Chapter 107 The Five Scrolls of Ancient India

The Five Scrolls of Ancient India The "Five Scrolls" in ancient India is a bit like, like that, it is A very rich collection of stories.However, it is more closely related to the secular atmosphere. The collection of stories is slightly different. Although it also has some small stories involving the relationship between men and women, the main The main content is "fable", the fable of man, the fable of man and animal, the relationship between animal and animal. fable. Many people already know that ancient Indian legends, fables and stories are very rich. We usually read the Christian "New Testament" and "Old Testament" from the standpoint of appreciating classical literary works,

Often amazed at the richness of the stories contained in it.Western literary and artistic works and works of art, to the present It is for this reason that many Japanese movies are based on the "Bible". Similarly, literature and art lovers who have had the opportunity to read some "Buddhist scriptures" must be surprised The "Buddhist Sutra" contains so many stories and fables, and the writing is so witty and gratifying. "Five Volumes" is such a collection of stories and fables.But it is not the Buddhist scriptures, And it has nothing to do with religion.It's just a "moral textbook".Because of these fables and interesting

However, the short stories are circulated orally among the people, or are circulated in banknotes. There is only one person, so a certain story is often similar and will appear in many different works. now. The original name of "Five Volumes" is "Pancatantra", which means five volumes of books.This is named by Because the original book is divided into five volumes, each volume contains a number of stories, poems and fables, so it is called It is "Five Volumes". This collection of stories has only a compiler, not an author.It is said that this is the ancient king of India,

In order to educate the princes, teach them to rule, to distinguish between good and evil, to deal with danger and to govern the country. Wisdom, specially ordered his ministers to compile this "Five Volume Book", through the folk songs and fables and stories to instill this knowledge in them. Regardless of whether the ancient rulers of India achieved their educational goals, this "Five Books" But because of its rich content and strong interest, it has won the love of ordinary readers other than the prince. Well, and spread widely. In recent years, this collection of ancient Indian stories has also been translated in our country.

Translated by Mr. Ji Xianlin, it is a foreign classical literature published by the Institute of Literature, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing One of the famous series of books.The translator himself wrote a long preface, the history of the book's circulation, version evolution, The influence of literary and artistic works of various countries in the world is introduced in detail, and the ideological content of them content, also criticized. The storytelling method of "Five Volumes" is similar to that of "One Thousand Zeros" in some places. As in One Night, a poem often uses the ending of the first story to lead to the next story.on the

In the seventh story of the four volumes, the monkey advises the sea monster not to feel bad about losing a wife However, the sea monster said that his fate was not good, and he had suffered many misfortunes, so it was difficult to dispel it, so he immediately chanted wrote a poem: No matter how cunning I am, Thy cunning is twice as great as mine; Lovers lost, husbands lost, What are you looking at naked? The monkey didn't understand the so-called, and asked him what it meant, so the sea monster said an infidelity. The story of a woman who lost her lover, her husband, and even her clothes.

The story goes like this: There was a peasant couple. The wife thought her husband was old and wanted to seduce other men. When Lai saw her, he took the opportunity to seduce her and said many pleasant things to her.The woman was happy when she heard this, and said He expressed his willingness to go with him, and said that he still had some money at home, and he was willing to go home and steal the money first, and then Then run away together and go to another place to enjoy happiness.So they agreed on a place to meet.woman When the man returned home, he stole all the property in the house while her husband was sleeping at night.arrive the next day

He went to the agreed place and fled with the scoundrel. The two walked for a while and came to the river.The rogue thought to himself that this woman was not young, so she It is really useless, and if someone chases and catches it, it will not be worth the loss, so it is better to leave it alone. She, taking her belongings, had better go off alone, therefore: "After thinking this way, he said to her: My dear, this big river is not It's easy, so I'd like to send our belongings to the other side first, and then come back, and take the You carry it on your shoulders alone, and carry it safely across the river.She said: Good man,

Just do it!After she said that, he took all her belongings. He also said: my dear, please give me your upper body and lower body clothes, so that You go into the water carefree.She did this, and the gangster took the property and went up and down with her The clothes he was wearing went to the place he thought of. "(According to Ji Xianlin's translation) The woman, naked, was sitting by the river, waiting for the rascal to come back to fetch her, when she saw a The female wolf came with a piece of meat in her mouth. At this time, a fish jumped up in the river. It put down the meat in its mouth and wanted to catch it.

The fish, the fish jumped back into the river, and at the same time an eagle swooped down from the sky and snatched the piece of meat. The she-wolf was empty-handed. Seeing this, the woman couldn't help laughing at it and groaned. poem. This unchaste woman who didn't know she was cheated, sat naked by the river and waited for her lover to carry her across the river People, sang a poem like this to mock the she-wolf who lost both the meat in her mouth and the fish: "The meat was taken away by the eagle, The fish jumped into the water again; Female jackal, you lost the fish,

What else is there to see? " Because the woman herself has been deceived by others, the she-wolf lost both her husband, her lover, and even more money and clothes, and laughed at it, and therefore sang the quote at the end of the last story The little poem came to her in return, saying that although she had always been famous for being cunning, this woman was more than that. Cunning, but even so, the result is that she lost both her husband and her lover, and in the end fell She has to be naked, and has no money and people, but she still has the leisure to take care of its business and so on. "Five Volumes" is full of such short stories full of worldly irony and wit.According to Chinese translation The author Mr. Ji Xianlin said in the preface of the translation that these stories in "Five Volumes" are not only found in "Buddha Sutra and other collections of Indian stories, namely Boccaccio's, Stella Patrolla's "Funny Night", Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales", La Fontaine's "Fables", and De The fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm in China all have the influence of "Five Books", which shows that it is widely spread. The notebook novels since the Tang and Song Dynasties in our country also have the influence of "Five Volumes".Ji Xianlin Xian Born from "Taiping Guangji", "Meijian Shihua", "Xuetao Novels", "Ying Xielu" and other books, Find many examples to testify.Think that this is along with the Chinese translation of the Buddhist scriptures, these Indian folk tales The legend has also been introduced to our country, and has been loved and noticed by scholars of letters.Strangely enough: "Five Juan Shu itself has never been translated into Chinese. There is not only one collection of stories like the "Five Juan Shu" handed down in India. Mr. Ji Xianlin mentioned that there are also Yuetian's "Story Sea", An Zhu's "Big Story Bouquet" and so on. None of these, of course, have a Chinese translation. Many years ago, I saw an English translation of "The Sea of ​​Stories" on Mr. Xu Dishan's bookshelf There seemed to be as many as seven or eight volumes in total, but I didn't have time to read them carefully at that time.He is also proficient in Sanskrit and likes to study Those who study the literature of the "Buddhist Sutra" will have this book on the shelf, which is just a matter of course.It's a pity that I didn't add details at the time Look, now Mr. Xu's collection of books has been handed over by his family to a university library in Australia, so I have no way of knowing which bookstore in the UK published the English translation of "The Sea of ​​Stories". Can't buy it.