Syntipas facts for kids
Syntipas is a name connected to some very old and popular story collections. He is believed to be the author of a famous group of tales called Seven Wise Masters. These stories came from ancient India and Persia. Syntipas first appears in Arabic writings as a wise Indian thinker who lived around 100 BC. Because The Seven Wise Masters was so popular, Syntipas was also connected to a collection of fables that came from ancient Greece.
Contents
The Seven Wise Masters
The Seven Wise Masters is a very popular collection of stories. It is similar to 1001 Nights because it uses a "frame story." A frame story is a main story that holds many smaller stories inside it. In this collection, Syntipas plays a key role in the frame story.
Story's Journey
People believe this story collection started in India or Persia. Over time, it was translated into many different languages. A version in the Syriac language was translated into Greek around the late 1000s. This was done by a Byzantine writer named Michael Andreopoulos. He called it The Book of the Philosopher Syntipas. Another version was translated from Arabic into Spanish in the 1200s. It was called The Book of the Wiles of Women.
The Frame Story Explained
The main story is about a young prince. His stepmother tries to trick him. When the prince rejects her, she accuses him of something bad. This makes the king, his father, want to execute him. However, the king's wise advisors and the stepmother start telling stories. They tell stories back and forth over several days. This delays the prince's execution. It gives him time to finally tell his side of the story. After this, a few more tales are told to explain the situation better.
The Fables of Syntipas
The Seven Wise Masters mainly features human characters. But another collection, The Fables of Syntipas, is different. This book focuses more on animal stories. It was also translated by Michael Andreopoulos from Syriac.
Fables and Aesop
A Latin version of The Fables of Syntipas was published in 1781. This caught the attention of scholars. They were interested in how Aesop’s Fables spread. It was later shown that most of these fables were translated into Syriac from an old Greek source. This happened around the 800s or later. About a quarter of the 62 fables in the collection are not from Aesop. However, it does include well-known tales like The Ant and the Grasshopper, The North Wind and the Sun, and The Farmer and the Viper.
See also
In Spanish: Sendebar para niños
