Pentateuch*

It is one of the oldest books in the world, antedating the New Testament a couple of centuries, quite as old as Aesop's Fables, which it much resembles. Two thousand and more years ago it was written (some say) in the fastnesses of Kashmir, by whom one cannot know, but surely by a great man, for its stories are retold the world over. Never before has it been completely translated from its original Sanskrit into English.

Its title means "The Five Books," the pentateuch. It is the book of niti, which means roughly, "the wise conduct of life." The tales are of beasts but meant for men, being divided into these sections: "The Loss of Friends," "The Winning of Friends," "Crows and Owls" (treating of peace, war, etc.), "Loss of Gains" (giving counsel for the retention of property) and "Ill-considered Action."

"In the southern country is a city called Maiden's Delight," so runs The Panchatantra's own introduction. The king there had sired three blockheads. Came a Brahman, by name Vishnu-sharman, who offered to submit himself to a certain indignity at the king's hands if within six months he had not enlightened these blockheads and bred in them the higher intelligence. This was agreed and the Brahman it was who told these stories, the blockheads to whom he told them.

It may well be that men today are wise enough. Reverence for antiquity has its limits. But there is consummate shrewdness in some of the things Vishnu-sharman related, putting his epigrams now into tales within tales, now into rimed quotations from religious writ. The translator suggests: "It is as if the animals in some English beast-fable were to justify their actions by quotations from Shakespeare or the Bible:"

Says Victor, the jackal, to Rusty, the lion:

With no stranger share your house;

Leap, the flea, killed Creep, the louse-- The monkey that became fastened in a crevice by the tenderest portions of his anatomy, is a more familiar anecdote:

Death pursues the meddling flunkey:

Note the wedge-extracting monkey.

Other familiar fables are recognized: the rabbit who slew a lion by showing him his rival in a well (on the principle of Aesop's dog-and-bone tale) ; the gluttonous heron that was strangled by a crab; the mice that gnawed elephants free; the bird with the golden dung (goose of golden eggs) ; the ass in the tiger skin. Translator Ryder's performance is best judged by inspection of the neat economy of some of the interlarded jingles:

The elephant is the lion's meat With drops of trickling ichor

sweet; Though lack thereof should come

to pass, The lion does not nibble grass.

Dogs wag their tails and fawn

and roll, Bare mouth and belly, at your

feet.

Bull-elephants show selfesteem, Demand much coaxing ere they eat.

On hours of talk or squabbling

rude, Of physic, barbers, flirting, food,

A gentleman does not intrude.

Indulge no angry, shameless wish

To hurt, unless you can:

The chickpea, hopping up and

down, Will crack no frying pan.

Whatever secrets, good or ill,

Men in their bosoms keep,

Are soon betrayed when they are

drunk Or talking in their sleep.

A crocodile at home Can beat an elephant; But if he goes abroad A dog can make him pant.

A seedy umpire is not very Pleasing to either adversary: Rabbit and partridge teach you

that-- They died, confiding in the cat.

Nonmoral learning is a curse,

A dog's tail, nothing less,

That does not save from flies

and fleas Nor cover nakedness.

No invalid should pilfer fur,

No invalid, rich provender.

No sneezer should become a

thief-- Unless they wish to come to

grief.

*The Panchatantra--Translated by Arthur W. Ryder--University of Chicago Press ($4.00.)