Notes
Notes CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1. The earliest systematic attempt to document the international migration of stories from the Pañcatantra was undertaken by Benfey (1966 [1859]). His long introduction is credited with launching the science of comparative folkloristics. An abbreviated account is found in Jacobs’s introduction to his edition of North’s Morall Philosophie of Doni (Jacobs 1888). The spread of the stories was further described and elaborated by Hertel (1914). Edgerton provides a convenient summary (1924: 40–47). Penzer’s notes in Tawney (1926) are also useful. Perhaps the clearest exposition of the spread of the Pañcatantra is found in the large fold-out table prepared by Edgerton in Tawney 1926, vol. 5 facing p. 242. 2. In the prelude to his “Wayside Inn,” Longfellow describes “a Spanish Jew from Alicant ”: “And it was rumored he could say/the Parables of Sandabar,/and all the Fables of Pilpay,/or if not all, the greater part!” 3. The earlier Western authors usually remarked on the fact that the Pañcatantra ranked just behind the Bible in its ubiquity, while Jallad ranked it just behind the Qur’an (Jallad 2004: 19). 4. The spelling of both these names varies from source to source. I have followed Jallad 2004. 5. The number of pages in a given version provides only a general indication of comparative length, because the number of words on a page varies from book to book. It is useful , however, for comparing the relative lengths of the tantras within a given version. 6. On the B. rhatkatha – in general, see also Nelson 1978. 7. I note with interest that when a version of a text is too long, it is “contaminated” with “interpolations”; when it is too short, it has been “castrated” or “mangled.” 8. Lanman wrote in his preface to the work: “Hertel’s book, Das Pañcatantra, appeared only a short time before the outbreak of the world-war. The teaching-staff of the Gymnasium at Döbeln was reduced in number and the work of those left at home was correspondingly heavier. In December, 1914, Professor Hertel, while on a sick-bed, received his orders to join the colors. His latest letter to me is dated Borna (Saxony), February 9, 1915. It explains the situation as to the promised Introduction and Notes, and says that he 213 daily expects to be ordered to the front. If he returns to his wife and seven children and to the studies in which he has won such great distinction, he may yet prepare the Introduction and Notes so that they may be issued with the translation of the Tantra – khya – yika which I have undertaken. . . . [Footnote:] The printed sheets were shipped from Leipzig to Boston via Rotterdam, and by the Holland-America Line, about the middle of February, 1915, the beginning of the great activity of the German submarines. In spite of torpedoes and mines and other dangers of the long list given in the war-insurance policy, the sheets arrived safe in Boston about the first of April.” (Lanman’s preface, Hertel 1915: xii). I do not believe that Lanman’s translation of the Tantra – khya – yika was ever published. 9. I am also indebted to Dr. Toke Lindegaard Knudsen for his assistance with the date. 10. I have chosen to use approximations because of the uncertainty associated with how the stories should be counted. For example, the three closely linked stories of selfinflicted injury (Stories 1-04a, 1-04b and 1-04c) could be counted as a single story or as three. CHAPTER 2. THE DISCOURSE OF DIVISION 1. For classification of animals on the basis of the morphology of their feet, see Smith 1991. 2. In the version of this tale found in the Hitopadeśa (Hit. 1907ff ), an old jackal among the exiles intentionally brought about the indigo jackal’s downfall with a howl, knowing that the impostor would be unable to suppress his instinctive response. 3. On the question of purity and auspiciousness, see also Milner 1994: 51–52, 110–115. 4. Halbfass notes the existence of similar “horizontal” schemes of hierarchy consisting of “concentric circles of increasing distance from a dharmic centre” (Halbfass 1991: 349). 5. Sanskrit literature, being oceanic, naturally provides a counterexample for any given proposition. It is even possible to find an auspicious jackal if one searches carefully enough: “With one, two, three or four cries, a jackal would be auspicious, and similarly, with five or six, it...
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