Long, long ago, in south India, there was a city called Mahilaropyam. It had a wise and learned king named Amarshakti. But he was a very unhappy man.
He had three sons and all of them were very foolish. No amount of effort had made them either wise or intelligent. This worried the king immensely. Finally, he decided to consult his ministers about how to find a solution to this problem. Sumati, one of the ministers, said he knew a learned person, Vishnu Sharma, who was a renowned scholar. “He will be the best person to instruct the princes, Sir,” he said.
The proposal appeared to be a good one, and the king invited Vishnu Sharma to the palace. The king asked him, “Venerable sir, would you please teach my sons the way to conduct themselves correctly so that they may acquire the right moral values?” The eighty-year-old scholar thought for a while. He agreed to teach nitishastra (right conduct) to the princes within six months. With gratitude, the king sent the three foolish princes to the ashram of Vishnu Sharma to study.
There, Vishnu Sharma taught them through the stories of the five tantras or systems of study, which came to be known as the Panchatantra. These five systems were:
i) Conflict among Friends
ii) Winning Friends
iii) Crows and Owls
iv) The Forfeit of Profit
v) Action without Due Consideration
These systems were important because they taught the princes the significance of being wise, discriminating and sensible people. At the end of the six months, the three duffers were transformed and returned to their father as three extremely sensible young men.
