Aesop's Fables
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Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE. Of varied and unclear origins, the stories associated with his name have descended to modern times through a number of sources and continue to be reinterpreted in different verbal registers and in popular as well as artistic media.
A detail of the 13th-century Fontana Maggiore in Perugia, Italy, with the fables of The Wolf and the Crane and The Wolf and the Lamb
A Greek manuscript of the fables of Babrius
12th-century pillar, cloister of the Collegiate church of Saint Ursus, Aosta: the Fox and the Stork
The Nepalese Iisapan Daekaatagu Bakhan
Panchatantra
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The Panchatantra is an ancient Indian collection of interrelated animal fables in Sanskrit verse and prose, arranged within a frame story. The surviving work is dated to about 200 BCE, but the fables are likely much more ancient. The text's author is unknown, but it has been attributed to Vishnu Sharma in some recensions and Vasubhaga in others, both of which may be fictitious pen names. It is likely a Hindu text, and based on older oral traditions with "animal fables that are as old as we are able to imagine".
An 18th-century Pancatantra manuscript page in Braj ("The Talkative Turtle")
A Panchatantra relief at the Mendut temple, Central Java, Indonesia
A Panchatantra manuscript page