13th Apr 04 Aesop and Indian Influences
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/107885
According to legend, Aesop was a Phrygian slave, living in the sixth century ( 620-520 BCE), who bought his way to freedom through his skill as an arbitrator, using fables to illustrate arguements. Like Herakles, many places claim his origin, among them: Thrace, Phrygia, Aethiopia, Samos, Athens and Sardis.
His existence is related through Herodotus that he was a slave of Iadmon of Samos who met with violent death by the inhabitants of Delphi. Herodotus does not give the cause of his death, although legend offers many explanations, one being that like Socrates, he offended the sensibilities of the people and died a martyr. Another is that as the treasurer of Croesus, he embezzled public monies and so incurred capital punishment. Other sources say that he defended a Samian demagogue, recorded in Aristotle's Rhetoric and he dined with the Seven Sages of Greece with Periander at Corinth. Supposedly, he presented the Fable of the Frogs Demanding a king to Peisistrattus, which could e the germ of Aristophanes, Frogs. He gained a collection of lore, explaining his existence, much like Herakles which was embellished upon and circulated well into Middle Ages: he was ugly and deformed according to the preface written by Maximus Planudes. Aesop appears as a figure within Plutarch's Symposium of the Seven Sages, in which jokes are made on his origins as a slave. Athens commissioned a public statute by Lysippus that showed no deformity.
Aesop's fables appear in Aristophanes', Wasps and cited in Plato's Phaedo by Socrates. They were alwso transcribed by Demetrius of Phaelerum (345-283 BCE) into ten books, Lopson Aisopeion Sunagogai, which has been lost. Babrius, the tutor to the son of Alexasnder Severus, translated the fables into choliambic in the third century CE. Phaedrus, a freedman of Augustus, anthologised another collection in Latin which was widely circulated throughout the Middle Ages and Avinus produced another anthology of 42 Latin elegiacs in the fourth century.
Probably, the Fables accompanied Alexander on his way east, entering India where they mingled with early folk tales. Similar tales existed in India at the time. The most widely recognized collection of tales ar the Jataka. However, an earlier collection of The Perfections of Buddha began by Asvagosha, who died after he ahd completed the thirty-fourth tale. The tales were meant to express the divinity of Buddha in his various incarnations. The Jataka Tales, possibly originated in Ceylon around 241. They present commentary on the gathas, moral verse, composed by Buddhaghosa school of the fifth century. The tales are coupled, presenting a Story of the Present which introduces a reflection of Buddha's past life, reflecting A Story of the Past which relates folklore introducing a moral lesson based on the former incarnations o the Buddha: Lion and Crane; Monkey and Crocodile.
In the 19th century, these stories became of major literary interests with translations from Rhys-David, Pausboll and R Morris. There are 550 tales in total and are similar to Aesop in their prsentation. Joseph jacobs in his introduction to Indian Fairy Tales conjectures that the Kasyapa fables ante-dated both the Bidpai and Jataka Tales. The Bidpai stories are very similar to Aesop in that they eliminated Buddha as the central figure and presented only animal wisdom tales. Many are difficult to assess their origin for their striking similarity to Aesop. Moreover, to confuse the heritage, in 52 CE, King Chandra Muka Siwa of Cinelaesia sent a delegation to Emperor Claudius in Rome. The collection was translated and known as the Kybsis, many of which were later incorporated into the collective works of Aesop by Babrius and Avian. The collections of Babrius and Avian circulated among the Medieval scholars and brought with them their corruptions and additions as they were popular material for sermons. They entered into literature through the Italian Novellari, Boccaccio and crossed through Chaucer, entering into the Elizabethan stage and Shakespearean opera. Indian fables were collected and circulated throughout the Middle Ages during the Crusades—a notable collection, Disciplina Clericalis, was translated by Petrus Alphons, a Spanish Jew, who converted, around 1106.
In the 19th Century, British colonization in India reaped literary rewards in the collection of Indian fables by M. Frere, Old Deccan Days, published in 1868 with Mr Murray; 1880, Ellis & White pubished Indian Fairy Tales by Stokes; 1883, Macmillan published Folk-Tales of Bengal by Ralston; and Trubner published Wideawake Stories by Steel and Temple; 1891 W H Allen published Tales of the Sun by Kingscote an anthology of an earlier work by Pandit Natesa Sasstri, Folk-Lore of Southern India. In 1887, Truebner's Oriental Library added Folk-Tales of Kashmir by Knowles; 1892 Snatal Tales by Campbell and Ramaswami Raju's Indian Fables. In 1889, Thornhill produced Indian Fairy Tales and 1885, Robinson Tales of South India.
In the time that Jacobs wrote his preface for Aesop's Fables and Indian Fairy Tales, he noted that the Fables were circulated in 38 languages with more than 112 different versions, with at least 28 versions in English. The mingling of East and West is not easy to decipher as corruptions of Buddhist literature entered the Christian catalogue with stories such as life of St Buddha assimilated as St Josephat in Barlaam and Josaphat.
However, one thing is sure, Aesop lived many years before the collection of the Bidpai and Jataka collections and so it is unfair to Aesop to say he borrowed his fables from the east. Phaedrus and later collectors mixed fables indisciminately, confusing the issues of origin.
Wikipedia: Aesop
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesop
Joseph Jacobs Short History of the Fable
http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/a/a3j/a3j_hist.html
Rare Titles of Aesop
http://www.seattlebookfair.com/2003featured/aesopb.htm
Sacred Texts Bidpai
http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/ift/ift31.htm
Main Lesson Bidpai Stories
http://www.mainlesson.com/books/dutton/tortoise/front.html
Bidpai ed Joseph Jacobs
http://www.authorama.com/indian-fairy-tales-31.html
Aesops Fables
http://www.aesopfables.com/
650 fables plus more
Fyler's translation
http://classics.mit.edu/Aesop/fab.html
Fairytale Collection: Aesop
http://www.fairytalescollection.com/Aesop_Fables/Aesop_biography.htm
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http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/07/aesop-and-fisherman.html
13 May 04 Aesop and Jatarka Tales
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/108550
29 Aug 04 Aesop and Friends
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/110154
