Читать книгу The Bakhtyār Nāma. A Persian Romance онлайн

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The oldest extant collection of Fables and Tales (excepting the Buddhist Birth-Stories, recently made known to English readers by Mr T. W. Rhys Davids’ translation of a portion) is that called in Europe The Fables of Pilpay, or Bidpai, of which the Sanskrit prototype is entitled Panchatantra, or Five Sections, with its abridgment, Hitopadésa, or Friendly Instruction. This work, or one very similar, existed in India and in the Sanskrit language as early at least as the 6th century of our era, when it was translated into Pahlavi, the ancient language of Persia, during the reign of Nushīrvān, surnamed the Just (A.D. 531–579). This Pahlavi version—though no longer extant—escaped the general wreck of Persian literature on the conquest of the country by the Arabs, and was translated, during the reign of the Khalīf Mansur (A.D. 753–774), into Arabic, from which several versions were made in modern Persian, and also translations into Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and most of the European languages. Perhaps no book of mere human composition ever had such a remarkable literary history and enduring popularity. These Fables, although arranged in sections, are sphered one within another in a rather bewildering manner, yet all are subordinated to a leading story or general frame.^[6] It is worthy of note that, while there is no proof that this work, in its present form, existed before the sixth century, yet many, if not all, of the Fables themselves have been discovered in Buddhistic works which were certainly written about or before the commencement of our era. Their translation from the Pali, which the learned Benfey seems to have conclusively proved, and their arrangement in the form in which they exist in Sanskrit, may have been done any time between the first and the sixth centuries.