Aesop's fables - teaching good life with a superb touch of humour

By Amal HEWAVISSENTHI

Aesop's fables are the gem of idiosyncratic tradition of Greek story telling and are a type of fictitious stories depicting a truth by means of animal or human characters. Almost all Sri Lankan readers may have been, at some point of their life, exposed to the glimpses of 'good life' idealised in Aesop's fables. The timeless quality of fables lies in their exceptional brevity and the use of animal and human characters to underline a moral principle. The fables themselves are a pungent analysis of human weaknesses and the comic allegory running in the tales are often transparent. Even though these fables appear to be meant for children, the life realities they concentrate on, are much beyond the children's ability to grasp. Children naturally relish the tales but they are unable to slide an appraising eye over the whole spectrum of philosophies in the fables. The word "fable" is inextricably linked to Aesop who is usually believed to have been a popular speaker and a storyteller in Greece during the 5th century BC.

Who is Aesop?

There is considerable scepticism about the real life of Aesop among scholars who argue that no such person called Aesop ever lived and a collection of fables compiled by a few writers has been conveniently attributed to an imaginary man called Aesop. Historical proof supports the idea that he was a slave in the islands of Samos and served a wealthy man called Iadmon who was said to be dumb. Some scholars believe that he lived during the reign of Pharaoh Amasis of Egypt. He was later released from slavery (a few years prior to his death) and returned to his popularity as a public speaker who skilfully spiced up his discussions and conversations with extemporized fables.

However, Delphians put Aesop to death by hurling him off a rock precipice charging him with sacrilege. The Greek priests strongly opposed the killing and urged Delphians to recompense someone connected to him for the damage of his life. Yet there was none to claim to be a relative of his.

It is said that Aesop amused people by his extremely ugly, misshapen appearance and his embarrassing stammer. Yet his greater depth of understanding and experiential vision of life had a pronounced contrast from his funny appearance. In any case, it is perfectly sensible to come near to conclusion that these qualities are attributed to him because of the funny nature of the fables created by him. In these and several other respects, there may be many inventions exaggerations but he must have been a vitally good humoured man with a blithe assurance.

Where did the fables spring from?

His fables are observed to deal with the animals known to Asia Minor (his birth place) such as camel, wild ass, lion or ape and recent research has shown that his fables trace their origin to the tales on the lands of Semitic orient. The wisdom books written on clay tablets which belong to the tradition from Babylonian times to Assyrian empire, carry fables which bear similarities to Aesop's fables in everything.

Yet the parallelism between his fables and Indian tales makes us believe that Aesop's fables found great inspiration from Jathaka tales and Vishnu Shirman's Panchatantra. This idea is absolutely baseless.

Tales in the mould of Aesop's fables are found in greek literature which goes some two centuries beyond the origin of Jathaka tales and stories of Panchatantra.

So it is totally safe to conclude that Babylonian fables and those borrowed directly from other lands reshaped and enriched the frame of fables in Greek literature from time to time. Thus fable compilations have widely come out in parallel with their increasing popularity and publicity.

Nature of his fables

Whether a particular fable features animals or humans, the final message it conveys, readily bears on human life. It has not escaped our notice that most fables focus more on developing diplomacy and understanding of life. A fable is a powerful vehicle that transmits values, idealises correct way of living and unswervingly despises cunning, greed and all types of negative qualities. Even Socrates was imbued with the usefulness of fables in analysing far too simplistically, the nature of existence, thought and about how people should live.

Aesop is known never to have spoken in a grandiloquent or impassioned manner but to have spoken attractively in public extemporizing a lot of fables. In one of his famous speeches to Delphians, he quoted a fable which illustrated why eagles do not lay eggs when beetles are around. Once he spoke to Samians on behalf of an embezzler and he exploited the fable of hedgehog and fox to graphically illustrate his point.

This rare talent earned him the label of "the father of fables." Yet an array of fables written within a period of thousand years by writers of total anonymity are generally supposed to have been composed by the unmatched master of tales Aesop. Brisky retelling of a few fables will illustrate the spirit of his fables and his inventive calibre.

I

An active widow used to wake her servant-maids at the precise time the cock crowed. The servant-maids, totally tired with non-stop work, plotted to kill off the cock who used to crow and remind the widow of the time to wake them up at dawn. They thought the cock was responsible for the early waking up. However, they killed the cock secretly only to redouble their troubles. The rich widow, completely unaware of the time the cock crowed, started to wake the servant girls much earlier than that! The fable illustrates the fact that one's own plots against someone else might be the source of one's own destruction.

II

A boy swimming in the river suddenly felt that he was drowning. As he saw a man going past him, the boy screamed for help and the man stopped to look at the river.

Instead of taking prompt action to save the boy, the man began to rebuke the boy for being stubborn enough to bathe in the river.

The boy desperately cried out "Rescue me now and lecture me when I am pretty safe!" The fable shows that where practical action is needed, thousand words are useless.

III

This is a philosophical statement of human nature. Usually a man carries two bags full to the brim with faults. One bag is in front and the other is behind on his back. The bag in front is filled with weaknesses or faults of others and the bag behind him is filled with his own faults. The man easily sees the faults of others and lamentably fails to see his own faults because the bag of his faults is behind him.

IV

A sparrow once built her nest on the wall of a courthouse and conveniently brought up her young. One day a ratsnake crept up on the nestlings and swallowed them.

On witnessing this tragedy the sparrow cried out "This is the place which dispenses justice to everybody and the very place has dispensed injustice to me!"