33 works across 28 centuries, back to Iliad and Odyssey.
Following one thread, 6 works from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone to Mahabharata. Back to all 33 works
1997
J. K. Rowling
Late 20th century. Britain. written in English.
An orphan raised by cruel relatives learns at eleven that he is a wizard and enters Hogwarts, a boarding school for magic, where he and two friends uncover a plot to steal an alchemical stone that grants immortality. It joins the British boarding-school story to the English children's fantasy tradition and sets the plot up as a clue-planted mystery.
1906
E. Nesbit
Edwardian. England. written in English.
Third book about five London children and the wish-granting Psammead, who travel through time to ancient Egypt, Babylon and Atlantis in search of the missing half of a magic amulet.
Stylistic influence, probable.
Rowling has said she identifies with E. Nesbit more than with any other writer. The Psammead books gave her a model of magic intruding on an ordinary household, told with brisk comic narration that plays the children's practicality against wonder.
Thematic kinship, probable.
In Surprised by Joy Lewis singled out Nesbit's trilogy, especially The Amulet, as a childhood favourite that taught him about the past. Narnia opens, as Nesbit's books do, with ordinary siblings in a London-era household who stumble into magic.
c. 9th century (earliest fragment)
Anonymous
Abbasid. Iraq and the Arabic-speaking Near East. written in Arabic.
Collection of tales framed by Scheherazade's nightly storytelling, full of djinn, wishes, flying carpets and magic lamps. Known in Europe through Galland's French version and many English translations.
Thematic kinship, probable.
The wish-granting Psammead plays the part of the djinn of the Nights, and the companion book The Phoenix and the Carpet takes its flying carpet from the same source. In The Story of the Amulet the children's trips to Babylon and the ancient East draw on the oriental settings Victorian readers knew from English versions of the Nights.
c. 750
Ibn al-Muqaffa
Early Abbasid. Iraq. written in Arabic.
Arabic version, made from a Middle Persian translation, of the Indian Panchatantra, presenting animal fables inside a frame of advice to a king. It became one of the most widely translated books of the medieval world.
Structural model, probable.
Ibn al-Muqaffa's Arabic Kalila and Dimna brought the Indian nested-fable frame into Arabic prose. The Nights uses the same device of a storyteller whose tales contain further tales, told to influence a king.
c. 300
Vishnu Sharma (attributed)
Classical India. India. written in Sanskrit.
Collection of animal fables nested inside one another and framed as lessons in statecraft for three princes. Its box-within-box design passed west through Persian and Arabic translations.
Direct source, well documented.
Kalila and Dimna is a translation, through a lost Middle Persian version, of the Panchatantra. Its jackal narrators and its frame of advice to a king come straight from the Sanskrit original.
c. 400 BCE (core)
Vyasa (traditional)
Vedic to Classical India. India. written in Sanskrit.
Epic of the war between the Pandavas and Kauravas, told through layers of narrators and full of embedded stories and teaching episodes.
Structural model, probable.
The Mahabharata established in Sanskrit the method of embedding teaching stories inside a larger narrative, and several of its fables reappear in the Panchatantra. The Panchatantra's purpose of teaching statecraft through stories also echoes the epic's didactic sections.
This is one of the oldest surviving works in its tradition; the line ends here.
