Middle Eastern Fables
Just as European authors found inspiration in the fables of Aesop, middle Eastern authors found inspiration in the fables of Bidpai. You may have noticed when you were reading the Indian fables, that the fables were stories within other stories. The fables of Bidpai, translated into Persian and retitled Kalīla wa-Dimna (Kalila and Dimna), likely influenced the later collection of stories known as One Thousand and One Nights. One Thousand and One Nights tells the story of Scheherazade, who herself tells stories to her husband to keep his interest and thereby postpone her promised execution.
Day 1 – Story within a Story
Read the Introductions to an ancient version of Aesop’s Fables by the writer Phaedrus and to the Panchatantra to understand the narrative frame into which the fables of Bidpai have been inserted. In a well-composed sentence, explain first the purpose of Phaedrus’s versification of Aesop’s fables. In a second, well-composed sentence, explain the premise and purpose of the Panchatantra. In a third, well-composed sentence, comment on how putting fables in a narrative context enhances their effects.
Introduction to Phaedrus’s Aesopic Fables
Introduction to the Panchatantra
Day 2 – The fables in Kalila and Dimna are told by Bidpai to a King. Its multitude of prefatory material will only overwhelm here, so let us read its fable about the Monkey and the Tortoise and compare it to its source, the Monkey and the Crocodile in The Panchatantra. How does the version in Kalila and Dimna expand ever further upon the story in the Panchatantra? What are your thoughts on these elaborations? Do they enrich the fable? Or might they detract from the fable? Write three well-composed sentences to express your thoughts.
The Monkey and the Crocodile in the Panchatantra
Kalila and Dimna’s The Monkey and the Tortoise
Day 3 – Reflect some more on the purpose of putting a collection of fables within the frame of a narrative context. Imagine a story that takes place in the present day and a scenario within that story into which the telling of fables could be embedded. When you imagine fables in a present-day scenario, how does it change how you understand the fables? How does a narrative frame connect the fable to the reader? And how do fables help a storyteller to teach a lesson to his audience in the story, and thereby to the reader? Write one sentence in response to each question.
Day 4 – Flesh out a present-day scenario into which you may embed the fable that you will write. Who will tell it? And to whom? And what situation will prompt the need for the moral of your fable? Write this opening scenario in three to five sentences.
Nihil sub sole novum 