BIDPAI (or PILPAY), FABLES OF

This article appears in Volume V03, Page 920 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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BIDPAI (or PILPAY), FABLES OF , the name given in the middle ages (from Sanskrit Vidya-pati,

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

scholar) to a famous collection of Hindu stories. The origin of them is undoubtedly to be found in the Pancha Tantra, or Five Sections, an extensive

body

BODY

of early fables or apologues. A second collection, called the Hitopadesa, has become more widely known in Europe than the first, on which it is apparently founded. In the 6th century A.D., a translation into Pahlavi of a number of these old fables was made by a physician at the court of Chosroes I. Anushirvan, king of Persia. No traces of this Persian translation can now be found, but nearly two centuries later, Abdallah-ibn-Mokaffa translated the Persian into Arabic; and his version, which is known as the " Book of Kalilah and Dimna," from the two jackals in the first story, became the channel through which a knowledge of the fables was transmitted to Europe. It was translated into Greek by Simeon Sethus towards the close of the 11th century; his version, however, does not appear to have been retranslated into any other European language. But the
Hebrew version of

Rabbi

RABBI

Joel, made somewhat later, was translated in the 13th century into Latin by John of

Capua

CAPUA (anc.
Casilinum
- CASILINUM (mod. Capua)
;, a town and archiepiscopal see of Campania, Italy, in the province of Caserta, 7 M. W. by rail from the town oI Caserta. Pop. (1901) 14
CAPUA (mod. S. Maria di Capua Vetere)

, a converted Jew, in his Directorium vitae humanae (first published in 1480), and in that form became widely known. Since then the fables have been translated into nearly every European tongue. There are also versions of them in the modern Persian, Malay, Mongol and Afghan languages.
See Wilson's analysis of the Pancha Tantra, in the Mem. of the Royal Asiat. Soc. i. ; Silvestre de Sacy's introduction to his edition of the Kalilah and Dimna (1816) ; articles by the same in Notices et Extr. des MSS. de la Bib. du Rai, vols. ix. and x. ; German translation by Philipp Wolff, Bid pal's Fabeln (2 vols., 2nd ed.,

Stuttgart

STUTTGART

, 1839); the Anvar-i Suheili, Persian version of the Fables, translated by E. B. Eastwick (

Hertford

HERTFORD
HERTFORD, EARLS AND MARQUESSES OF

, 1854); Benfey, Pantscha Tantra, German translation with important introduction (2 vols.,

Leipzig

LEIPZIG

, 1859) ; other editions, by L. Fritze (ib. 1884) .and R. Schmidt (ib. 1901); Max Muller, Essays (

Leipzig

LEIPZIG

, 1872), vol. iii. pp. 303, &c,; J. Jacobs' edition of Sir T. North's Morall Philosophie of Doni, the earliest English version of the fables (London, 1888) ; T. G. N. Keith-Falconer, Kalilah and Dimnah, or the Fables of Bidpai (

Cambridge

, 1895), their history, with a translation of the later Syriac version and notes;

Leopold

LEOPOLD (M.H. Ger. Liupolt; O.H. Ger. Liupald, from hut, Mod. Ger. Leute, " people," and paid, " bold," i.e. " bold for the people ")

Hervieux, Les Fabulistes Latins, &c. v. Jean de Capoue et ses derives (1899); E. G. Browne, Persian Literat. (1906), ii. 350.

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