The Teacher and the Taught: Structures and Meaning in the Arabian Nights and the Panchatantra

Abstract

The Arabian Nights and the Panchatantra are both works of Asian origin, and both have exercised their power over and literary imagination across continents for many centuries. The Panchatantra has been considered to be the older of the two, and it is supposed to have influenced the Nights, yet the narratives about the origin of each of these works do not supply clear evidence. Both of them exist in more than one version, and both have become popular in modern times by way of their translations into European languages. Through the ages, in telling and retelling, in translations and annotations, versions of the stories have emerged and become the subject of many scholarly works. For a folklorist scholar today, the widespread distribution and popular reception of the two works present a particular situation for research. The Arabian Nights continues to be an extremely popular work and is presented in the newest media, including, most recently, computer-animated films and video games. The Panchatantra's genre is classified as fable, and accordingly it appears most prominently in various forms of children's literature. At the academic level, constant and valuable research on the process of how the two works came into being, has revealed how they were molded and in a continuous process lasting for many centuries. And yet, though the existing research is quite exhaustive, numerous details of their history and character, particularly of the Arabian Nights, remain to be studied (Marzolph 19). A modern folklorist is faced with this contrast between the popular renown and the academic conclusions about the Nights. If this essay, then, proposes to analyze the ending of the Nights, on which version should this analysis be based: on the famous but highly constructed one, like Richard Burton's, or on others regarded as closer to native or authentic versions? Considering the intense discussion on the subject of the construction of the Nights, none of the versions retains credibility. I see this as the particular situation of research today when we are aware of the materials as they have emerged in the process of modernity and textualizing. With reference to the textualization of Asian works into European languages during the past five centuries, it is worth noting that the so-called have acquired an identity that has its own authenticity, such as an identity across national boundaries. Galland's Mille et une Nuits or Burton's Nights, for example, are known to millions of readers across the world as The Thousand and One Nights or the Arabian Nights. The constructs exist and cannot be wished away. More important, they need to be treated as materials of a very special kind. Indeed, the process of textualization of oral narratives is often complex and varied. Each textualized narrative is a version, and there are often various textualized versions prepared from different sources, which is exactly the situation in the case of the Arabian Nights. How, then, should these different textualizations be treated for interpretative and analytical studies? I think that they present a situation similar to the one offered by oral variants. Global The various European versions of the Arabian Nights, based on different manuscripts, may be seen as different textualized versions. At the same time, our academic understanding of the Arabian Nights as a Western construct should not prevent us from acknowledging their folkloric identity. If the constructs have become internationally renowned versions, then their analysis refers probably less to their contexts and more to their acquired international meaning. At a more specific level, the process of the emergence of European constructs of Asian folklore and their travel across continents is intrinsically related to the geography of the colonial world. Folklore from different parts of the world traveled to various other parts in the languages of the colonial rulers with an unprecedented speed. …