Falsafa

Comma for either/or — dharma, courage. Spelling forgiving — corage finds courage.

    fables · 3rd century · 6 crossings

    Panchatantra

    पञ्चतन्त्रPañcatantra

    Traditionally attributed, in Sanskrit

    The Sanskrit mirror for princes told through animal fables, traditionally ascribed to the sage Vishnu Sharma. The surviving text dates to around 300 CE; the material is older. No secular book before print crossed more languages.

    The chain

    c. 300 Sanskrit original

    traditional attribution

    1. c. 550–570 Sanskrit Middle Persian adaptation attested

      Karīrak ud Damanak

      translated by Burzoy commissioned by Khosrow I Anushirvan

      Burzoy's compilation joined the five Panchatantra books with chapters from the Mahabharata and other Indian sources. The book's own frame story says he was sent to India for a herb that revives the dead and learned that the herb was a book. The Pahlavi text is lost; everything west of India descends from it.

      1. c. 570 Middle Persian Syriac translation attested

        Kalilag and Damnag

        translated by Bud the periodeutes

        The Old Syriac version, made from the Pahlavi by an itinerant cleric of the Church of the East. It is the oldest surviving witness to Burzoy's lost book.

      2. c. 750 Middle Persian Arabic adaptation attested

        كليلة ودمنةKalīla wa-Dimna

        translated by Ibn al-Muqaffa

        Less a translation than a reinvention, with chapters of Ibn al-Muqaffa's own added, including Dimna's trial. It founded Arabic literary prose; its translator was executed within the decade.

        1. c. 1100–1200 Arabic Hebrew translation probable

          translated by Rabbi Joel

          The bridge between the Arabic and Latin Europe. Rabbi Joel is known only because the next translator in the chain says he worked from him.

          1. 1263–1278 Hebrew Latin translation attested

            Directorium humanae vitae

            translated by John of Capua

            The Directory of Human Life, made by a Jewish convert from Rabbi Joel's Hebrew. Most of the European vernacular versions, and through them La Fontaine's 'Pilpay', descend from this Latin.

        2. c. 1251 Arabic Castilian translation attested

          Calila e Dimna

          commissioned by Alfonso X of Castile

          Translated directly from the Arabic at the order of Alfonso, then still crown prince; the translator's name is not recorded. The year 1251 is the accepted emendation of the colophon's era-year; the 15th-century reading of 1261 and its claim of a Latin intermediary are both rejected.