156 Analytical Account oftlie Pancha Tantra. 



roused the inventive faculties of our ancestors, is universally admitted ; and 

 the advocates of the Gothic or Arabic origin of romance, agree in referring 

 its birth-place to the East. 



It is now too late to inquire, whether we are to consider Persia as the 

 birth-place of fictitious narrative : for, if such narrative was cultivated there, 

 it must have been clad in the Pahlevi language ; and both body and dress 

 are irrecoverably lost. We must, therefore, be content to admit the claims 

 of the Hindus, amongst whom we may trace the original of much that has 

 interested, and amused, our forefathers and ourselves. 



The oldest collection of fables and tales, of the class here intended, is 

 the work that passes by the title of the Fables of Bidpai, or Pilpai/. The 

 history of this work is too well known to require any elucidation. Mr. 

 Wilkins, and Sir William Jones, brought to light its original, from amongst 

 the hidden stores of Sanscrit literature ; and Mr. Colebrooke gave the text 

 itself of the Hitbpadesa to the public. The learning and industry of the 

 Baron de Sacy have finally traced the work through all its stages ; and 

 there are few subjects of investigation, the history of which has been more 

 successfully ascertained, than the Bibliographical adventures of the salutary 

 instructions of Vishnusarmd, or Fables of Pilpay. 



Although the stories of the Hitopadesa are undoubtedly identical witli 

 most of those, which are found in all the forms of Pilpay's fables, yet it has 

 been clearly shown by Mr. Colebrooke, that it is not the source from which 

 its successors have been directly derived. It is, in fact, itself but a scion of 

 the same parent stock, and in common with the rest, originates, as it indeed 

 admits, from an older collection, the Pancha Tantra. The text of this work 

 is not very rare in India, and it were therefore to have been wished, that it had 

 been selected for translation, in preference to the Hitopadesa ; but the op- 

 portunity has passed. The identity of the two works, for the greater part, 

 renders the translation of both, a work of supererogation : and, fully as the 

 topic has been developed, it is likely that a main defect will long continue to 

 mutilate it, at the very outset. The deficiency has, in some measure, been 

 supplied by the sketch, given by Mr. Coleb-ooke, of the contents of the 

 Pancha Tantra ; but, as his chief object was only to substantiate the greater 

 affinity between it and the Kalila Damana, than between the Arabic work 

 and the Hitdpadesa, he has not prosecuted its details farther than was suffi- 

 cient to effect his purpose. In the want, therefore, of a full analysis, and in 



