He also laments about the lack of vocabulary in western languages for Sanskrit words like niti. In the introduction of his work ( The Panchatantra: Purnabhadra’s Recension of 1199 CE) he said, “The Panchatantra is a niti-shastra, or textbook of niti”. Indologist Johannes Hertel, in his work The Panchatantra – Text of Purnabhadra (1912), traces the origins of the text to Kashmir.Īrthur William Ryder, a Sanskrit professor at University of California, Berkeley also translated Panchatantra in English from the 12th century manuscript of Purnabhadra. Not much is known about the place of origin of the book. Not many people might know, but the Panchatantra was compiled as a teaching manual for young princes by Vishnu Sharma, at the age of 80 years. The talking lion in The Chronicles of Narnia, an entire jungle full of talking animals in the Ice Age and of course the talking pigs of Animal Farm. The anthropomorphism of Panchatantra strikes a chord of similarity with many modern works. The use of animals, who talk, think and act like humans is a clever play to relate the acts and nature of humans to that of animals. Panchatantra uses metaphors and substitutes to tell a story.
