Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/571

 Reviews. 507

to the same conclusion. He considers that it is a manual of statecraft in the Machiavellian sense. He takes tantra to mean "artifice," or "case of political prudence." He even goes so far as to say that all stories which do not turn upon the superiority of cunning to stupidity must be suspected of being interpolations. The manual, though in it animals are introduced as speaking and acting, is not intended to be a collection of anecdotes, but a guide to success in politics. The first book teaches us how a king loses his best counsellor owing to the treacherous wiles of a courtier; the second how an alliance of prudent princes secures them against a powerful enemy; the third how, through cunning, a campaign against a foe superior in material strength leads to victory; the fourth, how an old banished king escapes a death, which appears unavoidable, by means of a barefaced deception ; and the fifth treats of the mischief produced by inconsiderate action. In fairy stories we are accustomed to see virtue rewarded and vice punished, but this is not the case in the Panchatantra, and least of all in its oldest form, the Tantrakhyayika. In this work honesty is cer- tainly not the best policy, and clemency leads only to contempt. For instance, in the third book the king of the owls, who spares the suppliant crow Chirajlvin, who was really playing the part of Zopyrus, is ruined thereby ; whereas, if he had followed the advice of his sensible minister, Raktaksha, who recommended that the crow should be immediately put to death, he would have saved himself and his kingdom. On the other hand, Raktaksha, if he did not succeed in convincing his sovereign, earned at any rate the respect of his adversary. Under these circumstances, we are not surprised to learn that Professor Hillebrandt has shown that the Tantrakhyayika contains extracts from the Kauti- liyas-astra, a manual of statecraft composed by the celebrated Chanakya, the Machiavelli of India. It is only fair to point out that the Buddhists and Jains have frequently entered protests against the ideals of Chanakya, though they are too apt to take over stories as they find them, and trust to counteracting their pernicious tendencies by methods similar to those followed in the Gesta Romanorum. In order to show that the Tantrakhyayika is the original form of the Panchatantra, in a way that will