The Perpetual Quest for Perpetual Motion

Before the discovery of the laws of thermodynamics, there was no particular reason to doubt that a physical process could continue forever - no reason, that is, save the fact that it has never been observed.

Eastern Stories in Boccaccio's Decameron

I've been reading Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron off and on lately, and one of the things I love about my copy (it's the Penguin Classics edition, translated by GH McWilliam) is the constant footnotes. They tell me everything from "yeah, that character was a real person, even though nothing like this actually happened to them" to "this entire story is a folktale of Indian origin." From a folkloristic perspective, that last kind of comment is always fascinating, and makes me want to know more.

The Decameron is part of a rich tradition of collections of stories on various themes, which often borrow from one another and consequently show up in other forms in other places. It turns out a surprising number of the stories originate in Eastern sources. Notable among these is the Panchatantra, a collection of animal fables and other tales written in Sanskrit in the 3rd century BCE; it's sometimes surprising how little the plots changed in the millennium and a half between this origin and the Decameron. Stories from the Panchatantra also appear in other places, notably including the Spanish El Conde Lucanor, the fables of Aesop, and the Thousand and One Nights.