Kalilah and Dimna or The Fables of Bidpai.

Title

en_US Kalilah and Dimna or The Fables of Bidpai.

Description

en_US This is a hardbound book (hard cover)

en_US Ion G.N. Keith-Falconer

Creator

en_US Keith-Falconer, I.G.N. (translator)

Date

2016-01-25T16:13:49Z

en_US 1995-02

en_US 1970

Date Available

2016-01-25T16:13:49Z

Date Issued

en_US 1885

Abstract

en_US This 1970 reprint of the 1885 original is a very careful scholarly translation. It works from Wright's Syriac and so corrects Knatchbull's 1819 translation based on De Sacy's original Arabic from 1816. Note that Jacobs reprinted North's first English translation just three years later in 1888: one would love to know what transpired between Jacobs and Keith-Falconer! This copy happens to contain some very careful marginal notes in pencil (and green highlighting), including especially fable-titles, up to 27 and again a few from 117 on. Do not miss the great Latin title on 19: Meretrix qua(e) fistulam ano viri imposuit ! Most sections follow the story as I know it from Ramsay Wood and others, including the portions on the lion and the ox and on the crow and his friends. See the T of C on xi and Keith-Falconer's summaries and comments on each of the stories (xxvi-xxxviii). Two long sections are relatively new to me: Dimnah's Defence (63-108) and The Story of the Wise Bilar (219-47). Keith-Almoner rejects the former, as far as I can understand, as not belonging to the original, as less interesting than any other part of the story, and as preposterously long. In it Dimna is vexed and sorry for what he did; the leopard overhears his confession (64). The mother of the lion prosecutes Dimnah. Dimnah, who is very wordy, tells four stories in his defense, all of low quality: The Painter and the Unfaithful Woman (76), The Ignorant Physician (93), The Wife Who Covered Her Loins and the Wife Who Did Not (97), and The Two Parrots and the Hawk (104). Dimnah defends himself adeptly in order to escape punishment. Kalilah counsels confession to Dimnah in prison, goes home, and dies, but yet another overhears Dimnah's confession to Kalilah in prison. In the end both overhearers come forward and Dimnah is sentenced to imprisonment without food. The Story of the Wise Bilar (219-47) is summarized well on xxxi-xxxiii. It contains a long interchange between the king and Bilar, in which Bilar is testing the king, who had rashly ordered Bilar to execute his favorite wife, before revealing to the king that he has kept her alive. Here the tortoise and ape (158), not the crocodile and monkey, deal with the heart of the latter as medicine. The versions are often wordy. There is even a nice ribbon with which to mark your place.

Identifier

en_US 9060222547

en_US 2077 (Access ID)

uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10504/77638

Language

en_US eng

Publisher

en_US Original: Cambridge, England. Reprint: Amsterdam: Philo Press

en_US Amsterdam

Subject

en_US PN989.I5 B4 1970

en_US Bidpai

en_US Title Page Scanned

Type

en_US Book, Whole