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Kalila and Dimna
The Fables of Bidpai, translated by Ion Grant Neville Keith-Falconer (Cambridge University Press, 1885)
One of the great classics of world literature: a cycle of animal fables of ancient Indian origin, most famously rendered into Arabic in the 8th century by Ibn al-Muqaffa'. This edition presents the version translated directly from a later Syriac recension by the Cambridge Arabist I. G. N. Keith-Falconer — one of the earliest and most respected scholarly English translations. The tales follow the two jackals Kalila and Dimna at the court of the Lion King, and the many nested stories of oxen, owls and crows, travellers, and princes that illustrate the perils of flattery and false counsel, and the rewards of wisdom and loyalty.
Text: 1885 Cambridge University Press edition, digitized by the Internet Archive (University of Toronto — Robarts Library), confirmed public domain. Cover: folio from a 13th-century Arabic manuscript of Kalila wa-Dimna, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Arabe 3465 — public domain, via Gallica / Wikimedia Commons.
