Like The Arabian Nights, Kalilah and Dimnah boasts a mixed pedigree. Its stories originated in India, gathered by an unknown Brahmin during the third century C.E., then traveled to Persia where they were translated from the Sanskrit to Pahlavi (an old Persian language) during the reign of the Sasanian king, Khusraw Anushirvan (531-579). Nearly 200 years later, the Arab scholar Abd Allah ibn al-Muqaffa', a Persian convert to Islam, translated the fables from Pahlavi into Arabic, under the title Kalilah wa-Dimnah. This version enjoyed great popularity throughout the Middle East and was itself translated into different languages, including late Syriac, Hebrew, modern Persian, and Turkish. During the thirteenth century Alfonso X of Spain set up a school of translators and chose Kalilah wa Dimnah as one of the Arabic texts to be rendered into Castilian. Scholars place the publication of this version, known as Calila e Digna, around 1251. The translation by Thomas Irving of this Spanish version, published in 1980, is the closest version available in English to the original Arabic. Throughout its various incarnations, Kalilah and Dimnah appealed to readers for its lively depiction of the animal kingdom as analogous to the human world and for its practical morality, originally intended to train princes in wise conduct.
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