A review by rainbow_reader
The Pancatantra by Visnu Sarma

2.0

Oh man. Okay so I did not like this. Here are my reasons:
1. The introduction alone is a huge turnoff as it is so unnecessarily long and convoluted.
2. The writing style and the verses it contains are just repetitive rather than poetic.
3. It is way too preachy which leads to the reader not actually retaining any of the lessons from the stories.
AND MOST IMPORTANTLY:
4. It is so anti-women. Like there are entire verses (upon verses) explicitly saying how women are horrible and deceitful and stupid etc. Anytime women are mentioned, they are almost always shown as cheating scum or some other negative portrayal.

Overall, it does contain some nice stories which are the backbone of many Indian childrens' childhoods. I would recommend you not to read the full book but rather read some other collection of stories from the Pancatantra because they only contain the nice stories. One that I particularly like is the Amar Chitra Kata ones.