The 'Panca Tantra' is a collection of Hindoo fables, the supposed author of which was Vishnu Sarman, and this is believed to be the source of 'The Fables of Pilpay' or Bidpaī, which are undoubtedly of Indian origin. The transformation which these latter have experienced in their progress down the ages, chiefly by reason of their having been

when free speech was a perilous exercise, and when to declaim against vice and folly was to court personal risk, the fable was invented, or resorted to, by the moralist as a circuitous method of achieving the end he desired to reach—the

There are books bearing the title of 'Fables' the contents of which are not fables in the restricted sense.

The lesson which the fable inculcates is indelibly stamped on the mind of the child, and has an influence, less or more, on his or her career during life.

Immediately before his execution he delivered to his persecutors the fable of The Eagle and the Beetle,[21] by which he warned them that even the weak may procure vengeance against the strong for injuries inflicted. The warning was unheeded by his murderers. The shameful sentence was carried out, and so Æsop died, according to Eusebius, in the

Arabia may with truth be designated the very fountain-head of fabulous story. It was in that country that the venerable Locman flourished, during, it is believed, the reigns of the Jewish kings David and Solomon. Berington, in his essay on 'The Arabian or Saracenic Learning,' remarks that Locman is said to have been an Ethiopian or Nubian,

The following instances of the application of fables to particular occasions are recorded. The fable of The Belly and the Members, which is reputed to be the oldest in existence, is of sterling excellence, as well as of venerable antiquity.[43] Its lucid moral is truth in essence. The logic of its conclusion is as invulnerable as the demonstration

A fable is generally a fiction, as has already been said. It is a singular paradox, however, that nothing is truer than a good fable. True to intuition, true to nature, true to fact. The great virtue of fables consists in this quality of truthfulness, and their enduring life and popularity are corroboration of

Others have endeavoured, with less or more feasibility, to prove that most of what are called Æsopian fables had their origin in the far East—'The inquisitive amongst the Greeks,' say they, 'travelled into the East to ripen their own imperfect conceptions, and on their return taught them at home, with the mixture of fables and ornaments of