A History of Sanskrit Literature c24.s3: 3. The Çukasaptati
A History of Sanskrit Literature c24.s3
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3. The Çukasaptati
c24.s3.1
Another case of translation which is certain is that of the *Çukasaptati*, whose existence, as we have seen, is attested by Hemacandra in the twelfth century when he cites an episode, not in our texts, in which the parrot is caught by a cat, proving probably that variant recensions were already in existence. By the beginning of the fourteenth century there already was extant a rude Persian version which displeased the refined taste of Nachshabī, a contemporary of Hāfiz and Saʻdī, who in 1329–30 produced the *Tūtīnāmeh*,¹ which a hundred years later was rendered into Turkish and in the eighteenth century evoked a fresh version by Kadiri. The *Tūtīnāmeh* rejected part of its original as unsuitable, substituting other tales partly from the *Vetālapañcaviṅçatikā*. From the Persian version many tales passed to western Europe *via* Asia, and one of the tales was made famous by Gottfried's *Tristan und Isolde*, in which occurs the account of the ordeal which was used to deceive by proving Isolde's innocence. In India the episode is old, for it occurs in a Chinese fifth-century version of an Indian tale and in a confused form is extant in the Jātaka book.²
c24.s3.2
¹ Pertsch, ZDMG. xxi. 505–21. The Persian of Kadiri was translated by C. J. L. Iken (1822), the Turkish by G. Rosen (1858).
c24.s3.3
² Chavannes, *Cinq cents contes*, i. no. 116; Jātaka, 62; Zachariae, *Kleine Schriften*, pp. 282 f.; J. J. Meyer, *Isoldes Gottesurteil*, pp. 74 ff.
Linked texts (3)
- Jātaka — Pāli
- Śukasaptati — Sanskrit
- Vetālapañcaviṃśatikā — Sanskrit