As streams of rivers onward flow,
And never more return again:
So day and night still bear away
The life of every mortal man.
It is uncertain who was the author of the Hitopadeça; nor can anything more definite be said about the date of this compilation than that it is more than 500 years old, as the earliest known MS. of it was written in 1373 A.D.
As both the Panchatantra and the Hitopadeça were originally intended as manuals for the instruction of kings in domestic and foreign policy, they belong to the class of literature which the Hindus call nīti-çāstra, or “Science of Political Ethics.” A purely metrical treatise, dealing directly with the principles of policy, is the Nīti-sāra, or “Essence of Conduct.” of Kāmandaka, which is one of the sources of the maxims introduced by the author of the Hitopadeça.
A collection of pretty and ingenious fairy tales, with a highly Oriental colouring, is the Vetāla-panchaviṃçati, or “Twenty-five Tales of the Vetāla” (a demon supposed to occupy corpses). The framework of this collection is briefly as follows. King Vikrama of Ujjayinī is directed by an ascetic (yogin) to take down from a tree and convey a corpse, without uttering a single word, to a spot in a graveyard where certain rites for the attainment of high magical powers are to take place. As the king is carrying the corpse along on his shoulders, a Vetāla, which has entered it, begins to speak and tells him a fairy tale. On the king inadvertently replying to a question, the corpse at once disappears and is found hanging on the tree again. The king goes back to fetch it, and the same process is repeated till the Vetāla has told twenty-five tales. Each of these is so constructed as to end in a subtle problem, on which the king is asked to express his opinion. The stories contained in this work are known to many English readers under the title of Vikram and the Vampire.
Another collection of fairy tales is the Siṃhāsana-dvātriṃçikā, or “Thirty-two Stories of the Lion-seat” (i.e. throne), which also goes by the name of Vikrama-charita, or “Adventures of Vikrama.” Here it is the throne of King Vikrama that tells the tales. Both this and the preceding collection are of Buddhistic origin.
A third work of the same kind is the Çuka-saptati, or “Seventy Stories of a Parrot.” Here a wife, whose husband is travelling abroad, and who is inclined to run after other men, turns to her husband’s clever parrot for advice. The bird, while seeming to approve of her plans, warns her of the risks she runs, and makes her promise not to go and meet any paramour unless she can extricate herself from difficulties as So-and-so did. Requested to tell the story, he does so, but only as far as the dilemma, when he asks the woman what course the person concerned should take. As she cannot guess, the parrot promises to tell her if she stays at home that night. Seventy days pass in the same way, till the husband returns.
These three collections of fairy tales are all written in prose and are comparatively short. There is, however, another of special importance, which is composed in verse and is of very considerable length. For it contains no less than 22,000 çlokas, equal to nearly one-fourth of the Mahābhārata, or to almost twice as much as the Iliad and Odyssey put together. This is the Kathā-sarit-sāgara, or “Ocean of Rivers of Stories.” It is divided into 124 chapters, called tarangas, or “waves,” to be in keeping with the title of the work. Independent of these is another division into eighteen books called lambakas.