Tag Archives: Panchatantra

Fables: varia

12 Sunday Mar 2017

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The Treasures of the Orient

  • The Panchatantra
  • Kalīlah wa Dimnah

Beast fables have been told or written since the dawn of times and in various societies. The same is true of beast epics, that may be called Beast fables. Ironically, colonialism, one of the darker moments  in the history of mankind, led to the discovery of some of the world’s most fundamental texts. Many of these were discovered during the British Raj and many were beast fables, such as the Panchatantra and the Hitopadesha. Scholars learned Sanskrit and translated the masterpieces of India. The Bahgavad Gita, which is not a beast fable, was translated into English by Sir Charles Wilkins. It was Mahatma Ghandi‘s “spiritual dictionary.” (See Bahgavad Gita, Wikipedia.)

However, beast literature begins with Vishnu Sharma‘s Sanskrit Panchatantra. Recent scholarship has situated the creation of the Panchatantra between 1,200 BCE and the 3rd century BCE. Given that the Panchatantra is probably rooted in an extremely old oral tradition, I doubt that it was much or most written before the 3rd century BCE. The Panchatantra‘s sage is Bidpai or Pilpay and, to a large extent, the purpose of the Panchatantra is the education of the prince, or worldly wisdom. These books are referred to as mirrors for princes. Eleven Panchatantra tales were used by 17th-century French fabulist Jean de La Fontaine.

The best-known Arabic analog of the Panchatantra is the work of Persian scholar Ibn al-Muqaffa’. His translation and adaptation of the Panchatantra (meaning: five books) is entitled Kalīlah wa Dimnah, dated 750 CE. Other earlier translations or analogs were published, one of which is Borzūya‘s Middle Persian (Pahlavi) Kalīlah wa Dimnah, dated 570 CE. That translation is lost. Vishnu Sharma’s Panchatantra also inspired the Hitopadesha, a text where beasts and animals interact. It was translated into English by Charles Wilkins. The sage in the Panchatantra and Kalīlah wa Dimnah is Bidpai, or Pilpay. French Orientalist G. Gaulmin‘s Livre des lumières, ou la Conduite des roys was published in 1644, several years after The Morall Philosophie of Doni (English, 1570). Both books were the Fables of Pidpai. (See Panchatantra and Anton Francesco Doni, Wikipedia.)[1]

La Fontaine’s source, however, was 17th-century French Orientalist Gilbert Gaulmin, the author of the Livre des lumières, ou la Conduite des roys (The Book of Lights or the Conduct of Kings). (See Panchatantra, Wikipedia.) La Fontaine’s first collection of fables reflects Æsop. But his second collection (books 7 to 11), published in 1778, was influenced by Orientalist Gilbert Gaulmin’s 1644 Livre des lumières, ou la Conduite des roys. La Fontaine acknowledges indebtness to Pilpay:  “Seulement, je dirai par reconnaissance que j’en dois la plus grande partie à Pilpay, sage Indien” (Only, out to gratitude, I will say that I owe most of my fables to Pilpay, an Indian sage” (Avertissement . II.7).

The Oral and the Learned Tradition

  • Phaedrus
  • Babrius

I wrote about the “oral tradition” elsewhere and mentioned it above. Æsop’s fables were transmitted orally from generation to generation, as would be the case with the Sanskrit Panchatantra. Æsop’s fables did not enter literature until Latin author Phaedrus, who lived in the 1st century CE, published a written collection of Æsop’s fables, as did the Greek-speaking author Babrius (2nd century CE). Once Æsop’s fables were in written form, they had entered a “learned” tradition, but could nevertheless be retold, just as fairy tales could be retold.

La Fontaine’s sources

Several collections of Æsop’s Fables were based on either Phaedrus or Babrius or both. Jean de La Fontaine used a 1610 Latin collection of Æsop‘s Fables, entitled Mythologia Æsopica, put together by Isaac Nicolas Nevelet. However, before publishing his second collection of fables, in 1678, which contains L’Ours et l’amateur des jardins (The Bear and the Gardener), La Fontaine had become familiar with Gilbert Gaulmin 1644 Le Livre des lumières, ou la Conduite des roys, a collection of Bidpai’s fables (Pilpay) can be read it is entirety by clicking on the link (Gallica BnF). Bidpai is a sage whose fables were learned by future kings. He is the sage in the Sanskrit Panchatantra and Persian (Arabic) Kalīlah wa Dimna. His wisdom is worldly wisdom, as noted above.

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The Panchatantra. An illustration from a Syrian edition dated 1354. The rabbit fools the elephant king by showing him the reflection of the moon (Caption and photo credit: Wikipedia)

Terminology

  • Æsop, Æsopic & Æsopian
  • Æsopic, Lybistic & Sybaritic

In recent years, much has been written about fables and beast epics. As a result, scholars now point to differences between Æsop’s fables. The term Æsopian refers to an oblique language. It was first used by Russian satirist Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin (27 January  1826 – 10 May 1889). As for Æsopic, it may refer to Æsop’s fables. One can speak of Æsopic fables.

Æsopic however has another meaning. It refers to fables that feature animals only. Fables that mix animals and human beings, such as La Fontaine’s L’Ours et l’amateur des jardins, and Æsop’s “The Bald Man and the Fly,” are called Libystic. In ancient Greece, if a fable’s dramatis personae were humans only, the fable was called Sybaritic.[2]

Isidore of Seville

Isidore of Seville (c. 560 – 4 April 636), an eminent  Father of the Church and the author of Etymologiae (origins), divided fables into Æsopic (animals) and Libystic (beasts and human beings). Isidore’s Etymologiae could be considered an aetiological text consistent with the teachings of the Church.

Fables are either Æsopic or Libystic. Æsopic fables are those in which dumb animals are imagined to have spoken with each other, or in which the speakers are things which have no soul, as cities, trees, mountains, rocks, and rivers. In contrast, Libystic fables are those in which there is verbal interchange of men with animals with men.
(Etymologiae 1.40.2) [3]

The consensus, however, is that fables are inhabited mainly by talking animals whose words may be dismissed, but have nevertheless been heard. The Church took an interest in the origins of animals. There had to be a Christian account of the creation of animals, so members of the clergy were at times naturalists. All animals had been put aboard Noah’s Ark but, in children’s literature, the Hebrew/Christian Unicorn missed the boat.

Animals belonging to the Medieval Bestiary are allegorical. They are not talking animals, except  “en son langage.”  They are allegorical rather than anthropomorphic animals.

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Physiologus, Adam nomme les animaux (Adam names the animals)
Cambrai, vers 1270-1275
Douai, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 711, fol. 17 (Photo credit: BnF) (click)

The Components of a Fable

The fable is a story, an exemplum, and the moral is the distinguishing element of fables. The moral may be an epimythium and follow the example, or story. It may also precede the story, in which case it is called the promythium. However, some fables do not have a moral, except the fable itself. Finally, one can give a fable a moral other than the moral ascribed by the fabulist.

Love to everyone ♥
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[1]  See a review of Sir Charles North‘s The Morall Philosophy of Doni (Project Muse, University of Toronto.) 

[2] Jan M. Ziolkowski, Talking Animals: Latin Beast Poetry, 750 – 1150 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), pp. 18-19.

[3] Loc. cit.

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10 March 2017
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The Cat’s Only Trick

10 Friday May 2013

Posted by in Fables

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le-chat-et-le-renard[1]

Le Chat et le Renard by Granville (Photo credit: LaFontaine.net)

The o  is classified as AT 105 in the Aarne-Thompson classification systems.[i] In the Perry Index, it is Æsopic fable number 605.

This motif goes back to the Panchatantra and does not always feature the same cast, i.e. a Cat and a Fox. In Æsop, the Cat’s only trick is usually entitled The Fox and the Cat, but in La Fontaine the title is The Cat and the Fox, Le Chat et le Renard. We therefore have a reverse image, which is appropriate since the Cat, not the Fox, manages to get out of harm’s way.

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The Cat and the Fox, by John Ray (Photo credit: Gutenberg eBook #24108)

Æsop’s The Fox and the Cat

A Fox was boasting to a Cat of its clever devices for escaping its enemies. “I have a whole bag of tricks,” he said, “which contains a hundred ways of escaping my enemies.” “I have only one,” said the Cat; “but I can generally manage with that.” Just at that moment they heard the cry of a pack of hounds coming towards them, and the Cat immediately scampered up a tree and hid herself in the boughs. “This is my plan,” said the Cat. “What are you going to do?” The Fox thought first of one way, then of another, and while he was debating the hounds came nearer and nearer, and at last the Fox in his confusion was caught up by the hounds and soon killed by the huntsmen. Miss Puss, who had been looking on, said: “Better one safe way than a hundred on which you cannot reckon.” (translated by G. F. Townsend)
 

Gutenberg’s The Æsop for Children: The Cat and the Fox

Once a Cat and a Fox were traveling together. As they went along, picking up provisions on the way—a stray mouse here, a fat chicken there—they began an argument to while away the time between bites. And, as usually happens when comrades argue, the talk began to get personal.
“You think you are extremely clever, don’t you?” said the Fox. “Do you pretend to know more than I? Why, I know a whole sackful of tricks!”
“Well,” retorted the Cat, “I admit I know one trick only, but that one, let me tell you, is worth a thousand of yours!”
Just then, close by, they heard a hunter’s horn and the yelping of a pack of hounds. In an instant the Cat was up a tree, hiding among the leaves.
“This is my trick,” he called to the Fox. “Now let me see what yours are worth.”
But the Fox had so many plans for escape he could not decide which one to try first. He dodged here and there with the hounds at his heels. He doubled on his tracks, he ran at top speed, he entered a dozen burrows,—but all in vain. The hounds caught him, and soon put an end to the boaster and all his tricks.
Common sense is always worth more than cunning. (Gutenberg’s The Cat and the Fox)
 

La Fontaine’s The Cat and the Fox or Le Chat et le Renard

For a selection of Jean de La Fontaine (8 July 1621 – 13 April 1695) fables, including The Cat and the Fox, click on Gutenberg’s EBook #24108. If you are looking for La Fontaine’s Le Chat et le Renard, in French, click on the title or on lafontaine.net.

Townsend’s and Gutenberg’s Æsop’s fables are slightly different from one another. G. F. Townsend’s Æsopic cat is a female. As for Gutenberg and La Fontaine’s cat, it is a male and, although the fox is trapped by the dogs, in Gutenberg’s The Cat and the Fox and in La Fontaine’s Le Chat et le Renard, the fox is not killed by huntsmen. There are no hunters in  and La Fontaine’s “The Cat and the Fox.” In La Fontaine, the dogs strangle their prey.

However banal this fable may seem, it has been considered an instance of analysis paralysis (see the Blue Inkwell,  “Are you the Fox or the Cat?” and The Fox and the Cat, Analysis Paralysis, Rob Clarke‘s post). However, in my earlier readings of this fable, it did not occur to me that the Fox was paralysed by his own potential for survival. I simply reflected that cats were fortunate to have claws that allowed them to climb trees and that our Fox had done the best he could without claws.

In Wikipedia’s entry on The Cat and the Fox, I read that there is a proverb attributed to ancient Greek poet Archilochus according to which “the fox knows many little things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing,” which presupposes that our cat may have been a hedgehog. I also read that the Panchatantra (Book 5) illustrates the dangers of being too clever. Two clever fish, Satabuddhi (hundred-wit) and Sahasrabuddhi (thousand-wit), are told by a frog, named Ekabuddhi (single-wit), not to worry if the fishermen who have visited and plan to return do come back.  He, Ekabuddhi (single-wit), will protect them.  But Ekabuddhi escapes as quickly as he can, and when the fishermen return, the clever fish are caught. (See The Fish That Were Too Clever.)

Kalila wa Dimna has a related story. Three fish, wise, clever and stupid, hear fishermen. The wise fish flees.  The clever fish “plays dead” (AT 56) and the stupid fish is caught by the fishermen. Writing in the thirteenth century, Persian writer Rūmī used this story in Book IV of his Masnavi. In Rūmī’s opinion, one who does not have “perfect wisdom” had better play dead.

In the much earlier Sanskrit Mahabharata or Mahābhārata, a swan rescues a crow who knows a hundred and one ways of getting himself out of trouble. The Mahabharata  and the Ramayana are the two Sanskrit epics (Indian and Nepalese). The Bhagavad Gita is part of the Mahabharata. (See The Crow and the Swan.)

Three_fish_Kalila_and_Dimna

Three Fish, Kalila wa Dimna
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
 

Wikipedia’s entry goes on to list the various animals who, in Eastern and Western Europe, have the “cat’s only trick” that makes them defeat a boastful fox or other animal.  According to the author of the Wikipedia entry, La Fontaine finishes his fable with a practical moral. “Too many expedients may spoil the business.” (« Le trop d’expédients peut gâter une affaire. »)

Conclusion

It is true that having too many options may slow a person down; making a decision is difficult.

However, it would seem that we do not have a level playing field. The Cat has claws, and claws are what an animal needs to climb a tree. As for the Fox, however clever he may be, he does not have claws. There is not much the Fox can do except enter a foxhole. We can compare three fish, but a cat is a cat and a fox is a fox. We are dealing with different animals and different abilities.

So The Cat and the Fox is probably, first and foremost, about limitations. Both the Cat and the Fox have limitations, but it so happens that, in this particular fable, claws are needed. Therefore circumstances favor the Cat rather than the Fox.

Moreover, the Fox makes a terrible mistake. He boasts about his cunning tricks. Fables are comic texts where the deceiver is deceived. Had the Fox not boasted, he and the cat may not have been attacked by a pack of dogs.

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[i] See The Fox and the Cat (Wikipedia). Click on The Fox and the Cat (AT 105) for stories based on the “Cat’s only trick.”

[ii] Nº 88 (Gutenberg EBook #19994, pictures by Milo Winter).

Wenceslas_Hollar_-_The_fox_and_the_cat_2

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9 May 2013
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The Cat and the Fox 
Wenceslaus Hollar (13 July 1607 – 25 March 1677)

Another Motif: Playing Dead

20 Saturday Apr 2013

Posted by in Beast Literature, Literature

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Renart and Tiécelin, the Crow

Renart and Tiécelin the Crow (BnF, Roman de Renart)

  *Photo credit: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Le Roman de Renart

In branch III of the Roman de Renart, the goupil — foxes used to be called goupils — Renart is hungry and goes in search of food.  When he gets to the road, he sees a cart loaded with fish and quickly lies across the road making believe he has died.  The merchant stops his cart and investigates.  He looks at Renart’s magnificent fur and as a merchant he wonders if there isn’t money to be made from the sale of the fur.  He throws Renart at the back of the cart, which is precisely what Renart wanted him to do.  Our trickster fox therefore feasts on the herrings (les harengs).  Having satisfied his hunger, Renart wraps himself into a coat made of eels and jumps off the cart.  As he runs away, he shouts “bless you” to the merchant, “there I am with plenty of eels to eat, you can keep the rest!”

Renart et les anguilles (eels) is one of the best known of Renart’s tricks, except that this time he doesn’t take advantage of the wolf Ysengrin (French spelling), the chief character in Nivardus of Ghent’s Ysengrimus (c. 1149).  Besides, the fox is not speaking Latin but Roman (le roman).

Renart et les anguilles

Renart et les anguilles (the eels) (BnF, Roman de Renart)

The Theft of Fish

Renart et les anguilles (br. III) is classified as motif 1 in the Aarne Thompson (AT) motif index,[i] where it is listed as The theft of fish. The getting-stuck-in-a-hole is motif 50 in the Aarne-Thompson Classification and is called Curing a sick lion. The bear and the honey is motif 49 except that the Roman de Renart’s Brun (Bruin) the bear gets stuck (coincé) in a log and not in a hole.[ii]

the Fox Who Played Dead: Æsop, Abstemius and Renart the Fox

Dr Laura Gibbs[iii] tells us about a fable entitled The Dog and the Fox who Played Dead by Æsop, but based on Abstemius (149). A fox played dead so he could catch birds. The fox “rolled in the mud and stretched out in a field.” However, a dog comes by and mangles the fox, which puts an end to the otherwise deadly ruse.

In the Roman de Renart, the fox entices Tiécelin, the corbeau (the crow), to sing and thus lose the cheese he has stolen. However, before taking the cheese, the fox makes believe he is wounded and when he tries to eat Tiécelin, all he succeeds in grabbing are a few feathers. Both stories are identical except for the presence of a dog in Æsop and Abstemius.

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So, in Æsop the make-believe is stopped by a dog, but the in the Roman de Renart, the make-believe is not carried out to the point of playing dead. However, Tiécelin has a name which suggests that he is a human in disguise, the chief device of animals in literature. In both fables, the fox says he fully deserves to have lost the bird, and the cheese. In Laura Gibbs’ version of The Dog and the Fox who Played Dead, the fox says “This is just what I deserve: while I was trying to catch the birds using my tricks, someone else has caught me.” The same is true of Renart. One has the impression that the fox knows how clever he is and that he can therefore afford to lose.

In the Medieval Bestiary, we read that

“the fox is a crafty and deceitful animal that never runs in a straight line, but only in circles. When it wants to catch birds to eat, the fox rolls in red mud so that it appears to be covered in blood. It then lies apparently lifeless; birds, deceived by the appearance of blood and thinking the fox to be dead, land on it and are immediately devoured.The most famous fox of the Middle Ages was Reynard, the trickster hero of the Romance of Reynard the Fox.”

In fact,

[t]he fox represents the devil, who pretends to be dead to those who retain their worldly ways, and only reveals himself when he has them in his jaws. To those with perfect faith, the devil is truly dead.

Playing dead (faire le mort) is a common ruse illustrated here using two examples from the Roman de Renart and a closely related example from Æsop. If we were to trace back Renart’s ruses, they would take us to the Pañcatantra. The structure of the Roman de Renart is a frame story, stories within a story, which is also the case with the Sanskrit Pañcatantraand its Arabic rendition, Ibn al Muqaffa’s Kalīlah wa-Dimnah.

However, the Roman de Renart is a fabliau.  The Pañcatantra and Kalīlah wa-Dimnah do not possess the scurrilous and at times scatological aspect of French fabliaux.[iv]  Moreover, if ancient beast epics and fables are used in the education of the prince, it would seem our ancient prince did not live in the albeit comical but ruthless world, the various European countries Reynard the Fox inhabits. We accept his cruel misdeeds because his tricks do not seem to hurt.One is reminded of the comic strips steamroller flattening a cat who always fluffs up again. I am using a comparison taken from Jill Mann[v] in Kenneth Varty,[vi] ed. Introduction, Reynard the Fox: Social Engagement and Cultural Metamorphoses in the Beast Epic from the Middle Ages to the Present (New York & Oxford: Bergham Books, 2000).

Conclusion

The comic text is a “self-redeeming” (the term is mine) by virtue of a powerful convention, the “all’s well that ends well.” But beast epics and fables are also a nītiśāstra. In other words, they are, by vocation and convention, cushioned advice for the “wise” conduct of a prince’s life. According to Franklin Edgerton (1924), “[t]he 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.”[vii] As I indicated in an earlier post, Edgerton may be a little severe regarding the morality of the Panchatantra, but, were we to apply his comments to Reynard the Fox, they would not be altogether inappropriate. Renart is a scoundrel.

In closing, I will also point out that the playing-dead motif is particularly important in that playing dead is a real-life option. This particular motif is very much about the “wise” conduct of a prince. For instance, laying low while the country regrouped probably came to the mind of American leaders on 9/11.

Fortunately, when all is said and done, a fox is a fox is a fox.

RELATED ARTICLES

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[i] Aarne-Thompson Motif-Index
[ii] Also see: Aarne-Thompson Classification System
[iv] With respect to fabliaux, you may wish to look at the Geoffrey Chaucer site.
Also see: Jill Mann, Feminizing Chaucer, Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2002.
[v] Jill Mann, The Satiric Fiction of the Ysengrimus, in Varty, p. 1.  Jill Mann has translated into English Nivardus of Ghent’s entire Ysengrimus.
[vi] Kenneth Varty, ed. Introduction, Reynard the Fox: Social Engagement and Cultural Metamorphoses in the Beast Epic from the Middle Ages to the Present (New York & Oxford: Bergham Books, 2000).
[vii] (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.)
Reineke Fuchs

Reineke Fuchs

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19 April 2013
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“To Inform or Delight”

29 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by in Art, Literature

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untitled
— 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 worldly form of wisdom. Personally, I do not think that one precludes the other. They are simply different strands 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 following site: Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), http://classes.bnf.fr/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 for 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.)
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   — 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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Beauty and the Beast

11 Friday Nov 2011

Posted by in Fairy Tales, Metamorphosis

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La Belle et la Bête, by Anne Anderson

La Belle et la Bête by Anne Anderson (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Anne Anderson, illustrator (1874 – 1930)

Many men are more truly beasts than you. A good heart and an ugly face are better than a fair face and a rotten heart.

In 1757, Mme Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont (26 April 1711 – 8 September 1780) translated and published Beauty and the Beast.

Beauty and the Beast is my favourite fairy tale because beast is transformed into a prince by a beautiful woman who sees beauty beneath a beastly form. Being recognized as handsome and being loved by a woman despite his monstrous appearance is the only way Beast can escape the curse that has turned him into a truly ugly animal.

As the story goes, during a snowy night, Beauty’s father, an impoverished trader, gets lost in a forest where, to his astonishment, he finds a castle. It is a beautiful castle. On the table, there is a meal and logs are burning in a fireplace. Moreover, a bed awaits him in a lovely room and, upon waking, Beauty’s father finds clean clothes and a good breakfast. Obviously, the trader’s host is a generous person.

However, after meeting Beast, matters change. The former trader’s horse is saddled and awaits the lost father, but he picks up a rose for his daughter, as she has asked. Beast is furious and tells Beauty’s father to return three months later, when he will kill him. The father is also told that if he does not come back, one of his three daughters will die in his place. Yet, Beast gives him a trunk filled with gold, which is surprising.

This is a fairy tale, so the number three is again used. The trader lives on a little farm and has three daughters and three sons. Beauty is the youngest and the most beautiful of the three daughters. Unlike her jealous sisters, she is also kind and compassionate.

When three months have elapsed, the trader is ready to return to the castle and die, but Beauty manages to convince her father to let her go in his place.

Beast does not kill Beauty upon her arrival at the castle. In fact, she finds that he has given her an apartment: “Beauty’s apartment.” This is also surprising. The apartment contains many books and a grand piano. At night, she and Beast have supper together and, after a while, he start asking her to marry him. But she keeps refusing.

One day, her mirror tells her that her father is ill. She asks Beast to let her visit with her ailing father. She promises to return. Beast, who was supposed to kill her, is devastated, but he lets her go and provides her with a ring that will allow her to find herself in the castle the morning after she puts it on. There is magic in this fairy tale, as is usually the case.

Beauty is away from the castle for more than a week, so when she returns, Beast is dying. She asks him to live and tells him she loves him and will marry him. She unknowingly lifts the curse that has transformed a prince into Beast. Beast is again a beautiful prince.

According to the Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales (pp. 45-49), this tale is related, in plot, to Apuleius’s c. 125 – c. 180) “Cupid and Psyche,” an inner fable within Apuleius Golden Ass, the outer fable. In motif, it is also related to the ancient Pañchatantra tale “The Girl who Married a Snake.” So now you know why I blogged on “Cupid and Psyche.” Versions of this fairy tale were also written by Straparola (c. 1480 – c. 1557) and Basile (c. 1575 – 23 February 1632), whom you know.

In 1946, Jean Cocteau (5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963), a poet, novelist, playwright, etc. made a film based on Beauty and the Beast. Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête is still considered one of the finest films in its genre, fantasy.

Resources

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“Every evening he paid her a visit.”
Beauty and the Beast
(Photo credit: Gutenberg, eBook #31431)
William Heath Robinson, illustrator (1872 – 1944)

© Micheline Walker
11 November 2011
WordPress

Reynard the Fox: the Trickster

22 Saturday Oct 2011

Posted by in Beast Literature

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A studious fox in a monk’s cowl, in the margins of a Book of Hours, Utrecht, c. 1460
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Sources: the Sick Lion tale

The fox is beast literature’s foremost trickster and, as we will see below (Townsend), he is a stock character, much as commedia dell’arte characters: the jealous, the boastful, tricksters, etc. As a trickster, he is as cunning as Machiavelli would want his prince to be.

In Western European literature, we find him first in the

  • Ecbasis Captivi, an anonymous Latin poem, written in verse, hexameters, which can be described as a fable (Innerfabel) within a fable (Außerfabel).[1] The Ecbasis Captivi contains the Sick Lion tale. We also find him, i.e. the fox, in Paul Diacre’s or Paul the Deacon’s;
  • Ægrum fama fuit (Paul the Deacon), FR a Carolingian (under King Charlemagne) text that also comprises the Sick Lion tale. The Ecbasis captivi and the Ægrum fama fuit culminate in Nivardus of Ghent’s
  • Ysengrimus (c. 1150), the birthplace of Reinardus who soon becomes Renart in the early “branches” of Pierre de Saint-Cloud’s
  • Roman de Renart (c. 1170). Other authors will write further “branches” or episodes of Le Roman de Renart.

However, the trickster as archetype is as ancient as the Sanskrit Pañcatantra and Persian scholar Abdulla Ibn al-Muquaffa’s Arabic rendition of the Pañcatantra, Kalīlah wa Dimna. In Kalīlah wa Dimna, a sage, Dr Pidpai or Pilpay, gives advice to King Dabscheleim.  The Tales of Kalīlah and Dimna have been translated by Ramsay Wood. In these ancient texts, the trickster figure, or archetype, is a jackal.

Anthropomorphism, or a fox is a fox is a fox

What is most important with respect to beast epics and fables, beast literature’s main genres, is the concept of anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphic animals are humans in disguise and therefore inhabit a comic discourse where the formulaic “all’s well that ends well,” makes comedy’s traditional marriage possible.Whatever the obstacles, in comedy, the young couple marries.

Similarly, in beast literature talking animals are animals. So, given that real animals do not talk, this allows the author to write the truth with impunity.The lion may be a king, but the King, vanity forbids, is not a lion.

There also exist zoomorphic animals who, like the Centaur we met in Chapter XVIII of Machiavelli’s sixteenth-century’s The Prince are half beast and half human, which the prince should be, given the corrupt world in which he lives. Like the Centaur, angels are zoomorphic. Zoomorphic creatures may also combine features borrowed from several animals. They are not anthropomorphic, or humans in disguise. In fact, they are not talking animals.

Renart is a talking animal, and talking animals protect authors because animals do not talk despite considerable eloquence, particularly in the case of Reynard. Reynard’s barat, or clever talkativeness, can pull him out of the worst possible circumstances. As we will see, the fox can talk himself out of raping and, thereby escapes the gallows. A modern example of anthropomorphism in literature is George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

Also central to beast literature are the archetypes. The trickster is an archetype. In his Preface to Æsop’s Fables, George Fyler Townsend states that “[t]he introduction [in fables] of the animals or fictitious characters should be marked with an unexceptionable care and attention to their natural attributes, and to the qualities attributed to them by universal popular consent. The Fox should be always cunning, the Hare timid, the Lion bold, the Wolf cruel, the Bull strong, the Horse proud, and the Ass patient.” This statement reflects an anthropomorphic vision of animals and expresses literary conventions (archetypes: ‘by universal consent.’)

The Sick Lion tale

In my favourite version of this tale, not a Æsopic fable, the Fox overhears the Wolf tell the Lion, already a king, that the fox has been remiss in not visiting the sick lion. So the fox goes looking for old shoes and returns to the lion’s den. He tells the Lion-King that he has travelled the world in search of a cure to the king’s illness and that he has the worn shoes to prove he has not only travelled in search of a cure, but that he has also found it. To get better, the King must wrap himself inside the skin of a wolf whose characteristics are those of the future Isengrim, the wolf on whom Renart will play all kinds of tricks.

 —ooo—

There is so much more to tell about Reynard, but now that we have the founding story, we can tell more. However, I should mention that Renart is a traveller. He is born in Ghent, migrates to France, goes to the Low Countries (Van den Vos Reinaerde) and then to Germany. He is Goethe’s Reinecke Fuchs (c. 1794) DE.

But I will close by emphasizing the popularity of the Roman de Renart. In French, a fox used to be called a goupil, so Renart was a goupil. However, le goupil became le renard (spelled with a ‘d’). Everyone knew Renart, the literary Renart.

—ooo—

[1] Jean Batany, Scène et coulisses du « Roman de Renart » (Paris : Sedes, 1989), p. 57.