HEN in 1859, the celebrated German

W professor Theodor Benfey published

his translation of the Panchatantra, there began a new period in literary research. For, as a true scholar, Benfey was not content to translate the only printed edition which was then available; but he collected the unfortunately very few MSS. which he was able to procure for his use, and he wrote an introduction to his book, which showed the great importance of Indian narrative literature for the civilized world.

Benfey, after the French scholar Silvestre de Sacy, the first editor of the Arabic version of "Kalilah and Dimnah," was one of those great pioneers in literary research who, from time to time appear to open new ways for future generations; but owing to the very scanty materials which were at his disposal, he could not possibly avoid grave misconceptions in the results he arrived at. These mistakes as well as the splendid results of his work. were at first accepted by the scholars as so many undeniable truths. Later on, doubts arose. Some of the weak points of Benfey's argumentation were recognised and some scholars went so far as to throw overboard also the most important truths which the great Indianist had investigated.

Among the adversaries of Benfey's Benfey's main thesis, that most of the European fairy tales and many other stories, were derived from Indian sources, there is, as far as I can see, only one who can read Sanscrit. But this scholar, who has written a booklet on the influence of Indian tales on other literatures, knows only some of the few printed collections, and nothing at all of the huge mass of the still unpublished manuscripts of Indian story books. The only thing which he really has proved is his ignorance of the matter, he is dealing with. On the other hand the best experts in the field of com

parative story literature, though they do not understand any Indian language, e.g., Johannes Bolte, Emmanuel Cosquin and Victor Chauvin, whose death, which took place some months ago, has been a very great loss to the literary world, as before them those of Reinhold Koehler, and Felix Liebrecht, never doubted the Indian origin of a huge mass of fairy and other tales, current amongst all the peoples of Northern and Western Asia, of Africa and Europe; and as Daohnardt has shown, such stories were even brought Africa to America by Negro slaves. All these scholars not only believed in this main result of Benfey's investigations but they proved its correctness in a very great many of new cases.

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In a previous paper (published in the Jaina Discipline, vide special issue for Divali), the author of these lines has shown, that much Indian influence is even to be found in our Christian scriptures, in the Holy Bible, both in the old and in the New Testaments.

Arabic and Persian literatures teem with Indian stories, and it is a proved fact that the most celebrated Arabic story book, the Arabian Nights, which has been translated into several Indian languages, is in the main of Indian origin.

Throughout the middle ages Christian monks and clergymen used in their sermons a great many stories and parables, which have been handed down to us in many Latin as well as Vernacular books amongst almost all the European Nations, only few of them were aware of the fact that they used Indian stories.

The most celebrated of these story books is the well known book of "Kalilah and Dimnah," translated about 570 A.D., by a Persian physician Burzoe, from the Sanskrit into the Pahlawi language and from this into Syriac by Bud, and about 750 A.D. into Arabic, by Abdullah Ibnal Mokaffa. From Abdullah's translation,

mediately or immediately, flowed all the many translations, which made of it the most universally read book of the West.*

The Indian origin of "Kalilah and Dimnah" was well known long ago. Silvestre de Sacy had given a clear account of the history and the propagation of this work, and other scholars, in the course of the nineteenth century, added many new materials.

was

But on the Indian origin of this highly important work and on the fate which it had in the course of centuries in its own country, there was very little information to be had. The only printed text that of Kosegarten's published in 1848. This text, I am sorry to say, was a most uncritical combination of three very different sources. Bentey, who used this text as his principal source, arrived partly by this fact at several wrong results. As in his time the Jains were regarded in Europe as a Buddhist sect, he ascribed the original Panchatantra to a Buddhist author. The book "Kalilah and Dimnah," he regarded as the faithful translation of only one work, written by one and the same author, whereas it is a collection of several different works. The text published by Kosegarten, according to his opinion, was a revision of the original Buddhist work, made by Brahmans, whose historical and literary consciences, he thought, induced them to rescue from loss this work of their adversaries by rewriting it, leaving out all the chapters which showed hostility towards them and their religion.

The author of the present essay was deeply interested in all these questions. That in very remote times civilization came from Asia to Europe, is a fact which nobody who knows something of history will deny. But this old story book, which at the same time professes to be an Arthashastra or a compendium of statecraft, should make its way from its native country to the farthest nations of the globe, not impeded by the many differences in the creeds and in the moral views and in the languages, and in the popular characters of the multifarious nations to which it came, and amongst which it became for many centu

Whoever wishes to inform himself about this interesting fact will find ample information in the translation of Keith Falconer's introduction to his "Kalilah and Dimnah" (Cambridge University Press, 1885).

Prof. Johannes Hertel.

ries a favourite reading of the cultured as well as of the uncultured classes of the society, that is a most astounding fact, a fact which proves how vivid a commerce of ideas existed between the far East and the far West. And most attractive it seemed to me to study the history of this famous Duniya-nu-shastra (World-scripture), as it justly can be called.

First of all, when beginning my studies, I saw that it was necessary to leave aside the printed editions and to examine the various manuscripts of the original work and of its derivatives. This I did during several years, and not only did I carefully examine all the Panchatantra MSS. available in the public libraries of India and of Europe, but through the kind help of Indian as well as of European scholars, I procured a great mass of MSS. from private libraries too. After having brought my studies to a certain conclusion, I think it now advisable to publish my results in a work written in German and bearing the title "The Panehatantra ; its history and its geographical distribution."

My researches on the history of the

Panchatantra have given a result which neither I nor any European or Indian scholar could have expected. They have shown me, how enormously the literature of the Jains and especially that of the Shvetambars of Gujrat has influenced the Sanskrit as well as the vernacular literatures of India. And in the meantine they have given me the proof of the unexpected fact, that one Jain work, the Shukasaptati, has, as a whole, been translated into Persian and has been propagated, and lastly brought to Europe by the Muhammadans.

As perhaps some people might suppose that I have arrived at these results through a certain predilection for the Jains, for their religion, or through the circumstance that I used only Jain sources for my researches, let me state here, first, that when I began my Panchatantra studies I had but a very scanty idea of what the Jains and their literature were, and secondly, that during all these years I have tried my best to collect all the Panchatantra MSS. available, writing hundreds of letters and spending a great deal of money. What I expected at the beginning of my work, was to see confirmed Benfey's results, but quite the contrary took place, and this effect has been arrived at not by any predilection whatsoever, nor by any negligence in my endeavours to find the truth, but by the fact that the Jains and especially the Shvetambars of Gujrat, not only. in Hemchandra's days, but long before and after this great scholar, exercised a most powerful and beneficial influence on the civilization of their native country. They not only promoted their religion, which taught their countrymen a compassionate behaviour towards men and animals, and their rulers justice towards their subjects; but they promoted learning and literary culture in Sanskrit as well as Prakrit, in Braj Bhasha and their vernacular Gujrati. At the same time their laymen caused to be built splendid temples which adorned the country, promoting a fine and impressive plastic and architectural art, thousands of manuscripts to be copied, and libraries to be established for their monks. These monks, on the whole, were not narrowminded. Like Hemchandra himself, they studied also the shastras of other religious communities, and hence their spiritual culture, which is abundantly evidenced by the huge mass of Jain works, still existing

in our days, was perhaps the highest in all India. What would have become of Prakrit literature without the Jain writers? It is my firm conviction that owing to this very spiritual culture the Jains maintained themselves and their influence in India amongst the people as well as at the courts of Hindu and Muhammedan rulers. To the unlearned they gave an attractive literature in the vernacular, and at the courts of the princes, they vied in literary art and learning with the most cultured Hinduistic or Muhammedan scholars, and they used the influence they gained in this way over the minds of the rulers to make them just and benign to their subjects.

In order to show how far this influence manifested itself in the field of literary production, and how the Jain monks worked in order to raise the cultural level of their countrymen, let me give in short the results of my studies on the Panchatantra.

The original work,* the reputed author of which was a Brahmin named Vishnu Sharma, must have been written between about 300 and 570 A. D. Its author was not some Buddhist, as Benfey presumed, but a Vaishnava, who appears to have lived in Kashmir. His aim was to teach young princes the Arthashastra or the doctrine of statecraft. In order to do so he wrote five Tantras in the form of an Akhyayika or an elaborated prose story, interspersing stanzas from various sources, and even prose quotations from Kautilya Shastra, which Pandit R. Shama Shastri, B.A., was fortunate enough to discover and publish quite recently. Hence the author entitled his work-Tantra Akhyayika. Though the manuscripts which he was so happy to procure for his use contain some interpolated stories and stanzas, it is easy to show that the remaining text is the original one, from which the first five chapters of 'Kalilah and Dimnah' as well as a North-WestIndian abstract called Panchatantra (i. e., a Shastra consisting of five Tantras) has flowed.

About the book 'Kalilah and Dimnah' I forbear to say anything here as everybody who takes some interest in the fate of this old Pahlavi version and of its derivatives may easily read the book of

the late Mr. Keith-Falconer referred to in the above lines.

The North-West-Indian abstract called Panchatantra, does not seem to exist any longer in North-Western India. We know it only from the very numerous manuscripts spread all over the Deccan, and from a single Nepalese manuscript which contains only the verse portions and an unique prose sentence which the copyist who made the verse abstract believed to be a stanza, but which is in reality a prose quotation from the Kautilyam. This circumstance shows that the original of the Nepalese Panchatantra contains a text from which this original differed only in a great number of characteristic readings which it shared with the Hitopadesh. But as regards the number and the arrangement of the stanzas as well as of the stories, this original of the Nepalese Panchatantra fully agrees with the archetype (or, original) of the Southern * Panchatantra. Its author only transposed Tantras I and II, as did also Narayana, the author of the Hitopadesh.

I cannot here enter into details and repeat the argumentation given in my above quoted book. Suffice it to say that the North-Western abstract, whose author must have lived after Kalidasa, as he quotes the stanza of Kumara-sambhava, II, 55, was completely ousted from NorthWestern India as well as from Bengal. From Bengal it was ousted ousted by the by the Hitopadesh of Narayana of Narayana Pandit, who lived in Bengal from 800 and 1373 A. D. (date of the oldest known MS.), as he quotes Kamandaki and Magha. Magha. The Hitopadesh was translated into many European as well as Asiatic languages (into English, German, French, Greek and into Bengali, Braj Bhasha, Gujrati, Hindi, Urdu, Marathi, Newari, Persian and Telugu), and into several of these languages it was translated several times. In German, e.g., we have six and in English eight translations, etc.

The Jain part in the Panchatantra recensions just mentioned is not very large. The Tantra Akhyayika is the work of a

Winternitz has pointed out that the word Dinar occurs several times in the text. Now this is a Latin word for a Roman coin, Denarius. The E of the first syllable of this word, as inscriptions show, was changed to I not before the 2nd century A. D.

Vaishnava, and such is the North-Western abstract, to which the Southern as well as the Nepalese Panchatantra and the Hitopadesh go back. The Hitopadesh again, is the work of a Shaiva scholar. But remarkable it is that the Braj Bhasha version of the Hitopadesh has been handed down to us in two Jain manuscripts, each of them containing a different recension and one if not both of them being written in Gujerat. The well-known Pandit Lallulal, a Gujerati himself, did not, as he says, translate his Raj Niti from the Sanskrit but he simply rewrote the older version of the Braj Bhasha text. This Braj Bhasha text is a combination of the books of the Hitopadesh and of the fourth book of the Panchatantra or Jain recension of the Panchatantra. And very probable it is, that its author not only was a Gujerati, but that he was also a Jain. Of the Southern Panchatantra very numerous Sanskrit and vernacular recensions are known to be in existence. Several of the latter as well as a greatly enlarged Sanskrit text show the influence of the Jain recensions of the Panchatantra, inasmuch as they contain many stories which for the first time in the Panchatantra traditions appear in the Jain recensions.

These Jain recensions, which are entitled Panchakhvana and not Panchatantra, are of the highest importance for the history of Indian narrative literature. As stated above, the Jains and especially the Shvetambars of Gujerat have a very large share in the civilization of their native country. They created a most extensive narrative literature by means of which they propagated in the form of fairy tales, beast fables, novels, and romances, the doctrines of their religion. No wonder, that the Panchatantra was very often rewritten and moulded into quite different shapes by their monks as well as by their laymen.

The most important of all these Jain recensions, Panchakhyan, is the oldest one, which was composed by some Jain monk in Gujerat. Unfortunately, neither his name nor his date can as yet be given, as no manuscript with the author's Prashasti has yet become known. But as the author quotes a stanza of Rudrata's, as the late Prof. Prisobel has shown, he must have written the Panchakhyan after about 850 A. D., and as Purnabhadra used his main sources, its author must have com

posed the work before 1199 A. D. or Samvat 1255.

This is the text which Kosegarten called by a Latin name 'Textus Simplicior (i. e., the more simple, i. e. less elaborate text), and which Benfey wrongly believed to be a Brahmanical adaptation of an ancient Bauddha work. The difference between this text simplicior and the old Tantrakhyaika is so great that we may call it quite a new work written in imitation of the old one. No doubt, it was composed by the order of some king or minister who wished to possess a new edition of the then celebrated Panchatantra.

The author of Textus simplicior took over into his own work most of the old, and added a considerable number of new tales and of new style. Moreover he added a great many quotations from Kamandaka's Nitisara, a work which was not yet known to the author of the Tantrakhyayika. But whereas the Pahlavi translator as well as the author of the NorthWest-Indian epitome translated or abbreviated the old prose wording, the author of the textus simplicior narrated in his own manner and in his own style. He is an excellent narrator, who knows how to amuse his hearers or readers in instructing them; and amongst the new tales which he introduced into the Panchatantra tradition, there are some of the best of the whole collection. The fourth and fifth books are extremely short in the older texts; our unknown author gave them a bulk not too much disagreeing with that of the first three Tantras. He reached his aim by transposing part of the stories of books iii and iv and the old fifth Tantra, which apparently included but two intercalated stories by that of quite a new one with eleven stories besides the frame story.

The only edition which gives an approximate idea of this text is that of Kielhorn and Buhler in vol. i, iii, and iv of the Bombay Sanskrit stories. But these two scholars had only one single MS, at their disposal, and this MS. was a late one, which contained not less than eight interpolated stories. This edition has been translated into German by Lubwig Fritze in the year 1884 and into Dutch by H. G. Van Der Waals in 1885 to 1897,

The many MSS. which I examined of this recension very widely diner in their word.. ing and owing to much copying and comparing of other MSS. the texts of even old

Manuscripts are nearly always in a sad condition. It is a duty that the gratitude of Jain scholars owe to one of the most successful writers of this community to search after old and good copies of this textcopies which contain the Prashasti; then it will be possible to ascertain the name and the date of the author and to throw aside the awkward and unfitting Latin title 'Textus simplicior. No doubt, such manuscripts are still in existence.

In the Jaina Upashrayas of Pophalians Pado in Patan and Dehlana Pado in Ahmedabad there are still very numerous copies of the Panchakhyana which unfortunately for the sake of Jain literature I was not granted the use of. Nobody, I dare say, has at present such a survey of the different recensions as the author of these lines. If these manuscripts would be sent to him for examination, he would in a very short time be able to give them their place in the history of this famous book. The use he has made of the very numerous MSS. sent to him by public authorities and Indian as well as European scholars will show that he deserves such aid, and that the reputation of Jain literature has derived a considerable profit from his investigation.

The success of the "Textus simplicior" was enormous. All the numerous subsequent recensions of the Panchatantra, whether written by Jaina or by Hinduistic authors, by monks or by laymen, in Gujerat, in Maratha, in the Deccan, in further India, in Indonesia, or in Nepal

are

either based on this text or else have largely availed themselves of it.

Next to it in time comes the recension of the Jain Monk Puran Bhadra Suri who wrote his work in A. D. 1199 or Samvat 1255. In his Prashasti he tells us that he was ordered by some minister to revise the old Shastra Panchatantra, which had become 'Vishirnakarna', disfigured. He tells us further on that he did his work with great care, and that he not only corrected it, but added to it new materials. A close examination and collation of his text with older recensions has shown that this statement is quite correct. Purna Bhadra mainly combined the textus simplicior with the Tantrakhyavika, but he must have compared still other old sources, as in some places he is in accordance with only the Pahlavi translation or Samdeva's abstract or that of