<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Another observation that Professor Edgerton makes challenges our persistent assumption that animal fables function mainly as adjuncts to religious dogma, acting as indoctrination devices to condition the moral behaviour of small children and obedient adults. Not the Machiavellian Panchatantra: "Vishnu Sarma undertakes", Edgerton notes, "to instruct three dull and ignorant princes in the principles of polity, by means of stories . . . .[This is] a textbook of artha, 'worldly wisdom, or niti, polity, which the Hindus regard as one of the three objects of human desire, the other being dharma, 'religion or morally proper conduct' and kama 'love' . . . . The morals of the stories are often amoral. They glorify shrewdness and practical wisdom in the affairs of life, and especially in politics and the conduct of government."
This realistic practicality explains why the original Sanskrit villain jackal, the decidedly jealous, sneaky and evil vizier-like Damanaka ('Victor') is his frame-story's winner, and not his goody-goody brother Karataka who is presumably left 'Horribly Howling' at the vile injustice of Part One's final murderous events. <b>In fact, in its steady migration westward the persistent theme of evil-triumphant in Kalila and Dimna, Part One frequently outraged Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious leaders â so much so, indeed, that ibn al-Muqaffa carefully inserts (no doubt hoping to pacifiy the powerful religious zealots of his own turbulent times) an entire extra chapter at the end of Part One of his Arabic masterpiece, putting Dimna in jail, on trial and eventually to death. </b>So much for naughty jackals! Â
Needless to say there is no vestige of such dogmatic moralising in the collations that remain to us of the pre-Islamic original â the Panchatantra. Technically, from the perspective of a more subtle and flexible functionality, Joseph Jacobs in 1888[24] offers a less coercive interpretation of how the Panchatantra/Kalila and Dimna stories might work more effectively to modify human behaviour: " . . . . <b>if one thinks of it, the very raison d'être of the Fable is to imply its moral without mentioning it."</b>
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This realistic practicality explains why the original Sanskrit villain jackal, the decidedly jealous, sneaky and evil vizier-like Damanaka ('Victor') is his frame-story's winner, and not his goody-goody brother Karataka who is presumably left 'Horribly Howling' at the vile injustice of Part One's final murderous events. <b>In fact, in its steady migration westward the persistent theme of evil-triumphant in Kalila and Dimna, Part One frequently outraged Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious leaders â so much so, indeed, that ibn al-Muqaffa carefully inserts (no doubt hoping to pacifiy the powerful religious zealots of his own turbulent times) an entire extra chapter at the end of Part One of his Arabic masterpiece, putting Dimna in jail, on trial and eventually to death. </b>So much for naughty jackals! Â
Needless to say there is no vestige of such dogmatic moralising in the collations that remain to us of the pre-Islamic original â the Panchatantra. Technically, from the perspective of a more subtle and flexible functionality, Joseph Jacobs in 1888[24] offers a less coercive interpretation of how the Panchatantra/Kalila and Dimna stories might work more effectively to modify human behaviour: " . . . . <b>if one thinks of it, the very raison d'être of the Fable is to imply its moral without mentioning it."</b>
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