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Updated: May 3, 2025
Wolff did well to omit it in his German translation of Kalila wa Dimna of 1837, for he could not have produced a correct rendering of de Sacy's text which was not completed till 1873 by Guidi. Even now it is impossible to make a translation of Burzoe's Introduction which can stand the test of philology.
Unless I am mistaken the excerpts in this book from Kalila wa Dimna are not always correct. Ibn Qutaiba was concerned more with the sense than with the phraseology of Ibn Moqaffa. My father belonged to the Warrior class, my mother came of an eminent priestly family.
The parable which stands at the close of the chapter is, unless one is greatly mistaken, directly taken from the romance with little modification. It stands in the whole of Kalila wa Dimna isolated, deviates in manner and tendency entirely from the story and also from what has issued from Ibn Moqaffa but is consistent with the monastic predilections of Burzoe.
Moreover, Firdausi's poem occasionally betrays that his sources had not flowed to him through Arabic. Of those men one only is met with again, Shahzan son of Barzin. He is mentioned by Firdausi at the head of his account of the genesis of KALILA WA DIMNA: "Listen to what Shahzan, son of Barzin has said when he revealed the secret."
We know further that books under the title of Persian Adab were spread among those who sympathised with Mazdaism and Manichism in the circle of Moslem society. These books by their character were comparable to books on Mazdak but also to Kalila wa Dimna. In the former the heading is Fi taat us Sultan, in the latter Fi rasail.
His rendering of Kalila and Dimma is well-known. It enjoys a prime role in the migration of this collection of stories to the West. Well-known also is his translation of the Persian book of Khoday Nameh, that is, the official chronicle of the Sasanian times and of the Ain Nameh, the Institutes of the time. We shall have occasion to speak about these books later on.
They translated into prose imitations of the tales such as those of the book of Patronis, borrowing from the general chronicles or in translations like the "Kalila and traditions, legendary or historic, as they found them in the Dimna," or the book of "The Ruses of Women," in verse.
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