The Hitopadesha  is one of the best-known works of Sanskrit literature. It is a collection of human and animal fables in prose, which have been explained by numerous wise and witty sayings in verse. As the prologue explains, the objective of this work was to instruct people in worldly wisdom and the principles of statecraft. Written in a style that is simple and elegant, it was also meant to confer proficiency in language. These features made it a very popular ‘reader’ amongst first-time students of Sanskrit from ancient to modern times.

The Hitopadesha is also one of the most widely translated works of Sanskrit literature. It has been translated into most of the major languages of India, including Bangla, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Newari, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. It was also amongst the first Sanskrit texts to be encountered by the British in India, and the second to be translated directly from Sanskrit into English - by Charles Wilkins, as early as 1787. (The first to be so translated was the Bhagavad Gita, also by Charles Wilkins, in 1784.) It was first printed (in the Nagari script) in 1804 in Serampore by William Carey, with an introduction by Henry Colebrooke. Since then, it has been translated into English several times. Amongst the better-known of the earlier translations is the 1861 one by Sir Edwin Arnold, titled The Book of Good Counsels. The Hitopadesha has also been translated into other European languages including Greek, Russian, Spanish, French and German, as well as into Burmese, Khmer, Thai, Malay, Persian and Sinhala.

We know very little about the author of the Hitopadesha. The two concluding verses of the work say that he was called Narayana, and that his patron, who commissioned the work, was called Dhavala Chandra. From the work itself, it is clear that Narayana was a learned scholar, and probably a devotee of the god Shiva. He addresses his patron as ‘Srimat’ and ‘Mandalika’ - this could mean that he was a prince of royal lineage or even the governor of a province. No other work by Narayana, or any mention of him or his patron has been found elsewhere.

The time and place in which Narayana lived and wrote are not definitely known. The Hitopadesha contains quotations from other Sanskrit works which date back to the 8th century CE, and so must have been composed at a date later than these. In addition, the earliest Hitopadesha manuscript available to us, found in Nepal, bears a date corresponding to 1373 CE - which indicates that Narayana had definitely written his work by then. Scholars thus placed the composition of the Hitopadesha between these two dates. Today it is generally accepted that Narayana wrote the Hitopdesha sometime between 800 and 950 CE. From a study of place names in the text and the mention of certain rites and rituals, it has been tentatively suggested that the work may have originated in Bengal. But the evidence for this remains slender.

The Hitopadesha is arranged in four ‘books’ or parts: the first two books, on how to win friends and how to break friendships, deal with right conduct, while the last two books, on war and peace, are concerned with statecraft. It also follows the traditional Indian story-within-a-story narrative structure, but the storyline is easy to follow. The basic narrative is quite straightforward: King Sudarshan rules in Pataliputra, and worried that his sons were growing up wayward and ignorant, he calls a meeting of wise men and asks who amongst them could instruct his sons in statecraft. A learned pandit called Vishnusharma steps forward and agrees to teach the princes. The king hands over the education of his sons to him, and he, in order to instruct them in right conduct and statecraft, tells them the stories of the Hitopadesha.

The structure of the Hitopadesha is very similar to that of the older and equally beloved collection of fables, the Panchatantra. Composed around 300 CE, the Panchatantra too is written in a mix of prose and verse and follows the traditional the story-within-a-story format. Both works have a similar frame story, and their main narrator has the same name (ie, Vishnusharma). The similarities are so pronounced that some modern scholars such as A.L. Basham declared the Hitopadesha to be a retelling of the Panchatantra.

However, though in the prologue to his work Narayana himself states that in the composition of the Hitopadesha he has drawn upon the Panchatantra (and ‘one more work’, which he does not name), and a study by Ludwig Sternbach shows that almost three-fourths of the Hitopadesha including almost one third of its verses may be traced to the Panchatantra, there are important differences between the two: for instance, compared with the five books of the older work, the Hitopadesha has only four; moreover, the order of the first two books of the Panchatantra has been reversed, its fourth book has been completely omitted from the Hitopadesha, its third book has been divided into two to form the third and fourth books of the latter, and parts of the fifth book have been incorporated into the last two. Moreover, of the thirty-eight interpolated tales in the Hitopadesha, at least ten cannot be found in any version of the Panchatantra. (The specific version of the Panchatantra that Narayana used is not known - different parts of the Hitopadesha can be traced to different recensions of the Panchatantra.)

Moreover, the Panchatantra is not Narayana’s only source. The ‘one more work’ that he refers to in his prologue actually encompasses multiple other works. The single most important of these other sources is the Nitisara, a treatise in verse on polity and statecraft by Kamandaki; almost ninety verses in the Hitopadesha are taken from this work. Narayana also quotes from the Nitishataka of Bhartrihari, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, and other important Sanskrit works including the Manusmriti and various Puranas as well as from popular works like the Mrichchhakatika of Shudraka. Some of the Hitopadesha stories are also found in other collections such as the Shukasaptati and the Vetala Panchavimshatika, and some of its verses in the Javanese and Pali literature of south-east Asia and the Tibetan and Mongolian literature of Central Asia. However, since the dates of most of these works have not been determined with any certainty, it is difficult to say which came first, the Hitopadesha, or these other works.

The Hitopadesha also contains Narayana’s own verses, and it is evident that he was a story-teller and poet of some distinction. His literary genius is evident in the skill with which he has combined the material from all these diverse sources into a single, compelling and, most importantly, original, work.

Here, then, is a selection of stories from this delightful and elegant work.