Perry Index Perry Index The Perry Index is a widely used index of "Aesop's Fables" or "Aesopica", the fables credited to Aesop, the storyteller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BC. Modern scholarship takes the view that Aesop probably did not compose all of the fables attributed to him; indeed, a few are known to have first been used before Aesop lived, while the first record we have of many others is from well over a millennium after his time. Traditionally, Aesop's fables were arranged alphabetically, which is not helpful to the reader. B. E. Perry listed them by
La Fontaine's Fables 1666 with the Latin title "Specimen sapientiae Indorum veterum" ("A sample of ancient Indian wisdom"). With a genealogy going back to the Indian Panchatantra, they were then attributed to Bidpai (Pilpay), who is given more than his fair due by La Fontaine in the preface to his second collection of "Fables": "I must acknowledge that I owe the greatest part to Pilpay, the Indian sage." () His sources are in fact much more diverse and by no means mainly oriental; of 89 fables, no more than twenty are found in Bidpai's collection. Avienus and Horace are also drawn upon in