A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF MORAL AND DIDACTIC MOTIFS IN GULKHANI'S "ZARBULMASAL" AND AESOP'S FABLES

This article offers a comparative study of moral and didactic motifs in Muhammad Sharif Gulkhani’s “Zarbulmasal” and the fables traditionally attributed to Aesop. The study focuses on the ways in which both literary traditions transform observations of human conduct into memorable ethical instruction through allegory, animal characterization, contrast, irony, proverbial wisdom, and narrative consequence. Although the two corpora emerged from different historical and cultural environments, they share a fundamental didactic purpose: human weaknesses are displaced onto non-human characters so that social and individual faults can be criticized indirectly. At the same time, important differences are visible in composition and moral presentation. Aesopic fables generally concentrate an ethical problem within a brief narrative and often lead the reader toward a compact moral inference, whereas “Zarbulmasal” integrates fable-like episodes, dialogue, satire, folk sayings, and proverbs into a broader literary structure. The comparison demonstrates that moral instruction in both traditions is inseparable from artistic form and cultural memory.