual down to a cruder reality and I am enormously thankful to the scholars who have translated and/or studied the masterpieces of the East, scholars such as Sir William Jones (philologist), Sir Charles Wilkins KH, FRS, and, in particular, Sir James George Frazer  FRS, FRSE, FBA, OM (1 January 1854 – 7 May 1941) whose Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (1906 – 1915) has often guided me. I also marvel at the many ways in which the past informs the present. The fables of antiquity are the exempla (plural of exemplum) of the Middle Ages, its proverbs, its sermons, and we still read animal stories rooted in the Panchatantra.       

(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)
arab_3467_078v 

   — Kalīlah wa-Dimnah (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

© Micheline Walker
28 March 2013
WordPress
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[i] Vishnu Sharma is considered the author of the Panchatantra, but there are doubts as to the authorship of Panchatantra. Doubts also linger as to the year of its publication.  According to some scholars, it dates back to c 300 BC, but other scholars claim otherwise.  It could date back to 1200 BC.

[ii] Nītiśāstra: Nīti can be roughly translated as “the wise conduct of life.” A śāstra is a “technical or scientific treatise.” (See Panchatantra, Wikipedia.)

[iii] (George Allen and Unwin, London 1965 [1924]) p. 13.  Edgerton’s edition and translation of the Panchatantra is an “Edition for the General Reader.” (Quoted in Wikipedia’s Panchatantra entry.)

The Dalai Lama reads and tells a Jātaka tale (March 2011)

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The Physiologus & Animals Depicted in Bestiaries

25 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by in Art, Beasts

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Bestiaries: sources

For the complete lists of animals featured in the Physiologus, see Physiologus, Wikipedia.  For a shorter list of these animals as well as their attributes, go to Medieval Bestiary: http://bestiary.ca/manuscripts/manubeast1345.htm.

For pictures featured in the Physiologus, go to Medieval Bestiary, Gallery: http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beastgallery218.htm

To access manuscripts other than the Physiologus, click on tab labelled Manuscripts: Medieval Bestiary, Gallery: http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beastgallery218.htm

—ooo—

In a post dated 22 February, I indicated that writers and artists who produced the bestiaries of the Middle Ages used as their main source a book entitled The Physiologus (‘The Natural Scientist’).  “It consists of stories based on the ‘facts’ of natural science as accepted by someone called Physiologus (Latin: “Naturalist”), about whom nothing further , and from the compiler’s own religious ideas.”[i]

There is no doubt concerning the authenticity of our unknown “naturalist,” i.e. the person who compiled the texts contained in the Physiologus.  But there is some disagreement with respect to the authorship of the texts included in the Physiologus.  The Physiologus  “is ascribed to one or other of the 4th-century bishops Basil and Epiphanius.” Peter of Alexandria, Basil, John Chrysostom, Athanasius, Ambrose, and Jerome; even pre-Christian authors like Solomon and Aristotle were said to have written parts of it (Curley, p. xvi).  (See Medieval Bestiary)

However, for our purposes, we need simply know that “medieval bestiaries ultimately are derived from the Greek Physiologus.”[ii] but that India “may also be a source:” 

Some Indian influence is clear—for example, in the introduction of the elephant and of the Peridexion tree, actually called Indian in the Physiologus. India may also be the source of the story of the unicorn, which became very popular in the West.[iii]

 

The Popularity & Dissemination of the Physiologus

The Physiologus may not have been as popular as the Bible, but nearly so.  “It was translated into Latin (first in the 4th or 5th century), Ethiopian, Syriac, Arabic, Coptic, and Armenian. Early translations from the Greek also were made into Georgian and into Slavic languages.”[iv]  It was then translated into several other languages.  However, the symbolism  attached to these allegorical animals may have changed and new symbols may have been added as various manuscripts wound their way through translations and possible “editions” of some original Physiologus.  A thousand years elapsed between the publication of the Physiologus and that of the Aberdeen Bestiary. 

According to Britannica, The Physiologus would have “48 sections, each dealing with one creature, plant, or stone and each linked to a biblical text.”  As for animals featured in the Physiologus, they are listed in Wikipedia.  In its list, Wikipedia names the dragon and the unicorn, both of whom are “fantastic” animals, as are the griffin and the phœnix .  (See Physiologus, Wikipedia and Medieval Bestiary)

sans-titre

Griffin couchant facing throne at Knossos (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Dragon, the Griffin, the Unicorn, and the Phoenix

In the Oxford Dictionary of Classical Myth & Religion, the Physiologus is described as “an exposition of the marvellous properties of some 50 animals, plants and stones, with a Christian interpretation of each.”[v]  In this statement, the key word is “marvellous.”  It matches the word used to describe the “fantastic” aspects of certain documents dating back to the French Middle Ages. Several mediavelists speak of the “merveilleux [marvellous] chrétien.”

Truth be told, among animals described in the Physiologus, some do not exist.  The dragon and the unicorn, who are listed in Wikipedia’s entry on the Physiologus, are legendary animals that I call “mythical animals.”  There are other mythical animals, two of whom are the afore-mentioned dragon and unicorn, but the Physiologus does not feature the phœnix, a mythical creature who was adopted as a symbol in Early Christianity.  Nor does it mention the griffin.  However, somehow I discovered the above fresco of the griffin while reading about the Physiologus. It is so lovely that I could not resist inserting it in this post. Although there are several mythical animals, the dragon, the griffin, the phœnix, and the unicorn are the more familiar. They are the four animals I call “mythical animals.”

Mythical vs Mythological Animals

Mythical animals may inhabit mythologies, east and west, but unlike the Minotaur of Greek mythology, they are legendary beasts who do not have a lineage.  In this regard, they differ from Greek mythology’s Minotaur who is the son of a bull and Phasiphaë, the daughter of Helios and the wife of Theseus, the mythical and mythological — Greek mythology — founder-king of Athens.  As for Pegasus, the winged horse, he is the offspring of Poseidon and Medusa.  However, among the fifty or so beast Physiologus depicts, there is a Centaur, a zoomorphic — half human, half horse — mythological animal as well as the Siren of Greek mythology.

 
(please click on the image to enlarge it)
A phœnix depicted in a book of mythological creatures by F. J. Bertuch (1747-1822)
A phœnix depicted in a book of mythological creatures by F. J. Bertuch* (1747-1822)

*F. J. Bertuch

(please click on the image to enlarge it)
Theseus fighting the Minotaur by Jean-Etienne Ramey, marble, 1826, Tuileries Gardens, Paris
Theseus fighting the Minotaur by Jean-Étienne Ramey, marble, 1826, Tuileries Gardens,* Paris

*Jean-Étienne Ramey

A Poetical Reality

The reality of these “fantastic” animals is poetical.  It is the reality that J. K. Rowling used when she wrote the Harry Potter series.  For instance, she featured the mythical phœnix, who is described in the Physiologus as an animal that rises from its own ashes and therefore represents Christ rising from the dead three days after his crucifixion.  Similarly, the legendary pelican kills its off springs and, three days later, revives them by feeding them her blood.[viii]  The author of the Physiologus may have borrowed from “pagan” sources, but his interpretation of the 50 animals, plants and stones is a Christian interpretation, which would suit medieval and Christian authors of bestiaries and artists depicting the fanciful animals bestiaries featured.

The animals featured in the Physiologus are in fact all the more “marvellous” and poetical in that they are zoomorphic, i.e. combining human and animal features, which is the case with the Centaur.  But mythical and mythological animals may also combine the features of several animals, which is the case with Pegasus, the winged horse.  However, whatever their appearance, these animals all stand for human beings or all symbolize human attributes.  They are not humans in disguise, but allegorical or animals depicting mankind.

Conclusion

I wanted to write on the Aberdeen Bestiary, but many of the animals featured in the Aberdeen Bestiary originate in the Physiologus, as does the symbolism attached to them.  It would appear that the “religious sections of the Physiologus (and of the bestiaries derived from the Physiologus) are concerned primarily with abstinence and chastity; they also warn against heresies.”[ix] 

However, what is most fascinating about these animals is that they are part of our world.  They are fanciful and the iconography attached to them, mostly delightful, but it could be that we actually need the phœnix.  If the phœnix rises from its ashes, we can also rise again, whatever ordeal has befallen us.  As for the pelicans who stretch maternal love to the point of reviving dead off springs by feeding them their blood, they are quintessential motherhood.  In other words, both the Physiologus and bestiaries it inspired tell our story, and that story is one we created.

The Physiologus is an “illuminated” manuscript.  Artists and scribes transformed it into a work of art.  Second-century artists may have used techniques that differ from the manner in which the Book of Kells and the Aberdeen Bestiary are illuminated, but the Lascaux Cave is a splendid testimonial to a motivation to “picture” our world and, in particular, the animals we require.  Several manuscripts of the Physiologus have survived.  The Bern Physiologus may well be the most notorious extant illuminated manuscript of the Physiologus.  For pictures, click on Bern Physiologus (Wikimedia commons) and Medieval Bestiary: http://bestiary.ca/manuscripts/manubeast1345.htm)

Angels have wings, yet we swear on the Bible.

Bellerophon riding Pegasus (1914)
Bellerophon riding Pegasus (1914)

‘Arrival to the Oxford market’: Anonymous (XIII century)

 
Main Source:  Medieval Bestiary: http://bestiary.ca/manuscripts/manubeast1345.htm
Photo credit: Wikipedia (all images)
 
[i] “bestiary”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 24 Feb. 2013
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/63117/bestiary>.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] “Physiologus”, Oxford Dictionary of Classical Myth & Religion (Oxford: Oxford Clarendon Press, 2003).
[vi] Ibid.
[vii] Donald Ray Schwartz, Noah’s Ark, An Annotated Encyclopedia of every Animal Species in the Hebrew Bible (Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson Inc., 2000).
[viii] “Physiologus”, Oxford Dictionary of Classical Myth & Religion (Oxford: Oxford Clarendon Press, 2003)
[ix] Britannica, loc. cit.
The Unicorn in the Physiologus

The Unicorn in the Physiologus

(please click on the picture to enlarge it)

© Micheline Walker
24 February 2013
WordPress