WITHOUT a parable spake He not unto them.'
The parable, or the fable, which is only the same thing under another name, has always been the favourite Eastern method for conveying instruction. This of course, immediately strikes the reader of the New Testament, where parables form so large a part of the Teacher's method and system. The same form meets us over and over again in the Old Testament, though perhaps it may not lie quite so much on the surface of the teaching. The parable or fable in Judges 1x, under which Jotham conveys to his fellow-countrymen his belief in the mistake they had made in choosing Abimelech for their king -a person of low origin, the 'bramble, from whom fire was to come forth and devour the 'cedars of Lebanon', will immediately occur to the memory. Or again, the acted parable, when Ahijah met Jeroboam, and rent his new garment in twelve pieces, and said to Jeroboam, "Take thee ten pieces, for thus saith the Lord, I will rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon and will give it to thee" (1 Kings XI. 30). Again, the book of Jonah, in the Old Testament, may perhaps be looked on in the light of a parable, the adventures which the prophet is said to have undergone being intended to teach certain spiritual truths. Apologue-fable story, with an underlying moral, comes natural to the Oriental mind. "Without a parable spake He not unto them." And so in a vast and miscellaneous literature, such as the classical literature of India, we should naturally expect to find instruction and wisdom conveyed under this form. The earliest collection of fables is that called the Panchatantra, or The Five Books, in which are collected some of the stories floating about the Eastern world at the time of its compilation. What the original text of the book may have been is difficult to say, in the face of the various alterations and expansions that it has undergone. Its existence in the 6th century A. D. is perfectly certain, when it was translated into Pahlavi by the order of King Nushirvan. Benfey, who has gone into the subject at some length, is of opinion that the original text rested on a basis of Buddhism, and that in course of time it underwent a number of important changes. He remarks also that, in consequence of these changes, a German translation made in the 15th century from a Latin rendering-the latter based upon an earlier Hebrew version-represents the original text more nearly than the existing Sanskrit form. A curious parallel to this is the hypothesis of Bentley, that from Jerome's Vulgate, the fourth century text of the Gospels could be restored.
The Panchatantra, in one form or another, was known over the whole civilized world. An Arabic translation existed, made in the 9th century A. D., one in Hebrew, and one in Greek, from which versions it was translated into most of the languages of Europe, and was known in England under an English version entitled Pilpay's Fables. We may say without exaggeration that we owe to India not only the idea whereby moral and spiritual truth is conveyed under concrete forms, but also some of those very identical forms under which this truth was originally conveyed to the Eastern peoples.
The Hitopadesa, or Book of Good Counsel, of which the following work is a translation, may be regarded as a recension of the Panchatantra. The Hitopadesa, however, underwent some considerable alterations, since it consists of only four books instead of five. This collection of stories first appeared in English in the translations of Dr. Charles Wilkins and Sir William Jones, made soon after the 'discovery' of Sanskrit literature.
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