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one must remember that the Indian works translated into Arabic were sometimes derived from preexisting Phelvi versions, and in the migrations through successive languages, the names often got frightfully disfigured. A notable instance of this kind is afforded by the fables of Pilpay (Kalila and Dimna[1]) from which La Fontaine borrowed the idea of several of his fables as he himself acknowledges: "I shall only say, from a sense of gratitude, that I owe the largest portion of them to Pilpay, the Indian sage." It has now been made out that Pilpay or Bidpai is a corrupt form of the Sanskrit word "vidyápati" (master of learning).
Even long before the time of the Caliphs, India was the favourite resort of the students of medicine and other sciences. Thus Barzouhyeh, a contemporary of the celebrated
- ↑ ". . . . . et malgrè l'espece de transformation que ce livre a dû subir en passant de l'indien en pehlvi, du pehlvi en arabe, de l' arabe en persan, on y retrouve encore des caractères frappans de cette origin . . . . ."—de Sacy: "Calila et Dimna ou Fables de Bidpai, (1816), p. 5.
