PREFACE
TO THE "BOOK OF GOOD COUNSELS."
The Hitopadeśa is a work of high antiquity and extended popularity. The prose is doubtless as old as our own era; but the intercalated verses and proverbs compose a selection from writings of an age extremely remote. The Mahábhárata and the textual Veds are of those quoted; to the first of which Professor M. Williams (in his admirable edition of the Nala, 1860) assigns the modest date of 350 b.c., while he claims for the Rig-Veda an antiquity as high as 1300 b.c. The Hitopadeśa may thus be fairly styled "The Father of all Fables;" for from its numerous translations have probably come Esop and Pilpay, and in latter days Reineke Fuchs. Originally compiled in Sanskrit, it was rendered, by order of Nushirván, in the sixth century a.d., into Persic. From the Persic it passed, a.d. 850, into the Arabic, and thence into Hebrew and Greek. In its own land it obtained as wide a circulation. The Emperor Akbar, impressed with the wisdom of its maxims and the ingenuity of its apologues, commended the work of translating it to his own Vizier, Abdul Fazel. That Minister accordingly put the book into a familiar style, and published it with explanations, under the title of the Criterion of Wisdom. The Emperor had also suggested the abridgment of the long series of shlokes which here and there interrupt the narrative, and the Vizier found this advice sound, and followed it, like the present Translator. To this day, in India, the Hitopadeśa, under its own or other names (as the Anvári Suhaili), retains the delighted attention of young and old, and has some representative in all the Indian vernaculars. A selection from the metrical Sanskrit proverbs and maxims is here given.