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The fables and proverbs which pass under the name of PILPAY or BIDPAI consist mainly of the Pantcha Santra, or Five Sections, and the Hitopadesa, or Friendly Instructor, which were translated into Persian in the fifth century A.D. They were afterwards translated into Arabic; and in 1709 the Persian version was translated into French under the title of Les Conseils et les Maximes de Pilpay, which appear in English as The Instructive and Entertaining Fables of Pilpay. The name of Pilpay appears to have been first attributed to the collection in Persia, the reputed Hindu author being Vishnu-Sarma.
These fables are the earliest collection in the world, and greatly surpass in humour and in variety of matter and of lesson the Fables of Aesop. There is at the same time similarity enough between the two collections to suggest a common source. The Sanskrit fables are supposed to be told by their author for the education of the children of a certain rajah, and form a wonderfully interconnected series. The animals introduced relate other stories to one another, and deliver many proverbs and practical moral precepts, which form a much more important part of this collection of fables than of any other.
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| This biography is
reprinted from The New Calendar of Great Men. Ed. Frederic
Harrison. London: Macmillan and Co., 1920. |
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