Indian
Vishnu Sharma is named in the frame story of the Panchatantra as the elderly Brahmin scholar who promised a despairing king that he could teach his three hopeless sons the science of politics in six months, and did it by telling them animal stories. Whether he existed is unknown; the Sanskrit text was compiled around 300 CE from much older oral material, and the earliest surviving recensions already disagree with each other. What is certain is the reach of the book attributed to him. It was translated into Middle Persian in the sixth century, then Arabic as Kalila wa Dimna, then Syriac, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and by 1570 into English. Its stories travelled into Aesop, La Fontaine, the Arabian Nights, and Chaucer. Outside religious scripture, it is one of the most widely translated works ever produced in India.