The Dialectics of Friendship: The Ringdove Chapter in the Arabic Kalila wa-Dimnah and Its Eleventh-Century Greek Translation
Main Article Content
Abstract
In the long history of translating the Sanskrit Panchatantra in the West, the Ringdove chapter has proven to be the most stable. Only a few minor details were changed by copyists and translators, leading to the question what the reason for its stability might be. This article argues that the unique content of the Ringdove, which describes a successful friendship between four different animal species, is the reason for its stability. The overall concept of what ‘true friendship’ consists of appears to have found cross-cultural resonance, leaving no need for changes. To examine this stability, this article compares Ibn al-Muqaffa‘’s Arabic version, Kalila wa-Dimnah, that became the source of all successive translations west of India, to its eleventh-century Greek translation, Stephanites kai Ichnelates, by Symeon Seth. While certain features of Byzantine literature are found in Stephanites, the overall order of events and the dialectic method in the text that defines true friendship do not change. This leaves the Ringdove in the unique situation of a happy ending in which fate and predetermined enmity between species are overcome by the power of friendship. In this way, a focus entirely on the Ringdove chapter, which is entirely apolitical and life-affirming, challenges traditional views of the Panchatantra/Kalila wa-Dimnah as a Machiavellian political manual for princes told in fables.
Downloads
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Proposed Policy for Journals that Offer Open Access
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Since issue IV and for the future issues, it is the policy of the publisher that authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
References
Manuscripts
Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut.XI.14.
Istanbul, Ayasofya 4095 (618/1221)
London, British Library MS Or. 4044 (fifteenth century)
London, British Library MS Or. 8751 (799/1369)
Primary Sources
Anacharsis, in Demetrios Chrestides (ed.), Markiana Anekdota, University of Thessaloniki Press, Thessaloniki 1984, p. 205–290.
Aphthonios, Progymnasmata, in Aphthonii progymnasmata, ed. Hugo Rabe, Teubner, Leipzig 1926.
Eugenios of Palermo, Stephanites kai Ichnelates, in Alison Noble, Alexander Alexakis, Richard P. H. Greenfield (eds.), Animal Fables of the Courtly Mediterranean: The Eugenian Recension of Stephanites and Ichnelates, Harvard University Press, Cambridge 2022.
Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, Kalila wa-Dimnah, in Michael Fishbein (ed.), Kalilah and Dimnah. Fables of Virtue and Vice, New York University Press, New York 2021.
John Philoponus, In Aristotelis analytica posteriora commentaria, in Ioannis Philoponi in Aristotelis analytica posteriora commentaria cum anonymo in librum II, ed. Maximilianus Wallies, De Gruyter, Berlin (1909), p. 27–30.
Symeon Seth, Stephanites und Ichnelates. Überlieferungsgeschichte und Text, ed. Lars-Olof, Sjöberg, Almqvist & Wiksell, Uppsala 1962.
Tantrākhyāyika: die älteste Fassung des Pañcatantra, ed. Johannes Hertel, Teubner, Leipzig 1909.
Theognis, Elegiae, in Douglas Young (ed.), Theognis, Taubner, Leipzig 1971, p. 1–83.
Viṣṇuśarmā, Panchatantra, in Viṣṇuśarmā, The Five Discourses on Worldly Wisdom, ed. and transl. Patrick Olivelle, Clay Sanskrit, New York 2006.
Secondary Sources
Abalrasul, Al Safi Hind Rafea, « When the East Meets the West: Literary Interference and Cultural Transfer », Journal of Humanistic and Social Studies, 11/1 (2020), p. 9–22.
Alphonso-Karakala, John B., « Facets Of Panchatantra », Indian Literature, 18/2 (1975), p. 73–91.
Bouras-Vallianatos, Petros, Sophia Xenophontos, « Galen’s Reception in Byzantium: Symeon Seth and his Refutation of Galenic Theories on Human Physiology », Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, 55 (2015), p. 431–469.
Chase, Michael, « Philoponus’ Cosmology in the Arabic Tradition », Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales, 79/2 (2012), p. 271–306.
Crostini, Barbara, « Spiritual ‘Encyclopedias’ in Eleventh-century Byzantium? Miscellaneous Evidence for an Encyclopedic Outlook », in Peter van Deun, Caroline Macé (eds.), Encyclopedic Trends in Byzantium?, Peeters, Leuven 2011, p. 213–230.
Edgerton, Franklin (ed.), The Panchatantra Reconstructed: An Attempt to Establish the Lost Original Sanskrit Text of the Most Famous of Indian Story-Collections on the Basis of the Principal Extant Versions, vol. II: Introduction and translation, American Oriental Society, New Haven 1924 [1967].
Genette, Gerard, Palimpsestes: Literature in the Second Degree, Nebraska University Press, Lincoln 1997.
Ghazoul, Ferial, « Poetic Logic in The Panchatantra and The Arabian Nights », Arab Studies Quarterly, 5/1 (1983), p. 13–21.
Glynias, Joe, « Reconstructing Middle Byzantine Arabo-Greek Astrology from Later Greek Manuscript », Mediterranea. International Journal on the Transfer of Knowledge, 7 (2022), p. 183–224.
Gründler, Beatrice et al., « An Interim Report on the Editorial and Analytical Work of the AnonymClassic Project », Medieval Worlds, 11 (2020), p. 241–279.
Gründler, Beatrice, Khouloud Khalfallah, « Anthologizing Kalīla wa-Dimna: The Incipit of the First Risāla », Journal of Abbasid Studies, 9 (2022), p. 105–160.
Gutas, Dimitri, Anthony Kaldellis, Brian Long, « Intellectual Exchanges with the Arab World », in Anthony Kaldellis, Niketas Siniossoglou (eds.), The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2017, p. 79–98.
Hassan, Iyas, « Langue nomade en cour impériale. L’arabe d’Ibn al‑Muqaffaʿ entre deux èreso », Bulletin d’études orientales, 65 (2017), p. 221–246.
Hertel, Johannes, « Was bedeuten die Titel Tantrākhyāyika und Pañcatantra? », Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, 20 (1906), p. 81–89.
Hiltebeitel, Alf, Rethinking the Mahābhārata: A Reader’s Guide to the Education of the Dharma King, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2001.
Hölzlhammer, Lilli, « Altindische Weisheit in Byzanz. Zu den didaktischen Erzählstrategien in Symeon Seths Stephanites und Ichnelates und seinen arabischen Vorgängern », Fabula, 63/1 (2022), p. 96–118.
Kuroyanagi, Tetsuko, « Kalila and Dimna in Persian literature (ペルシア文学におけるカリーラとディムナ) », Bulletin of the Society for Near Eastern Studies in Japan 12/1 (1969), p. 1–16.
MacDougall, Byron David, « John of Sardis’ Commentary on Aphthonius’ Progymnasmata: Logic in Ninth-Century Byzantium », Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, 57 (2017), p. 721–744.
Mallette, Karla, « Narration as Raumschach: Kalila and Dimna in Time, Space and Languages », Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies, 13 (2022), p. 313–329.
Marroum, Marianne, « Kalila wa Dimna: Inception, Appropriation, and Transmimesis », Comparative Literature Studies, 48/4 (2011), p. 512–540.
Mazid, Bahaa-eddin, « Date-palms, Language and the Power of Knowledge: An Analysis of a Fable from Kalila and Dimnah », Journal of Pragmatics, 41 (2009), p. 2515–2534.
Montada, Josep Puig, « Ibn al-Moqaffaˇ y el orgullo sasánida », Anales del Seminario de Historia de la Filosofía, 24 (2007), p. 85–94.
Papaioannou, Stratis, Michael Psellos: Rhetoric and Authorship in Byzantium. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2013.
— « Voice, Signature, Mask: The Byzantine Author », in Aglae Pizzone (ed.), The Author in Middle Byzantine Literature: Modes, Functions, and Identities, De Gruyter, Berlin 2014, p. 21–40.
Pietrobelli, Antonie, Marie Cronier, « Arabic Galenism from Antioch to Byzantium: Ibn Buṭlān and Symeon Seth », Mediterranea. International Journal on the Transfer of Knowledgel, 7 (2022), p. 281–315.
Schleifer, Johannes, « Studien in Kalila wa-Dimna », Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, 29 (1915), p. 399–419.
Searby, Denis M., « Byzantine ‘Encyclopedism’, Sacro-Profane Florilegia and the Life of Saint Cyril Phileotes », in Denis M. Searby, Ewa Balicka Witakowska, Johan Heldt (eds.), ΔΩΡΟΝ ΡΟΔΟΠΟΙΚΙΛΟΝ, Uppsala University Press, Uppsala (2012), p. 197–209.
Shamma, Tarek, « Translating into the Empire. The Arabic Version of Kalila wa Dimna », The Translator, 15/1 (2009), p. 65–86.
Speight, Marston R., « A Versatile Mathal: ‘The Man who Hired Laborers’ », Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 15 (2004), p. 91–98.
Taylor, MacComac, The Fall of the Indigo Jackal: The Discourse of Division and Purnabhadra’s Pancatantra, State University of New York Press, Albany, 2007.
Vilimonović, Larisa Orlov, Structure and Features of Anna Komnene’s Alexiad, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2019.
Zagklas, Nikos, « Theodore Prodromos and the Use of the Poetic work of Gregory of Nazianzus: Appropriation in the Service of Self-representation », Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 40/2 (2016), p. 223–242.