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The tales in this Vol 2 book (& its storyline predecessor Vol 1) stem from our ancient immersions in the Oral Tradition, when -- before the invention of writing -- "once-upon-a-time" triggered speedy entry into vibrant 'storyworlds'. The Page is never quite the Stage. Wild extremes of primitive music (probably from flute or drum), voice, accent, mimicry, song and dance aroused small groups -- then as now -- into a vivid social sense of extra-dimensionality, sometimes merging an awareness of the everyday with the certainty that evolutionary survival demands constant change and adaptation.
Today, our more subdued, linear literary tradition, developed over the past 2,500 years, is codified through the written word or notated score. It often marks the difference between silently reading a play by Shakespearea or absorbing it through the hurly-burly of any stage performance.
The stories of ?Kalila and Dimna? hark back to wilder times, close to our hunter-gatherer era, before agriculture, when animals, shadows and spirits lurked close nearby. Some of its ancient animal-stories were first transcribed and then re-jigged by poets, monks and scholars through five languages -- the Pali ?Jatakas Tales? (450 BCE); the Sanskrit ?Panchatantra? (300 BCE); Arabic (750 CE); Persian (1505 CE); and the 1570 English rendition by Sir Thomas North (published when Shakespeare was a boy of six).
Two of the earliest scholastically "re-constructed" (and distinctly different) 19th Century ?Panchatantra? Sanskrit manuscripts link directly to humanity's oral tradition of physical storytelling. We are drawn to their stories as we are to the mysteries of pre-historic cave paintings. Here be dragons indeed!
"A must-read for anyone interested in the masterpieces of world literature -- or just a totally engrossing reading experience." LISA ALTHER
All ?Kalila and Dimna? variations are both multi-layered, inter-connected and variable arrangement of animal stories, where one story leads into another, sometimes three or four deep.
Such structures have contributed to world literature for over 2000 years, migrating East to West along the Old Silk Road into neighbouring cultures in a multitude of written and oral linguistic formats. All our beast fables from Aesop and the Buddhist ?Jataka Tales? through La Fontaine to Uncle Remus owe this strange, shape-shifting 'book' a huge debt.
In its original Arabic format, ?Kalila and Dimna? (?The Panchatantra? being its Sanskrit precursor), ostensibly constitutes a handbook for rulers, a so-called 'Mirror for Princes' illustrating indirectly, through a cascade of teaching stories and verse, how to (and how not to!) run the kingdom of your life. In their slyly profound grasp of human nature at its best (and worst!) these animal fables indirectly give us -- avoiding any overt moralistic criticism -- indirect and amusing sage counsel, often seasoned with sharp doses of satire.
"Stories as closely inter-folded as the petals of a rose." URSULA LE GUIN (2014 National Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters)
Based on a collation of scholarly translations from key Sanskrit, Syriac, Arabic and Persian texts as well as the 1570 English rendition by Sir Thomas North, Wood gives us the first vernacular version in either East or West for over 400 years. The unexpectedly dynamism behind such ancient fables shines forth as a great world classic is captured -- renedering it relevant, fascinating and hugely readable.
"Racy, funny, vigorous, contemporary." DORIS LESSING (2007 Nobel Laureate)
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