Answer:
Explanation:
not produced by a single author at a single point in time though attributed to a Greek slave named Aesop (early 6th century). He was captured in war and sold into slavery, and is believed to be from Thrace on the Greek mainland (see map, Norton 11)
some of our information about Aesop comes from the poet Sappho, in her poetry, and some references to Aesopic material are found in Aristophanes’s plays, which tell us that he and his fables were common knowledge in 4th c. Greece.
Aristotle, a 4th c. Greek philosopher, natural scientist and student of Plato, who founded a school outside of Athens (the Lyceum), and is considered as one of the most influential thinkers in the history of Western thought, was a collector of Aesop’s Fables. In his Rhetoric, he tells a story of how Aesop, then living on the island of Samos, defended a popular leader being tried for his life before the Assembly. Aesop tells them a fable about a fox crossing a river who was swept away by a current
Jakata fables
though their precise origins are unknown, they originate in ancient India, and were recorded when they were included in the teachings of the Buddha.
brief history of the Buddha: his story is passed down orally and is a mix of legend and fact; Theravada Buddhists believe that the Buddha was born in 624 BCE although scholars claim it was more likely 543 BCE. His name was Siddhatta and his father ruled a Kingdom in Kapilavattus, which is now southernmost Nepal. He was a member of a warrior class, and at his birth a sage predicted that he would either become a great ruler, or a Buddha – an enlightened one. His father kept him sheltered from knowledge of the outside world because he did not want him to choose the holy way. At age 16, Siddhatta married a princess that he won in an arms contest and she bore him a son. It wasn’t until he was 29, when he saw an old man, a sick man, a dead man, and an ascetic (someone who practices severe self-discipline and abstention), that he became aware of the suffering that all men experience. After that, he renounced the world and became an ascetic so that he could understand the meaning of life.
although the Buddha lived and taught in northeastern India, after his death, his teachings spread and eventually became well-known in southeast Asia.
depictions of the Jataka tales are found as murals in cave temples of monasteries.
the structure of the stories are as follows: an introductory episode depicts an incident from the time of the Buddha, which provides a reason for telling the tale; the narrative is then related partly in verse, partly in prose; a commentary follows which gives the Buddha’s explanation and meaning of the preceding story; a conclusion is offered when the Buddha returns to the present and identifies persons still living who are the later incarnations of the main characters.
the Buddha does not always reincarnate as an animal, and the stories are not always animal tales.