Aesop From India

Posted: 5/14/2019

Unfortunately, I forgot how I learnt about the Panchatantra. I suspect it was Michael Wood’s excellent documentary “Story of India”, but I am not sure.

Anyway, was I surprised that, in my infinite ignorance, I had probably never learnt of this masterpiece of Indian literature before. The author(s) of the animal fables are unknown or not known for sure and the fables are based on much older oral traditions. “The surviving work is dated to roughly 200 BCE”, which make these Indian fables not quite as old as Aesop’s fables, which date back to around 620 and 564 BC.

Given the regrettable fact that classicist education in Western countries has been phased out to quite some extent it is important to realize that there are strong cross cultural similarities between ancient civilizations. The ancients were a lot smarter than we ignorant modern people think not least due to our poor government run public education!

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panchatantra
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Panchatantra-Indian-literature

Lysistrata: When Women Prevented War

Posted: 5/11/2019

Recently watched Classicist Michael Scott’s excellent documentary Ancient Greece The Greatest Show on Earth: Kings

If you are not very familiar with ancient Greek literature (comedies, tragedies, drama), then I highly recommend the above the three episode documentary by Michael Scott. Ancient Greek literature has so much more to offer than the Odyssey or Trojan War.

As a teenager my parents told me about a very peculiar story that a long time ago Greek women refused having sex with their husbands to end a war. Never followed up on this amazing story or forgot details about it … Now, in the above documentary, Michael Scott retells the story, which is actually based on an ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes titled Lysistrata. “It is a comic account of a woman's extraordinary mission to end the Peloponnesian War between Greek city states by denying all the men of the land any sex …  withhold sexual privileges ...” (Source: Wikipedia)

Was this comedy a reaction to the disastrous failure of the so called Sicilian Expedition by Athens. It was a catastrophic defeat and a serious blow to Athenian power over the Mediterranean Sea.  

Unfortunately, the reverse case, i.e. that a majority of women usually are in support of or ignore war efforts by their male partners is far more common in human history. Someone still ought to write a comedy about this!