Once upon a time, sitting by the fireside, man told his first story, and built the foundations of his own rule over his world. Stories gave the world shape. They established orders and challenged them, showed man the road to the future and helped him unravel the labyrinths of the past.
Through stories, man trapped the world around him, and bent it to his will. Man knew ... stories were what inspired him, made him stronger, better, wiser. Stories were what made man realize that there was more to life than mere existence. There was something to look up to, something to aim for, somewhere to go ...
From original sanskrit manuscripts to short stories in english, our efforts are dedicated to 'The Panchatantra', the oldest collection of Indian fables surviving.
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The Panchatantra was, in the beginning, a canonical compilation of Sanskrit (Hindu) as well as Pali (Buddhist) animal fables in poetry and prose. The unique Sanskrit text, now long lost, and which some scholars consider was collected in the 3rd century BCE. However, based as it is on older oral civilization, its past history among storytellers probably hark reverse to the origins of language and the subcontinent's most primitive social groupings of hunting and fishing folk gathered around campfires.
The work is an ancient and vigorous multicultural hybrid that to this day continues an erratic process of cross-border mutation and adaptation as modern writers and publishers struggle to fathom, simplify and re-brand its complex origins. It illustrates, for the benefit of princes who may succeed to a throne, the central Hindu principles of Raja Nitti (political science) through an inter-woven series of colorful animal tales. These stories operate like a succession of Russian dolls, one narrative opening within another, sometimes three or four deep, and then unexpectedly snapping shut in irregular rhythms to sustain attention (Story within a story). The short stories presented by us in English, with pictures, are based on the original sanskrit manuscripts of the Panchatantra.
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