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Tag Archives: The Panchatantra

La Fontaine’s “The Dog that dropped the Substance for the Shadow”

10 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, Fables

≈ Comments Off on La Fontaine’s “The Dog that dropped the Substance for the Shadow”

Tags

Aesop's Fables, an Hitopadesha - the Conduct of Kings, David Badke, Eastern tradition, Emblems, Ibn al-Muqaffa, John Lydgate, Kalīla and Dimna, La Fontaine, The Dog and Its Reflection, The Panchatantra, Western tradition

800px-Dog_and_reflection_kalila_and_dimna

The Dog and Its Reflection,  Arthur Rackham, illustration

The Dog and Its Reflection,
Arthur Rackham, illustrator (Gutenberg [EB #11339]

“The Dog that dropped the Substance for the Shadow” is an Æsopic fables. It is #133 in the Perry Index where it is entitled “The Dog and Its Image,” or “The Dog and Its Reflection.” We can trace it back to Phædrus and Babrius who committed to paper fables Æsop had told. Phædrus wrote in Latin and Babrius, in Greek. Later fabulists, European or Western, drew their subject matter from these two sources.

There also existed an Eastern tradition of the same fables. According to the foreword, or avertissement, of a seventeenth-century French translation of Les Fables de Pilpay, Æsop, if there ever was an Æsop, seems to have lived in Greece, but was from the Levant.

les Grecs ont suivi les Orientaux; Je dis ‘suivi,’ puisque les Grecs confessent eux-mêmes qu’ils ont appris cette sorte d’érudition d’Esope, qui estoit Levantin.

“[T]he Greeks followed the Orientals; I say ‘follow,’ because the Greek themselves confess that they acquired this sort of knowledge [cette sorte d’érudition] from Æsop, who was from the Levant (Levantin). (See Les Fables de Pilpay philosophe indien, ou la conduite des roys, the Avertissement, p. 10 approximately). It is an online Google book. Pilpay is the story-teller in Vishnu Sharma‘s Sanskrit Panchatantra.

According to one source, L’Astrée, a lenghty seventeenth-century pastoral novel, written by Honoré d’Urfé‘s (11 February 1568 – 1 June 1625), contains the following sentence: « Ce ne sont, dit Hylas, que les esprits peu sages qui courent après l’ombre du bien, et laissent le bien même. » (Hylas said that only silly minds run after the shadow of a possession leaving behind the possession itself). (See lafontainet.net.)

When Jean de La Fontaine (8 July 1621 – 13 April 1695) chose to rewrite an Æsopic fable, he often used a translation into Latin by Névelet, Mythologia Æsopica Isaaci Nicolai Neveleti, Francfort, 1610. (See lafontaine.net.)

Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 3630, Folio 81r The Medieval Bestiary

Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 3630, Folio 81r 
The Medieval Bestiary [i]

Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 14429, Folio 112v

Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 14429, Folio 112v, The Medieval Bestiary

Sources: East and West

West: Phædrus & Babrius
East: The Panchatantra (India), Kalīlah wa Dimna (various)
 

Given that this post features La Fontaine’s fable, I used the Musée de La Fontaine‘s
translation. However, Æsop ‘s version of this fable is told in the Project Gutenberg’s [EB #11339] (V. S. Vernon Jones, trans., G. K. Chesterton, intro, and Arthur Rackham, ill.).

In all likelihood, Vernon Jones used Phædrus (Latin) or Babrius (Greek) as his source. He may also have used another re-teller’s translation of Phædrus and Babrius, the Western tradition.

However, Æsop also told fables belonging to a parallel Oriental tradition. “The Dog that dropped the Substance for the Shadow” was retold in Arabic by Persian Muslim scholar Ibn al-Muqaffa’. His translation is entitled Kalīlah wa Dimna and dates back to 750 CE. Ibn al-Muqaffa’ used Borzōē‘s or Borzūya‘s Pahlavi‘s translation of the Sanskrit Panchatantra, 3rd century BCE, by Vishnu Sharma. (See Panchatantra – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.) The Panchatantra is an online publication. (See Internet Archives.)

The Oral vs the Learned Tradition: literacy

It is therefore possible, perhaps probable, that Æsop, a story-teller whose fables were transmitted to Western Europe, used fables originating in an Eastern and “learned” tradition. The Eastern tradition may have been a “learned” tradition, i.e. written down fables, but the fables, animal fables, were told to people who may not have been able to read or write. Literacy is a key factor in the transmission of fables or tales. It would be my opinion that La Fontaine’s source, Névelet or Neveleti, used Phædrus or Phædrus
retold by other fabulists who may have borrowed elements from Babrius.

A “Learned” Eastern Tradition

In other words, Æsop’s fables were probably transmitted to Western fabulists by Phædus and Babrius, but there is an eastern tradition, a parallel. When La Fontaine wrote his second collection (recueil) of fables, published in 1678, he had read G. Gaulmin’s Livre des lumières ou la conduite des roys (1644) (The Book of Lights or the Conduct of Kings). This book contains Pilpay’s fables. (See Panchatantra, Wikipedia.)

“A New Persian version from the 12th century became known as Kalīleh o Demneh  and this was the basis of Kashefi’s 15th century Anvār-e Soheylī (Persian: The Lights of Canopus). The book in different form is also known as The Fables of Bidpaï (or Pilpai, in various European languages) or The Morall Philosophie of Doni (English, 1570).” (See Panchatantra, Wikipedia)

Our fable is number 17 in La Fontaine’s sixth book of fables, published in 1668 (VI.17). It was written before La Fontaine read Le Livre des lumières, 1644, the fables of Bidpaï.

The Fables of Pilpay or Bidpaï

Le Livre des lumières = Fables de Pilpay
Hitopadesha: the conduct of kings
Æsop was from the Levant
 

Le Livre des lumières is a Google Book. By following the link Livre des lumières, one can see that the stories of Pilpay or Bidpaï, the story-teller in the Panchatantra or Pañcatantra (3rd BCE, perhaps earlier) are also used to teach a prince the conduct of kings. “The Panchatantra is a niti-shastra, or textbook of the niti. The word niti means roughly ‘the wise conduct of life’.” (The Panchatantra, Translator’s Introduction, p. 5).

The Panchatantra inspired a separate Hitopadesha, fables used to prepare a prince for his royal duties. As its title indicates, directions on the conduct of kings are included in the online Les Fables de Pilpay philosophe indien, ou la conduite des roys. 

La Fontaine’s fable reads as follows:

The Dog that dropped the Substance for the Shadow

This world is full of shadow-chasers,
Most easily deceived.
Should I enumerate these racers,
I should not be believed.
I send them all to Aesop’s dog,
Which, crossing water on a log,
Espied the meat he bore, below;
To seize its image, let it go;
Plunged in; to reach the shore was glad,
With neither what he hoped, nor what he’d had.
 

« Le Chien qui lâche sa proie pour l’ombre » 

Chacun se trompe ici-bas.
On voit courir après l’ombre
Tant de fous, qu’on n’en sait pas
La plupart du temps le nombre.
 
Au Chien dont parle Ésope il faut les renvoyer.
Ce Chien, voyant sa proie en l’eau représentée,
La quitta pour l’image, et pensa se noyer ;
La rivière devint tout d’un coup agitée.
À toute peine il regagna les bords,
Et n’eut ni l’ombre ni le corps.
(VI.17)
 

Æsop’s “The Dog and the Shadow”

A Dog was crossing a plank bridge over a stream with a piece of meat in his mouth, when he happened to see his own reflection in the water. He thought it was another dog with a piece of meat twice as big; so he let go his own, and flew at the other dog to get the larger piece. But, of course, all that happened was that he got neither; for one was only a shadow, and the other was carried away by the current. [EB #11339]
 
img188

Kongelige Bibliotek, Gl. kgl. S. 1633 4º, Folio 18r The Medieval Bestiary

I have not found “The Dog and its Reflection,” in Les Fables de Pilpay, but Bidpaï wrote a similar story entitled “The Fox and a Piece of Meat.” However, “The Dog and its Reflection” is included in the Arabic Kalīlah wa Dimna.

“The Dog and its Reflection” was incorporated in the 12th-century Aberdeen Bestiary, an illuminated manuscript. (See The Medieval Bestiary, scroll down to Æsop’s Fables.)

In Britain, John Lydgate told this story in his Isopes Fabules. His moral was that “Who all coveteth, oft he loseth all.” The fable is also part of Geoffrey Whitney‘s (c. 1548 – c. 1601) Choice of Emblemes.[ii] Whitney’s moral is “to make use of moderate possessions,”
Mediocribus utere partis. This story was told by several fabulists in many countries. (See The Dog and Its Reflection, Wikipedia.)

In La Fontaine’s “Le Chien qui lâche sa proie pour l’ombre,” the moral precedes the example (it usually follows the fable) and seems to differ from the moral provided by other fabulists. La Fontaine warns that one should not be deceived by appearances, a common moral in seventeenth-century France. However, La Fontaine ends his fable by writing that the dog reached the shore “[w]ith neither what he hoped, nor what he’d had.”

Conclusion

We tell the same stories, east and west, but terrorists in the Levant are killing innocent American journalists. I still hope for a diplomatic resolution to the current conflict. Further bloodshed is not necessary. President Obama is a man of peace, so I am confident that he will do what has to be done.

The oak tree is felled by a terrible wind, but the reed bends and survives.

However, that man who beheaded James Foley and Steven Sotloff in cold blood is a criminal.

RELATED ARTICLE

  • La Fontaine’s Fables Compiled & Walter Crane, 2nd Edition (2 September 2014)
  •  “Le Chêne et le Roseau” (The Oak Tree and the Reed): the Moral (28 March 2013)

Sources and Resources

  • Digital Books Index
  • The Medieval Bestiary (David Badke)
  • D. L. Ashliman:  Folklore and Mythology Electronic Text
  • Wikipedia: La Fontaine’s Fables (list and links)
  • The Baldwin Project: The Dog and Its Image
  • lafontainet.net
  • the Panchatantra is an online publication for children. EN
  • the Panchatantra is an Internet Archives publication. EN
  • Les Fables de Pilpay philosophe indien, ou la conduite des roys (Google book) FR
  • Wikipedia – the free encyclopedia: The Dog and Its Reflection
  • Wikipedia – the free encyclopedia: John Lydgate (c. 1370 – c. 1451)
  • Wikipedia – the free encyclopedia: Geoffrey Whitney (c. 1548 – c. 1601)
  • Emblems: see Emblem Book
  • Geoffrey Whitney’s Book of Emblemes.
  • Fables in Rhyme for Little Folks, From the French of La Fontaine
    by W. T. Larned, Illustrated by John Rae
    Project Gutenberg [EBook #24108] 
  • Robert Deryck Williams, “Virgil.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 09 Sep. 2014. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/629832/Virgil>.
____________________
 
[i] David Badke, The Medieval Bestiary, Web
 
[ii] Whitney’s Choice of Emblemes, 39 (online: Choice of Emblemes (Google book)
 
Henry Purcell: Ground in C Minor; Hanneke van Proosdij, harpsichord – YouTube 
 CHIEN-QUI-LACHE-SA-PROIE-PO
© Micheline Walker
10 September 2014
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The Mouse Metamorphosed into a Maid, by Jean de La Fontaine (IX.7)

30 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Fables, Literature

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Bidpai, D. L. Ashliman, Horace, Jean de La Fontaine, Le Livre des lumières, metamorphosis, metempsychosis, Nature will out, The Panchatantra, The Soul of Animals

RP496_1L
The Cat Metamorphosed into a Woman, by Arthur Rackham
 
(Photo credit: The Project Gutenberg [EBook #11339]) 
Aarne-Thompson (Aarne-Thomson-Uther) type 2031C.
 
Aesop’s Fables: Venus and the Cat (The Project Gutenberg [EBook #11339])
Fables d’Ésope: La Chatte et Aphrodite 
La Fontaine: La Chatte métamorphosée en femme (II.18)
La Fontaine: The Cat Metamorphosed into a Woman (II.18)
La Fontaine: La Souris métamorphosée en fille (IX.7)
La Fontaine: The Mouse Metamorphosed into a Maid (IX.7)
 

La Souris métamorphosée en fille

La Fontaine’s First Collection of Fables (1668)

Jean de La Fontaine‘s Cat Metamorphosed into a Woman (II.18) belongs to the second of six books of fables he published in 1668. As we have seen, it is a Aesopic fable. However, La Fontaine’s immediate source was Névelet’s 1610 Latin edition of Aesop’s Fables, the Mythologia Æsopica Isaaci Nicolai Neveleti (Frankfurt, 1610) where the same fable, by Aesop, is entitled Venus and the Cat. The moral of The Cat Metamorphosed into a Woman is Horatian:

The Delights of Nature (Horace, Epistles, Book I. x, lines 1-25)
Drive Nature off with a pitchfork, she’ll still press back,
And secretly burst in triumph through your sad disdain.
(lines 24-25) 
or 
Limit your desires (Horace, Epistles, Book I, ii, lines 55-71)
A jar will long retain the odor of what it was
Dipped in when new.
(lines 69-70)
 

La Fontaine’s Second Collection of Fables (1678)

In Book IX:vii of his second volume of fables (1678), Jean de La Fontaine published La Souris métamorphosée en fille (The Mouse Metamorphosed into a Maid). The Mouse Metamorphosed into a Maid is not rooted in the Aesopic corpus, but finds its origin in the Panchatantra (3rd century BCE, or earlier), where it is entitled The Mouse Turned into a Maid or The Transformed Mouse Seeks a Bridegroom.

SOURIS-METAMORPHOSEE

La Souris métamorphosée en fille

ne, he drew his fable[i] from Le Livre des lumières ou la conduite des roys (The Book of Enlightenment or the Conduct of Kings), published in 1644 by Gilbert Gaulmin (1585-1665) who used a pseudonym. He called himself David Sahid d’Ispahan. Le Livre des lumières ou la conduite des roys contains fables by storyteller Bidpai or Pilpay (FR), the storyteller featured in both the Sanskrit Panchatantra, by Vishnu Sharma, and its Arabic version, Kalīlah wa-Dimnah, written by Persian scholar Ibn Al-Muqaffa’. The Panchatantra was well-known and it migrated to both Eastern and Western countries. According to Edgerton (1924), who translated the Panchatantra into English,

…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.
(See Panchatantra, Wikipedia.)
 

Although both The Cat Metamorphosed into a Woman (II.xviii) and The Mouse Metamorphosed into a Maid feature a metamorphosis gone awry. Yet, not only are their source different, but so are their narratives. La Fontaine’s La Souris métamorphosée en fille (The Mouse Metamorphosed into a Maid) is a rather long fable. One may read it in full by clicking on the title on the fable. However, I will provide a summary.

A mouse falls from an owl’s mouth. The storyteller does not pick her up, but a Brahmin does and this Brahmin knows a sorcerer. The sorcerer transforms our mouse into a Maid. She grows up as a maid, but when she turns fifteen and time has come for her to marry, the Brahmin seeks a husband for her. Suddenly problems arise. The girl wants a powerful husband but she is rejected by the son of Priam, the Sun, a Cloud, the Wind, and a Mountain. However, our lovely maid is not disappointed because she herself is not interested in the suitors who have rejected her. She finally expresses a degree of satisfaction when she hears the word “rat.”  The rat rejects her as do a cat, a dog, a wolf… The sorcerer reappears, nearly fifteen years later, and states that one chooses a mate among one’s kind and one’s kind share the same soul. Consequently, metempsychosis, the migration of a soul, is not possible. In other words, as is the case in The Cat Metamorphosed into a Woman, although the mouse has grown into a beautiful girl, her human form is skin-deep. She has the soul of a mouse, not that of a human being.
 

La Fontaine does not tell us what happens to the mouse metamorphosed into a maid (she is turned back into a mouse), but here is his moral:

In all respects, compared and weighed,
The souls of men and souls of mice
Quite different are made,
Unlike in sort as well as size.
Each fits and fills its destined part
As Heaven does well provide;
Nor witch, nor fiend, nor magic art,
Can set their laws aside.
La Fontaine (IX.vii)
 
Parlez au diable, employez la magie,
Vous ne détournerez nul être de sa fin [destined part].
La Fontaine (IX.vii)
 

As mentioned above, The Mouse Metamorphosed into a Maid is rooted in the Panchatantra and its Arabic version, Kalīlah wa-Dimnah. It has the same moral as The Cat Metamorphosed into a Woman: “Nature will out.” But its narrative differs, to a greater than lesser extent, from that of The Cat Metamorphosed into a Woman (II.xviii). Finally, both are listed as Aarne-Thompson type 2031C. However, Professor D. L. Ashliman does not include La Fontaine’s two fables in his list of “cumulative tales.”

Aarne-Thompson or Aarne-Thompson-Uther types 2000-2100 are all cumulative or chain tales. As indicated above, when writing The Mouse Metamorphosed into a Maid, La Fontaine drew his material from the Sanskrit The Mouse Turned into a Maid or The Transformed Mouse Seeks a Bridegroom, which is a cumulative tale and is listed under: Chains Involving Other Events 2029-2075. According to D. L. Ashliman, The Mouse Turned into a Maid or The Transformed Mouse Seeks a Bridegroom (The Panchatantra, India) shares affinities with the following stories or narratives:[ii]

The Husband of the Rat’s Daughter or The Rats and Their Daughter (Japan)
A Bridegroom for Miss Mole (Korea)
The Story of the Rat and Her Journey to God (Romania)
The Most Powerful Husband in the World (France and French North Africa)
 

Conclusion

Reason vs Instinct

La Fontaine’s moral is very clever. He does not deny that animals have a soul, but he states clearly that animals have a soul, but that it is a soul of their own.

The souls of men and souls of mice
Quite different are made[.]
 

The Primacy of Reason challenged

The primacy of reason was challenged almost as soon as René Descartes published his Discourse on Method (Discours de la méthode) in 1637.[iii] According to Descartes, animals function much as clocks do. They were looked upon as machines. But, Blaise Pascal (19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) argued that humans are endowed with both reason and instincts: Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point. (Les Pensées, published posthumously). Instincts are a characteristic humans share with animals, yet it was Pascal’s conviction that reason needed the support of instincts or le coeur, the heart: c’est sur ces connaissances du coeur et de l’instinct qu’il faut que la raison s’appuie (reason must lean on knowledge gleaned from the heart and instinct). See Pierre Magnard. In my opinion, such was also La Fontaine’s view. I have written a post on this subject: The Two Rats, Fox and Egg: The Soul of Animals.

So two little fables about a cat and a mouse transformed into a woman or girl contain the wisdom of their century as does The Two Rats, Fox and Egg: The Soul of Animals. Moreover, both the The Cat Metamorphosed into a Woman and The Mouse Metamorphosed into a Maid deny metempsychosis by featuring an attempted and partly successful metamorphism or metempsychosis.

From Mouse to Mouse

Ironically, the sorcerer is the character who says that sorcery does not work fully, which is contrary to his transforming the mouse into a maid. The structure of this fable therefore resembles that of The Cat Metamorphosed into a Woman (II.xviii) and Venus and the Cat. So the moral of La Fontaine’s The Mouse Metamorphosed into a Maid is expressed not only in words, but through form.

The very thing the wizard did
Its falsity exposes
If that indeed were ever hid.
 

In other words, the story or narrative could be summed up in a short phrase. It is “from mouse to mouse” as it is “from ashes to ashes.” As powerful as he was, Louis XIV could no more escape death than the humblest of his nation’s impoverished peasants: memento mori.

______________________________
[i] He acknowledged he did, see Bidpai (Wikipedia). 
[ii] Different folktales may have the same title and the same folktale may have different tiles. Moreover, a folktale (fables, fairy tales, etc.) may belong to more than one AT type. Finally, various animals can play the same role. That role is then called a function.
[iii] The Discours de la méthode (1637) is The Project Gutenberg’s [EBook #13846].
 
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791)
Variations in C Major on the French Song “Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman,” K. 265 
Walter Klien, piano
 
 
nature2Gerbil, by
Jacopo Ligozzi (1547–1627)
Photo Credit: Wikipedia 
 
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July 29, 2013
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Medieval Bestiaries: the Background

22 Friday Feb 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, Illuminated Manuscripts

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Aberdeen Bestiary, Beasts, Book of Kells, British Isles, Insular art, Johannes Gutenberg, Kashefi's Lights of Canopus, La Conduite des Rois, The Panchatantra, Très Riches Heures

 
An illustration from a Syrian edition dated 1354. The rabbit fools the elephant king by showing him the reflection of the moon

The Panchatantra, an illustration from a Syrian edition dated 1354. The rabbit fools the elephant king by showing him the reflection of the moon. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Age of Illuminated Manuscripts

The fall of the Western Roman Empire

The Middle Ages is a period of European History that began in the 5th century CE. On the 4th of September 476, Romulus Augustus, the last Emperor of the Western Roman Empire, was deposed by Odoacer, a Germanic chieftain. The collapse of the Western Roman Empire occurred gradually as nomadic tribes: Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vikings, Vandals, Franks, Gauls, etc. invaded the various regions the Romans had conquered.

The new age, known as the Middle Ages and, pejoratively, as the “dark ages,” would last until the 15th century CE and was not entirely dark. In Western European countries, it was the golden age of illuminated manuscripts, many of which featured fanciful and even mythical beasts and are called bestiaries.

It would appear that Celtic monks were among the first artists to produce illuminated manuscripts, but the movement spread south and reached a pinnacle in the 15th century, in the current Netherlands, then known as the Franco-Flemish or Burgundian lands.

The Fall of the Byzantine Empire and the invention of the printing press

However, a thousand years after the fall of the Roman Empire, in 1453, the Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottoman Turks and, three years earlier, in 1450, the printing press had been invented. These two events changed the course of history. The fall of the Byzantine Empire brought about a rebirth (Renaissance) in European culture and it so happens that Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1395 – 3 February 1468) invented the printing press as the Greek scholars of the Byzantine Empire fled west, first to Italy, carrying precious Greek manuscripts. So the invasion of the Byzantine Empire, by the Ottoman Turks, the last invasion, ushered in a new age. Europe entered its Renaissance (literally: rebirth) and, as it did, works that had been hand copied mostly by monks in the scriptorium of monasteries would henceforth be printed at a rapid rate, putting an end, however, to the long reign of illuminated manuscripts.

The reign of illuminated manuscripts had, indeed, been a long one. The Book of Kells, a Gospel book in Latin, was created by Celtic Monks in c. 800. The Book of Kells is the finest illuminated manuscript belonging to Insular or Hiberno-Saxon art, the art of the British Isles, and predates the Très Riches Heures de Jean de France, Duc de Berry (c. 1412 and 1416), a Book of Hours. Moreover, the Book of Kells had antecedents. It was a pinnacle.

Suleiman in a portrait attributed to Titian c.1530

Süleiman the Magnificent, in a portrait attributed to Titian c. 1530

Titian, Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/1490 – 27 August 1576)

The Printing Press

Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1450. (See Johannes Gutenberg, Wikipedia.) The Pope (1458 – 1464), Pius II (18 October 1405 – 14 August 1464) was delighted because the Bible could be printed quickly and disseminated widely. However, despite the invention of the printing press, illuminated manuscripts had a  period of grace. Between 1450 and 1501, books could be printed, but blank spaces were left so the book could be illuminated. Books printed during this fifty-year period are called “incunables.”

The Aberdeen Bestiary

Medieval Beast Literature: two traditions

But the Aberdeen Bestiary, one of several medieval bestiaries, was not an incunable and it belonged to one of at least two traditions in beast literature and visual arts.  Medieval beast literature includes allegorical bestiaries, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, beast epics and fables originating, to a greater or lesser extent, in India’s Panchatantra, written in the 3rd century BCE, if not earlier. The Panchatantra could belong to a learned tradition stemming from an oral, i.e. unwritten, tradition.

Aberdeen Bestiary, The Beaver

Aberdeen Bestiary, The Beaver (F11r)

The Aberdeen Bestiary: an Allegory

The Aberdeen Bestiary (Aberdeen University Library, Univ Lib. MS 24) is a 12th-century English illuminated manuscript bestiary that was first listed in 1542 in the inventory of the Old Royal Library at the Palace of Westminster. Bestiaries[i] are not Gospel books, nor are they Books of Hours. They are allegories, which means that each beast, plant or stone is a symbol. Britannica defines allegories as “a symbolic fictional narrative.”[ii] For instance, in Western literature, the Unicorn, a fantastical animal, represents Christ and the Phœnix, an immortal bird, represents the resurrection of Christ. Each animal is a symbol.

Reynard the Fox  & Fables

Worldly Wisdom

However, as bestiaries — allegorical texts — flourished, so did various beast epics and fables. As noted above, this tradition is rooted, to a significant extent, in the Sanskrit Pañcatantra, [iii] attributed to Vishnu Sharma, translated into Pahlavi in 570 CE (AD), by Borzūya, and into Arabic, in 750 CE, by Persian scholar Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa. Ibn al-Muqaffa’s translation is entitled Kalīlah wa Dimnah. A 12th-century version became known as Kalīleh o Demneh and would be the basis of Ḥoseyn Wāʿeẓ-e Kāshefī,[iv] or Kāshefī‘s 15th century the Lights of Canopus and The Fables of Bidpai (The Morall Philosophie of Doni [English, 1570]. (See Panchatantra, Wikipedia.)

Bidpai is the storyteller. Moreover, several Æsopic fables and the many versions of Reynard the Fox (Le Roman de Renart FR) are associated with that tradition, but not completely. Æsop (c. 620–564 BCE), if indeed there was an Æsop, did borrow from Bidpai, but he also drew from several other sources. In his second volume of fables, Jean de La Fontaine retold fables by Bidpai. His source was, in all likelihood, Kāshefī’s Lights of Canopus, translated by Gilbert Gaulmin, a pseudonym, and entitled Le Livre des lumières ou La Conduite des Rois (1644). (See Pañcatantra FR, Wikipedia.)

The Education of the Prince

Interestingly, tales stemming from the five books of the Pañcatantra  (pancha: five; tantra: treatises) are, first and foremost, about “the wise conduct of life,” i.e. a nītiśāstra, and, consequently, closer to Machiavelli‘s Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli [3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527]) Prince than to allegorical medieval bestiaries. (See Pañcatantra, Wikipedia.)

Reynard the Fox, first written in the 12th century, is filled with trickster tales and tales pointing to the need to consider the consequences of one’s actions, the moral of countless fables. Fables are moralizing, but in a worldly fashion, as befits stories that will guide a prince. As mentioned above, the Panchatantra, or Pañcatantra, has been linked to Machiavelli’s Prince. Yet,  the Pañcatantra is not unethical, nor, for that matter, is The Prince, if one keeps in mind that the world Machiavelli lived in was factious and that his prince would have to live in that very world. Machiavelli had worked for the Medici family who were bloodthirsty and in whose quest for power “the end justifie[d] the means.”

The Yale, folio 16v

Aberdeen Bestiary, The Yale (F16v)

Animals, Plants and Stones as Symbols

There are, nevertheless, similarities between the allegorical bestiary, where animals are symbols, and beast stories rooted, in part, in the Pañcatantra. In both traditions animals are anthropomorphic. The word anthromorphism is derived from the Greek ánthrōpos, meaning human, and morphē, meaning shape. In other words, literary beast are humans in disguise and, in both traditions, they are also stereotypes. The fox is wily and the phœnix symbolizes the resurrection of Christ.

However, bestiaries differ from Reynard the Fox. In bestiaries, we have zoomorphic animals, or animals that combine human and animal features (satyrs, the Centaur and the Minotaur of Greek mythology) or animals that combine the features of many animals (Pegasus, the winged horse). In other words, our allegorical animals are as fanciful as many of Jacobus de Voragine‘s saints and martyrs. Strictly rather than poetically speaking, there is no St George. Moreover, strictly rather than poetically speaking, there are no unicorns, griffins, or dragons. Yet, fantastic animals, the phœnix, unicorns, griffins, dragons and others, are the denizens of bestiaries and have a reality of their own, a poetical, symbolic reality.

Fanciful or “Fantastic” Animals

Most of the artists who created illuminated bestiaries had never seen the animals they depicted. In fact, historians themselves relied on the reports of travelers, from ancient Greece down to Marco Polo (15 September 1254 – 9 January 1324). The Travels of Marco Polo (Il Milione and Le Livre des merveilles du monde) and the accounts of other travelers no doubt  contained  descriptions of animals, but a picture is worth a thousand words. There is a Marco Polo sheep, but it could be that a traveler described an animal with one horn, not two. That animal might have been a rhinoceros, a real animal, but, short of a picture, our animal could take on characteristics that transformed it into a unicorn, a mythical, or fantastical, animal.

The Physiologus: A Source

Therefore, our artists based their illuminations mostly on descriptions found in books. Their most important source was a 2nd-century CE Greek book entitled the Physiologus. In the Physiologus, the pelican feeds her young with her own blood, the phœnix rises from its own ashes, etc. They were symbols before entering bestiaries. Authors of bestiaries also borrowed from Isidore of Seville‘s (c. 560 – 4 April 636) Etymologiae or Origins. Finally, although they may not have been accurate, there were books on animals written by historians. The main ones are listed in From Bestiaries to… Harry Potter.

Conclusion

I must close, but we have the backdrop. My next post will be on the Aberdeen Bestiary.

Love to everyone. ♥

RELATED ARTICLES

  • Allegorical Illuminated Manuscripts: Medieval Bestiaries (22 February 2013)
  • The Golden Legend Revisited (12 February 2013)
  • From Bestiaries to… Harry Potter (29 October 2011)
 
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[i] bestiary”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 21 Feb. 2013
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/63117/bestiary>.
 
[ii] “allegory”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 19 Feb. 2013
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/16078/allegory>.
 
[iii] “Panchatantra”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 21 Feb. 2013
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/440899/Panchatantra>.
 
[iv] “Hoseyn Wa’ez-e Kashefi”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 25 Feb. 2013
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/312873/Hoseyn-Waez-e-Kashefi>.
 
Kalīlah wa Dimnah 
colophon
 
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21  February 2013
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