The work has gone through many different versions and translations from the sixth century to the present day. The original Indian version was first translated into a foreign language (
Pahlavi) by
Borzūya in 570 CE, then into Arabic in 750. This Arabic version was translated into several languages, including Syriac, Greek, Persian, Hebrew and Spanish, and thus became the source of versions in European languages, until the English translation by
Charles Wilkins of the
Sanskrit Hitopadesha in 1787.
Early cross-cultural migrations The
Panchatantra approximated its current literary form within the 4th–6th centuries CE, though originally written around 200 BCE. No Sanskrit texts before 1000 CE have survived. Buddhist monks on pilgrimage to India took the influential Sanskrit text (probably both in oral and literary formats) north to Tibet and China and east to South East Asia. These led to versions in all Southeast Asian countries, including Tibetan, Chinese, Mongolian, Javanese and Lao derivatives. Around 550 CE his notable physician
Borzuy (Burzuwaih) translated the work from Sanskrit into the Pahlavi (
Middle Persian language). He transliterated the main characters as
Karirak ud Damanak. According to the story told in the
Shāh Nāma (
The Book of the Kings,
Persia's late 10th-century national epic by
Ferdowsi), Borzuy sought his king's permission to make a trip to Hindustan in search of a mountain herb he had read about that is "mingled into a compound and, when sprinkled over a corpse, it is immediately restored to life." He did not find the herb, but was told by a wise sage of "a different interpretation. The herb is the scientist; science is the mountain, everlastingly out of reach of the multitude. The corpse is the man without knowledge, for the uninstructed man is everywhere lifeless. Through knowledge man becomes revivified." The sage pointed to the book, and the visiting physician Borzuy translated the work with the help of some Pandits (
Brahmins).
Kalila wa Demna: Mid. Persian and Arabic versions that the honest bull-courtier, Shatraba(شطربة), is a traitor. Borzuy's translation of the Sanskrit version into Pahlavi arrived in Persia by the 6th century, but this Middle Persian version is now lost. The book had become popular in Sassanid, and was translated into Syriac and Arabic whose copies survive. version of
Kalila wa dimna, dated 1210 CE, illustrating the King of the Crows conferring with his political advisors The introduction of the first book of
Kalila wa Demna is different from
Panchatantra, in being more elaborate and instead of king and his three sons studying in the Indian version, the Persian version speaks of a merchant and his three sons who had squandered away their father's wealth. The Persian version also makes an abrupt switch from the story of the three sons to an injured ox, and thereafter parallels the
Panchatantra. The two jackals' names transmogrified into Kalila and Dimna in the Persian version. Perhaps because the first section constituted most of the work, or because translators could find no simple equivalent in Zoroastrian Pahlavi for the concept expressed by the Sanskrit word 'Panchatantra', the jackals' names,
Kalila and Dimna, became the generic name for the entire work in classical times. After the first chapter, Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ inserted a new one, telling of Dimna's trial. The jackal is suspected of instigating the death of the bull "Shanzabeh", a key character in the first chapter. The trial lasts for two days without conclusion, until a tiger and leopard appear to bear witness against Dimna. He is found guilty and put to death. Ibn al-Muqaffa' inserted other additions and interpretations into his 750CE "re-telling" (see Francois de Blois' Burzōy's voyage to India and the origin of the book
Kalīlah wa Dimnah). The political theorist Jennifer London suggests that he was expressing risky political views in a metaphorical way. (Al-Muqaffa' was murdered within a few years of completing his manuscript). London has analysed how Ibn al-Muqaffa' could have used his version to make "frank political expression" at the 'Abbasid court (see J. London's "How To Do Things With Fables: Ibn al-Muqaffa's Frank Speech in Stories from Kalila wa Dimna,"
History of Political Thought XXIX: 2 (2008)).
The Arabic classic by Ibn al-Muqaffa fools the
elephant king by showing him the reflection of the
moon. Borzuy's 570 CE Pahlavi translation (
Kalile va Demne, now lost) was translated into
Syriac. Nearly two centuries later, it was translated into Arabic by
Ibn al-Muqaffa around 750 CE under the Arabic title,
Kalīla wa Dimna. After the Arab invasion of Persia (Iran), Ibn al-Muqaffa's version (two languages removed from the pre-Islamic Sanskrit original) emerged as the pivotal surviving text that enriched world literature. Ibn al-Muqaffa's work is considered a model of the finest Arabic prose style, and "is considered the first masterpiece of
Arabic literary prose." into 'modern' Persian by
Abu'l-Ma'ali Nasrallah Munshi in 1121, and in 1252 into Spanish (old Castilian,
Calila e Dimna). Perhaps most importantly, it was translated into
Hebrew by Rabbi Joel in the 12th century. This Hebrew version was translated into
Latin by
John of Capua as
Directorium Humanae Vitae, or "Directory of Human Life", and printed in 1480, and became the source of most European versions. A German translation,
Das Buch der Beispiele, of the Panchatantra was printed in 1483, making this one of the earliest books to be printed by
Gutenberg's press after the Bible. The Latin version was translated into Italian by
Anton Francesco Doni in 1552. This translation became the basis for the first English translation, in 1570: Sir
Thomas North translated it into
Elizabethan English as
The Fables of Bidpai: The Morall Philosophie of Doni (reprinted by Joseph Jacobs, 1888). La Fontaine published
The Fables of Bidpai in 1679, based on "the Indian sage Pilpay". ==Modern era==