KALILA WA DEMNA
i. Redactions and circulation
In Persian literature Kalila wa Demna has been known in different versions since the 6th century CE. The complex relations between the extant New Persian versions, a lost Sanskrit original, and a lost Middle Persian translation have been studied since 1859 when the German Indologist Theodor Benfey (1809-1881), a pioneer of comparative folklore studies, published a translation of extant Sanskrit versions of the Pañcatantra (lit. “five topics”; for the debate about possible interpretations of the Sanskrit title, see Pañcatantra, tr. Olivelle, pp. xiii-xiv). The scholarly construction of the migration of an Indian story cycle into Near and Middle Eastern languages has received considerable attention, because the project touches on the fundamental question of how to conceive of national and international literary histories if narrative traditions have moved freely between Indo-Iranian and Semitic languages. Two philological approaches dominate the research. Johannes Hertel (1872-1955), Mojtabā Minovi (Plate i), and others have focused on editing the earliest versions as preserved in Sanskrit and New Persian manuscripts, while Franklin Edgerton (1885-1963) and François de Blois have created 20th century synthesized versions of the lost Sanskrit and Middle Persian texts.
The circulation of Kalila wa Demna in Persian literature documents how Iran mediated the diffusion of knowledge between the Indian subcontinent and the Mediterranean. The oldest extant versions of the story cycle are preserved in Syriac and Arabic, and originate from the 6th and 8th century, respectively, as translations of a lost Middle Persian version. Benfey was the first to note that the independent Arabic and Syriac translations of a lost Middle Persian version provide the only terminus ad quem for a lost Sanskrit original (Kalilag und Damnag, p. VI). The state of research regarding the Sanskrit Pañcatantra is beyond the scope of this entry, but it should be noted that most Sanskrit scholars still assume the existence of a single Sanskrit original (Urtext) compiled by a single author, though absolutely nothing is known about this author (Brinkhaus, pp. 55-56). Sanskrit scholars also agree that the literary sources of the Pañcatantra comprise both the technical literature of Hindu ethics and statecraft, such as the Arthaśāstra attributed to Kauṭilya (fl. 300 BCE), and the popular story-telling tradition. In the Jātaka tales about the former lives of the Buddha and in the historical epic Mahābhārata, animal fables have long served religious and didactic purposes.
Major recensions. The three preserved New Persian translations originated between the 10th and 12th century, and are based on the Arabic version of Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ (b. ca. 721, d. ca. 757), which is the most influential of the known Arabic versions. The European reception of the fables is beyond the scope of this entry, but it is important for the understanding of the Persian reception in the Islamic lands that between the 11th and the 13th century, around the Mediterranean, the Arabic version of Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ was translated into Greek (Hertel, 1914, pp. 401-4), as well as into Hebrew (Hertel, 1914, p. 395) and Old Spanish (Hottinger; Wacks). The older Hebrew version, customarily ascribed to Rabbi Joël (fl. 1200), became through the Latin translation of John of Capua (fl. 1260) the source of all European vernacular translations until the 1690s. The first English version appeared in Tudor England in 1570, and was prepared by Thomas North (1535-1603?) who used the Italian translation by Anton Francesco Doni (1513-74) for The Moral Philosophy of Doni popularly known as the Fables of Bidpai.
The Baghdadi bookseller Nadim (d. 995 or 998) listed Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ as an important translator of Middle Persian literature in his Fehrest, though he did not associate the Kalila wa Demna translation with any known patron (pp. 132, 364; cf. tr. pp. 259, 715-16). In the preface of the Šāh-nāma by Abu Manṣur al-Maʿmari (d. 961), the ʿAbbasid caliph Maʾmun (r. 813-33) commissioned Ebn al-Moqaffa to translate the fables (Qazwini, p. 21; cf. Minorsky, p. 265). At a first glance the association with Maʾmun appears simply as a “serious historical blunder” (de Blois, p. 51). This severe judgment seems supported by the Kašf al-ẓonun (ed. Yaltkaya and Bilge, II, col. 1508), where Katip Çelebi (1609-1657) stated that Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ wrote the Arabic translation for the ʿAbbasid caliph Manṣur (r. 754-75), which is historically feasible. Yet Moḥammad Qazwini’s edition of the older Šāh-nāma preface does not list any variants to Maʾmun in the text’s manuscripts. This observation can be related to the Šāh-nama by Ferdowsi (b. 940?, d. 1019 or 1025), who is assumed to have drawn on Abu Manṣur’s work. Ferdowsi also mentions Maʾmun as Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ’s patron, and variants to Maʾmun are again missing from the collated manuscripts (VIII, p. 371, l. 3501). The undisturbed transmission of this historically impossible connection in both the Šāh-nāma and one of its sources may reflect that among Persian reading audiences it seemed more sensible to associate the translation of Kalila wa Demna from Middle Persian into Arabic with a caliph who appeared to be on the Persian side within the anti-Arab movement of the šoʿubiya. Maʾmun’s mother had been the Persian concubine Marājel and his tutor had been the Zoroastrian convert Fażl b. Sahl (d. 818), while Maʾmun himself had been the governor of Khurasan from 802 to 813. Moreover, by the 10th century, Persian reading audiences might have mixed up the Arabic Kalila wa Demna by Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ with a lost Arabic imitation of Kalila wa Demna that Sahl b. Hārun b. Rāhavayh (d. 830) composed as part of a larger work for Maʾmun (Katip Çelebi, ed. Yaltkaya and Bilge, II, col. 1509; cf. Zakeri, p. 839), as they were unlikely to read the fables in either Arabic version.
The first Persian translation was prepared by the vizier Abu’l-Fażl Moḥammad Balʿami (d. 940) who wrote a prose version for the Samanid ruler Naṣr b. Aḥmad (r. 914-43). Afterwards Rudaki (de Blois, pp. 51-52; cf. Storey/de Blois, V/1, pp. 221-26) was asked to turn the prose version into a narrative poem (mathnawi). Balʿami’s translation is lost, but fragments of Rudaki’s mathnawi are preserved (ed. Braginskiĭ, nos. 273-357). In the 12th century Moḥammad b. ʿAbd-Allāh al-Boḵāri (ed. Ḵānlari and Rowšan; cf. the earlier edition by Gehlhar) and Abu’l-Maʿāli Naṣr-Allāh Monši (ed. Minovi; cf. the earlier edition by Qarib, see Plate ii) returned to Ebn al-Moqaffaʿs Arabic text for their new independent versions. Moḥammad al-Boḵāri wrote his prose version for Sayf-al-Din Ḡazi (r. 1146-49), a Zangid atabeg (see ATĀBAK) of Mosul. Naṣr-Allāh Monši composed a literary version, combining Arabic verses with Persian prose, for Bahrāmšāh (b. after 1084; d. about 1157), a sultan of the Ghaznavids in the eastern Iranian lands.
Naṣr-Allāh Monši’s literary version has dominated the Persian reception of Kalila wa Demna ever since, and two 13th century commentaries have been preserved (Šarḥ-e aḵbār, ed. Imāni). In 1260 Bahāʾ-al-Din Aḥmad b. Moḥammad Qāneʿi Ṭusi turned it into a mathnawi (ed. Tudivā) dedicated to his Rum Saljuq patron ʿEzz-al-Din Kaykāvus. In the late 15th century the Timurid man of letters Ḥosayn Wāʿeẓ Kašefi (d. 1504-5) drew on both the Arabic version by Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ and the Persian version by Naṣr-Allāh Monši to write the Anwār-e Sohayli, which subsequently became the most popular Persian version of Kalila wa Demna. About a century later, Abu’l-Fażl ʿAllāmi (d. 1602) revised the Anwār-e Sohayli for his Moghul patron Akbar (r. 1556-1605), and this version circulated as ʿEyār-e dāneš (ʿIār-e dāneš). In the second half of the 20th century, there were not only the major recensions by Naṣr-Allāh Monši, Kašefi, and Abu’l-Fażl in print, but also versions that present Kalila wa Demna as a classic of children’s literature in the form of a mathnawi (ed. Jomhuri; ed. Faḵr Ṭabāṭabāʾi, see Plate iii) or in a Persian purged of all Arabic words (ed. Ājudāni; see Plate iv).
Manuscripts. Research about the circulation of Kalila wa Demna in Persian literature has to consider the rupture between the oldest preserved manuscripts of the New Persian translations by Moḥammad al-Boḵāri and Naṣr-Allāh Monši and the indirect evidence for the work’s popularity in Iran since the 6th century. Rudaki’s version, however, will not be discussed in the following because the fragments are preserved in much more recent manuscripts (Storey/de Blois, V/1, pp. 224-26). Since in Iranian studies Persian literature is valued as a central component of Iranian identity, every answer to the question of how to connect the dots between a lost Middle Persian translation and the extant Persian versions is fraught with potential pitfalls. As a philologist, de Blois considers a lost Middle Persian translation the prototype of all subsequent versions of Kalila wa Demna (p. 1). He supposes that the lost Middle Persian translation was “a work consistent in style and intention” (p. 17) and clearly distinct from the Pañcatantra in both form and content. De Blois argues that early Persian literature was written in a straightforward, unadorned language, and observes that Naṣr-Allāh Monši’s adaptation seems unusual among the preserved versions because its complex, adorned literary language is more closely related to the Sanskrit original (p. 5). In contrast, the sociologist Said Arjomand circumvents these philological issues by focusing on Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ’s role as a Persian secretary (kāteb) for Muslim caliphs so that his Arabic literary output can be claimed as an expression of Iranian intellectual traditions, although it was not written in Persian (pp. 22-23).
The time-lag of several centuries between indirect evidence for the fables’ circulation and the direct evidence of dated manuscripts is not a unique case within philological research. Yet the methodological issues of Kalila wa Demna are particularly complex, because any hypothesis about the relationship between the Middle Persian and New Persian versions must account for the intermediary Arabic and Syriac versions (for examples of conventional two-dimensional stemmata, see Chauvin; ed. ʿAzzām, p. 40 [preface]; de Blois, p. 11; Grube, 1991, endpapers; Šarḥ-e aḵbār, p. 58). On the one hand, in many languages at least two versions of the fables circulated at the same time. The version of Balʿami, for example, was contemporary to that of Rudaki, and thus Rudaki’s cannot simply be plotted as a replacement of Balʿami’s. This observation raises the additional question as to whether it be more logical to assume that there were more than one Middle Persian version. On the other hand, premodern Muslim societies were linguistically diverse because they comprised ethnically and religiously diverse communities. The long entries on Kalila wa Demna in the bibliographies of Nadim and Katip Çelebi document that in the Islamic lands, between the 10th and the 17th century, readers could choose between different versions in several languages. It seems more appropriate – though difficult to visualize in a two-dimensional stemma – to suppose that influence among the Syriac, Arabic, Middle Persian, Persian, and Sanskrit versions was both multi-directional and repeated (cf. de Blois, p. 20 n. 2).
The older Syriac translation (ed. Schulthess) is contemporary with its source, a lost Middle Persian version. But the younger Syriac translation (ed. Wright) was made from the 8th century Arabic version by Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ, so that the younger Syriac and the New Persian translations by Moḥammad al-Boḵāri and Naṣr-Allāh Monši are all based on Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ’s text. The oldest dated manuscripts of these five versions, at least as far as known and preserved at the beginning of the 21st century, suggest a direct relationship between manuscript survival and the changing status of Syriac, Arabic, and New Persian as prestigious literary languages in the Islamic lands. Few manuscripts of the older and the younger Syriac translations are known (Brockelmann, pp. 503-4; Grotzfeld, cols. 889-90), and the oldest copies are respectively dated to the early 16th (ed. Schulthess) and the 11th century (ed. Wright). The scanty evidence seems to correspond to the diminishing role of secular Syriac literature during the flourishing of the ʿAbbasid caliphate (750-1258).
The much larger number of manuscripts of the Arabic version by Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ (for a survey of just 30 Arabic manuscripts, see de Blois, pp. 66-72; cf. GAL I, pp. 151-52, and S I, pp. 234-35) reflects the work’s popularity among Arabic reading audiences, but there are no preserved manuscripts written before 1200 (de Blois, pp. 3-4). The oldest copy of Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ’s translation has a colophon with the date Jomādā II 618/July 1221 (Istanbul, Süleymaniye Library, MS arab. Aya Sofya [AS]; ed. ʿAzzām, pp. 21-25 [preface] and 283 [text]; cf. de Blois, p. 66; and ed. Minovi, p. kāf for the call numbers of 3 MSS arab. in the AS collection). This manuscript is almost 130 years older than that which Louis Cheikho had found in a Melkite monastery in Lebanon (MS arab., colophon dated 6 Rajab 739/18 Jan. 1339; ed. Cheikho, pp. 24-25 [preface] and 246 [text]). Wilfred Madelung (apud de Blois, p. 3 n. 4) has suggested that the absence of manuscripts written before 1200 reflects that damaged copies of secular literature were not repaired and recycled because they could be easily replaced with new copies. The continued demand among Arabic reading audiences for copies of Kalila wa Demna seems to explain why the fables were among the first typeset Arabic books printed in the Near East. In Egypt, where the first book in Arabic script was published by an Islamic press in 1822, Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ’s version has been in print at least since 1833 (ed. Cheikho, p. 6 [preface]; Brockelmann, p. 503). But from 1835 onwards the Homāyun-nāma (see below), a 16th century Ottoman translation of Kāšefi’s Anwār-e Sohayli, was also issued in Cairo (Burrell).
The oldest dated manuscripts of the complete Persian translations by Moḥammad al-Boḵāri and Naṣr-Allāh Monši were written during the lifetime of their patrons. Moḥammad al-Boḵāri’s patron Sayf-al-Din Ḡazi ruled Mosul in the late 1140s, and the only known manuscript has a colophon dated Rajab 544/November 1149 (Istanbul, Topkapi Saray Library, MS pers. Y. Yazmalar 777; for the colophon, see ed. Ḵānlari and Rowšan, p. 20 [preface]; a barely legible facsimile is provided in Gehlhar, p. 239, cf. p. 232, who reads Ṣafar 544/June 1149). Although this version was written for a Turkish patron in norther Iraq, Katip Çelebi (ed. Yaltkaya and Bilge, II, cols. 1507-9) did not mention Moḥammad al-Boḵāri’s version and there are not any known Otttoman translations. In contrast, the version that Naṣr-Allāh Monši dedicated to his Ghaznavid patron Bahrāmšāh became the most famous version in the Islamic lands (ibid., cols. 1508-9: hāḏehi al-tarjama heya al-mašhura be’l-Kalila wa Demna fi hāḏā al-zamān lakinnahu aṭnabo wa-ashabo beʾirād al-alfāẓ al-moḡlaqa). The Leithandschrift of Minovi’s edition (p. yaṭ; Istanbul, Süleymaniye Library, MS pers. Carullah 1727) is dated 551/1156 (p. 422), shortly before the death of Bahrāmšāh in 1157. It is noteworthy that both Persian manuscripts predate the earliest dated manuscripts of their Arabic source. But books are always also valued for reasons other than their theological and artistic merits, and people do not only collect books that they actually read. A manuscript whose content was recognized to be an important work of literature might still be kept around, even though it did not any longer serve as reading matter. The geographical distribution and movement of all known manuscripts in Arabic, Persian, Syriac, and Sanskrit remains to be analyzed, yet the better survival of early Persian Kalila wa Demna manuscripts seems to reflect the rising importance of Persian as formal literary language outside the Iranian lands from the 12th century onwards.
A comprehensive interpretation of the Arabic and Persian manuscript evidence, which includes a considerable number of illustrated manuscripts (see KALILA wa DEMNA iii. Illustrations), is impossible until reliable and statistically significant data be available, especially regarding the survival rates of religious and secular literature on the one hand and of illustrated manuscripts on the other. The practice of enhancing Kalila wa Demna books with images (for illustrated Islamic mss., see Grube 1990-1991; for a survey juxtaposing Islamic manuscripts with western manuscripts and early modern printed books, see the 76 examples collected in North, pp. 113-79) may be as old as the Persian translations from the 10th century. In the older Šāh-nāma preface, Abu Manṣur mentioned that Rudaki’s mathnawi was embellished with images (Qazwini p. 23 nn. 4-6; cf. Minorsky, p. 266). Arabic and Persian versions printed in the Near East before 1945 indicate that expensive versions of illustrated Kalila wa Demna books continued to be produced after the advent of large-scale commercial printing in the Islamic lands after 1800. In Qajar Persia, between 1845 and 1909, lithographic printing houses issued seven illustrated editions of Kāšefi’s popular version and four editions of Naṣr-Allāh Monši’s text, now perceived as the more classical version. Only the first three editions of Anwār-e Sohayli, published between 1845 and 1850, are richly illustrated with 56 black/white images each, while the other four editions, which appeared between 1857 and 1880, have just 7 to 13 images (Marzolph, 2001, pp. 233-34, cf. figs. 98, 110, 111, 114, 142 and pp. 225-27, 229 with captions). There are fewer variations between the four editions of Naṣr-Allāh Monši’s Kalila wa Demna because the number of images range between 23 and 26 in the editions issued between 1865 and 1909 (Marzolph, 2001, p. 247, cf. figs. 49, 75, 76, and 87 and pp. 220-24 for the accompanying captions). In the 1910s a simplified version for children was printed twice in a three volume series with the title Aḵlāq-e asāsi in Tehran (Moḥammadi and Qāyeni, I, pp. 264-65 and II, p. 715, 717). For these illustrated lithographs, Moḥammad ʿAli Kātuziyān Tehrāni adapted Naṣr-Allāh Monši's text (Plate v), combining it with the Marzobān-nāma and a selection from Saʿdi's Bustān.
An important 20th century Arabic example of an illustrated Kalila wa Demna is ʿAbd-al-Wahhāb ʿAzzām’s edition of the aforementioned AS manuscript. This edition has been repeatedly reprinted, while copies of the 1st edition are extremely rare. In 1941, the Egyptian publisher Dār al-Maʿāref celebrated its the 50th anniversary with this publication of a classical work of Arabic adab literature. The renowned intellectual Ṭāhā Ḥosayn (1889-1973) contributed a foreword (pp. 7-12), while ʿAzzām argued in his introduction (pp. 13-51) for the superiority of the AS manuscript over the Lebanese one edited by Cheikho. ʿAzzām’s text is accompanied by 13 color plates of Persianate miniature paintings (Plate vi) by Roman Strekalovsky, a Russian artist who in the 1950s was associated with the American University in Cairo. But these Orientalist miniatures are usually overlooked whenever Arabists and Iranists discuss this edition (e.g., Sadan, p. 139 n. 14; de Blois, p. 66).
Indirect evidence. The popularity of Kalila wa Demna is attested by many references in Arabic and Persian sources, yet mention of the fables and their frame-tale in literature must be distinguished from historical information about the origins of the story cycle. This distinction is even more important, because the Arabic and Persian versions include a frame-tale about the fables’ Indian origins and their translation into Middle Persian. The wise Indian king Dābešlim asked the philosopher Bidpāy to tell him stories about important aspects of statecraft. When the Sasanian king Ḵosrow I Anōširvān (r. 531-78) learned about this book, he sent the physician Borzuya to the Indian king to obtain a copy of the Sanskrit text and to translate it into Middle Persian. In an exhaustive study of the frame-tale tradition, de Blois established five variations of this frame-tale (pp. 40-43), and observed that Bozorgmehr-Boḵtagān, Ḵosrow’s legendary vizier, is mentioned in each. De Blois concluded that Burzoya’s authorship of the Middle Persian version remains historically possible, because it can be neither proven nor falsified (p. 58). Dābešlim and Pidpāy are literary characters that were added to the Sanskrit sources by the Middle Persian translator (pp. 22-23), while Borzuya and Bozorgmehr are historical characters, occasionally mixed up in the Arabic and Persian manuscript tradition (pp. 48-50). Since the publication of de Blois’ study in 1990, scholars have in principle accepted his position about the value of the frame-tale as historical evidence for the transmission of Kalila wa Demna from India to Iran (e.g., Grotzfeld, col. 889). The consensus, however, may reflect that Burzoya’s travel to India offers the only available terminus ad quem for the lost Sanskrit original, as mentioned above (e.g., Pañcatantra, tr. Olivelle, xii; cf. Brinkhaus, pp. 56-57). For it is salient that in other classical works of Persian literature, the frame-tale is treated as a literary device for creating cohesion between otherwise unconnected stories, even if the work features a historical character, such as the Sasanian king Bahrām V Gōr (r. 421-39; see BAHRĀM) in Haft Peykar by Neẓāmi Ganjavi (d. 1209?).
The following examples of indirect evidence represent three groups of written sources: (1) the already cited Arabic bibliographies by Nadim and Katip Çelebi; (2) Persian literature, such the forementioned Šāh-nāma by Abu Manṣur; and (3) Islamic historiography in Arabic and Persian. Visual evidence for the popularity of Kalila wa Demna (Raby; cf. Marshak), like the murals in Panjikant, will not be considered.
(1) Bibliographies. In the second half of the 10th century, Nadim tracked the books known in the ʿAbbasid capital Baghdad in a systematic bibliography. In contrast, Katip Çelebi compiled an alphabetically arranged title catalog to record books that were extant or recorded in Ottoman libraries in Anatolia and in the first half of the 17th century. Both sources provide snapshots of the Arabic and Persian books in circulation. They are valuable historical evidence because they are finding aids, independent of interpretation. At the beginning of the 21st century, their different approaches to the linguistic and stylistic diversity that characterizes the circulation of Kalila wa Demna are instructive for editors who are charged with the task of making sense of significant differences among the manuscripts that all claim to present, for example, the version of Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ (cf. de Blois, pp. 3-4, for the 19th century editions by Silvestre de Sacy, Cheikho, and ʿAzzām) or Naṣr-Allāh Monši (cf. Farzān and Mahdavi-Dāmḡāni about the editions by Qarib and Minovi).
Considering the continuing debate about that the fables’ Indian origin and a Middle Persian translation, it is salient that Nadim (p. 364, tr. pp. 715-17) already reported that people disagreed about the origins of Kalila wa Demna, considering the matter beyond his expertise while dutifully listing four theories: India as reported in the beginning of the work itself (qila ʿamilatho al-Hend wa-ḵabara ḏāleka fi ṣadr al-ketāb), the Arsacids (al-moluk al-aškāniya), the Persians (al-Fors), or the wise Bozorgmehr (Bozorjmehr al-ḥakim). Nadim did not provide any information about the content of the work beyond its general classification into the section about evening stories and fables (al-asmār wa’l-ḵorāfāt, p. 363, tr. p. 712), and the omission may be due to the work’s literary genre of bibliography. The entry, however, provides a vivid impression of the large variety of known, though not necessarily extant, versions. The Middle Persian source is described as having 17 or 18 chapters (sing. bāb). There is an unspecified number of Arabic versions, in prose and in verse, of varying length (esp. p. 364: wa-raʾayto anā fi nosḵa ziādat babayn “I myself have seen in a manuscript an addition of two chapters”). Moreover, Kalila wa Demna was included into many anthologies and popular as abridgment (lehāḏā al-ketāb jawāmeʿ wa’ntezāʿāt ʿamelahu jamāʿa). Yet Nadim already knew that the poets of the Persians had prepared a version in verse (wa-qad ʿamilat šoʿarāʾ al-ʿAjam hāḏā al-ketāb šeʿran) and that the work had been translated from Arabic into Persian (wa-noqela elā al-loḡa al-fāresiya be’l-ʿarabiya; note the different interpretation by Dodge, tr. p. 717).
Compiled about 600 years later, Katip Çelebi’s entry is characterized by a similar multitude of Arabic and Persian versions, though the fables’ Indian origin is no longer in doubt. The first part of the entry (II, cols. 1507-8) begins with the story of Bidpāy and Dābešlim, followed by a table of contents for a 14 chapter version, and concluded with the story of how Anōširvān sent Borzuya to India so that before the arrival of Islam Bidpāy’s book had been translated from Sanskrit into Persian. The reminder of the entry is reserved for a survey of translators and patrons, from the Arabic version by Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ to the Ottoman versions composed by his contemporaries. The modern editions include an Ottoman abridgment by Osmanzade, who died 1136/1724 (ed. Yaltkaya and Bilge, II, col. 1509) or 1139/1726 (ed. Flügel, V, p. 239), which must be a later addition to the manuscripts. Yet Katip Çelebi’s survey does not provide information about any changes in the number of chapters, giving thus the impression that the changes in language and style did not substantially alter the work’s content. The Persian versions by Rudaki, Naṣr-Allāh Monši, and Kāšefi are mentioned, and only the Moghul recension ʿEyār-e dāneš is missing. In addition, the reader finds cross-references under Anwār-e Sohayli (ed. Yaltkaya and Bilge, I, col. 194; missing from Flügel’s edition) and Homāyun-nāma (ed. Yaltkaya and Bilge, II, col. 2046); the latter is an Ottoman translation of Kāšefi’s Anwār-e Sohayli by Ali Çelebi (Vâsi Alisi, d. 1543; cf. Eleanor Sims in Grube, 1991, pp. 119-23; Burrell) and dedicated to Süleyman Qanuni (r. 1520-66).
After 1697, when Antoine Galland (1646-1715) posthumously published Herbelot’s French adaptation of Kašf al-ẓonun under the title of Bibliothèque orientale, Katip Çelebi’s interpretation of the circulation of Kalila wa Demna became widely known among European Orientalists. But Barthélmy d’Herbelot (1625-95) divided Katip Çelebi’s entry “Kalila wa Demna” into three entries, reorganizing the bibliographical information. Ali Çelebi’s “Homaioun Nameh” (p. 456) became the main entry, while Kāšefi’s “Anuar Sohaili” (p. 118) and Naṣr-Allāh Monši’s “Calilah u Damnáh” (p. 245) were minor entries. This division reflected that among European Orientalists, toward the end of the 17th century, Ottoman (Plate vii) and Persian literature was much better known than Arabic literature because Ottoman and Persian were the administrative languages of the Ottomans and the Safavids. Already in 1698 the first partial translation of Anwār-e Sohayli became available to French reading audiences, when Les fables de Pilpay: Philosophie indien, ou la conduite des rois was published in Paris.
(2) Literature. Among the references in Persian prose and poetry, the mention of the frame-tale in both the Šāh-nāma preface by Abu Manṣur al-Maʿmari and in the Šāh-nama by Ferdowsi has received intense scrutiny (e.g., de Blois) because of the Šāh-nāma’s central role in Persian literature. In the older Šāh-nāma preface (Qazwini, pp. 21-23; cf. Minorsky, pp. 265-66), Abu Manṣur uses the story of how Kalila wa Demna became available to Persian reading audiences as an example highlighting the central role of high-ranking patronage for the promotion of literature. Thanks to Anuširvān, Maʾmun, and Naṣr b. Aḥmad the stories are translated from Indian to Persian, from Persian to Arabic, and from Arabic to Persian. In other words, for Abu Manṣur Kalila wa Demna serves as a precedence for his own work. But in Ferdowsi’s Šāh-nāma, the story about the fables’ Indian origins (VIII, pp. 361-73) occurs toward the end of the mathnawi, during the reign of Nušinravān, since both Borzuya and Bozorgmehr are associated with the reign of Ḵosrow I Anōširvān. The origin of Kalila wa Demna offers yet another occasion to examine a ruler’s behavior towards his courtiers.
Passing references to Kalila wa Demna in Persian literature indicate that the fables were so popular that its content had become proverbial. In Tāriḵ-e Masʿudi the Ghaznavid historian Abu’l-Fażl Bayhaqi (995-1077) cited two qaṣidas by Abu Ḥanifa Eskāfi (2nd half of 11th century; cf. Storey/de Blois, V/1, pp. 64-65), each of which has an allusion to the fables. In the first, the thorough study of Kalila wa Demna is considered one way of learning that dishonesty is not rewarded (p. 363 lines 5-6: nakard hargez kas bar farib o ḥilat sud / magar Kalila o Demna naḵᵛānda-i dah bār). In the second qaṣida, Dābešlim is recalled to illustrate the behavior of gloating enemies (p. 493, lines 3-4: ḥāsed emruz čenin me-tawāri gašt o ḵomuš / di hami bāz nadānast-mi az Dābešlim).
(3) Islamic historiography. Historians mentioned Kalila wa Demna in three different contexts: the meḥna, India, and the Sasanians. While they classified the fables as a work of literature which originated before Islam and outside the Arab and Iranian lands, references to the story cycle itself are always positive.
In his universal history, the polymath Ṭabari (839-923) made a single passing reference to Kalila wa Demna during the events of the year 225/839-40, towards the end of the meḥna (II, 1309; tr. XXXIII, pp. 187-88). In this passage the fables are classified as Persian advice literature (adab men ādāb al-ʿajam), and their popularity is adduced as a defense against the charge of blasphemy (kofr). In the year 225/839-40, the Persian general Afšin (d. 841) was accused of owning a blasphemous book which he had adorned with gold, jewels, and satin (ketāb ʿandaka qad zayyantahu be’l-ḏahab wa’l-jawhar wa’l-dibāj fihi al-kofr be’llāh). Afšin explained that he inherited the book with Persian advice literature in this condition from his father (hāḏā ketāb wareṯohu ʿan abi fihi adab men ādāb al-ʿajam … fa-taraktohu ʿalā ḥālehi), and reminded the judge that he himself owned similarly adorned books, such as the Kalila wa Demna (ka-ketāb Kalila wa Demna wa-ketāb Mazdak fi manzeleka). It is noteworthy that Kalila wa Demna is not mentioned in connection with the reign of Ḵosrow I Anōširvān, because Ṭabari compiled in his annals important information about Sasanian history.
The Baghdadi geographer Yaʿqubi (d. after 905) summarized the contents of Kalila wa Demna in the section about the kings of India in his Taʾriḵ (I, pp. 92-106; Pers. tr. I, pp. 102-116). Yaʿqubi, however, did not establish a patron-author relationship between Dābešlim and Bidpāy, and instead reported that Bidpāy composed the didactic work during the reign of Dābešlim (I, pp. 97-98; Pers. tr. I, p. 107). Yaʿqubi’s version comprises ten chapters (I, pp. 98-99; Pers. I, tr. pp. 107-9), and the section provides no information whatsoever about Persian or Arabic translations. Accordingly, the fables are not mentioned later in the work, when Yaʿqubi reports about the death of Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ (II, pp. 442-43) in the section about the reign of the second ʿAbbasid caliph Manṣur.
In the first half of the 11th century, the polymath Abu’l-Rayḥān Biruni (d. after 1050) mentioned Kalila wa Demna in his encyclopedia of India: Ketāb fi taḥqiq le’l-Hend men maqula maqbula fi’l-ʿaql aw marḏula (Book concerning the investigation of India comprising statements reasonable or unreasonable). Biruni ended his survey of the books of the Indians with a passage about the Pañcatantra (p. 123; tr. I, p. 159), which he used for accusing Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ of being both a Manichean and a bad translator. Biruni begins the passage with an expression of humility, stating that he could not translate the Pañcatantra (be-woddi in konto atamakkanu ketāb Panč Tantra). He mentioned that the work is known outside India as Kalila wa Demna (wa-howa al-maʿruf ʿendanā be-ketāb Kalila wa Demna), and described the fables’ way into Arabic as a back and forth between Persian and Sanskrit, and then between Arabic and Persian (fa-ʾenna-hu taraddada bayna al-fāresiya wa’l-hendiya ṯomma al-ʿarabiya wa’l-fāresiya). But the introductory humility topos is now turned against the fables’ translators. Biruni raises doubts about the reliability of these translators in general (ʿalā alsenat qawm lā yoʾmen taḡrirohom eyyāho) and of Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ in particular, since he had added the story about Borzuya (ka-ʿAbd-Allāh ben al-Moqaffaʿ fi ziādatehi bab Borzuya) to his Arabic translation. While there is a long tradition of accusing Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ of having been a Manichean (Guidi), Biruni is alone in praising the Indian original to fault its Arabic translator Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ.
The Ghaznavid historian ʿAbd-al-Ḥayy b. al-Żaḥḥāk Gardizi (first half of the 11th century) combined in his dynastic chronicle Zayn al-aḵbār the pre-Islamic history of Persia with the Islamic history of Khurasan until the middle of the 11th century. Gardizi mentioned Kalila wa Demna in connection with the reign of Ḵosrow I Anōširvān (pp. 31-33). Bozorgmehr is the vizier of Nuširwān-e ʿAdel, and it is one the vizier’s achievements that he brought the fables from India to Iran (p. 33). It cannot be a coincidence that both Ferdowsi and Gardizi treat the Middle Persian translation of Kalila wa Demna as an important event of Sasanian history, though it is not clear how frame-tale and indirect evidence in both literature and historiography might have influenced each other over time. The written evidence suggests that by the 10th century Kalila wa Demna had become an important topos of Sasanian patronage of Middle Persian literature for those men of letters who wrote Persian literature and historiography for noble patrons in the Iranian lands.
Bibliography:
There is not yet a single comprehensive bibliography of manuscripts, editions, and scholarship on Kalila wa Demna. Introductory bibliographies with secondary sources in western languages are provided by F. de Blois’ study of Burzōy’s Voyage, 1990, pp. vi-x, H. Grotzfeld’s encyclopedia entry “Kalila und Dimna,” 1993, cols. 892-94, and the 2003 edition of Thomas North’s Moral Philosophy of Doni, pp. 181-95. A bibliography of Persian studies can be found in Šarḥ-e aḵbār, ed. B. Imāni, 2001, pp. 794-95 (for full references of these follow below). A survey of recent scholarship on animal fables is included into the conference proceedings Von listigen Schakalen und törichten Kamelen: Die Fabel in Orient und Okzident, ed. Mamoun Fansa und Eckhard Grunewald, Wiesbaden, 2008.
Selected editions, commentaries and translations:
A useful, though not completely correct, “Genealogical Table of the Panchatantra” is provided on the endpapers of E. Grube’s A Mirror for Princes from India, 1991 (for full reference, see Studies below). The Persian translation by Moḥammad al-Boḵāri is missing, yet three unidentified lost Persian versions are mentioned. For Arabic manuscripts and printed books, see: GAL I, pp. 151-52, and S I, pp. 234-35; and F. de Blois, Burzōy’s Voyage, 1990, pp. 66-72 (for full reference, see Studies below). For 19th century printed texts of the fables, including their European translations, see the annotated Bibliographie des ouvrages arabes ou relatifs aux arabes publiés dans l’Europe chrétienne de 1810-1885: II – Kalîlah (Liége, 1897) by Victor Charles Chauvin. A survey of the Persian manuscript tradition is provided by Aḥmad Monzavi, Fehrest-e moštarak-e nosḵahā-ye ḵaṭṭi-e fārsi-e Pākestān: VI – Dāstānhā, Lahore, 1987, pp. 923-24 (Kalila wa Demna), pp. 970-74 (Anwār-e Sohayli), and pp. 986-90 (ʿEyār-e Dāneš), cf. the index pp. 1440-42 s.v. Kalila wa Demna. For illustrated lithographs of the versions by Naṣr-Allāh Monši and Kāšefi, see Marzolph’s study of Narrative Illustration, 2001, pp. 233-34, 247 (for full reference, see Studies below). The most comprehensive census of illustrated manuscripts is E. Grube, “Prolegomena for a Corpus Publication of Illustrated Kalīlah wa Dimnah Manuscripts,” Islamic Art 4, 1990-1991, pp. 301-481. At the beginning of the 21st century, a large variety of Arabic and Persian editions is in print, yet reprints of the scholarly editions by Cheikho and ʿAzzām, as well as Qarib and Minovi, are occasionally bowdlerized. In the following, the most important publications are listed in historical order.
Les fables de Pilpay: Philosophie indien ou la conduite des rois, Paris, 1698; partial tr. of Anwār-e Sohayli by Gilbert Gaulmin and Dāwud Saʿid.
Contes et fables indiennes de Bidpaï et Lokman, Paris, 1724; combines Antoine Galland’s unfinished tr. of Ali Çelebi’s Homāyun-nāma with the 1698 text of Fables de Pilpay, repeatedly reprinted, for example, as vol. XVII and vol. XVIII, pp. 5-231, of Cabinet des fées, ou: Collection des contes des fées et autres contes merveilleux, Geneva, 1786.
Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy, Calila et Dimna, ou Fables de Bidpai: Précédées d'un mémoire sur l'origine de ce livre, et sur les diverses traductions qui en ont été faites dans l'Orient, et suivies de la Moallaka de Lébid, en arabe et en françois, Paris, 1816; edition of the oldest illustrated manuscript (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France [BNF], MS arabe 3465, probably Syria, ca. 1220) with an abridged version of the text.
Idem, “Le livre Calila et Dimna,” in Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque du roi et autres bibliothèques, vol. X, pt. 1, Paris, 1818, pp. 94-196, 265-268; edition of Naṣr-Allāh Monši’s translation as preserved in 6 MSS pers. in the BNF.
Theodor Benfey, Pantschatantra: Fünf Bücher indischer Fabeln, Märchen und Erzählungen, tr. from the Sanskrit with introduction and notes, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1859.
Kalilag und Damnag: Alte syrische Übersetzung des indischen Fürstenspiegel, ed. and tr. by Gustav Bickell, with an introduction by Theodor Benfey, Leipzig, 1876.
Theodor Nöldeke, Die Erzählung des Mäusekönig und seinen Ministern: Ein Abschnitt der Pehlewî-Bearbeitung des altindischen Fürstenspiegels, Göttingen, 1879.
The Book of Kalilah and Dimnah or: The Fables of Bidpai, ed. William Wright, Oxford, 1884; the younger Syriac version is preserved in a single 11th century manuscript, held by the library of Trinity College, Dublin.
Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ, La version arabe de Kalîlah et Dimnah, ou: Les fables de Bidpai, ed. Louis Cheikho, Beirut, 1905; privately owned MS arab., dated 6 Rajab 749/30 Sept. 1348.
Kalila und Dimna, ed and tr. by Friedrich Schulthess, Berlin, 1911; Syriac text with German translation; new edition of the older Syriac version, first edited by Bickell.
Johannes Hertel, Tantrākhyāyika: Die älteste Fassung des Pañcatantra nach den Handschriften beider Rezensionen, 2 vols., Berlin, 1909; repr. of the Sanskrit text as The Panchatantra: A Collection of Ancient Hindu Tales in its Oldest Recension, the Kashmirian, Entitled Tantrakhyayika, Harvard Oriental Series 14, Cambridge, Mass., 1915.
Idem, The Panchatantra Text of Purnabhadra and its Relation to Texts of Allied Recensions as Shown in Parallel Specimens, Harvard Oriental Series 12, Cambridge, Mass., 1912.
Moḥammad-ʿAli Kātuziyān Tehrāni, Aḵlāq-e asāsi yā mohaḏḏab-e Kalila wa Demna, Tehran, 2nd printing, 1914 (1331/1913 on title page, but Rabiʿ II 1332/March 1914 in colophon); illustrated lithograph.
Franklin Edgerton, The Panchatantra Reconstructed: An Attempt to Establish the Lost Original Sanskrit Text of the Most Famous Indian Story Collections on the Basis of the Principal Extant Versions, 2 vols., American Oriental Series 23, New Haven, Conn., 1924.
Abu’l-Maʿāli Naṣr-Allāh Monši, Kalila wa Demna, ed. ʿAbd-al-ʿAzim Qarib, 1st ed., Tehran, 1929; rev. 2nd ed., Tehran, 1931.
Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ, Kalila wa-Demna, ed. ʿAbd-al-Wahhāb ʿAzzām, with a preface by Ṭāḥā Ḥosayn and illustrations by Roman Strekalovsky, Cairo, 1941; edition of the oldest dated Arabic manuscript (Jomādā II 618/July 1221), held in Istanbul, Süleymaniye Library, Aya Sofya collection; for description and reproduction of the opening page, see preface, pp. 21-25.
Abu’l-Maʿāli Naṣr-Allāh Monši, Montaḵab-e Kalila wa Demna barā-ye dābirestānhā, ed. ʿAbd-al-ʿAzim Qarib, Tehran, 1941.
Idem, Kalila wa Demna bā moqābala-ye çāp-e ʿAbd-al-ʿAzim Qarib va taṭbiq-e çandin nosḵa-ye moʿtabar-e çāpi o ḵaṭṭi, ed. Jaʿfar Sajjādi, Tehran, n.d. [1950s?].
Abu’l-Ḥasan Rudaki, Āṯār-e manẓum, ed. by Yosif S. Braginskiĭ and tr. into Russian by V. V. Levik, Moscow, 1964, esp. the Kalila wa Demna fragments nos. 273-357.
Abu’l-Maʿāli Naṣr-Allāh Monši, Tarjoma-ye Kalila wa Demna, ed. Mojtabā Minovi, Tehran, 1964 (cf. the review by S. M. Farzān, “Dar aṭrāf-e Kalila wa Demna-ye Bahrāmšāhi,” listed below); corrected 2nd ed., Tehran, 1982; for a list of the used manuscripts and printed books, see preface, pp. yaṭ-kāf.
Jahānbaḵš Jomhuri, Rāy o Barahman, yā Kalila wa Demna-ye manẓum, Tehran, 1977.
Bahāʾ al-Din Aḥmad Qāneʿi Ṭusi, Kalila wa Demna-ye manẓum, ed. Māgāli Tudivā, Tehran, 1979.
Moḥammad b. ʿAbd-Allāh al-Boḵāri, Dāstān-hā-ye Bidpāy, ed. Parviz Nātel Ḵānlari and Moḥammad Rowšan, Tehran, 1982; edition of the single preserved manuscript, Istanbul, Topkapi Saray Library, MS pers. Y. Yazmalar 777.
Abu’l-Maʿāli Naṣr-Allāh Monši, Rāy o Barahman: Kalila wa Demna-ye pārsi, with a preface by Edward Joseph, ed. Aḥmad Ājudāni, Los Angeles, Calif., 1992.
Idem, Kalila und Dimna: Fabeln aus dem klassischen Persien, tr. Seyfeddin Najmabadi und Stefan Weber, Munich, 1996.
Pañcatantra: The Book of India’s Folk Wisdom, by Patrick Olivelle, Oxford World’s Classics, New York, 1997; a new tr. of Edgerton’s 1924 Sanskrit version.
Šarḥ-e aḵbār va abyāt va amṯāl-e ʿarabi-e Kalila wa Demna, ed. Behruz Imāni, Tehran, 2001; comprises two commentaries, one by Fażl-Allah b. Oṯmān b. Moḥammad al-Asfazāri (Esfarāʾini) and the other by an anonymous author; for a review of the manuscripts, see pp. 68-69 s.v. nos. 2-3, cf. pp. 93-116 and 337-44.
Thomas North, The Moral Philosophy of Doni, Popularly Known as the Fables of Bidpai, ed. John Butler et al., Ottawa, 2003; new critical edition of the oldest English version, first published London, 1570.
Abu’l-Maʿāli Naṣr-Allāh Monši, Kalila wa Demna-ye manẓum yā peymāna-ye pand, rhymed version by Ḡolām-Ḥosayn Faḵr Ṭabāṭabāʾi, Tehran, n.d. [1997?], with illustrated endpapers.
Studies and all other cited literature:
Nabia Abbott, “A Ninth-Century Fragment of the ‘Thousand Nights’: New Light on the Early History of the Arabian Nights,” JNES 8/3, 1949, pp. 129-64.
Said Amir Arjomand, “ʿAbd Allah Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ and the ʿAbbasid Revolution,” Iranian Studies 27, 1994, pp. 9-36.
Akbar Aṣḡari-Tabrizi, “La Fontaine va Kalila wa Demna,” Āyanda, 6/9-12, 1359 Š/1980, pp. 683-89.
Esin Atıl, Kalila wa Dimna: Fables from a Fourteenth-Century Arabic Manuscript, Washington, D.C., 1981.
Abu’l-Fażl Bayhaqi, Tāriḵ-e Masʿudi, ed. ʿA.-A. Fayyāż, Mashad, 1971.
A. F. L. Beeston, “The ‘ʿAlī ibn Shāh’ Preface to Kalilah wa Dimnah,” Oriens 7, 1954, pp. 81-84.
Moḥammad b. Aḥmad Biruni, Fi taḥqiq le’l-Hend men maqula maqbula fi’l-ʿaql aw marḏula, Hyderabad, 1958; revised ed. of Edward Sachau's edition of BNF, Paris, MS arab. Schefer 6080, originally published as Alberuni's India, London, 1887; accompanying Eng. tr. by Sachau, 2 vols., London, 1888.
François de Blois, Burzōy’s Voyage and the Origin of the Book of Kalīlah wa Dimnah, Prize Publication Fund 23, London, 1990; pers. tr. as Borzu-ye ṭabib va manšā-ye Kalila o Demna, by Ṣadiq Sajjādi, Tehran, 2003.
Carl Brockelmann, “Kalīla wa Dimna,” EI²IV, 1978, pp. 503-6; first pub. in EI¹.
Hans Casper von Bothmer, Kalila und Dimna: Ibn al-Muqaffa's Fabelbuch in einer mittelalterlichen Bilderhandschrift, Wiesbaden, 1981; study of an illustrated Arabic manuscript, Munich, Baverian State Library, MS arab. 616.
Horst Brinkhaus, “Das indische Pañcatantra als Quelle von Kalīla wa-Dimna,” in Von listigen Schakalen und törichten Kamelen, Wiesbaden, 2008, pp. 55-66 (for full reference, see above).
Kathleen R. F. Burrell, “Wāsiʿ ʿAlisi,” EI², XI, 2002, p. 162.
Jill Sanchia Cowen, Kalila wa-Dimna: An Animal Allegory of the Mongol Court, Oxford, 1989; orig., The Istanbul University Library “Kalila wa Dimna”: An Il-Khanid Masterpiece, Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1980; richly illustrated but to be used with caution, cf. reviews by S. Blair (Iranian Studies 22/2-3, 1989, pp. 133-35), S. R. Canby (Speculum 68/2, 1993, p. 488), M. S. Simpson (JAOS 111/2, 1991, pp. 401-2), and P. P. Soucek (JNES 54/1, 1995, pp. 72-74).
Moḥammad Dabir-Siyāqi, “Rudaki o Sendbād-nāma,” Yaḡmā 8, 1334 Š/1955-56, in three parts: no. 4, pp. 218-23; no. 7, pp. 320-24; and no. 9, pp. 413-16.
Cemal Demiriciŏglu, “Translating Europe: The Case of Ahmed Midhat as an Ottoman Agent of Translation,” in Agents of Translation, ed. Paul Bandia and John Milton, Amsterdam, 2009, pp. 131-59, esp. pp. 152-53 for the 1886 Ottoman abridgment Ḵolāṣa-ye Homāyun-nāma.
L. P. Elwell-Sutton, “Collecting Folktales in Iran,” Folklore 93/1, 1982, pp. 98-104.
ʿAbbās Eqbāl-Āštiani, Majmuʿa-ye maqālāt, ed. M. Dabir-Siyāqi, Tehran, 1990, esp. “Kalila wa Demna” (pp. 136-61).
Sayyed Moḥammad Farzān, “Kalila wa Demna-ye Bahrāmšāhi,” Armaḡān 17/5, 1315 Š/1936, pp. 361-71.
Idem, Maqālāt, ed. Aḥmad Edārači Gilāni, Tehran, 2536/1977, in particular the essays “Dar aṭrāf-e Kalila wa Demna-ye Bahrāmšāhi” (pp. 17-67), “Tatemma-ye yāddāšthā rājeʿ beh baḵš-e awwal” (pp. 68-92), “Naẓari beh ḥawāši-e Kalila wa Demna” (pp. 93-117), and “Dar bāra-ye Kalila wa Demna” (pp. 118-22).
Abu’l-Qāsem Ferdowsi, Šāh-nama, ed. Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh et al., 8 vols., New York, 1987-2008.
Charles-Henri de Fouchécour, Moralia: Les notions morales dans la literature persane du 3ᵉ/9ᵉ au 7ᵉ/13ᵉ siècle, Paris, 1986, esp. pp. 414-20 for a discussion of Kalila wa Demna as mirror-for-princes.
Abu Saʿid ʿAbd-al-Ḥayy b. al-Żaḥḥāk b. Maḥmud Gardizi, Zayn al-aḵbār, ed. ʿAbd-al-Ḥayy Ḥabibi, [Tehran], 1968.
James N. Gehlhar, “Stylistic Analysis of the Development of Literary Persian and Turkish as Seen in Versions of Kalīla wa-Dimna,” Ph.D. diss., University of Edinburgh, 1976; Appendix C on pp. 231-359 offers an edition of the single preserved manuscript of Moḥammad al-Boḵari’s translation, Istanbul, Topkapi Saray Library, MS pers. Y. Yazmalar 777.
Ruprecht Geib, Zur Frage nach der Urfassung des Pañcatantra, Freiburger Beiträge zur Indologie 2, Wiesbaden, 1969; orig., Ph.D. diss., Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, 1963.
Heinz Grotzfeld et al., “Kalila wa-Dimna,” in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, VII, 1993, cols. 888-895.
Ernst J. Grube, ed., A Mirror for Princes from India: Illustrated Versions of the Kalilah wa Dimnah, Anvar-i Suhayli, Iyar-i Danish and Humayun Nameh, Bombay, 1991.
Michelangelo Guidi, La lotta tra l’Islām e il Manicheismo: Un libro di Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ contro il Corano confutato da al-Qāsim B. Ibrāhīm, Rome, 1927.
Faranak Hashemi, “Komparatistische Untersuchung von Kalila und Dimna und Tierfabeln deutscher Dichter der Aufklärungszeit,” Ph.D. diss., Dānešgāh-e Āzād-e Eslāmi, Tehran, 2005.
Barthélmy d’Herbelot de Molainville, Bibliothèque orientale, with a preface by Antoine Galland, Paris, 1697.
Johannes Hertel, Das Pañcatantra: Seine Geschichte und seine Verbreitung, Leipzig, 1914.
Arnold Hottinger, Kalila und Dimna: Ein Versuch zur Darstellung der arabisch-altspanischen Übersetzungskunst, Bern, 1958; orig., Ph.D. diss., Universität Zürich.
Robert Irwin, “The Arabic Animal Fable,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 55, 1992, pp. 36-50.
Katip Çelebi (Ḥājji Ḵalifa), Kašf al-zọnun, ed. Gustav Flügel, 7 vols., London, 1835-58; ed. Şerefeddin Yaltkaya and Kilisli R. Bilge, 2 vols., Istanbul, 1941-43.
Aḥmad Mahdavi-Dāmḡāni, Ḥāṣel-e awqāt: Majmuʿa-i az maqālāt, ed. ʿAli Moḥammad Sajjādi, Tehran, 2002, esp. “Yāddašthā-ye darbāra-ye abyāt-e ʿarabi-e Kalila wa Demna-ye Bahrāmšāhi va maʾḵaḏ va guyandegān-e ān abyāt” (pp. 63-123) and “Maʾāḵeḏ barḵi az abyāt o maṣāriʿ-e ʿarabi-e Kalila wa Demna-ye Bahrāmšāhi bar āsās-e čāp-e Mojtabā Minovi” (pp. 125-39).
Moḥammad-Jaʿfar Maḥjub, Dar bāra-ye Kalila wa Demna: Tāriḵčeh, tarjomahā, va du bāb-e tarjoma-ye našoda az Kalila wa Demna, 2nd ed., Tehran, 1970.
Boris Marshak, Legends, Tales and Fables in the Art of Sogdiana, New York, 1995.
Ulrich Marzolph, Narrative Illustration in Persian Lithographed Books, HO I/60, Leiden, 2001.
Idem, “The Lithographed Kalīlah wa Dimnah: Illustrations to Tales from the Kalīlah wa Dimnah and Anwār-i Suhaylī Tradition in Lithographed Editions of the Qājār Period,” Islamic Art 6, 2009, pp. 181-213.
Vladimir Minorsky, “The Older Preface to the Shāh-nāma,” in idem, Iranica: Twenty Articles, Tehran 1964, pp. 260-73.
André Miquel, “La Fontaine et la version arabe des fables de Bidpaï: Réflexion sur la structure de la fable,” Revue de littérature comparée 38/1, 1964, pp. 35-50.
Moḥammad Hādi Moḥammadi and Zohra Qāyeni (Zohreh Ghaeni), Adabiyāt-e kudakān-e dawra-ye mašrūṭa (1847-1921), Tāriḵ-e adabiyāt-e kudakān-e Īrān 3-4, 2 vols., Tehran, 2002.
Nadim, Ketāb al-fehrest, ed. Reżā Tajaddod, Tehran, [1971], esp. p. 364; Eng. tr. by Bayard Dodge, 2 vols., New York, 1970, esp. II, pp. 715-17.
Theodor Nöldeke, “Zu Kalīla waDimna,” ZDMG 59, 1905, pp. 794-806; review of Cheikho's Arabic edition.
Moḥammad Parvin-Gonābādi, “Tarjoma-ye Kalila wa Demna,” Rāhnemā-ye ketāb 10/4, 1346 Š/1967, pp. 378-80.
Moḥammad Qazwini, “Moqaddama-ye qadim-e Šāh-nāma,” in idem, Bist maqāla az maqālāt-e tāriḵi o enteqādi o adabi, ed. ʿAbbās Eqbāl, Tehran, 1934, pp. 1-64.
Julian Raby, “Between Sogdia and the Mamluks: A Note on the Earliest Illustrations of Kalila wa Dimna,” Oriental Art 33/4, 1987-1988, pp. 381-98.
Idem, “The Earliest Illustrations to a Kalilah wa Dimnah Manuscript,” Marg 53/1, 1991, pp. 16-31.
Mohamed Rekaya, “Maʾmun,” EI², VI, 1991, pp. 331-339.
Joseph Sadan, “Vine, Women and Seas: Some Images of the Ruler in Medieval Arabic Literature,” Journal of Semitic Studies 34/1, 1989, pp. 133-52.
Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy, “ʿEyār-e Dāneš ou Le paragon de la science: Traduction persane du Livre de Calila, faite par le vazir Abou’lfazl,” in Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque du roi et autres bibliothèques, vol. X, pt. 1, Paris, 1818, pp. 197-225.
Ṭabari, Ketāb tāriḵ al-rosul wa’l-moluk, ed. M. J. de Goeje et al., 15 vols., repr., Leiden, 1964; tr. as The History of al-Tābarī, ed. E. Yarshater, 40 vols., Albany, N.Y., 1985-2007.
David A. Wacks, Framing Iberia: Maqāmāt and Frametale Narratives in Medieval Spain, Leiden, 2007; orig., Ph.D. diss., University of California Berkeley, 2003.
Moḥammd b. Ḥosayn al-Yamani, Ketāb możāhāt amṯāl Ketāb Kalila wa-Dimna bemā ašbahahā men ašʿār al-ʿArab, ed. Moḥammad Yusof Najm, Beirut, 1961.
Aḥmad b. Abi Yaʿqub Yaʿqubi, Tāriḵ, ed. M. Th. Houtsma, 2 vols., Leiden, 1883; partial Persian tr. by Moḥammad Ebrāhim Āyati, 2 vols. in 1, Tehran, 1963.
Ḡolām-Ḥosayn Yusofi, Didāri bā ahl-e qalam dar bāra-ye bist ketāb-e naṯr-e fāresi, 2 vols., Mashad 1976, repr., Tehran, 1988, esp. “Dāru-ye jān,” (I, pp. 141-71 and 257-59).
Mohsen Zakeri, “Sahl b. Hārūn b. Rāhawayh,” EI², VIII, 1995, pp. 838-40.
(Dagmar Riedel)
Originally Published: December 15, 2010
Last Updated: April 20, 2012
This article is available in print.
Vol. XV, Fasc. 4, pp. 386-395
D’Orient en Occident - Les recueils de fables enchâssées avant les Mille et une Nuits de
Galland: Barlaam et Josaphat, Calila et Dimna, Disciplina clericalis, Roman des Sept Sages, eds. Marion Uhlig and Yasmine Foehr-Janssens, Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages 16, Turnhout, Belgium, 2014.
Linda T. Darling, "Mirrors for Princes in Europe and the Middle East: A Case for Historiographical Incommensurability," in East Meets West in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: Transcultural Experiences in the Premodern World, ed. by Albrecht Classen, Berlin, 2013, pp. 223-242.
Moḥammad Ḡofrāni, “Noṣuṣ nāšenāḵta az Ketāb-e Kalila o Demna,” Maqālāt va barrasihā (Tehran), nos. 5-6, 1971, pp. 54-97.
Rosalind Ballaster, Fabulous Orients: Fictions of the East in England, 1662-1785, Oxford, 2005.
Eadem, Fables of the East: Selected Tales, 1662-1785, Oxford, 2005.
For a study of the Oriental tale as a "poor cousin" of the novel, see:
Srinivas Aravamudan, Enlightenment Orientalism: Resisting the Rise of the Novel, Chicago, Ill., 2012.
Beatrice Gründler, "Les versions arabes de Kalīla wa-Dimna: Une transmission et une circulation mouvantes," pp. 387-418.
César Merchán-Hamann, “Fables from East to West,” in Crossing Borders: Hebrew Manuscripts as a Meeting-Place of Cultures, eds. Piet van Boxel and Sabine Arndt, Oxford, 2009, pp. 35-44.
Luis M. Girón-Negrón, “How the Go-Between Cut her Nose: Two Ibero-Medieval Translations of a Kalilah wa Dimnah Story,” in Under the Influence: Questioning the Comparative in Medieval Castile, eds. Cythnia Robinson and Leyla Rouhi, Leiden, 2005, pp. 231-259.
Karla Ann Merino Nielsen, "Sewing on the Frame: Medieval Iberian Frametale Collections as Book-length Narratives," Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2010.