The first edition of this book, consisting of 48 selected stories from the Panchatantra and Hitopadesa was published by me in 1931 in the middle of the Civil Disobedience movement. My idea was to popularise them among the English-knowing people all over the world and to show that they are true of all people all over the world, in the main, and specially so of the people of India, as, in the words of Thompson. "The ev'r-new weaveth the ev'r old, Ever telling the never-told". and thus weave a web of friendship with the English whom the Indians were fighting, albeit non-violently. That edition was warmly received by the English-knowing people and was very favourably reviewed by leading English newspapers and journals all over the world. Typical was the comment of the Manchester Guardian:- Certainly we owe to Mr. A.S.P. Ayyar gratitude for having given us this selection and translation. Nothing transports us so readily to the Indian atmosphere". As I had narrated the stories separately, and omitted unimportant moralising’s the book was translated into Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and other Indian languages and went into two or more editions there. There was an insistent demand from readers all over the world for a second edition including the omitted 32 stories also. My heavy work as High Court Judge made it impossible for me to undertake this arduous task, and I consoled myself with the Panchatantra aphorism. "The fruit falls when it is ripe, not a moment earlier". After I retired from the High Court, I have taken up this task, and, by God's grace, completed it. My thanks are due to the publishers, V.Ramaswamy Sastrulu & Sons, Esplanade, Madras, for neatly and quickly printing the book, and to my daughters, Srimati Asokam S. Eswar, M.A., Sita Lakshminarayanan, and Savitri Subrahmanyam and my grand-daughter Kumari Jaya Lakshmi, for correcting the proofs.
India is the classic land of fable, allegory, parable and story. Nowhere in the ancient world aid have these forms of art flourished in such luxuriance and variety as in the land between the Himalayas and the sea. In verse and prose, and in mixed verse and prose, the great Sanskrit and Prakrit authors narrated many a story of sparkling wit, surpassing wisdom, sublime import, and deep insight into human nature. In other countries, fiction had a tendency to become light literature, a thing of pleasure rather than of instruction. But in India, fiction became the deepest as well as the lightest vehicle of thought and was never scorned by the greatest philosophers. That is why we find the clever, worldly-wise Vishnusarma teaching his shrewd lessons in politics and worldly wisdom in the form of stories, equally with the venerable Buddha and Mahavira, whose celebrated Jataka and Kathakosa stories aimed definitely at moral instruction, with the authors of the epics and the Puranas whose object too was religious and moral instruction, and with Kshemendra, Gunaddya, Somdadeva and Dandi who in their famous Brihatkatha, Brihatkathamanjari, Kathasaritsagara and Dasakumaracharita respectively wrote higher tales for mere pleasure. In all these stories, the gods and the devils, the beasts of the land, the birds of the air, and the denizens of the deep were equally impressed into service with men, by women and children. The bull Sanjivaka, the lion Pingalaka, the jackals Damanaka and Karataka, crows and owls, rats and doves, monkeys and crocodiles, fishes and hares, gods and goddesses, demons and demonises, all talk on various aspects of Man's Life, equally with men and women. They study the Vedas and practise religious rites, and discourse on gods, saints, heroes, Faith and Karma, Justice Cat speaks on the transistorizes of life, and the need to concentrate on eternal verities till he gulls his victims, the sparrow and the rabbit, and swallows them both! (story No. 29(b). The Ass, in story No. 61, discourses on the beauty of music and insists on singing after a full meal. With consummate skill, the various human foibles and vices are exposed, the avarice of priests, the intrigues of courtiers, the amounts of woman, the follies of fools.
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