No contribution is too small and it will only take a minute. We thank you for pitching in. It was one of the earliest known translations of a foreign work into Arabic and is even today considered to be a masterpiece of Arabic prose. The stories with moral lessons found great resonance within Arab society and this work came to be considered a must-read for civil servants and princes.
In fact so popular did it become in the Arab world that it is said that kings and commoners alike, vied to get copies of the book for themselves, a status it retains to this day! Over time, it became a must-have for every king across the Islamic world and each owned their own illustrated copy, often sporting different titles. About the same time, the Panchatantra had also spread across the Byzantine Empire.
A Jewish Rabbi named Joel translated the work into Hebrew in the 12th century. These were based on Latin versions of the tales done in CE by a monk by the name of John of Capua. It is amazing how the spread of different cultural influences can be studied based on different versions of this one text and its journey. Similarly, the Panchatantra was introduced and translated in Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand by Buddhist monks and these versions show a strong similarity with the Buddhist Jataka tales.
The delightful tales of the Panchatantra made it a very popular text. Its stories, carried far and wide by merchants and travellers, spread rapidly across the world, and the text was translated again and again into various languages through the centuries.
He sent his physician Barzoi to India to procure books on government and kingship, including the Panchatantra , which Barzoi translated from its original Sanskrit into Pahlavi.
He included in his translation an appendix containing fables from other Indian sources, including the Mahabharata. Known as Kalilag and Damnag after two of the principal characters, the jackals Karataka and Damanaka , this survives in manuscript form. Its subject matter made it extremely popular amongst all sections of society, and it was copied over and over again, with many mistakes and alterations.
But the stories became part of the folklore of the Islamic world, and the work was carried by the Arabs to Spain. There, it was translated into Old Castilian in as Calila e Dimna. Share your perspective on this article with a post on ScrollStack, and send it to your followers.
Contribute Now. Burzoy succeeded in his endeavours, returning to Persia with the knowledge he had gained. The title is derived from the two jackals who appear in the first sections of the Panchatantra. More than animal fables, the stories were narratives in how to live a wise, good life, and were meant especially for princes born to rule. Thanks to scholarly investigations of the last century, we do know of the existence of both books, as also their various recensions and versions over the centuries.
This latter book was in turn copied several times, and formed the basic text from which later versions in New Persian, and in the various European languages were written — and which exist today. He used a text written in Sanskrit and dated to sometime before CE, by a Jain monk of Gujarat called Purnabhadra. Hertel details the differences between the versions he referenced and also how he came by them. In one version, he makes friends with an Indian who steals it from the royal treasury, and Burzoy commits it to memory.
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