century can be made to illustrate a tale told probably by the Buddha nearly two thousand years before.
These traditional illustrations may also be made to play an important part in the criticism of the Bidpai literature. They would serve as the readiest means of testing the affiliation of texts. In particular, they may bring order into the confusion which now reigns as to the Arabic version. I trust that henceforth no description of an Arabic MS. of the Fables will be considered complete without a list of its illustrations. We may thus determine the question whether there are not two distinct families of Arabic MSS. of the Kalilah wa Dimnah, one of which was derived directly from the Sanskrit by a Jewish dragoman, according to the tradition given by Abraham Ibn Ezra, which formed the starting point of this long, but, I hope, not uninteresting or unimportant digression.
Whether any Jew was concerned in bringing the Fables from India or no, there is no doubt that Jewish intermediation brought them into mediæval Europe. The Arabic version appeared under the name of "Kalilah wa Dimnah," a softened form of the Pehlevi Kalilag and Dimnag, which
