Literary Criticism (Reader-Response Criticism)

The Lion Makers (A tale from the Panchatantra in India)

Long, long, long ago four Brahmans lived in the same town.  They were wonderful friends as children.  Each was very smart.  But the way they showed their intelligence was different.  Three of them were scholars.  They read everything they could find to read and loved to argue and debate.  But, they had very little comon sense in the ways of the world.

The fourth had very good common sense but had very little formal education.  He had to work from the time he was young.  He had not been able to go to school, and he could not read.

"How does being smart help us if we continue to live here where the people are poor and where there is no money to be made?" they asked of each other.  "We should travel to other parts of the world and use our wisdom to make ourselves rich."  This was how they set out on their journey.

When they had gone only a short way, the eldest of them said, "One of us does not deserve to be in our company."  He looked at the fourth Brahman.  "Our companion has no education," he stated.  "He hs only common sense!  No one can become rich without a good education.  I don't think we should share our earnings with him!"

The second Brahman turned to the first and said, "You are right.  Our friend has no education.  Let us send him home instead of sharing our fortune with him that we will earn with our intelligence."

The third said, "No, no.  This is not the way to behave.  We have been friends since childhood.  We should let him come with us.  We will give him an equal part in all that we earn!"

The first two agreed after a long discussion to let the fourth Brahman continue with them on their journey.  They walked along until they came to the bones of a dead lion.

The first of the educated men said, "Here is a chance to show our ignorant friend how much we know.  Here lie the bones of some dead creature.  Let us see if we can bring it back to life by using all that we have learned."  Then he added, "I know how to put a skeleton back together!"

The second Brahman, not wanting to be outdone, said, "I can give it skin and cover it with flesh and give it blood."  As he did this, the third Brahman stated that he could breathe life back into the body.

As he said this, the fourth Brahman spoke up.  "My friends," he said, "I concede that you have learned much more from books and schools than I have.  But, my common sense tells me that we should not bring a lion back to life.  I do not believe we are wise to do this.  If he comes back to life, he will want to eat us."

The first three Brahmans were angry with him.  "We let you travel with us even though you are not very knowledgeable like we are.  You know so very little, and yet you presume to kow more than we do?

"I only know what my common sense tells me," the fourth Brahman stated.  "However, if you intend to persist in bringing the dead lion back to life, please hold your efforts until I have climbed this tree."

After the fourth Brahman climbed the tree, the first three Brahmans completed their task of bringing the lion back to life.  As the breath of life filled his lungs, the lion let out with a great roar and ate up all three scholars who were on the ground.

With a full stomache, the lion was not willing or able to climb the tree and eat the fourth Brahman.  So the man with no formal education had the sense to climb down the tree and go back to his former home. 

This is a famous tale from the Indian epic Mahabharata which emphasizes the thought that Wisdom is much better than having an Intelligence alone. This text can be criticized in a Reader-Response Criticism. Critics in this approach are not interested in a "correct" interpretation of a text or what the author intended but rather on what goes on the mind of the readers during the reading o f a text.

Thus, there is no single perfect interpretation of a text because the reader's interpretations vary and they are the ones who create the absolute meanings of texts.

The author tries to tell to the readers how important it is to have wisdom and not knowledge alone. In the case of the Brahmans, they were blinded by their intense trust on knowledge alone. They weren't even able to manage to think about what they are doing. They were driven by their strong desire to prove that they are very intelligent and that the fourth Brahman was stupid and dumb.

If such things would happen in the modern days, one could immediately say that a dead lion cannot be brought into life again but since this is just a tale, then some things like this would be possible. However, for me it is not the intelligence of the Brahmans that killed them but their too much pride and there urge to prove to the stupid Brahman that they are a lot better than him. The author ended the story by leaving a lesson that people must not boast too  must about their background. 

I learned one simple thing from this which is the fact that we must not rely too much on our knowledge alone. It is not important whether we're smart or not because it won't determine our relationship with other people. What matters most is how we would be living and deciding based on the situations we are into. The way we act in front of the people around us will be the basis of our life.