Page:The Fables of Bidpai (Panchatantra).djvu/40

xxx have been. The First Part is really a continuation of the "Argument" and, though it is not so stated, is an abstract of Barzoye's account of his religious views, a kind of Religio Medici, in which the Buddhistic influence is strong. This again can only go back as far as Persia, though the celebrated tale with which it concludes occurs also in "Barlaam and Josaphat," or the Life of St. Buddha. It is only with the Second and Third Parts that we come upon the earliest stratum of the Fables. These correspond to the first book of the original Fables represented in the first book of the Pantschatantra and in the second of the Hitopadesa. The Fourth Part again is originally an addition of Al-Mokaffa's in the Arabic version. The only things quite English in the book are, if we may be excused the Hibernicism, the Italian sonnet to North, and the other two poems (pp. 7-10). The remaining three quarters of the Indian original are not represented in North's version, which is confined more strictly than any of the others to the story of Kalila and Dimna. These appear in the anonymous form of the ass and the mule. Thus the illustration on p. 100 gives us