Vishnu Sharma

Vishnu Sharma is the ancient Indian scholar traditionally credited as the author of the Panchatantra, a collection of interlinked animal fables written to teach principles of statecraft and practical wisdom, traditionally said to have been composed to instruct the sons of a king. In Western retellings the work and its narrator have often circulated under the names Pilpay or Bidpay, terms understood to mean court scholar in Sanskrit. The Panchatantra is one of the most widely translated non-religious texts in history: it was rendered into Middle Persian around 570 CE and into Arabic around 750 CE, from which it spread and was translated further across cultures and languages, eventually reaching Europe by the eleventh century and circulating in versions from Java to Iceland. Vishnu Sharma's own historical existence and biography are not established beyond this attribution, in the same way many ancient compilers of oral material are known chiefly through the text credited to them.