If not actually a Buddhistic work, the Panchatantra must be derived from Buddhistic sources. This follows from the fact that a number of its fables can be traced to Buddhistic writings, and from the internal evidence of the book itself. Apologues and fables were current among the Buddhists from the earliest times. They were ascribed to Buddha, and their sanctity increased by identifying the best character in any story with Buddha himself in a previous birth. Hence such tales were called Jatakas, or "Birth Stories." There is evidence that a collection of stories under that name existed as early as the Council of Vesali, about 380 B.C.; and in the fifth century A.D. they assumed the shape they now have in the Pali Sutta-pitaka. Moreover, two Chinese encylopædias, the older of which was completed in 668 A.D., contain a large number of Indian fables translated into Chinese, and cite no fewer than 202 Buddhist works as their sources. In its present form, however, the Panchatantra is the production of Brahmans, who, though they transformed or omitted such parts as betrayed animus against Brahmanism, have nevertheless left uneffaced many traces of the Buddhistic origin of the collection. Though now divided into only five books, it is shown by the evidence of the oldest translation to have at one time embraced twelve. What its original name was we cannot say, but it may not improbably have been called after the two jackals, Karataka and Damanaka, who play a prominent part in the first book; for the title of the old Syriac version is Kalilag and Damnag, and that of the Arabic translation Kalilah and Dimnah. Originally the Panchatantra was probably intended to be a manual for the instruction of the sons of kings in the principles of conduct (niti), a kind of "Mirror of Princes." For it is introduced with the story of King Amaraçakti of Mahilaropya, a city of the south, who wishes to discover a scholar capable of training his three stupid and idle sons. He at last finds a Brahman who undertakes to teach the princes in six months enough to make them surpass all others in knowledge of moral science. This object he duly accomplishes by composing the Panchatantra and reciting it to the young princes.