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Title
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en_US
Kalilah and Dimna or The Fables of Bidpai.
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Description
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en_US
This is a hardbound book (hard cover)
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en_US
Ion G.N. Keith-Falconer
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Creator
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en_US
Keith-Falconer, I.G.N. (translator)
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Date
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2016-01-25T16:13:49Z
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en_US
1995-02
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en_US
1970
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Date Available
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2016-01-25T16:13:49Z
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Date Issued
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en_US
1885
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Abstract
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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.
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Identifier
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en_US
9060222547
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en_US
2077 (Access ID)
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Language
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en_US
eng
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Publisher
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en_US
Original: Cambridge, England. Reprint: Amsterdam: Philo Press
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en_US
Amsterdam
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Subject
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en_US
PN989.I5 B4 1970
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en_US
Bidpai
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en_US
Title Page Scanned
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Type
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en_US
Book, Whole