Water Bears水熊蟲

鄧元元

Have you heard the fable of The Crow and the Pitcher2 where the thirsty crow gets the water level in the pitcher up by filling it up with stones？ This story teaches us： Necessity is the mother of invention. There is another one about The Tortoise and the Hare where both the animals decide to get into a race. Contrary to the expecta-tion of swift hare winning the race， the unhurried tortoises wins. So it is said， “The slow and steady always wins the race.”

Most of the fables that we read today were actually written sometime between 620 and 560 BC by a Greek slave named Aesop. He wrote hundreds of fables while he was in captivity3. He keenly4 observed things around him and wrote gripping5 tales around them. In the end， he always added a wise advice.

Collection of fables written by Aesop is com-monly known as Aesops Fables.

Aesops Fables from Greece and Jataka Tales and Panchatantra from India have many stories in common. The details sometimes differ widely. For instance， the fable of The Wolf and the Crane is told in India as a story of A Lion and Another Bird.

So some historians debate6 whether， in ancient times， the Greeks learned these fables from Indian storytellers or the other way round.

Well， it does not matter who wrote them first. They are wonderful stories！

你聽說過《烏鴉和瓶子》這則寓言嗎？口渴的烏鴉往瓶子里裝石子升高了水面。這個故事告訴我們：需求是發明之母。另外一則寓言《烏龜和兔子》則講述的是兩只動物決定進行一場比賽。人們期待敏捷的兔子獲勝，但與此相反，不緊不慢的烏龜贏得了比賽。因此有了這樣的說法：“又慢又穩總能贏比賽。”

我們現在讀的大部分寓言是公元前620年至560年之間一個叫做伊索的希臘奴隸所寫。他被囚禁的期間寫了數百則寓言。他敏銳地觀察身邊的事件并將其寫成了扣人心弦的故事。在末尾，他通常會加上一條智慧的建議。

伊索寫的寓言集就是家喻戶曉的《伊索寓言》。

希臘的《伊索語言》和印度的《本生經》、《五卷書》中的很多故事有共通之處，而細節卻大相徑庭。例如，《狼和鶴》的寓言在印度則是《獅子和鳥》的故事。

因此，有些歷史學家爭論在古代究竟是希臘人從印度講故事的人那里還是由其他途徑學到了這些寓言。

不過，誰先寫出這些故事并不重要。重要的是這些都是非常精彩的故事。endprint