The Panchatantra Stories

Many years ago, there was a kingdom in the southern part of Bharatvarsha , with a beautiful city called Mahilaropya. It was the capital, from which king Amarashakthi ruled the country. He was learned and wise. Regarded as a master of all the traditional art forms, he was respected by every other king and prince in the subcontinent. Despite having tremendous wealth and fame, the king was not happy. He was worried about his three sons, Bahushakthi, Ugrashakthi, and Ananthashakthi, who were learning-impaired. He brought in the best teachers to educate them, but his efforts were in vain. The princes remained dunces. One day, after assembling his ministers, the king lamented, "Gentlemen, all of you know very well that my sons lack common sense. A cow that does not provide milk is useless, so is an idiot and a disobedient son. Such children can only give life-long grief. Do any of you have any idea on how to make them intelligent?" The ministers knew it would be futile to tr...

I do not recollect how old I was then; I was probably in my kindergarten years, but I vividly remember the first story I heard from my dad. It was the story of The Rabbit and the Tortoise. Every night before bedtime, he used to tell me stories from our Itihaasas and Puranas , as well as from Panchatantra and Hitopadesha . It would not be an exaggeration to say that those stories initiated me in to the habit of book reading. Panchatantra was originally written in Sanskrit. Recently I came across a translation by Arthur Ryder, first published in 1925 by the University of Chicago press. It is considered to be the best translation to date. Once I started reading, I found its language to be old style, and harder than what I had expected to see in children's books. Mr. Ryder had translated even the proper nouns, obviously to stay close to the original, and had interspersed the stories with poetic verses. That is when I felt this urge to put pen to paper and retell the stories in my o...