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improvement equally of the monarch and the subject, and diver sified with entertaining stories to attract the admiration of the reader. The Brahmin asked a year to complete his task, during which time he shut himself in his cabinet, accompanied only by his secretary. At the end of the term, the book was produced, and read in public before the king and his nobles; and to the magnificent offers made him by the delighted monarch, the philosopher replied by a request that his work might be preserved among the archives of the kingdom, and secreted from the eyes and hands of the Persians. Without doubt, the sage had observed the constant disposition of all knowledge to travel from East to West. From this close custody among the royal treasures, Barzouieh, as we have seen, in the reign of Nushirvan, rescued the precious deposit and brought it one stage forward on its western progress.

The second preface to the Arabic edition contains the account of Barzouieh's successful mission into India, which has been already detailed, and is followed by a third, where Almokaffa gives the student his special directions, by following which he may reap the reward of his labour, and intreats him not to rest content with the shell of the fable, but to seek its fruit in the hidden moral. A fourth preface exhibits the translation of the life of Barzouieh by the minister of Nushirvan; and the reader, after passing through these several antichambers, is at length ushered into the lecture room of the wise man of the East.

A fragment of this version was published by Henry Albert Schultens, at Leyden, in the year 1786; and thirty years after the whole was edited at Paris by the Baron de Sacy, the most learned Arabic scholar of his age, who prefixed an elaborate memoir on the history of the work, to which we have been, and through the remainder of this paper shall be, greatly indebted. From it we learn, that besides the version we have just noticed, two metrical translations have been attempted in Arabic verse, of one of which the learned baron has procured a transcript.

In the infancy of Arabic literature, translations from the Greek into that language were very frequent, and though the selection of authors does not seem in all cases to have been judiciously made, yet the opportunity which was offered by an acquaintance with Greek literature, was on the whole turned to good account. The contrary instance of a book rendered from Arabic into Greek, is a great rarity, and on that account, if on no other, is entitled to attention. A Greek translation of the Calilah and Dimnah was undertaken in the reign of Alexis Comnenus, by Simeon, the son of Seth, at the express command of that emperor. It was printed at Berlin, at the end of the seventeenth century, when the Greek text was

accompanied by a Latin version, from the pen of Sebastian Godfrey Starck. Simeon gave it the title of repaviтns naι Στεφανίτης και Ιχνηλάτης, which is derived from a supposed meaning in the title of his original. In other respects, also, he has rendered the copy he had before him with great fidelity; and unlike all his oriental rivals, he has abstained from any attempt to pass off his own invention as an improvement on this venerable relic of ancient wisdom. This however is his sole merit, and few will be tempted to encounter a work, which, but partially disguised in most uncouth Greek, betrays perpetually its eastern origin.

There exists, in manuscript, a Hebrew translation of Pilpay's Fables, of an incomplete copy of which M. de Sacy has given an account to the world; but he reserves the remainder of his observations to the period, when he shall have been " fortunate enough to procure from Constantinople, Salonica, or some other place in the Levant, a perfect copy from which he may fix its date, and the name of its author." A Syriac version is also said to have been made, though no manuscript of it is known, from the Indian language; but the probability is, from the sameness of its title, that it is derived from the Arabic of Ebn Almokaffå.

Several versions are supposed to have been made from the Arabic edition of Calilah and Dimnah, by some of the earlier Persian writers, and one in particular is mentioned, as from the hand of Roudeki, an eminent poet; but the oldest Persian translation now extant, is the work of Nasr-allah, who flourished about the five hundred and fifteenth year of the Mahometan era, which answers to the Christian year 1122. Its author, driven by the troubles which agitated his country into retirement, employed his whole time in study; and having met with this collection of moral tales, was so charmed with its stile and matter, that he resolved to present it to his countrymen in his native language. His attempt, like almost all those we have already noticed, was stamped with the approbation of his sovereign. It would be called more justly a paraphrase, than a translation, as the simplicity of the Arabic author is lost under the turgid embellishments, with which, in the manner of most Persian prose writers, it is encumbered. A full account of it is given, with extracts, in the tenth volume of that very valuable series, the Notices et Extraits des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque du Roi.

Ahmed Soheili, the vizier of one of the descendants of Timur, about the year nine hundred of the Mahometan era, engaged Hosein Vaez, or Hosein the Preacher, surnamed Cashefi, or the Expounder, from his commentary on the Koran, to remodel the Persian version of Nasr-allah. The new title of the work, Anvar Soheili,which has been erroneously translated, "the Lights of Canopus," was invented in honor of the minister who em

ployed him to compile it, though probably with an allusion to the other meaning, which the words will equally bear. That this double meaning was applied in the mind of the writer, will appear from the complimentary lines which he has addressed. to his patron in the Introduction, where he compares him to the brilliant star of the other hemisphere.

"As the bright star of southern skies
Sheds its blest influence far and near,
So thou, whene'er thy glories rise,
Shin'st, the Canopus of our sphere.""

It is to be feared, that the reader's patience will be tried by the catalogue of the different editions of Pilpay's Fables, which we have already given; but we would fain, if possible, excite his interest for this, the most delightfully entertaining of oriental fictions. It enjoys an unbounded popularity in the East, where fancy and invention hold so absolute a sway; but it will hardly pass unscathed through the fiery ordeal of western criticism. The object of Hosein Vaez was to reduce the work of Nasr-allah into a style of less inflation, and to render it more acceptable to the mass of the people. "He has not contented himself," De Sacy observes, "with suppressing or altering every thing that would obstruct the ordinary reader; he has even added to the merit of the original, by inserting a great number of verses taken from various poets; and by employing constantly that measured cadence, which, accompanied invariably by rhyme, constitutes the poetical prose of oriental authors; and which, by adding an inexpressible charm to just and solid reasoning, greatly diminishes the absurd and ridiculous effect which is produced, by its far-fetched thoughts and extravagant metaphors, on the severe and delicate taste of Europeans." Though his style," he adds, "is not exempt from these faults, yet his book, like the Gulistan of Sâdi, is read again and again with renewed pleasure." We cannot forget that this learned Arabic scholar has shewn a prejudice against Persian literature, when put in competition with his more favorite study, that has allowed him to adopt as the motto of one of his works, a couplet from an Arabian poet, in which he compares his countrymen to the kernel of the date, and the despised Persian to its worthless shell. But this gives additional weight to the praises which are extorted from him on the volume of Čashefi.

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* تو سهېلي تا کجا تابي كجا لمالى شوي نور تو ز هركه ي تلب نشان دولت است

Sir William Jones, a less severe, though not a less competent judge than the erudite Frenchman, has given a high testimony of his admiration of this work, in the preface to his Persian Grammar. "The most excellent book in the language is, in my opinion, the collection of tales and fables, called Anvar Soheili, by Hosein Vaez, surnamed Cashefi, who took the celebrated work of Bidpai or Pilpay for his text, and has comprised all the wisdom of the eastern nations in fourteen beautiful chapters." Our great orientalist was not however blind to the peculiarities of the author he thus warmly praised; but, deeply versed as he was in the poetry of many a distant clime and age, he could look on the fanciful vagaries of an Asiatic imagination, with an indulgent eye. In his commentaries on Asiatic poetry, he has given, after Meninski, in Persian and Latin, the following instance of the love of amplification, which is particularly characteristic of this expounder of the Koran; observing, that the same meaning might have been as well expressed in a short sentence, stating that—" a beautiful girl passionately loved a handsome youth." It is hardly necessary to remark, that this quotation, which must be read throughout in one breath, as a single sentence, will be viewed, not only under the disadvantage of a literal translation, except in the verses; but also under the unfriendly influence of a cold sky, beneath which we are wholly unable to sympathize with the warmth of feeling which produces the glowing language of a Persian prose writer. Their best poets write, be it remembered, in what we should call more correct taste.

"One of these damsels, a single spark of whose beauty would add lustre to the brides of Paradise, and from the brightness of whose cheek the world-enlighting sun was burnt up with the fire of jealousy, whose laughing eye pierced the target of the bosom with the arrow of a glance, whose life-bestowing lip, like a packet of sugar, gave sweetness to the heart;

Whose form is like the cypress tree's,
Whose musky tresses scent the breeze;
Whose chin its silver orb displays,
While necklace gems beneath it blaze:

That orb, those gems, her neck entwining,

The proud sun's shining orb outshining;

was bound by the cords of love, to a youth of a noble countenance, with musk-scented hair, in stature resembling the cypress, and in face the moon; with a soft voice and a slender waist; the curls of whose hyacinthine locks were the delight of Tartarian nymphs; with the love of whose joy-inspiring sweetness the virgins of Samarcand were in raptures;

His face! oh his face, beam'd the sun's pure light,

And his locks !-Ev'ry curl was wavy and bright."

Now far be it from us to claim one iota of approbation for the above strange specimen of ill-assorted, tautological description, which unfortunately unites the opposite faults of deficiency and diffuseness. We must, at least, in justice to ourselves, after leaving the reader to form his unbiassed opinion of its merits, intreat him to believe that all its faults are derived from the original, though we thereby forfeit all claim to the modesty of those translators, who are continually expressing a deep sense of their many imperfections. It is but fair to state, that though this may be considered as a general sample of the most flowery manner of writing, now current in Asia, yet it would be unjust to leave it to stand alone, as the text from which the character of our author might be preached away. Florid as his narratives usually are, we may, even in his pages, find a tale sometimes related with European simplicity. We will extract, as a contrast to the last, a story from the eleventh chapter, in which there is hardly sufficient ornament to enable us, in the English translation, to trace its eastern origin. It is, besides, a story, that through some channel or other, is familiar to English readers.

"A certain man, whose hair was a mixture of black and white, had two wives, one old, the other young. He had an equal affection for both, and was day and night to be found in the house of one or the other of them. It was his custom, when he entered the house of either, to lay his head on her lap, and go to sleep. One day, he went into the house of the elder one, and according to his usual habit fell asleep, having first laid his head on her lap. The old lady, looking on his face and at his beard, said to herself, "There is no use in there being so many black hairs on this man's chin. I will pluck them out, that his beard may be entirely white, and then his young wife will no longer like him, and when he sees that her love is gone, and that she feels for him nothing but aversion, the fire of his love for her will be quenched, and he will transfer his affection wholly to me." She then tore out as many of the black hairs as she could.

A Moslem's beard! ah, how they'll rend it,

If from his wives he can't defend it.

On another day, the man, having entered the house of his young wife, placed his head in her lap in his accustomed manner, and dropped asleep. The young woman, seeing so large a proportion of grey hairs in his chin, thought within herself, "These white hairs must be rooted up, that his beard may appear quite black, and when he sees that it is black, he will withdraw himself from the society of his old wife, and become entirely devoted to me." Then she also tore up as much as the opportunity allowed of his grey hairs. When some time had elapsed, he one day put his hand to his chin, and found not a

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