The Panchatantra is an ancient collection of animal fables told in 300 BCE by Vishnu Sharma. It teaches us life lessons through engaging animal fables. Panchatantra has stories divided into 5 tantras or chapters. Each of these tantras has a main thread story which expands on the main theme of the tantra by including many sub-stories.

While that itself has value, the main intent of the Panchatantra can be seen or understood by listening to these sub-stories in the context of the main thread story. All these sub-stories have been used to support a particular argument by the characters of the main story. So in order to get a holistic understanding of Panchatantra, it is useful to first start from the main thread story and then jump into the thread story like how it has been presented in the original Panchatantra.

Panchatantra is a combination of prose and poetry. Innumerable Subhashitas have been included from various other Sanskrit works in Panchatantra. Most of the time, in the commonly found Panchatantra translations, this wealth of learning from Subhashitas is mostly lost.

This is an attempt to present the stories in the same way they appear in the original Panchatantra. The stories have been slightly shortened but care has been taken to ensure that the essence of the stories isn’t lost. The story narration here retains many of the Subhashitas as well. The videos include Devanagari script along with simple English translation. Intention is to get the audience interested in the Original Sanskrit Panchatantra.