The Panchatantra
A king who has given up on his idle sons hands them to a brahmin promising to teach them statecraft in six months, and the teaching is done entirely in animal stories: a lion and a bull pulled apart by a jackal's whispering, the monkey and the crocodile, the mice who gnaw the elephants free. Tales open inside other tales, and the lesson is seldom kindness; it is how to read an ally, a rival and a king. Translated into Pahlavi, then into Arabic as Kalila wa-Dimna, then into Hebrew, Latin and most of the European vernaculars, which makes it the most widely traveled book of stories before printing.
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- 42% · 9 shared