A History of Sanskrit Literature c24.s2.1

c24.s2.1

The enterprise of the physician Burzōe, who under Chosrau Anōsharwān (531-79) translated a version of the *Pañcatantra* into Pahlavi, was a work of the utmost importance for the Indian fable literature.² It is lost, but by A.D. 570 it was rendered by one Būd into Syriac, and about 750 an Arabic version was made by Abdallah ibn al-Moqaffaʻ from which the western versions are derived. The Syriac version is preserved in one manuscript and is imperfect, the Arabic is clearly expanded from the original, which seems to have consisted of five books corresponding to the *Pañcatantra*, five or eight other books taken from a different source³—whether or not the fusion was accomplished in India before Burzōe—and two books regarding his mission and his introduction. Of these fifteen chapters the Syriac has only ten, while the Arabic has twenty-two in all. The title of the work was clearly derived from Karaṭaka and Damanaka, the two jackals who figure in the first book of the *Pañcatantra*, variants of whose names occur regularly as the title of the translations, while the character of the work was somewhat altered by the inclusion of tales which were distinctly of a moral character.