I have noticed them in vol. ii. 47–49. “To the Gold Coast for Gold.”
I can hardly accept the dictum that the Katha Sarit Sagara, of which more presently, is the “earliest representation of the first collection.”
The Pehlevi version of the days of King Anushirwan (A.D. 531–72) became the Humáyun-námeh (“August Book”) turned into Persian for Bahram Shah the Ghaznavite: the Hitopadesa (“Friendship-boon”) of Prakrit, avowedly compiled from the “Panchatantra,” became the Hindu Panchopakhyan, the Hindostani Akhlák-i-Hindi (“Moralities of Ind”) and in Persia and Turkey the Anvar-i-Suhayli (“Lights of Canopus”). Arabic, Hebrew and Syriac writers entitle their version Kalílah wa Damnah, or Kalilaj wa Damnaj, from the name of the two jackal-heroes, and Europe knows the recueil as the Fables of Pilpay or Bidpay (Bidyá-pati, Lord of learning?) a learned Brahman reported to have been Premier at the Court of the Indian King Dabishlím.
The older Arab writers, I repeat, do not ascribe fables or beast-apologues to Lokman; they record only “dictes” and proverbial sayings.
Professor Taylor Lewis: Preface to Pilpay.
In the Katha Sarit Sagara the beast-apologues are more numerous, but they can be reduced to two great nuclei; the first in chapter lx. (Lib. x.) and the second in the same book chapters lxii.-lxv. Here too they are mixed up with anecdotes and acroamata after the fashion of The Nights, suggesting great antiquity for this style of composition.
Brugsch, History of Egypt, vol. i. 266 _et seq._ The fabliau is interesting in more ways than one. Anepu the elder (Potiphar) understands the language of cattle, an idea ever cropping up in Folk-lore; and Bata (Joseph), his “little brother,” who becomes a “panther of the South (Nubia) for rage” at the wife’s impudique proposal, takes the form of a bull—metamorphosis full blown. It is not, as some have called it, the “oldest book in the world;” that name was given by M. Chabas to a MS. of Proverbs, dating from B.C. 2200. See also the “Story of Saneha,” a novel earlier than the popular date of Moses, in the Contes Populaires of Egypt.
The fox and the jackal are confounded by the Arabic dialects not by the Persian, whose “Rubáh” can never be mistaken for “Shaghál.” “Sa’lab” among the Semites is locally applied to either beast and we can distinguish the two only by the fox being solitary and rapacious, and the jackal gregarious and a carrion-eater. In all Hindu tales the jackal seems to be an awkward substitute for the Grecian and classical fox, the Giddar or Kolá (_Canis aureus_) being by no means sly and wily as the Lomri (_Vulpes vulgaris_). This is remarked by Weber (Indische Studien) and Prof. Benfey’s retort about “King Nobel” the lion is by no means to the point. See Katha Sarit Sagara, ii. 28.