2023-03-04 05:47:32 by suhasm
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3
Nothing is known which connects it definitely with any parti-
cular locality. There are one or two straws which seem to point
to Southern India as its home, but they are hardly conclusive.
There is no basis whatever for the theory advanced by a German
scholar, J. Hertel, that it was composed in Kashmir.
The general character of the Pañcatantra is so familiar to
the reading public of India that I consider it unnecessary to de-
scribe it. I shall, however, devote a few paragraphs to its history,
which is perhaps less well-known.
Few books in the literature of the world have enjoyed such
great popularity over so wide an area. It has penetrated practi-
cally all the literatures of Europe and Southern and Western
Asia. It is known to exist in over 200 versions and translations,
in about 650 different languages and dialects, spreading from Java
on the south-cast to Iceland on the north-west.* This unexampled
popularity may itself be considered a tribute to the genius of the
work.
Let us, by way of illustration, trace a few of these lines of
descent.
In the 6th century of our era, under the famous Persian King
Khusrau Anusherwan, lived a physician named Burzoe, who
travelled in India and brought home with him about 550 A.D. a
translation into his own language, Pahlavi, of some Indian stories,
which he had prepared with the help of Indian pandits. The
first and major part of his work consisted of a version of the Panca-
tantra. The Sanskrit text used by Burzoe already differed from
7
Nothing is known which connects it definitely with any parti-
cular locality. There are one or two straws which seem to point
to Southern India as its home, but they are hardly conclusive.
There is no basis whatever for the theory advanced by a German
scholar, J. Hertel, that it was composed in Kashmir.
The general character of the Pañcatantra is so familiar to
the reading public of India that I consider it unnecessary to de-
scribe it. I shall, however, devote a few paragraphs to its history,
which is perhaps less well-known.
Few books in the literature of the world have enjoyed such
great popularity over so wide an area. It has penetrated practi-
cally all the literatures of Europe and Southern and Western
Asia. It is known to exist in over 200 versions and translations,
in about 650 different languages and dialects, spreading from Java
on the south-cast to Iceland on the north-west.* This unexampled
popularity may itself be considered a tribute to the genius of the
work.
Let us, by way of illustration, trace a few of these lines of
descent.
In the 6th century of our era, under the famous Persian King
Khusrau Anusherwan, lived a physician named Burzoe, who
travelled in India and brought home with him about 550 A.D. a
translation into his own language, Pahlavi, of some Indian stories,
which he had prepared with the help of Indian pandits. The
first and major part of his work consisted of a version of the Panca-
tantra. The Sanskrit text used by Burzoe already differed from
7