Panchatantra and Its Lessons

Ratan Lal Basu

doi:10.32351/rca.v9.362

Authors

Ratan Lal Basu Presidency College, Calcutta & University of Calcutta https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8178-0664

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.32351/rca.v9.362

Política de Crossmark DOI: https://doi.org/10.32351/politica-crossmark

Keywords:

ancient history of India, panchatantra

Abstract

The wonderful story book Panchatantra is the most widely travelled text of Indian origin. The authorship of the treatise has been ascribed to some unidentifiable Vishnu Sharma. It is said in the preamble that the octogenarian author composed the stories in order to educate three refractory sons of an ancient Indian king named Amara Shakti. The book contains all the essential knowledge as embedded in all the ancient Indian sastras of ethics, morality, practical economics and politics, ideas necessary for all conceivable professions including that of the ruler, ministers and high government officials. This story book, in five Tantras (parts), has been popular among readers of all ages, occupations, countries, races, and religious communities.
Thousands of books and articles have been written on Panchatantra and various aspects of the text, its origin, history etc. have been closely scrutinized by erudite scholars to the best conceivable depths. But here our approach is going to be quite novel. Eschewing all theoretical queries we adopt the story telling mode right from the beginning, as in case of the text of Panchatantra. The story telling mode of presenting any topic has its origin in unknown past and it has been again and again verified that this mode of presenting any topic is the most attractive, effective and the least time consuming mode of instilling any concept into the comprehensive faculty of the target audience or readers.

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Author Biography

Ratan Lal Basu, Presidency College, Calcutta & University of Calcutta

Ph. D. in Economics (on Arthasastra of Kautilya). He is a prolific writer -Fiction, Indology, Ancient History, Economics, International Relations, Espionage, Scientific Interpretation of Religious and Mythological Texts, Yoga and Tantra Cult-. He is an Alumnus of Presidency College, Calcutta and University of Calcutta. He retired as Reader in Economics and Teacher-in-charge of a govt. sponsored college and joined IIMS (Kolkata)-AIS, New Zealand Cross Credit Program as Principal. He is the Treasurer of Bengal Economic Association. He is an invited author on Indology of Cosmopolis, the bi-lingual (French and English) journal associated with the Encyclopedia jointly sponsored by the governments of Canada and Belgium. He is associated as an author with The Culture Mandala the journal of Bond University, Australia. He is one of the most notable critiques of the concept of Human Development Index (HDI).

References

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