A History of Sanskrit Literature c19.24

c19.24

We know that in the sixth century A.D. there existed in India a Buddhist collection of fables, in which animals play the part of human beings (*cf.* p. 369). By the command of the Sassanian king, Khosru Anūshīrvān (531–579), this work was translated by a Persian physician named Barzoi into Pehlevī. Both this version and the unmodified original have been lost, but two early and notable translations from the Pehlevī have been preserved. The Syriac one was made about 570 A.D., and called *Kalīlag and Damnag*. A manuscript of it was found by chance in 1870, and, becoming known to scholars by a wonderful chapter of lucky accidents, was published in 1876. The Arabic translation from the Pehlevī, entitled *Kalīlah and Dimnah*, or “Fables of Pilpay,” was made in the eighth century source of other versions which exercised very great influence in shaping the literature of the Middle Ages in Europe. These versions of it were the later Syriac (*c.* 1000 A.D.), the Greek (1180), the Persian (*c.* 1130), recast later (*c.* 1494) under the title of *Anvār-i-Suhailī*, or "Lights of Canopus," the old Spanish (1251), and the Hebrew one made about 1250.