Ramsay Wood
Encyclopedia
Panchatantra
The Panchatantra is an ancient Indian inter-related collection of animal fables in verse and prose, in a frame story format. The original Sanskrit work, which some scholars believe was composed in the 3rd century BCE, is attributed to Vishnu Sharma...
. His Kalila and Dimna-- Selected Fables of Bidpai was published by Knopf in 1980. Wood believes that these fables are the earliest secular example of what Lawrence Lessig
Lawrence Lessig
Lawrence "Larry" Lessig is an American academic and political activist. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark, and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications, and he has called for state-based activism to promote substantive...
calls remix culture
Remix culture
Remix culture is a term used to describe a society which allows and encourages derivative works. Remix is defined as combining or editing existing materials to produce a new product. A Remix Culture would be, by default, permissive of efforts to improve upon, change, integrate, or otherwise remix...
.
Fable collections as early examples of remix culture
Wood claims that in hundreds of literary collections, various arrangements of The Panchatantra fables are known by separate titles in different languages at different times in different places. Yet each unique cultural remix always links back to an oral, even pre-literate, storytelling society in ancient India. No original text survives. We can only enjoy and study the many derivative works.Wood’s Kalila and Dimna has an Introduction by the novelist and Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing
Doris May Lessing CH is a British writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook, and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos....
supporting his contention. She cites some literary variants of The Panchatantra. This Introduction was reprinted in Lessing's 2005 collection of essays, Time Bites: Views and Reviews At the London 2009 Institute for Cultural Research's Seminar entitled The Power of Stories Wood delivered an illustrated lecture entitled The Kalila and Dimna Story — How an ancient 'book' left home. A online video of this lecture is available from his website.
English versions
The fables first appeared in English as The Morall Philosophie of Doni in 1570, translated from the Italian by Sir Thomas North, who also translated Plutarch’s Lives. Wood’s book is the first modern English, multiple-sourced, remix of these ancient fables since North's 1570 version. Wood’s Kalila and Dimna is reconstituted from the North text and also seven other works translated from SanskritSanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
, Arabic, Syriac and Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
. In the book’s ‘Afterword’ Wood suggests that these distinct literary collections of ancient fables, although highly revered classics in each target language, are among the world’s most durable examples of cross-cultural migration, adaptive morphology and secular survival — as they have been widely and continuously shared and modified for over two thousand years from a legendary, long-lost, original manuscript.
Edinburgh Festival 1984
In 1983, Wood’s book was turned into a play entitled A Word in the Stargazer’s Eye by Stuart Cox of Theatr Taliesin Wales. The show premiered at the 1984 Edinburgh FestivalEdinburgh Festival
The Edinburgh Festival is a collective term for many arts and cultural festivals that take place in Edinburgh, Scotland each summer, mostly in August...
, starring the actor Nigel Watson. The Scotsman
The Scotsman
The Scotsman is a British newspaper, published in Edinburgh.As of August 2011 it had an audited circulation of 38,423, down from about 100,000 in the 1980s....
reviewed it thus:
Theatr Taliesin Wales subsequently toured the production in many countries for several years, from Iceland
Iceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
to India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
.
Wood’s second volume, Kalila and Dimna – Fables of Conflict and Intrigue, will continue his re-compilation project when it is published by UK publisher Medina Publishing in 2011. In May 2008 Saqi Books re-issued Wood’s first volume — revised, enlarged and retitled as Kalila and Dimna – Fables of Friendship and Betrayal.
French edition 2006
Éditions Albin Michel
Éditions Albin Michel is a French publisher. It was founded in 1911 by Albin Michel.-External links:*...
published a French translation of his 1980 first volume. A review by Roger-Pol Droit
Roger-Pol Droit
Roger-Pol Droit is a French academic and philosopher. Alumnus of the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud, he has written popular books, most notably 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life, which has been translated into twenty-two languages...
in Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
on Sept 15th 2006 said:
Crossing linguistic and cultural frontiers, these fables also transcend conventional time-frames. They abound with temporal paradoxes. Ancient letters, locked in a series of smaller and smaller treasure chests by King Houschenk in the past, are addressed to kings of the future. They contain words of advice whose meaning only becomes gradually clear, sometimes after a very big delay.
Other activities
Wood was a freelance photographer and journalist who covered feature stories in Europe, Africa and the Far East until 1986. His first major publication, when he was 25, was an interview and photographs with the poet Robert GravesRobert Graves
Robert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...
in LIFE Magazine. He was chairman of the original charity called Afghan Relief
Afghan Relief
Registered British Charity Commission Number 289910The objects of this Trust were to relieve poverty and sickness and promote health and advance education amongst refugees from Afghanistan....
, from 1992 until its dissolution in 2002. He was a co-founder and acting Secretary of the College of Storytellers from 1980 until 1991. In 2005 he qualified as an assistant literacy teacher and now works part-time in London at Emerson House helping dyslexic children learn keyboard skills. He was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1943.