Page:The Fables of Bidpai (Panchatantra).djvu/26

xvi them in their present connection about 200-400, and to attribute them to the new Brahmanism of that period, possibly as rivals to the Jatakas. Of their later history in Buddhist countries little is known definitely. They passed into Thibet and China, and in the Indian peninsula parts of the original work appear in the Pantschatantra or Pentateuch, which contains five of the original thirteen books, in the Hitopadesa, which includes four of these, in the Mahabharata, which contains another three books, and the Katha-sarit-sagara, (Ocean of Stories), of Somadeva, which has many of the stories in a detached form; these are late, and often give us less information about the original than the more faithful Western versions. The moment we start on the Western travels of the Fables we are on firmer ground. They were translated into Pehlevi (or Old Persian) by Barzoye, by the orders of Khosru Nushirvan (fl. 550 ), under circumstances which are related to us in the book itself (pp. 34-40). Firdausi thought the event of such importance that he devoted a section to it in his Shahnameh, or poetical chronicle of Persia (Mohl’s translation, vi., 356-65). This Pehlevi version was almost