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The Panchatantra is a series of inter-woven fables, many of which deploy metaphors of anthropomorphized animals with human virtues and vices Its narrative illustrates, for the benefit of three ignorant princes, the central Hindu principles of n?ti. While n?ti is hard to translate, it roughly means prudent worldly conduct, or "the wise conduct of life".Apart from a short introduction, it consists of five parts. Each part contains a main story, called the frame story, which in turn contains several embedded stories, as one character narrates a story to another. Often these stories contain further embedded stories The stories operate like a succession of Russian dolls, one narrative opening within another, sometimes three or four deep. Besides the stories, the characters also quote various epigrammatic verses to make their point.