Foreword to volume 5

The Pañcatantra and the “Fables of Bidpai”

PART of the present volume of the Ocean of Story is occupied by Somadeva’s version of the famous collection of Indian stories known as the Pañcatantra. The history of this work and its offshoots has been dealt with in Appendix I to this volume, and I shall confine myself in this place to supplementing what has there been set forth regarding the so-called “Fables of Bidpai,” with special reference to the Kalīla wa-Dimna of Ibnu ’l-Muqaffa‘ and its translations and adaptations in modern Persian literature.

This Kalīla wa-Dimna is claimed to have been translated in the middle of the eighth century from a Pahlavī or Old Persian original, which in its turn had been compiled from one or more Indian works. The legend about this Old Persian compilation has been handed down by a number of early Arabic writers, beginning in the eighth century with the translator Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘ himself, and has been retold in a famous passage in Firdawsī’s Ṣāhnāma. The accounts furnished by al-Mas‘ūdī and an-Nadīm, both belonging to the tenth century, are well known, as is also the passage from the Ṣāhnāma. Less well known is the following passage in ath-Tha‘ālibf s History of the Persian Kings,^[1] which, as far as I am aware, has not been translated into English:—

“Anūṣīrwān had twenty-five doctors, Greek, Indian and Persian. One of the most famous Persian doctors and the one who devoted the most time to the study of books was a certain Burzoë. Having read in a book that on a certain mountain in India there was a wonderful medicinal plant which had the property of bringing the dead back to life, he was continually revolving this matter in his mind, and determined to search for it and obtain it. Finally he told Anūṣīrwān of his intention. and begged the king to allow him to set out and attempt to find the object of his desires. Permission was duly granted, and provision was made for his journy. He also received a letter for the King of India, which sho uld assure him success. Burzoë set out in due course for the capital of India, and on arrival presented Anūṣīrwān’s letter to the king, who received him graciously and gave orders that Burzoë should be allowed to do any thing he wished, and enabled him to proceed in his search for the plants to the locality in which they were said to grow.

“Burzoë, avoiding no efforts or fatigue, wore himself out in picking, collecting, sorting and combining these plants, so that he might have said with the people of Baghdad,

‘We have continually been busy with nothing at all, and now we have finished.’

“He experienced much grief and disappointment, because without attaining his object he had wasted his days, and he pictured to himself how greatly ashamed he would feel in the presence of his master when he again appeared at court. He therefore inquired who was the greatest doctor and the most learned man in India; and they indicated to him a certain very old man. Burzoë went and visited the old man and told him his story, referring to what he had read in a certain book regarding the mountains of India on which grew the plants that could bring the dead to life.

“The old man said to him: ‘Oh! Burzoë! thou hast learnt one thing, but other things have escaped thee^[2]; did you not understand that this is an allegory of the ancients? By the mountains they meant the learned — by the plants their salutary and profitable words—by the dead they meant the ignorant. They wished to say that when the learned instruct the ignorant by their maxims it is as if they brought the dead to life. Now these maxims are contained in a book called Kalīla wa-Dimna, and this book is to be found only in the Treasury of the King.’

“Burzoë thus delivered from his anxieties, and overjoyed with what he had heard, besought the king to lend him this book and thereby to place King Anūṣīrwān under an obligation of gratitude and thankfulness. The king replied: ‘

I will give the order for this book to be lent to you, by reason of my regard both for your king and for yourself; but only on condition that you examine it in my presence and that you do not take a copy of it for yourself.’

“Burzoë replied that to hear was to obey; and thereafter he attended the king’s court daily, and sending for the book studied it there. Each day he memorised what he had read, and when he returned to his dwelling wrote it out, until finally he had completed the whole work. He then begged the king’s permission to return to his master’s court. This was granted, and he was given presents and a robe of honour.

“When he rejoined Anūṣīrwān he told his story and announced the good news that he had got possession of the book, which he then presented to the king. The king was overjoyed and loaded Burzoë with gifts, and further ordered Buzurj-mihr^[3] to translate the book into Pahlavī. Burzoë, with coaxing and entreaty, begged the king to allow his (Burzoë’s) name and his biography to be prefixed to the first chapter. To this Anūṣīrwān agreed.

“The book remained always carefully guarded by the [Sāsānian] kings of Persia, until finally Ibnu’1-Muqaffa‘ translated it into Arabic, and Rūdakī turned it into Persian verse by the order of Amīr Nashr ibn Aḥmad [the Sāmānid].”

Such is presumably the popular form the legend took in the time of ath-Tha‘ālibī, and it will be seen that it differs in many respects from the versions of Ibnu’1-Muqaffa‘ and of Rūdakī. The main points of difference are (1) regarding the manner in which the book was sought and found, and

(2) regarding the work of translation into Pahlavī.

According to Birdawsī, for example, it is the King of Persia who, hearing of the existence of this wonderful book in India, directs lus minister to seek out a man versed in the Indian and Persian languages, who should go to India and procure the book. B urzoë, who is selected, after great diffi culties obtains this book and several others; but fearing lest the Indian king should demand their return, himself trans lates them into Persian, and brings his translations back to his master. All versions are agreed in stating that this Persian translation was very jealously guarded by the Sasanian kings, and it was not till the time of the second ‘Abbāsid Caliph al-Maṃṣūr that it was rendered accessible by Ibnu ‘l-Muqaffa‘. In no recension of the text of Ibnu ‘l-Muqaffa‘ is it specially mentioned from which language the Arabic translation was made, but we are led to presume that it was Pahlavī, not only from the context, but also from the statement made by an-Nadīm and others that Ibnu ‘l-Muqaffa‘ translated a number of other Pahlavī works, none of w hich, however, has survived.^[4]

 

The Source of the Burzoë Legend

Now the only original source for the Burzoë Legend is the Kalīla wa-Dimna of Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘; and the account found in the Persian translation by Naṣrullah is, of course, based solely on this. It is interesting to compare these two versions as they have come down to us: bearing in mind that we have no copy of Ibnu’l-Muqa

Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘ Eighth Century	Naṣrullah (Ed. a.h. 1282) Twelfth Century
P. ‘20. Anūṣīrwān, an exceptionally gifted king, hearing of the existence of the Indian book, selects Burzoë who was skilled in Fārsī and Hindi to go on a mission to India to look for it. He is to get this book out of the Treasury of the Indian king, and from their learned men “complete perfect and written in Farsī.” He is also told to get other books which were not to be found in Persia.	P. 22. And the reason for, and cause of, translating this book and bringing it from Hindustān to Fārs was that God had endowed Anūṣīrwān with special gifts of intelligence, justice, etc. And he sought for a man knowing Hindi and Fārsī.
P. 21. Burzoë, on arrival, makes friends with the nobles, merchants, and learned men of India—and admits to his confidence a certain man named Adwayh [in Cheikho’s text only] telling him the real object of his mission.	P. 24. Burzoë, on arrival, makes friends with the nobles, merchants, and philosophers of India, and finally he confides his secret to a certain learned man.
P. 25. Finally, after a long discussion on the keeping of secrets, the Hindu shows Burzoë the books. “And when Burzoë set about the interpretation (tafsīr) and copying (naskh) of these books he worked day and night and wore himself out with fatigue—and when he had completed this book [i.e. Kalīla wa-Dimna ] which he preferred to the other books, and it was indeed the most learned of them—he wrote to Anūṣīrwān telling him of his good fortune. Anūṣīrwān, in reply, wrote and told Burzoë to return without delay, and to avoid the main roads.	P. 25. The discussion between these two is very much shorter than in an Arabic text. P. 27. Finally the Hindu gives Burzoë the books, and Burzoë spends long days in writing (nibishtan) and in copying this and other books (īn kitāb va kutub-i digar nuskhat girift). P. 27. Anūṣīrwān receives news of Burzoë’s success, and sends a messenger to him, with instructions to avoid the main road lest his letter should fall into enemy hands. Burzoë at once returns.
Muqaffa’— continued P. 27. Burzoë after presenting his work to Anūṣīrwān refuses all gifts offered him except a robe of honour in Qūhistānī style. He, however, makes one special request of the king, namely, that Buzurjmihr should be ordered to write a chapter on Burzoë, which should form a part of the Book.	Naṣrullah— continued P. 27. Burzoë refuses all gifts from Anūṣīrwān except a robe of honour in Khuzistani style. He requests, however, that a chapter on himself may be written by Buzurjmihr, and added to the Book.
P. 28. Buzurjmihr wrote a biography of Burzoë from his birth down to the time when he was sent on his mission to India.[5]	P. 30. Buzurjmihr’s chapter is to recount the life of Burzoë down to the present moment (tā īn sā’at).
P. 29. Buzurjmihr refuses all gifts except a kingly robe.	P. 30. Buzurjmihr accepts no gift at all.

There remains one important passage in Naṣrullah (pp. 35, 36) which is altogether wanting from any of the Arabic texts I have been able to consult, though it is specifically claimed to be a quotation from Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘.

“Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘says: ‘Having heard that the Persians had translated this book from Hindī into Pahlavī, we desired that the people of Iraq, Syria and the Hejaz should also benefit by it, so we have translated it into Arabic, which is their language; and as befitted such a work, we have done all that was possible to assist the student and to aid the reader by explanation and elucidation, so that the task of appreciating and understanding this Book may be the easier for those who peruse it.’”

The difficulty with regard to the three Chapters in Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘—namely (1) The Mission of Burzoë, (2) The Life of Burzoë, and (3) The Presentation of the Book—is that all three seem to be the work of Ibnu’1-Muqaffa‘, while only the last is definitely attributed to him.

The Mission of Burzoë is ascribed to Buzurjmihr, but according to the Arabic, Buzurjmihr only brought the Life of Burzoë down to the time of his Mission. The Life of Burzoë, on the other hand, is definitely attributed to Buzurjmihr in the Burzoë legend, and yet in all versions it is given as an autobiography in the words of Burzoë himself.

Now the date of Burzoë’s Mission was somewhere about the middle of the sixth century A.D., for Anūṣīrwān reigned from A.D. 531 to 579. No trace has ever been found of this Pahlavī text of Kalīla wa-Dimna, and it might be presumed that if it was so carefully guarded by Anūṣīrwān and his successors that care was also taken that no copies should be made of it. We are nevertheless confronted with the strange fact that in A.D. 570 or thereabouts a Christian Persian of the name of Būd was able to translate Kalīla wa-Dimna into Syriac. Benfey and other scholars seem quite satisfied from internal evidence that Būd’s translation was made from the Pahlavī. On the other hand ‘Ebed-Jesu, bishop of Nisibis, mentions in his Catalogue of Syriac Writings that Būd, who lived about A.D. 570, “translated from the Indian the book of Kalīlag and Damnag.”^[6] ‘Ebed-Jesu writing at the beginning of the fourteenth century A.D. probably knew nothing of Ibnu’1-Muqaffa‘or of the Burzoë legend, and his statement has been discredited. This does not, however, remove the difficulty of accounting for Būd’s having had access to this carefully guarded book almost immediately after it was first lodged in the Royal Library.^[7]

Were it not for the reverence in which I hold such great scholars as Benfey and Nöldeke I should be tempted to suggest that Ibnu’1-Muqaffa‘ never had before him a Pahlavī Kalila and Dimna but based his version on the Syriac of Būd, adding to it chapters which he derived from other Syriac and possibly Pahlavī sources.^[8] For of Burzoë we know practically nothing, outside his legend, beyond the statement made by Ibn Abi Uṣaybi‘a that he was born in Marv ush-ṣāhijān. The whole Burzoë legend might have been concocted by Ibnu’1-Muqaffa‘in order to glorify his fatherland Persia: supposing it to have found a place in the first recension of his Kalīla wa-Dimna. No text has, however, been found of an earlier date than the thirteenth century; and seeing that the numerous MSS. differ very much from one another, it is only by the aid of Būd’s Syriac and of the earliest translations into Persian, Spanish, Hebrew and Greek that an idea of the original form of Ibnu’1-Muqaffa‘ can be obtained, and that the obscurities in the existing Arabic text can sometimes be explained. An edition based on all the available material still remains to be made: the most satisfactory text hitherto published is that edited by the learned father Cheikho, of Beyrout (1st ed. 1905, 2nd ed. 1923), where information will be found regarding all existing MSS. and editions.

Before passing to the Persian recensions of Kalīla wa-Dimna, I may point out that of the fourteen chapters comprised in this work the following chapters represent more or less the five chapters of the Pañcatantra: (1) The Lion and the Ox; (3) The Ring Dove; (4) The Owls and the Crows; (5) The Tortoise and the Ape; and (6) The Ascetic and the Weasel: and that all these chapters occur in Būd’s Syriac version.^[9]

 

Rūdakī’s “Kalīla wa-Dimna”

The earliest translation of the Arabic Kalīla wa-Dimna into Modern Persian is that referred to by Firdawsī in his ṣāhnāma, where we are told that Abū’l-Faẓl al-Bal‘amī, the vazir of the Sāmānid Prince Nashr ibn Aḥmad, ordered the Arabic of Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘to be recited in Pārsī and Darī (i.e. the court language). Later on Nashr ibn Aḥmad, desiring to possess a written Persian version of this work, which should not only serve him as a guide, but might remain a permanent memorial to himself (k’azū yādgārī bovad dar jahān), caused the blind poet Rūdakī to put into Persian verse the Arabic prose of Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘, which was recited to him in the presence of the Prince. That a complete verse translation was made by Rūdakī we know from a number of early independent sources,^[10] though the poem itself has quite disappeared, together with almost all the poet’s other works.

No explanation has ever been offered for the loss of Rūdakī’s Kalīla wa-Dimna, which certainly created a great stir in its own day. I think we may assume that copies existed down to the fourteenth century, if only on account of two quotations, which seem to be at first hand, found in an anonymous work entitled Tuḥfat ul-Mulūk,^[11] which was written not later than that period. I do not know of a direct quotation in any later work.

Rūdakī, who is justly regarded as the “Father of Persian Poetry,” flourished at the Samanid Court of Bukhārā during the first half of the tenth century. He left behind him, in addition to a number of panegyrics and lyrics, certain narrative poems (mashnavīs): notably Kalīla wa-Dimna, and possibly a Sindbadh Nāma. That all these poems should have disappeared entirely—except for a few scattered quotations —is the more remarkable when we remember that the inordinately long Epic of Kings of Firdawsī, completed only fifty years after the death of Rūdakī, has been preserved in its entirety. One can only suppose that the historical and national Epic made such a far stronger appeal to public taste than the Indian fables that the latter was completely eclipsed by the former. That any trace has been left of Rūdakī’s Kalīla wa-Dimna is mainly due to the lexicographers. At a time when the Modern Persian language was in process of gaining literary status, and was being employed by patriotic Persians to replace the hitherto dominant literary medium Arabic, the poets loved to employ as far as possible old Persian words, although, owing to the fact that they had been supplanted in the popular vocabulary by an Arabic loan-word, they were not readily understood. It thus came about that from the very outset of this new literature, scholars were engaged in preparing little lexica (known as Farhangs) in which these obsolete or difficult words were explained with quotations from the poets in support. Even Rūdakī himself wrote such a Farhang, which must have been mainly devoted to the explanation of his own writings!

Among these Farhangs there has been preserved to us one entitled Lughat-i Furs, written by Asadī the Younger in the eleventh century A.D. This little dictionary contains many quotations from the works of Rūdakī, and among them no less than fifty-nine rhyming verses^[12] in the ramal metre (–˘––/–˘––/–˘–), which, as we know, were the style and metre employed by Rūdakī in his Kalīla wa-Dimna. Of these verses sixteen, at any rate, seem to belong to Kalīla wa-Dimna. Others are so vague that without further context nothing definite can be affirmed, while others again may, as has been suggested by Nöldeke, belong to the Sindbadh legend. It would seem unlikely, however, that Rūdakī should have written more than one narrative poem in this particular metre, and it is therefore possible that all the fifty-nine verses belong to Kalīla wa-Dimna, which in Rūdakī’s version may have embodied stories not found in Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘.

Horn, in his edition of the Lughat-i Furs,^[13] has referred to passages in Keith-Falconer’s translation of the Later Syriac version and in Wolff’s translation of the Arabic, which seem to correspond to the sixteen verses referred to above. Seeing that these quotations from Rūdakī have never been translated or compared with Ibnu’1-Muqaffa‘, I think it may be of interest to my readers if I set side by side the two versions in the rare cases which admit of no doubt as to their identity.^[14]

(1) Dimna-rā guftā ki tā īn bāṅg chī’st
Bā nahīb u sahm īn [āvāy-i] kī’st [i.o.ms. faryād-i]
Dimna guft ū-rā: juz īn āvā digar
Kār-i [tū na] hast u sahmī bīṣtar [1.0.MS. tū bar]
Āb harchi bīṣtar nīrū kunad
Bandarūgh-i sust-būda bif’ganad
Dil gusista dārī az bāṅg-i buland
Rañjagī bāṣad-at [v’āzār-i gazand]. [1.0.MS. v’āzār u gazand]

“[The Lion] said to Dimna: What is this noise?
Whose is this voice full of terror and wrath?
Dimna said to him: Apart from this voice, something else

Has worried you; a greater danger.
When a river attains to great force
It sweeps away the worn-out dam.
You have lost heart by reason of a loud noise
So trouble, annoyance and harm have come upon you.”

There is no mistaking the identity of this passage, which, beyond its close similarity to Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘, has the additional importance of enabling us to establish the correct reading of a word which has troubled such scholars as de Sacy, Guidi and Cheikho.

I will next give a translation of the corresponding passage in the Arabic which begins at line 3, p. 62, of Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘:

“Dimna said: It is not right that because a sound
like this reaches the king he should leave his abode.
For it has been said: Water damages a weak dam;
Conceit damages the intelligence; secret whisperings
damage friendship, and loud noises and
commotion damage a weak heart.”

All editors have been in doubt regarding the passage which runs—

De Sacy in his notes to Kalila says:

“Le mot  se prend souvent dans le sens de bonnes œuvres, acte de bienfaisance.”

Cheikho (Ibn M., p. 41 of notes) says:

“On peut lire  c-à-d. le vin ou bien   le barrage.”

Thanks to Rūdakī we now know that Cheikho’s second suggestion—namely, sikr, a dam—is the correct reading. This corresponds with Pañcatantra (Edgerton, trans., p. 283) and with Syriac I (text, p. 36b). Somadeva (see this volume, p. 45) has “bridge” for “dam.”

Syriac II (K-F., p. 14) has also understood the passage in Ibn’l-Muqaffa‘, but Naṣrullah and the Spaniard have left it alone, probably because they did not understand it.

(2) Chūn kashaf anbūh-i ghawghā’ī bidīd
Bāṅg u žākh-i mardumān khashm āvarīd.

“When the tortoise saw that noisy crowd
The cries and shouts of the people enraged him.”

Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘, p. 89:

“And when the people saw her [the tortoise]
they called out and said: Look at this
wonderful thing! And when the tortoise
heard their remarks and their surprise, she
said: May God put out your eyes! But
when she opened her mouth to speak she
fell to the ground and died.”

See also K-F., p. 49, lines 17, 18.

(3) Shab zamistān būd kappī sard yāft
kirmakī shab-tāb nāgāhī bitāft
kappīān ātash hamī pandāṣtand
Pushta-i ātash badū bar dāṣtand.

“The night was wintry, a monkey felt cold:
A little glow-worm suddenly showed its light,
The monkeys thought it was a fire
And placed a bundle of fire-wood on it.”

Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘, p. 94:

“There was a party of monkeys on a hill, who
seeing a fire-fly (barā‘a^[15]) flying, thought it
was a spark, and collecting some faggots
placed them on the fire-fly.”

Naṣrullah’s text of Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘ must have had a slightly different reading to Cheikho, as he translates,

“suddenly they found a glow-worm (kirmī shab tāb) which had fallen on one side,”

in which he agrees with Rūdakī. The Spaniard has luziernega.

By some strange misunderstanding the Anvār-i Suhayli (see below, p. xxiii), and after it the ‘ Iyār-i Dānish (see below, p. xxv), both say that the monkeys were deceived by “a bit of glittering reed” (nay pāra-i rūṣan). Abu’l-Faẓl, the author of the ‘Iyār-i Dānish, had, as we know, Naṣrullah’s translation also before him, and it is therefore strange that he should have selected what to us must appear the less satisfactory reading.

(4)    V’az dirakht andar gavāhī khvāhad ūī.^[16]
Tū badāṅgāh az dirakht andar bigū’ī
K’ān tabaṅgūy andarū dīnār būd
Ān sitad z’īdar ki nāhushyār būd.

“And if he wants a witness from within the tree
Then you must speak from within the tree
Saying: the dinars were in that tray,
He took them because he was unwise.”

Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘, p. 96:

[The dishonest partner says to his father]
“I want you to go to-night and get inside
the tree, and when the Qāẓī comes and asks
the tree for its evidence, you will speak from
inside and say: The negligent partner took
the dinars.... So the father went to the
tree and hid in it. On the morrow the Qāzī came with
       the two partners, etc.”

See K-F., p. 57, line 21 et seq.

(5) Mard-i dīnī raft u āvardash kanand
Chūn hamī mihmān dar-i man khvāst [kand]. [i.o.ms.
        wrongly, kard]

“The Ascetic went and fetched him a spade
Since the guest wished to break into my house.”

Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘, p. 134:

“He asked for an axe, and the guest brought it
. . . and cut into my lair till he reached
the dinars.”

See K-F., p. 118, line 11.

(6) Gūft dīnī-rā ki īn dīnār būd
K’ īn fažāgan mūṣ-ra parvār būd.

“He said to the Ascetic: It was these dinars
which kept alive this loathsome mouse.”

Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘, p. 134:

“The husband said to the Ascetic: These dinars
were what gave the mouse such strength
in jumping...”

See K-F., p. 118, line 20.

(7) Īstāda dīd añjā duzd u ghūl [i.o.ms. duzd ghūl]
Rūy-i zisht u chashmhā hamchūn dū ghūl.

“The thief saw standing there the Devil
with his ugly face and his eyes like a pair of devils.”

The exact equivalent of this passage does not occur in Cheikho’s Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘, though it clearly belongs to the story of the Devil and the Thief, who having quarrelled each in turn rouse the sleeping Ascetic they had intended to rob or destroy. See Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘, p. 156, and K-F., p. 145.

In the Anvār-i Suhaylī it is related that the Devil wished to destroy the Ascetic because of the good influence exercised by this pious man over the inhabitants of the country, which had made the Devil’s market dull!

(8) ṣīr ghazm āvard u jast az jāy-i khvīṣ
V’āmad īn khargūṣ-rā alfaghda pīṣ.

“The Lion was enraged and made a plunge
while the hare gained his object [ i.e. escaped].”

Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘, p. 73:

“The Lion put down the hare, and made a
spring to attack him— i.e. the Lion reflected in
the well—and the hare escaped.”

See K-F., p. 27, line 28.

The above eight extracts from Rūdakī’s Kalīla wa-Dimna, comprising thirteen verses in all, by no means exhaust the list of possible identifications of Asadī’s quotations with Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘, but they will suffice to show that Rūdakī followed the Arabic original fairly closely, and that had his poem come down to us it would have been of great value for the reconstruction of a definite text of Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘.

The next Persian version in point of age which has come down to us is the prose Kalīla wa-Dimna of Naṣrullah, of which I shall now speak. It may be mentioned, however, that Naṣrullah in his Introduction says:

“Va īn kitāb-rā az pas-i tarjama-i
Pisar-i Muqaffa‘ va naẓm-i Rūdakī
tarjamahā karda and.”

“And other translations have been made since the translation of the son of Muqaffa‘ and the Poem of Rūdakī.”

 

Naṣrullah’s “Kalīla wa-Dimna”

This excellent rendering of Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘ has been fully described by the great de Sacy in vol. x of Notices et Extraits des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque du Roi (pp. 94-139). De Sacy had before him several early MSS. of this work. One indeed (No. 375), though not dated, he thought might belong to the twelfth century A.D. Another (No. 376) was written in Baghdād in a.h. 678 (a.d. 1279-1280).^[17]

Abū’l-Ma‘ālī Naṣrullah ibn Muḥammad ibn ‘Abdi’l-Ḥamīd held some humble position at the court of Bahrām ṣāh, the great-grandson of the famous Sultan Maḥmūd of Ghazna. After enumerating the leading men of letters of his day at Ghazna he relates that a certain learned doctor of the law one day presented him with a copy of the Arabic Kalīla wa-Dimna, “Than which,” he says, “after the books of the Shar‘a [Holy Law] there is no more valuable book.” He mentions incidentally that there were many copies of it in Ghazna (Tehran lithograph, a.h. 1304, p. 14).

He then goes on to explain his reasons for making this translation, saying (op. cit., p. 19) that since the public has grown indifferent to the reading of Arabic books, the wise sayings and admonitions [of Kalīla wa-Dimna] have been neglected, nay almost entirely forgotten, and so it occurred to him to make a Persian translation. We know very little of Naṣrullah, but the date of his death is given as A.D. 1152.

His translation which, except for the numerous quotations in Arabic, is written in a direct and simple style follows Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘ very closely, and includes the two Introductions (1) regarding the discovery of the Indian originals and how they were brought to Anūṣīrwān, and  (2) the account of Burzoë. It does not, however, even mention the spurious Introduction of “Bahnūd ibn Saḥwān” prefixed to many Arabic recensions.^[18] There is nothing to show that Naṣrullah had ever actually seen Rūdakī’s Kalīla wa-Dimna, though he of course refers to it in his Introduction. Naṣrullah’s work has been lithographed several times in Tehran, but the text leaves much to be desired. A definite edition based on the oldest MSS. would be of great service, not only to students of Persian literature, but also to those interested in our present inquiry.

 

Qāni‘ī’s “Kalīla wa-Dimna”

Next in order of date to Naṣrullah’s prose version comes the versified rendering of Aḥmad ibn Maḥmūd aṭ-Tusī, whose poetical name was Qāni‘ī. His poem, of which the unique manuscript copy exists in the British Museum,^[19] is dedicated to ‘Izzu’d-Dīn Kay Kā’ūs, son of Kay Khusraw, who succeeded his father in a.h. 642, when the Mongols were invading Asia Minor, and was probably composed about a.h. 618 (a.d. 1221). His Introduction contains, in addition to a narrative of contemporary events, the story of the arrival of an Indian envoy at the Court of Anūṣīrwān, who tells of the wonderful herb said to grow in India which bestows eternal life on those who eat of it. The herb is but an emblem of the book of wisdom which the kings of India keep as a sacred heirloom in their treasury. He entreats the king not to betray to his Indian master that he has disclosed this secret. On fol. 13a begins the story of Burzoë, and thereafter the order of Naṣrullah is followed very closely.

Qāni‘ī does not anywhere mention the source from which his version is derived, but he evidently was following Naṣrullah rather than Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘ or Rūdakī. His general tendency is to expand rather than condense the narrative of his predecessors, and in many instances one is led to suspect that he derived his details from other sources than those mentioned. His poem is written in the familiar mutaqārib metre (˘––/˘––/˘––/˘-(/?)) employed by Firdawsī in his Ṣāhnāma. His style is simple and direct, but he does not impress one as a first-class poet. There is too much padding with conventional figures, and there is a paucity of rhyme which leads to constant repetitions of the same words. In view both of its subject and its date, Qāni‘ī’s poem nevertheless deserves to be published and thus rescued from the oblivion of seven hundred years. He at times supplements the narrative of Naṣrullah. For in the story of the Monkey and the Wedge, whereas the various Indian recensions (Pañcatantra, Hitopadeśa, and Kathā-sarit-sāgara) all account for the presence of the carpenters, by explaining that a rich man was having built either a temple or a playhouse, the Arabic Kalīla wa-Dimna and its offshoots come straight to the story of the monkey without any introduction. Likewise the Old Syriac only says, “Es war einmal ein Zimmermann, der spaltete Holz mit zwei Keilen” (see Schulthess trans., p. 3). It is therefore remarkable that Qāni‘ī should have thought it necessary to give the story a setting, and that in doing so he should have hit upon the setting of the Indian versions. For he makes Kalīla say:

“I have heard that in former times in the country of Rūm [Turkey]^[20]
Which country and land gives delight to the world
A great man laid the foundations of a building
So that he might raise a lofty palace in the town
By the command of that prudent man of fame
A Paradise sprang up on the face of the earth.
Two fields had been surrounded by a wall (?)

The carpenters were busy all day long
The lord of that charming abode
Kept an old monkey on a chain;
This monkey had been tied up near the carpenters
And was quite contented to be thus tied up
The monkeys observed that the carpenters across the trees
Were drawing their saws, through that hard wood, etc.”

The coincidence is striking, and one wonders first how the setting came to be omitted in the Arabic and Syriac versions, and secondly whether Qāni‘ī was reproducing details he had found in his copy of Naṣrullah.

 

Anvār-i Suhaylī

The most famous of all the versions of the so-called Semitic recension is undoubtedly the Persian prose work entitled Anvār-i Suhaylī, or The Lights of Canopus, composed in the fifteenth century by Ḥusayn ibn ‘Alī, the Preacher of Herāt, known as al-Kāṣifī. [The title he gave to his version of Kalila and Dimna was chosen in order to commemorate one of the names of his patron, the Amīr Shaykh Aḥmad Suhaylī, the vazir of Sultan Abū’l-Ghāzī Ḥusayn Bahādur Khān, a descendant of Tamerlane: while his own name of Kāṣifī was given to him on account of his being a commentator (kāshif) of the Qur’ān.] Kāṣifī explains in his Preface that though he has adhered to the same arrangement as that of the Hindu sages, he has omitted the first two chapters, “which cannot be regarded as of much utility, and were not included in the original book” (i.e. in the original translated by Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘). He, however, considered it fitting to prefix to his own version a story which should serve as an introduction.

This Introduction, which in the Cawnpore edition of 1880 extends over no less than forty-eight pages, contains in addition to the story of the Emperor Humāyūn Fāl and his Minister Khujista Rāī, and of Dabshalīm and his Minister Bīdpāy, five stories in the same style as the rest of Kalila and Dimna, the origin of which has not yet been traced, though they are probably also Indian. The stories themselves, like the Introduction, may he read in the translations of either Eastwick or Wollaston. I shall merely give their titles in this place.

• No. I. The Two Pigeons, of whom one determined to adventure out into the world.
• No. II. The Young Hawk, who was reared in the nest of a Kite.
• No. III. The Old Woman’s Cat who ventured into the king's banqueting hall.
• No. IV. The Merchant’s Son who became a soldier and conquered many countries.
• No. V. The Leopard who recovered his father’s lost kingdom.

The avowed object of Kāṣifī in writing the Anvār-i Suhaylī was to preserve these Indian stories in a form which would make them more intelligible to the general reader. The only Persian version which was known in his day was the Kalīla wa-Dimna of Naṣrullah, which in Kāṣifī’s opinion was, in spite of its many excellences, too full of Arabic quotations and rare Arabic words: the book was indeed so difficult in style that according to Kāṣifī “it came near to being altogether neglected.” It is a fact that Naṣrullah’s text abounds in Arabic quotations, but otherwise the style and language are exceedingly simple; while Kāṣifī’s text furnishes an example of that rhetorical hyperbole and exaggerated metaphor which, though giving much pleasure to those who enjoy linguistic gymnastics and furnishing an admirable text-book for students of the Persian language, is wearisome in the extreme for those who merely wish to read the stories for their own sake. No doubt it constitutes a kind of tour dr force, and indicates a supreme command of the Persian language; but so often one cannot see the wood fur the trees. Kāṣifī was a famous preacher, and probably delighted in the sound of his own voice: and this practice very likely developed in him that taste for bombastic verbosity which reveals itself in his writings. In my view his real object in adapting Naṣrullah’s Kalīla wa-Dimna was not so much to simplify it as to let himself go, as it were, on material which seemed to lend itself to such treatment. A fatal example in the grand style had been set in the fourteenth century by the author of the Ta’rīkh-i Waṣṣāf, a history of the Mongols in Persia, whose subject was totally unsuited to such style, and has set a baneful influence on most subsequent historical compositions in Persia.^[21]

 

‘Iyār-i Dānish

Kāṣifī’s version of the Indian tales no doubt had the effect of relegating Naṣrullah’s to comparative oblivion,^[22] and it was not till the end of the sixteenth century that a really simple Persian version was published. This version, known by the title of ‘ Iyār-i Dānish, was written by the famous historian of the Emperor Akbar, Abū’l-Faẓl ibn Mubārak, at the request of his master.

In his Ā’īn-i Akbarī (see Blochmann’s translation, i, p. 106), Abū’l-Faẓl says:

“By order of His Majesty, the author of this volume composed a new version of the Kalīla wa-Dimna, and published it under the title of ‘Iyār-i Dānish. The original is a masterpiece of practical wisdom, but full of rhetorical difficulties; and though Naṣrullah-i Mustawfī and Mawlānā Ḥusayn-i Wā’iẓ had translated it into Persian, their style abounds in rare metaphors and difficult words.”

This version has, however, never enjoyed the same popularity as the Anvār-i Suhaylī, and though manuscript copies are fairly common, there is only one incomplete lithograph. The Hindustani translation by Mawlari Hafīẓu’d-Dīn of Delhi, entitled Khirad-afrūz, has been often lithographed. The “Iyār-i Dānish differs from the Anvār-i Suhaylī in its introductory matter; for in the place of Kāṣifī’s long Introduction Abū’l-Faẓl gives a paraphrase of the two chapters with which Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘and after him Naṣrullah begin their versions: (I) on the nature of the book, and (II) on Burzoë, which were omitted by Kāṣifī. In order, however, to preserve Kāṣifī’s Introduction he has placed a paraphrase of it at the end of his Chapter II.^[23]

At the end of his Introductory Chapter he describes how and why he was entrusted by Akbar with the preparation of a simplified version.

“When the eyes of that Caliph of the Age Abū’l-Fatḥ Jalālu’d-Dīn Muḥammad Akbar, Pādīṣāh-i Ghāzī, fell on this book, this ‘bone-setting’ of words and ‘story-telling’ of old maxims were blessed with the bestowal of exalted praise.”

He goes on to say that, although the Anvār-i Suhaylī is better suited to the public taste than the famous Kalīla wa-Dimna [of Naṣrullah], it still is not free from Arabic expressions and rare metaphors; and therefore he was commanded to produce a version in a simple style which might become more generally useful, rejecting some of the [rarer] words and avoiding long-winded phrases (dirāz-nafasīhā-yi sukhan).

That Abū’l-Faẓl had Naṣrullah’s Kalīla wa-Dimna constantly before him is evident from numerous passages in which he has followed Naṣrullah in preference to Kāṣifī.

A full description of the ‘ Iyār-i Dānish with quotations from the text was published by de Sacy (Notices et Extraits, x, pp. 197-225).

 

“Kalīla wa-Dimna” in Arabic verse

In conclusion I may be permitted to add a note on the various poetical renderings made in Arabic on the basis of Kalīla wa-Dimna, of which no complete list has yet appeared in a European language. For my materials I am mainly indebted to Jurjī Zaydān’s “Ta’rīkh ādābi’ l-lughati’ l-arabiyya” (Cairo, 1912, ii, p. 131 et seq.).

(1) The earliest rendering of Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘into Arabic verse was made by Abū Sahl al-Faẓl ibn Nawbakht al-Fārsī, who, like Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘, was in the service of the ‘Abbāsid Caliph al-Maṃṣūr and afterwards in that of his son al-Mahdī and of Hārūn ar-Raṣīd. He translated a number of works from Persian into Arabic, which are enumerated on p. 674 of the Fihrist, where, however, his versified Kalīla wa-Dimna is not mentioned. In the Kashfu’l-Ẓunūn (under title K. wa-D.) we read Abdullah ibn Hilāl al-Ahwāzī made a version of Kalīla wa-Dimna for Yahya ibn Khālid, the Barmecide, in the reign of al-Mahdī, and Abū Sahl ibn Nawbakht made a translation in verse for Yahya ibn Khālid, the vazir of al-Mahdī and ar-Raṣīd, for which he received one thousand dinars as a reward.

(2) Abān ibn ‘Abdi’l-Hamīd al-Lāhiqī made a poetical version of Kalīla wa-Dimna, at the suggestion of his patrons the Barmecides, “in order that this work might be more easily memorised.” Of Abān’s poem only the first two lines have been preserved:

“This is a book of instructions and experience
Which is called Kalīla Dimna.
In it (is found) cautions and uprightness
It is a book composed by the Indians.”

Yahya ibn Khālid gave the poet ten thousand dinars and al-Faẓl gave him five thousand dinars as a reward. Ja’far, however, gave him nothing, but merely said:

“Is it not sufficient for you that I should memorise your poem, and thus become your Rāwī?”^[24]

(3) About the same period another poetic version was made by Alī ibn dā’ūd, the secretary of Zubayda, the daughter of Ja’far the Barmecide, and the wife of Hārūn ar-Raṣīd.

(4) Portions of Kalīla and Dimna were rendered into verse by Bishr ibnu’l-Mu’tamid.

(5) A short metrical version was made by Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Habbāriyva (died A.H. 504), which is the oldest verse rendering that has been preserved to us. Manuscripts of this work exist in London and elsewhere, and a lithographed edition was published in Bombay in a.h. 1317, with marginal notes and glosses by Shaykh Faẓlullah Bahā’ī, who tells us that the author’s original MS. is in India. This version bears the title of Natā’iju’l-fiṭna fī naẓm Kalīla wa-Dimna. It comprises three thousand seven hundred verses, which the author says he wrote in ten days! It is primarily based on Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘, but use was also made of Abān’s lost poem. This allusion to Abān is worth quoting:

“I have also followed Abān al-Lāhiqī
But though he is ahead of me he cannot come up to me
For in spite of his preceding me in point of time
I am superior to him as a poet.”

(6) Another version was made by a certain Ibn Mamatī al-Mishrī, who died in a.h. 606.

(7) In the ninth century of the Hijra a metrical version of the Kalila and Dimna stories was made by Jalālu’d-Din an-Naqqāṣ. Two copies of this poem are known to exist, one in the British Museum (Or. 3626). which has been described by Rieu, Supplement Arabic Cat., p. 735 e t seq., and another in the Library of the Catholic Fathers in Beyrout. An-Naqqāṣ makes no allusion to Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘, but only to Abān al-Lāhiqī.

(8) Part of Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘was versified by Abdu’l-Mu’min ibn Ḥasan aṣ-Ṣaghānī about A.D. 1242. Copies of this work exists in Vienna and Munich. De Sacy had a copy made for himself of the Vienna MS., which is, he says, in a state of great disorder. It bears the title Durar ul-ḥikam fī aṃṣāli’l-Hind wa’l-‘Ajam.

The author says he knew Abān’s poem by hearsay only, and that no one in his day had seen it.

 

Concluding Remarks

When I accepted Mr Penzer’s flattering invitation to write the Foreword to the Pañcatantra volume of the Ocean of Story it did not occur to me that I might become involved in controversy; for, apart from a certain familiarity with the Arabic Kalīla wa-Dimna and the Persian Anwar-i Suhayli, I was a stranger to the subject. The general reading necessary even for a comparison of the various modern Persian versions with the Arabic of Ibnu’l-Muqaffa‘ led me willy-nilly to a searching examination of the Burzoë Legend, and since these inquiries have resulted in opinions at variance with generally accepted views, I feel it is perhaps my duty to add a few further observations in support of my heterodoxy.

First, with regard to the Indian king to whose court Burzoë was sent, I do not find that he is ever given a name or a place, but there is nothing which would imply that he was Dabshalīm, the master of the Sage Bīdpāy, who is at the back of the Kalila and Dimna stories. Now the Chatrang Nāma, a Pahlavī work of unknown date and provenance, brings King Dabshalīm into correspondence with Anūṣīrwān (Chosroes I) and into personal contact with Burzurjmihr, as will be seen from the following summary of the book made by West^[25]:—

“Devaṣārm, king of the Hindūs, sent to King Khusro-i Anoṣak-ruban a set of chessmen^[26] and other valuable presents, with a demand for an explanation of the game, or a heavy tribute. After three days’ consideration, Vadshorg-Mitrō, Khusrō’s prime-minister, explains the game, and invents that of backgammon, with which, and many valuable presents, he is sent to India to make similar demands from Dēvaṣārm, whose courtiers fail in explaining the new game after forty days’ consideration, and their king has to pay tribute.”

Now in the Burzoë Legend, as we have seen, the wonderful book of which Anūṣīrwān wished to obtain a copy was composed by Bīdpāy for his master the king, Dabshalīm. There is no indication that it was a new work when it was first heard of in Persia. According to the Chatrang Nāma, Dabshalīm and Anūṣīrwān were contemporaries, and this would imply that the fables of Bīdpāy were composed in the sixth century, and that news of their existence reached Persia very soon after that event. Is it possible that in the oft repeating of the story, Buzurjmihr and Burzoë have been confused, and that in the original form it was Buzurjmihr who went to India for the book, and that the then king in India was the Dabshalīm (Devaśarma) of the Fables, and that Bīdpāy^[27] was the courtier who revealed the secret of the book to Buzurjmihr?

Another weak point in the legend is the secrecy with which this book was guarded by the Indian king. In the sixth century A.D. there were certainly many collections of these stories in various forms and under various titles, so there could be no question of the so-called “Kalila and Dimna” group existing in one particular copy only, or of any mystery attaching to its contents. And however useful the stories may have been found by the “Indian King,” they certainly could not have been classed among the Sacred Books.

Secondly, it is quite evident that these stories in their simplest Indian form were essentially popular in character, and represented the only form of literature in that day which might be enjoyed by women and children. Only a people to whom such fables were a novelty would trouble to invent such a childish setting, and I fail to understand how this particular point has been entirely ignored by those very scholars who have devoted so much labour to the co-ordination of the many Indian versions. Kāṣifī, in his Introduction, tells us that the Persian kings in their turn kept Burzoë’s translation under lock and key. His object in making this statement is like that of Ibn’l-Muqaffa‘regarding the Indian original, obviously to give an additional importance to the book— what we should nowadays call a publisher’s “puff.”

Before dismissing the subject of the Pahlavī Kalila and Dimna, I wish to make it clear that in my view the linguistic arguments in favour of the existence of such a version, especially the Persian rendering given to certain Sanskrit names in Būd’s Syriac translation, are of infinitely more importance than the Burzoë Legend, and indeed preclude the possibility of denying that there ever was a Pahlavī version.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Zotenberg, H., Histoire des Rots des Perses.... Paris, 1900, p. 629. This work was composed in the eleventh century a.d.

[2]:

Abū Nuwas (?), The whole verse runs:

[3]:

Buzurjmihr, the great minister of Anūshīrwān, whom Nöldeke regards as a hero rather in belles-lettres than in history (see Burzôts Einleitung, Strassburg, 1912).

[4]:

See Keith-Falconer, Introduction, pp. xl, xli.

[5]:

De Sacy’s text refers to a previous journey to India made by Burzoë in search of medicinal herbs, in the course of which journey he learnt “their writing and language.”

[6]:

See Assemanni, Bib. Or., vol. iii, pt. i, pp. 219, 220.

[7]:

Assemanni ( loc. cit.) tells us that Būd was Periodeutes in the time of the Patriarch Ezechiel, circa a.d. 570. As his duties comprised the supervision of the Christians in Persia and India, this is no reason why he should not have known Indian languages.

[8]:

De Sacy in his day (Calila et Dimna, Paris, 1816, pp. 36, 37) mooted the possibility that Būd and Burzoë were one and the same person, but as he could have no knowledge of the Old Syriac version he retained Pahlavī as the language into which Būd’s translation was made.

[9]:

The fact that the animals who are the protagonists in the Indian versions are often changed to suit local conditions in the process of translation has often been noted, but I am not aware (see the article by Sprengling in the American Journal of Semitic Languages, xl, p. 81 et seq., Jan. 192 +) that attention has ever been called to the curious circumstances that neither in the Indian originals nor in any of their offshoots is the horse introduced as an actor. Being neither an Indianist nor a Folklorist I am not prepared to offer any explanation of this phenomenon. Was it that the horse was regarded as too sacred by the early Aryans to be treated with such familiarity, or was it that the horse was known only as a domestic animal in India at the period when these fables first became current?

[10]:

See ray article “Rūdakī and Pseudo-Rūdakī” (Journ. Rou. Ass. Soc., Oct. 1924).

[11]:

B. M. MSS. Or., 7863.

[12]:

There is one other verse in this metre which does not, however, rhyme.

[13]:

Asadi’s Neupersisches Wörterbuch — Lughat-i Furs, nach der einsigen vatikanischen Handschrift, Paul Horn, Berlin, 1897, Abhandl. d. Kgl. Gesell. d. Wissen.

[14]:

I have also utilised the MS. belonging to the India Office, which was unknown to Horn, and often has a better reading.

[15]:

Barā‘a, according to the dictionaries— i.e. cicindella.

[16]:

The I.O.MS. has only one verse representing these two—namely,

V’az dirakht andar gavāhī khvāhad ū:
Tū badāṅgah az tabaṅgūy bāz jū.

[17]:

Quite recently a dealer in Paris obtained a very fine copy dated a.h. 633, but, like so many other early Persian MSS., the text was destroyed for the sake of the illuminations. It is sad to think of the amount of literary vandalism that has been perpetrated in our day in the name of Art.

[18]:

See Nöldeke’s review of Keith-Falconer’s Kalīla and Dimna (Gött. Gel. Anz., 1885, pp. 753-757), and his  article in Z. d. M. G., vol. lix, p. 794.

[19]:

Odd. 7766. This work has been described by Rieu in his Persian Catalogue, vol. ii, pp. 582-584.

[20]:

It is interesting to note that in the story of the Lion and the Jackal the New Syriac version begins his story: “In the land of the Turks” (Keith-Falconer, p. xlviii).

[21]:

See E. G. Browne, Persian Literature under Tartar Dominion, Cambridge, 1920, pp. 67, 68.

[22]:

Though several Turkish or Turki translations in prose and verse were made, the most popular of all has been the Humāyūn Nāna by ‘Alī Chelebi, which is a fairly close translation of Anvār-i Suhaylī. It was dedicated to the great Ottoman Sultan Sulayman I, who reigned from A.D. 1512-1520.

[23]:

The name of the Emperor of Kāshifī’s story has been changed from “Humāyūn Fāl” to “Farrukh-Fāl” possibly out of consideration for the memory of Akbar's father.

[24]:

In the early centuries of Islām, Arabic and Persian poets each had their rāwī, or professed memoriser of their poems.

[25]:

See Grundriss der Iranischen Philologie, Band I, Lieferung 2, p. 119.

[26]:

The existence of chess in Persia is mentioned in another semi-historical Pahlavī work—namely, the Karnāmak of Artakhsīr i Pāpakān, the founder of the Sasanian dynasty.

[27]:

The “Adwayh” of Cheikho’ text of Ibnu’1-Muqaffa‘.