Poetic Logic in "The Panchatantra and The Arabian Nights"

Author(s): Ferial Ghazoul

Source: Arab Studies Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Winter 1983), pp. 13-21
Published by: Pluto Journals
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 Poetic Logic in The Panchatantra and
The Arabian Nights

Ferial Ghazoul

POETIC LOGIC AND NARRATION

The paradoxical expression "poetic logic" was first used by Giambattista

Vico when writing La Scienza Nuova (1725). By "poetic" Vico meant the
spontaneous, imaginative, and highly metaphoric mode of expression,
which he associated with folk literature and thought. 1 Logic, on the other
hand, indicates a rigorous and systematic development of thinking. But the
contradiction is only on the surface, since creations of collective imagination
have been proven to contain within them inner systems of relations and
logical coherence of an indirect nature. The poetic logic of a given work of
art is, therefore, its pattern of signifying and its system of communicating.
This study will compare and contrast the underlying poetic logic of two
world classics that have emerged from the Orient and influenced other
literatures tremendously. There is probably a genetic kinship between The
Panchatantra and The Arabian Nights ,2 and most certainly definite
elements common to narrative Indian literature are present in The Arabian
Nights .3 However, this paper does not deal with the question of artistic
borrowing; it concentrates on structural affinities and variations in the two
texts.

Ferial Ghazoul is Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at

The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt.

This article is a modified version of a paper delivered in the Xth International

Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (India, 1978). The author is
grateful to Dr. Thomas Lamont for his encouragement and support, and to the
Indian Ministry of Education and Welfare for their kind hospitality.

1. Giambattista Vico, The New Science , trans. T.D. Bergin and M.H. Fisch
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970), pp. 85-96.
2. A. Berriedale Keith, A History of Sanskrit Literature (London: Oxford
University Press, 1920), p. 361.
3. Mia I. Gerhardt, The Art of Story-telling: A Literary Study of The Thousand
and One Nights (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1963), p. 9.

ASQ Volume 5 Number 1 13

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 14 Arab Studies Quarterly

In a sense, both The Panchatantra and The Arabian Nights fall into the
same narrative genre: a collection of tales within a framework story. Yet the
function of storytelling in the two works varies considerably. In The
Panchatantra , the purpose of telling stories is explicitly stated in the
prologue as teaching "the art of practical life" or "the art of intelligent life."4
The purpose of storytelling in The Arabian Nights is stated by Shahrazad
secretly to her collaborator Dinazad as a device for survival.5 It is
interesting, therefore, to note the patterns of stories and the modes of
production of meaning in the two cases.
The frame story in The Panchatantra is simple and undramatic when
compared to the frame story in The Arabian Nights. The net result is that
the complexity and the power of The Arabian Nights' prologue continues to
hover over Shahrazad's discourse, while Vishnusharman, the eloquent
Brahman, recedes into the background as his fables unfold. This has far-
reaching implications. The reader can properly focus on the stories of The
Panchatantra and extract their moral or point. In The Arabian Nights the
content of what Shahrazad is relating is less important as the crucial element
is this juxtaposition of a woman comdemned to death at dawn, relating
stories to postpone her verdict. It is the case of Shahrazad that captivates as
much as her narration. Furthermore, in The Arabian Nights, formulaic
beginning and ending of story partly punctuate the narration but mostly
remind us of Shahrazad's drama:

Shahrazad said "O Auspicious King, it has reached me that . . .

And when dawn caught up with Shahrazad, she stopped her permitted
say ....

The system of partition or division is significant too. The night is the

measuring unit, as it were, in The Arabian Nights , but nights vary in length.
In some, more than one story is told; in others, part of one. The verbal
quantity also varies from one night to another, as well as from one
manuscript to another. There is something arbitrary about the length and
the content of each night, though all variations of The Arabian Nights claim
one thousand and one nights. On the other hand, in The Panchatantra , the
units of which the work is made are chapters or books, as the title
"panchatantra" (five books) very clearly shows. Each book is a classificatory
unit and their unfolding is announced in the prologue and rigorously
followed in the text. The five books- (1) The Loss of Friends, (2) The

4. The Panchatantra , trans. Arthur W. Ryder (Chicago: The University of

Chicago Press, 1925), p. 15.
5. Alf Lay la wa Lay la (Cairo: Bulaq, 1835), vol. I, p. 6.

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 Poetic Logic 15

Winning of Friends, (3) Crows and Owls, (4) Loss of Gains, and (5) Ill-
considered Action - are independent and tackle different aspects of social-
political relations. Each book has its own frame story which triggers the
narration and develops it. Hence the five frame stories and their characters
are interwoven with the inserted stories. Each inserted story, to a great
extent, moves the action. For example, in the story of "The Jackal and the
War-drum" in Book I (The Loss of Friends) of The Panchatantra, 6 which is
told by Victor, the counseling jackal, he demonstrates to Rusty, the lion-
king, that "one should not be troubled by a mere sound"7 and hence is
permitted to investigate the sound. Storytelling in The Panchatantra can be
said to contribute to the progression of the plot. In contrast, inserted stories
in The Arabian Nights often work as a digression from the plot. For
example, the story of " 'Aziz and 'Aziza"8 is not instrumental in the
unfolding of "Sirat 'Umar ibn al-Nu'man"9 in which it is inserted. The
inserted story constitutes a distraction in the movement of the framing story.
Progression in The Panchatantra and digression in The Arabian Nights
are tendencies in the line of narration rather than absolute rules. Further-
more, it is wrong to assume that progression is the only manifestation of
skill in narrative construction. Digression should be viewed as another and
alternative way of fictional construction. In The Arabian Nights digression
is certainly functional and even rewarding, for the idea is to gain time and to
captivate. It is becoming, therefore, for Shahrazad to sidetrack, creating this
somewhat amusing, somewhat bewildering labyrinth in which Shahrayar as
well as the reader are completely enmeshed. Since the purpose of The
Panchatantra , on the other hand, is didactic, there is an effort to control the
flow of the material and its channels. The point is not to charm, but to
instruct; therefore, clarity is recommendable.
When symbolization occurs in the fables of The Panchatantra , it is
formulated in a way which makes decoding a fairly easy activity and
deciphering a simple substituting process. Not only does The Panchatantra
use ready-made stock characters such as gullible kings (in "The Monk Who
Left His Body Behind,"10 "The Unforgiving Monkey,"11 and "Merchant
Strong-teeth"12) and adulterous wives (in "The Weaver's Wife"13 and "The
Farmer's Wife"14); but it is also consistent in associating traits with beasts.

6. The Panchatantra . dd. 41-42.

7. Ibid., p. 42.
8. Alf Lay la wa Lay la, vol. 1, pp. 234-55.
9. Ibid ., vol. I, pp. 139-301.
10. The Panchatantra , pp. 174-82.
11. Ibid., pp. 454-61.
12. Ibid., pp. 49-54.
13. Ibid., pp. 62-71.
14. Ibid., pp. 412-14.

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 16 Arab Studies Quarterly

Hence the monkey regularly appears stupid; the lion, strong; the jackal,
crafty; and so on. This helps the reader understand the situation and derive
the proper moral, in the same way that masks and colors are used in Far
Eastern theater to denote moral position and social status. This is hardly the
case in The Arabian Nights where, for example, the demons (jinn ) can be
harmful (in "The Fisherman and the Demon"15) or helpful (in " 'Ala al-Din
and the Magic Lamp"16). Women, as well, are of ambivalent disposition.
There are those who are obsessed with sexual delights (the wives of
Shahzaman, Shahrayar, and the kidnapped woman in the frame story,17 and
those in "The Woman and the Bear"18 and "The Princess and the
Monkey"19). But there are also self-sacrificing, sublimating, or pure women
who function as paradigms of "proper" female behavior, such as 'Aziza (in
" 'Aziz and 'Aziza"20) and Shahrazad (in the frame story21). Such vacillation
prevents the stabilization of the narrative code and turns the reader away
from anchoring the text into the outside social world. The emphasis is more
on the transformations within the narrative sphere, hence the reading
remains in its self-contained circle.
To be self-contained does not mean that the fiction does not cross reality.
In fact The Arabian Nights , like any text, imaginative or expository, has to
use words and concepts from language that are necessarily pregnant with
social implications. However, the specificity of The Araban Nights lies in the
multiplicity of stories included and points of view adopted to the point
where no coherent ideological argument can be derived from it. It is often
difficult to decide under what genre to classify The Arabian Nights because
of the richness and variety of its material. It has fantastic as well as realistic
stories. It deals with erotic impulses as well as sublimated love. It has
religious stories and detective stories. Some of its stories are of epical length
and others are short anecdotes. But the lack of obvious unifying pattern
does not mean lack of significance. For the point that the thematic
complexity reveals is the encyclopedic drive in The Arabian Nights , that
which the mystics have called "unity in multiplicity."
The Panchatantra may not have a fixed ideological position, but it does
bring together stories that are instructive in a realistic situation. It is not
cynical, though it offers down-to-earth, unsentimental, and flexible advice.

15. Alf Lay la wa Lay la , vol. I, pp. 10-24.

16. H. Zoten berg, Histoire d'Ala al-Din ou La lampe merveilleuse (Paris:
Imprimerie Nationale, 1888).
17. Alf Lay la wa Lay la, vol. I, pp. 2-4.
18. Ibid., vol. I, pp. 531-33.
19. Ibid., vol. I, pp. 533-34.
20. Ibid., vol. I, pp. 234-55.
21. Ibid., vol. I, pp. 4-6; and vol. II, p. 619.

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 Poetic Logic 17

It constitutes what has been called a niti-shastra , or a manual of wise rules

for social interaction.22 It is directed thematically, while The Arabian Nights
run in innumerable directions. For in The Arabian Nights what counts is not
a move in a given direction and with a forseeable objective, but to move, the
orientation being immaterial. In The Panchatantra , the aim of the narrating
Brahman is intelligent living, savoir vivre. In The Arabian Nights, the aim is
plain living, survivre. It is indeed very significant that the character who is
entrusted with teaching social wisdom is a wise old man of eighty years,
while Shahrazad, the symbol of struggle for life, is a young woman of
childbearing age.
We have seen that The Panchatantra is characterized by a bold and clear
system of signifying, while The Arabian Nights ' message remains elusive and
ambiguous. This is the distinction between formulated allegory and
symbolic allegory.23 There .are a number of elements that contribute to the
solidity of The Panchatantra and the liquidity of The Arabian Nights as it
were. Having touched briefly on the overall construction pattern, we will
now compare the use of specific construction elements in the two narratives,
mainly, the characters, the plots, and the formulaic expressions.

CHARACTERS, PLOTS, AND LOCUTIONS

The characters in The Panchatantra are predominantly animals. In Book

I, the principal characters are: two jackals, Victor and Cheek; the lion,
Rusty; and the bull, Lively. In Book II, the characters are: the crow, Swift;
the mouse, Gold; the turtle, Slow; and the deer, Spot. In Book III, the action
is shared by the crows and the owls. In Book IV, the exchange of stories and
the intrigue is between a monkey and a crocodile; and in Book V between a
merchant and a monk. The talking beasts, of course, defy everyday norms
just as flying horses or gigantic demons do. Yet, somehow, the text does not
fail to convey to us that the talking animal is not a wonder but an allegory.
How is it done? And why is a talking monkey in The Panchatantra taken for
granted, but not the writing monkey in The Arabian Nights?24 This is, of
course, a question of narrative technique. In The Panchatantra , as in any
fable including those that occur in The Arabian Nights, the act of speech by
animals is presented without any indication of supernatural or fantastic
event. In Book I of The Panchatantra , the lion is said to be the king of
animals, an almost universal metaphor to mean that he is the most powerful

22. The Panchatantra , p. 5.

23. As drawn by C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval
Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958).
24. Alf Layla wa Layla, vol. I, pp. 36-41.

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 18 Arab Studies Quarterly

and the mightiest among them. Here, there is a poetic transfer from the
human hierarchic society to the animal world. King in folk thought means
the greatest or strongest. The acceptable metaphor is used here to develop
an extended comparison or what Riffaterre has called la metaphore filée. 25
Hence the lion has a retinue of animals and, furthermore, this retinue is
divided into four divisions. The comparison in one aspect, namely, the
attributive, is now extended to the organizational level. Furthermore, king
lion has the given name "Rusty," which helps humanize him especially when
human sentiments of fear and concealing of fear are attributed to him.26
Clearly, at this point the metaphor has been extended beyond the point of
suspended disbelief. The lion is simply not a lion, not the kind of lion that
we know: a beast of the jungle that may be able to subdue all animals, but
does not have in any concrete sense a court and a retinue. Here, we have a
substitution that has worked progressively and inversely as follows:
1. The lion to the animals is as the king to the subjects.
2. The lion is the king of the animals.
3. The lion is the king.
4. The king is the lion.
These steps correspond to the following mental processes:
1. Explicit analogy
2. Implicit analogy
3. Abbreviation
4. Inversion.
The analytical logic of the fables becomes clear enough. The lion now
stands for the king in a four-step process of concealment. The lion simply
veils the king, and it is a very thin, transparent veil. The lion refers to the
king as a generic term, not a specific one. Symbolization in the fable is, then,
radically different than that of a roman a clef such as Diderot's Les bijoux
indiscrètes , where narrative characters are drawn from figures that are
identifiable in history and in place. The fable deals with generalities that are
prevalent everywhere. In such a world, it is not surprising that the jackals
who are the lion's counsellors exchange pointed stories and pungent verses.
The question that imposes itself is: Why the veiling? Why not call a king a
king instead of a lion? Why the detour? Some may argue that it is a remnant
of primitive poetic thought. But that is unlikely, for it is the deliberate
translation of an already existing abstract thought. The Panchatantra's
fables are not pre-abstract thought, but illustrations of abstractions that are
present in the text in the form of maxims and gnomic verses. The most likely
explanation is that the use of fables was a mode of retaining and preserving

25. Michael Riffaterre, "La metaphore filée dans la poésie surréaliste," Langue
Française 3 (September 1969), pp. 46-60.
26. The Panchatantra , p. 22.

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 Poetic Logic 19

in an age where writing was costly and publishing unknown. Stringing a

series of rules of conduct in a plot and attributing sayings to animals is
certainly more effective than memorizing a set of dry, complicated rules.
Furthermore, fable-telling recovers totemism defined in the words of Lévi-
Strauss as "relations posed ideologically, between two series, one natural ,
the other cultural"21 The fables reproduce in the world of animals the
behavioral code recommended by the culture.
As for The Arabian Nights , the animals we come across are mostly
metamorphized human beings. The animals are humanized in the
presentation, just as they were in The Panchatantra , but they are by no
means allegorized. In the story of "The Three Ladies of Baghdad" we come
across two black dogs who get whipped by a lady.28 But the whipping is so
ceremonial that it includes regular sessions of torturous whipping followed
by affectionate caresses, and accompanied by the crying of the dogs. All
these elements contribute to make the scene enigmatic rather than allegoric.
The ambivalence inherent in hurting and relieving, the ritual aspect, and
finally the tears of the dogs raise the reader's curiosity and also that of
Harun al-Rashid, who is posed in the narration as a puzzled spectator.
Hence, this episode reveals a secret while the allegory of the fable revealed a
message. In The Arabian Nights , we know what we see has another layer but
that layer does not provide the message. We only know that the surface of
the text constitutes a veil, but beneath the veil we cannot see clearly, if at all.
What we sense lurking beneath the veil is a state of mind and a psychological
disposition rather than a clear-cut social message.
The plots of individual stories in The Panchatantra are relatively simple
and uncomplicated and revolve around a single discovery. In the story of
"The Wedge-pulling Monkey,"29 the fable is about a monkey who meddled
in a construction site and got his private parts caught in a wedge. Here, the
point is to discourage meddling into that which does not concern one. In the
story of "The Jackal and the War-drum,"30 the point centers around the
deception of appearance, hence the jackal was under the impression that the
skin of the drum covered rich meat, but after struggling with it, he
discovered that it was empty. In the story of "Numskull and the Rabbit,"31
the point being made is how shrewdness can overcome force. All the animals
agreed to send one of them for the meal of the ferocious lion. When it was
the rabbit's turn, he fabricated a story: a strong lion stopped him on the way.

27. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Totemism , trans. Rodney Needham (Boston: Beacon

Press, 1963), p. 16.
28. Alf Lay la wa Lay la, vol. I, p. 28-29.
29. The Panchatantra, p. 25.
30. Ibid pp. 41-42.
31. Ibid., pp. 81-88.

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 20 Arab Studies Quarterly

Having raised the lion's wrath and jealousy, he led him to a well where the
lion mistook his own image for a challenging other. The lion jumped in to
kill the other and in doing so met his own end. The point is made in an
illustrative fashion and cannot escape the attention of the reader. In
contrast, in The Arabian Nights , plots tend to be complex. The story of
"The Three Ladies of Baghdad" is so rich and branches in so many
directions that it is difficult to extract its significance without elaborate
analytic work.32 Significance in the tales of The Arabian Nights seems to
recede to fathomless depths, and it takes a certain effort of concentration
and intensive penetration before one realizes the point behind it; even then
the point is missed if it cannot be related to some state that one has
experienced and perhaps suppressed. It is, therefore, not so much a
discovery as much as a process of recovery that one encounters in the tales
of The Arabian Nights. Whether it is the ambivalence of sadomasochism as
represented in the whipping and caressing scenes, mentioned earlier, or the
undressing of one's mother as in the story of "Jawdar,"33 the appeal is
oriented to some deep psychic stratas rather than surface social ones. This is
not to say that The Arabian Nights does not have simple-structured tales or
social stories, or for that matter fables. But, it is again a question of
predominance; long, complicated stories are frequent in The Arabian
Nights , and secret underground enclosures, forbidden doors, and fulfillment
of magical wishes seem to be their typical motifs.
Another indicative element in the system of signification lies in the use of
locutions. The Panchatantra uses locutions, gnomic verses, and proverbs in
a regular manner - namely, to start a tale and to end it. Hence stories are
very tightly contained by the maxim or the saying which both initiates the
fable and finishes it. For example, the story of "The Mouse that Set
Elephants Free"34 is preceded by the saying:

Make friends, make friends, however strong

Or weak they be:
Recall the captive elephants
That mice set free.35

The fable is ended in those words:

32. See the analysis in Andras Hamori, On the Art of Medieval Arabic Literature
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), pp. 164-80.
33. Alf Layla wa Layla, vol. II, pp. 86-105.
34. The Panchatantra , pp. 274-76.
35. Ibid., p. 273.

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 Poetic Logic 21

Make friends, make friends, however strong36 ....

This clearly stresses the point of the fable and makes it work as an
extended illustration of the locution. The only other time that verse is
inserted in this story is when the mice were having their convention and
discussing the wrath of elephants:

An elephant will kill you, if

He touch; a serpent if he sniff;
King's laughter has a deadly sting;
A rascal kills by honoring;37

In this case, the verse highlights the power of the elephant eloquently by
tying it with comparable powerful creatures such as serpents and kings. The
verse in this case serves a descriptive role, but a highly hyperbolic one. The
point is, therefore, made or rather remade through a shift to a metrical
discourse. The verse serves to underline and to eloquently articulate the
maxim of the fable.
In The Arabian Nights , verse as well as maxims are used, but rarely to
pinpoint a moral. They are generally used at a moment of tension or
emotion, as when lovers break into poetry to express their passion or their
bewilderment. In "Sirat 'Umar ibn al-Nu'man" Dhaw al-Makan is stricken
by grief and he cries, reciting a poem in which he recalls his former glory and
his present predicament.38 Verse and locutions are essentially used in an
expressive way to portray that which narrative prose is incapable of doing
adequately. At times, verse and proverbs are used for a descriptive purpose
as when women are accused of treachery, and reference is made to Adam
and Joseph;39 however, the verses are used to demonstrate not so much the
point of the story as the point of view of the imprisoned woman who was
speaking.
The Arabian Nights uses locutions to dramatize a state of mind or a point
of view while The Panchatantra uses locutions to draw a point and stress a
quality. The use of stylistic locutions enhances the pitch in The Arabian
Nights while it serves as the extraction of the lesson in The Panchatantra.
In conclusion, the elements of the poetic logic of the Indian classic
converge in order to mean while the narrative logic of the Arabian classic
works in order to be.

36. Ibid., p. 276.

37. Ibid., p. 274.
38. Alf Lay la wa Lay la, vol. I, p. 274.
39. Ibid., vol. I, p. 4.

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