Abstract
This chapter inquires into the epistemic space of narrative in Indic mnemocultures. If narrative is seen to filiate identity and ethics in temporal terms in European tradition, Sanskrit mnemocultures suspend any such status to narrative; they do not sublimate memory in narratives of self-hood. They spread across through non-narrative strands and are oriented to imparting action knowledges. This chapter concentrates on the Panchatantra to explore the relation between narrative and non-narrative strands and their ethical political implications.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
For a critical unravelling of the narrative of European heritage, cf. Lacoue-Labarthe (1993a, pp. 1–13).
- 2.
I have used the Sanskrit-Telugu bilingual version of the Panchatantram (2009), vol.1, p. 5.
- 3.
I am indebted to the work of S.N. Balagangadhara for this phrase (although I use the term later on in a slightly different way from his). In a formidable work of original theoretical significance, Balagangadhara configures Indian singularity on the basis of “action knowledge”—the capability to learn from modes of doing. As ideas can generate ideas, actions too can bring forth actions in distinct ways, argues Balagangadhara. This theoretical vantage enables him to contrast the reflective difference of India (Asia) with that of the West (which he configures as oriented towards theoretical or propositional knowledge). Balagangadhara escapes the trap of binarism by contending that action and theory are cultural universals. However, his main contention is that cultural difference can be configured on the basis of the emphasis that cultures lay on these orientations. Cf. Balagangadhara (1987: pp. 77–107).
- 4.
Incidentally, the Greek word for plot (in Aristotle’s use) is muthos. As one can see, by the time of Aristotle the term seems to be cleansed of all its theatrocratic appurtenances. It becomes a signifier of a perspectivizing narrative orientation.
- 5.
For Ricoeur (1991: pp. 20–21), plot provides an “intelligible whole”.
- 6.
Differing with Barthes’ psychoanalytic account, Cavarero (2000, p. 14) goes on to see in Sophocles (rather than in Freud) the “life-story [of Oedipus] that reveals to him who he is….”.
- 7.
This is precisely the credo of German Romanticism which structures modernity in European intellectual history. Biography and autobiography are the celebrated offspring of this credo. Cf. Lacoue-Labarthe (1993b: pp. 7–11).
- 8.
For revival of the fable and its distinct relation to the absolutist monarchic regime in the 17th–18th century Europe, cf., Patterson (1991).
- 9.
In his significant work, Rogues, Derrida unravels the filiation between democratic sovereignty and the millennial theogonal, ipsocratic political traditions of Europe. While exposing the patriarchal, fraternal and androcentric nature of historical democracy (from the Greeks), Derrida (2005: p. 11) speculates on the future of democracy: “the question of democracy to come might take the following form, among others: what is ‘living together?’ and especially: ‘what is a like, a compeer,’ ‘someone similar or sensible as a human being, a neighbor, a fellow citizen, a fellow creature, a fellow man,’ and so on?” Incidentally, this work on political theology of democracy actually begins with a fable about the relation between law and force, might and right, from Lafontaine. Curiously, it is difficult to see a tale that is identical to the Lafontaine’s version in the Panchatantra.
References
Balagangadhara, S. N. 1987. Comparative Anthropology and Action Sciences: An Essay on Knowing to Act and Acting to Know, Philosophica, 40(2): 77–107.
Caverero, A. 1997/2000. Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood, translated by P. Kottman (London: Routledge).
Derrida, J. 1997. Politics of Friendship, translated by G. Collins (London: Verso).
Derrida, J. 2005. Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, translated by P-A. Brault & M. Naas (Stanford: Stanford University Press).
Edgerton, F. 1915. The Hindu Beast Fable in the Light of Recent Studies, The American Journal of Philology, 36(1) (accessed via http://www.jsto.org/stable/289519, on 15 February 2010).
Houben, J. & Rath, S. 2012. Introduction: Manuscript Culture and Its Impact in ‘India’: Contours and Parameters. In S. Rath (Ed.), Aspects of Manuscript Culture in South India (Leiden: Brill).
Lacoue-Labarthe, P. 1993a. The Fable. In The Subject of Philosophy, edited and with a foreword by T. Trezise, translated by H. J. Silverman, G. M. Cole, T. D. Bent, et al., Theory and History of Literature, Vol. 83 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).
Lacoue-Labarthe, P. 1993b. The Subject of Philosophy, edited and with a foreword by T. Trezise, translated by H. J. Silverman, G. M. Cole, T. D. Bent, et al., Theory and History of Literature, Vol. 83 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).
Olivelle, P. 1997. Introduction, Pancatantra: The Book of India’s Folk Wisdom, translated by P. Olivelle (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Panchatantram. 2009. Bilingual version translated into Telugu by Jeereddy Balachenna Reddy (2 vols.) (Hyderabad: Sanskrita Bhasha Prachara Samiti).
Patterson, A. 1991. Fables of Power: Aesopian Writing and Political History (Durham: Duke University Press).
Ricoeur, P. 1991. Life in Quest of Narrative. In D. Wood (Ed.), On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation (London: Routledge).
Ricoeur, P. 1999. Memory and Forgetting. In R. Kearny & M. Dooley (Eds), Questioning Ethics: Contemporary Debates in Philosophy (London: Routledge).
Solomon, R. 1995. On the Origin of the Early Indian Scripts, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 115(2): 271–279.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer India
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rao, D.V. (2014). Fables of Identity and Contingencies of Certainty: Disarticulations of the Panchatantra . In: Cultures of Memory in South Asia. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 6. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-1698-8_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-1698-8_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New Delhi
Print ISBN: 978-81-322-1697-1
Online ISBN: 978-81-322-1698-8
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)