A History of Sanskrit Literature c24.s3.1

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