User:Shreevatsa/Panchatantra

Textual history of the Panchatantra
https://manasataramgini.wordpress.com/2004/06/05/panchatantra-indias-great-product-origin-and-evolution/


 * Considers nested structure of stories an Indo-Aryan innovation, inherited by Panchatantra from the MBh.
 * More specifically, animal stories are found in Bhīṣma's address to Yudhiṣṭhira

This has inspired both the Buddhist Jātaka tales and the Pañcatantra.

Hertel

 * that first great classic in the field of Comparative Literature


 * Oldest known recension: Tantrakhyayika, probably 200 BC

"the oldest known Sanskrit recension of the collection among the manuscripts loaned to me by the Deccan College Library of Poona. It is one of the Kashmirian manuscripts got by Bühler, is written in the Sâradâ character, and bears the title Tanträkhyäyika. This recension probably dates from about 200 B. C.

Pandit Sabajabhatta, of Srinagar, discovered some more fragmentary MSS. of this fine old text

Together with the Poona MS. they form the basis of my forthcoming critical edition of the Tanträkhyäyika."

"Of the multitudinous Indian recensions of the work, one of the most important is that which has commonly been called by Western scholars the ' textus ornatior ', but which is better designated by the name of its author, the Jaina monk Purnabhadra Suri. It is dated 1199 A.D."
 * Textus ornatior = Purnabhadra 1199 CE

"An English translation of Purnabhadra's text has been made by Mr. Paul Elmer More, now Associate Editor of The (New York) Nation, and formerly a pupil and assistant of Professor Lanman at Harvard." It shows up in a few catalogs among "in preparation" books, but seems to have never seen the light of day.
 * More's translation of Purnabhadra, never published

Of course there's Ryder's outstanding translation.