Home > Books > Children’s Fiction > Fairy Tales & Folklore > Tales from the Panchatantra

This is a selection of Tales from the Panchatantra (with GEMs highlighted).  The list below includes links for several associated items which may be available online for each book: (a) Wikipedia page, (b) e-book, and (c) audiobook.  There is also a column called “More info” with links to optional posts on each book.

Along with Aesop’s Fables, the Panchatantra is among the earliest fable collections known to mankind (especially in the Indian subcontinent).  Both collections go back to at least several hundred years BC and are comprised of many pithy tales, each ending with a moral.  The Panchatantra fables are attributed to an Indian scholar named Vishnu Sharma, although it is unclear whether he was a real person or simply a literary invention.

Although numerous versions of these fables have been transmitted in both oral and written forms over millennia, most of these are not in English or are not easy to read.  I have chosen two sources for my selected list of 60 Panchatantra fables which are in English and are suitable for children:

  • Tales of Panchatantra, a website with a clear, easy-to-read narration of each story
  • (1925) The Panchatantra, by Arthur W. Ryder, one of the finest and best-organized collections of Panchatantra tales

Note that the list below is sortable by each column. (Multiple levels of sorting are possible by sorting more than one column in succession, from lowest to highest.)  You can also do an instant filtering of the table by entering a character string in the ‘Search’ field.

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