Book Reviews

Author(s): J W De Jong
Publisher: J W De Jong

Page 12

238
REVIEWS
Lommel was more inspired when he was writing for a larger public. Sometimes his prose is animated by a lyrical tone which is rarely found in the works of contemporary Vedic scholars, cf. p. 179: "Und er (der in der Natur beheimatete Mensch] spürt den aufsteigenden Dunst, er wittert die Düfte der Nacht und lauscht dem Wehen des Windes und dem Rauschen der Flügel ziehender Vögel, er sieht die Wolken vor dem Mond vorbeiziehen, und sein Denken und Träumen durchfliegt die weiten Räume des Luftreichs, bis kühler Tau, der sich von oben senkt, ihn gegen Morgen das Feuer lebendiger schüren lässt."
Professor Janert has contributed a preface and added three indices (Sach- und Namensregister; Verzeichnis der Textstellen; Liste der behandelten Wörter, Stämme, Wurzeln) which greatly facilitate the study of this volume. Misprints have not been corrected. On p. 379 Frazers "Golden Bow" has to be corrected to Frazers "Golden Bough" and on p. 413, n. 2 in JAOS 15 (1981) S. 143 f.' 1981 is a misprint for 1891. The bibliography does not mention that Die Religion Zarathustras nach dem Awesta dargestellt (Tübingen, 1930) was reprinted in 1971 by Georg Olms Verlag in Hildesheim.
Australian National University
J. W. DE JONG
Harry Falk, Quellen des Pañcatantra, Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1978, IV, 205 pp. (Freiburger Beiträge zur Indologie, Band 12).
It is not within the purview of this doctoral thesis, despite its title, to reveal the sources, written and oral, of each and every frame and emboxed fable of the Pancatantra. Given our present knowledge of Sanskrit fable literature before the data of the composition of the Pañcatantra, that would be a most difficult task.' Dr. Falk has preferred to study in detail the sources of three frame and three emboxed fables, which he has traced in the Mahābhārata and in the Jā takas. He has primarily confined himself to the first three tantras (texts) of the Pancatantra as they are presented in the Tantrākhyāyika, and consequently in Franklin Edgerton's "reconstruction". By dint of a thorough and meticulous analysis of the Sanskrit texts of his source materials and those of the reworkings deliberately executed by the anonymous author of the Pañcatantra, Dr. Falk has succeeded in interpreting his findings in such a way as to enable us to understand the author's technique of composition, and thus to gain an insight into the genesis of this masterpiece of Sanskrit literature.
Dr. Falk views the Pancatantra as essentially a dharmaśāstra (and in its "reversed aspect" as a nitiśāstra). Nowhere does he mention it as a nidaršanakathā, a literary genre to which Bhoja refers in his Srngäraprakāša. Dr. Falk's interpretations are derived from those incidences in which the author of the Pancatantra has converted prior nidaršanakathās (exempla, fabulae), which may have functioned differently, into illustrative tales that inculcate principles of dharma and niti which were to be practiced by those readers who would be guided by his work, that is, by rajaputras who would eventually assume the rule of a kingdom, if we are to believe the content of the kathāmukha.
According to Johannes Hertel, each fable of the Pancatantra is to be considered a “Klugheitsfall" (case of trickery), so that the work as a whole teaches a Machiavellian doctrine, a view which Edgerton could not accept; nor can Dr. Falk, for he interprets the niti content of the Pancatantra as "defensive niti," that is, the author of the Pascatantra utilizes niti in aid of the defense of dharma. By delineating what is asādhudharma, as expressed in the niti-ślokas of Kaninka Bhāradvāja, the author of the Pañcatantra propounds in reality sādhudharma as "die Umkehrung der niti" (the reversal of niti). The arguments accompanied by illustrations which Dr. Falk advances in support of his "Umkehrungstheorie" are, in my opinion, strongly convincing, and in this theory lie the significance and value of his dissertation.