CHRISTINE VAN RUYMBEKE (UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE) MURDER IN THE FOREST: CELEBRATING REWRITINGS AND MISREADINGS OF THE KALILA-DIMNA TALE OF THE LION AND THE HARE * SUMMARY This paper considers rewritings and translations of a key-episode within the cycle of fables known as the Kalila-Dimna in several innovative ways. First, by considering the ways in which this episode has been rewritten throughout the centuries, the essay takes a stand radically opposed to the prevalent scholarship around the fables, which consists in rating WKHUHZULWLQJVIRUWKHLUIDLWKIXOQHVVWRWKHVRXUFHWH[W V 7KHSUHVHQWDSSURDFK³FHOHEUDWHV´ the misreadings and rewritings for the insights they give us into the mechanisms of the tale. Second, by analysing the episode as a weighty lesson in domestic politics, showing the fatal mistakes that can build up to regicide, the essay also aims at re-introducing an awareness of the contents of the fables as a very effective and unusual mirror for princes. Keywords: Kalila-Dimna; fables; Pancatantra; rewritings; misreadings; regicide; mirror for princes. RÉSUMÉ Cet article propose un nouveau regard sur la question des ré-écritures et traductions G¶XQ épisode-clé du cycle des fables de Kalila et 'LPQD7RXWG¶DERUGVHSODoDQWjO¶RSSRVpGH O¶DSproche habituelle des fables, qui consiste à en apprécier les différentes versions pour leur ressemblance avec le texte-source, cet article, au contraire, « célèbre » les variantes introduites par les ré-écritures de la fable au cours des siècles. Ces variantes nous donnent des informations quant à la compréhension du contenu de la fable. Ensuite, cet article analyse la fable en tant que leçon de politique domestique, car elle indique les erreurs fatales qui peuvent mener au régicide. Cette analyse permettra de ré-introduire une compréhension des fables en tant que Miroir des Princes tout à fait inhabituel et efficace. Mots clés : Kalila-Dimna ; fables ; Pancatantra ; ré-écritures ; lectures ; régicide ; miroir des princes. * Research for this paper, representing one aspect of my forthcoming monograph on AnYƗr-e Sohayli, started in 2007 during my sabbatical term as Fellow in Residence at the Columbia University Institute for Scholars, Reid Hall in Paris. I hereby would like to thank the Institute for their invaluable help and for giving their visiting scholars all possible assistance and encouragement, beautifully shielding them from worry or stress! 203 STUDIA IRANICA 41, 2012, pp. 203-254 204 CH. V A N R U Y M B E K E StIr 41, 2012 ³%RXQGOHVVLQWHPSHUDQFH In nature is a tyranny. It hath been The untimely emptying of the happy throne, $QGIDOORIPDQ\NLQJV´ Macbeth: iv.3, 67-68 The Kalila-Dimna cycle of fables presents one of the most prominent cases of re-writing, translation ² and misreading ² in the medieval world, transcending the (artificial) literary boundaries of the Muslim and Christian cultural areas. The success of the text in the medieval and pre-modern periods, especially in the Islamic cultural sphere, alerts us to the fact that this is one of the funGDPHQWDOWH[WVRIWKH³DQFLHQWZRUOG´7KHRULJLQRI this seminal book which is traditionally described as a Mirror for Princes1 is unclear and key-pieces of the puzzle are missing, though the question was passionately and hotly debated over long years. It is agreed that the text was put together in Pahlavi language at some point during the sixth century AD. This is the ante quem date for a prior version of this text, as is commonly argued by sanskritists. However, it is probably more correct to consider the cycle of fables²right from inception already ²as a work of composite origin, gathering several translations/rewritings/ excerpts from Sanskrit texts (a putative Ur-Pancatantra, an Ur-Tantrakhyayika supposed to date from the second century AD2 and the Mahabharata), several tales of Buddhist origin (jatakas) and several chapters composed directly by the sixth-century Persian author, reported to be a certain %RU]nj\D, physician at the intellectually dynamic court of its time, that of the Sassanid Khosrow AnushirYƗQ (r. 531-579 AD). This work appears almost immediately to have been translated by a Christian monk into Syriac, thus attesting to the fruitful crosspollination fostered at the Sassanian Court.3 In the first half of 1 See my forthcoming monograph on $QYƗU-e Sohayli. To the best of my knowledge, DIWHU 5LFKWHU¶V LQLWLDO PHQWLRQ DQG GH )RXFKpFRXU¶V EULHI LQWHUSUHWDWLRQ RI LWV FRQ- tents, this aspect of the fables has not been further convincingly argued in Western scholarship nor have the contents of the work further been analysed in this light (Richter 1932; Fouchécour 1986, pp. 414-420). In more recent studies of the pheno- menon of advice literature, the text is not usually included amongst Mirror for Prin- ces. See Lambton 1971; Gruendler & Marlow 2004; Bosworth 2010, pp. 527-529. 2 Hertel 1909. The earliest surviving manuscript however, dates from the eleventh century AD. 3 It is interesting to remember that this court was a haven for both the Syrian scholars of Edessa (the School of Edessa was closed in the fifth century AD) and the Neo- Platonist philosophers (banished from Athens by Justinian in 529), who were wel- comed at the Academy of Gonde-6KƗSXULQ.KX]HVWDQ)RUWKHRULJLQRIWKH3DKODYL work, see de Blois 1990, p. 17. Perry 1965, p. xix, posits a Greek origin for some IDEOHV DV KH VLJQDOV WKDW ³PDQ\ IDEOHV RU IDEOH-motifs which make their first M U R D E R I N T H E F O R E S T 205 the eighth century, the putative Pahlavi text was expanded and translated into Arabic by Ibn al-0XTDIIDµ (d. ca. 760), at the court of the Abbasid al- Manৢnjr (r. 754-775), and thence, into most known literary languages, amongst which are notable for our purpose, several prose and verse trans- lations and re-writings in Classical Persian.4 Scholars have spent much time and effort (the enormous²but mostly repetitive²secondary literature is truly staggering) piecing together the story of the text and the pedigree of its translations and re-writings, with a view both to tracing the stemma of known versions in Eastern and Western languages and to reconstructing the SXWDWLYHORVW³RULJLQDO´6DQVNULWSyriac and Arabic texts. The actual contents of the fables on the other hand, remain under- VWXGLHGDQGFRQWLQXHWRFDXVHSX]]OHPHQW,QWUXWKWKHZRUN¶VLQFUHGLEOH success over the medieval and pre-modern periods baffles the present-day reader. Why would the Abbasids, for example, have been anxious to translate into Arabic these Pahlavi fables, with the same urgency as, say $ULVWRWOH¶VSKLORVRSKLFDOoeuvre? But also, the personality of the translators and rewriters of the attested versions of the fables is intriguing. Apart from professioQDO SRHWV VXFK DV 5XGDNL 4ƗQHµL -DOƗO DO-Din Rumi (or La Fontaine in seventeenth-century France), most other authors were them- selves important state officers (even future rulers, as the Spanish Infant Alphonso the Wise (r. 1252-1284)) or were working closely with statesmen who had reached the highest echelons of the curriculum. There is a remarkable continuation in this phenomenon, as in seventeenth-century France, a Persian version of the text was translated by Gilbert Gaulmin, a member of the seraglio around the great statesmen Richelieu (d. 1642) and Seguier (d. 1672), the latter being the dedicatee of Le Livre des Lumières. The personality of the authors makes it thus permissible to consider the contents of the Kalila-Dimna of use to statesmen, just as those of the more UHFRJQLVHG 0LUURUV IRU 3ULQFHV VXFK DV IRU H[DPSOH 1H਌ƗP DO-0RON¶V (d. 1092) 6L\ƗU DO-PXOnjN :KHQ ZH FRQVLGHU WRGD\¶V GUDPDWLF GRZQ- grading of WKH UHDGHU¶V OHYHO²from medieval statesmen to present-day primary school², the conclusion presents itself that we must be mis- reading the text and the challenge to rediscover its true worth beckons!5 appearance in Greek or Near Eastern literature are found later in the Pancatantra and other Indian story-books, including the Buddhist Jatakas´7KLVDUJument is reversed by sanskritists! 4 For the story of the Arabic and Persian Kalila-Dimna cycle of fables, see for example, Brockelmann 1978, pp. 503-506; Riedel 2010, (accessed May 2011); de Blois 1990, and id. 2010, pp. 423-424. 5 ,UZLQ¶V ³7KH $UDELF %HDVW )DEOH´ (Irwin 1992, pp. 36-50) is an example of how secondary literature typically misunderstands the use of the fables at the courts. 206 CH. V A N R U Y M B E K E StIr 41, 2012 Preceded by two or four introductory chapters,6 the different Arabic and Persian versions of the text consist of between eleven and fourteen chapters or books of variable length and fame, each shaped as a frame-story within which several levels of secondary tales may be embedded. The other versions of the text also vary in length and scope and range from Ramsay :RRG¶s version of the chapter on the Bull and the Lion only, to the five first chapters in the Pancatantra versions or to the ten chapters of John of &DSXD¶VYHUVLRQ$VLVWKHFDVHZLWK$HVRSLFIDEOHVLQWKH.DOLOD-Dimna cycle, the characters are often, but by no means exclusively, animals thinking and behaving as human types. Key-moments or key-thoughts in these frame-stories are developed in secondary tales, which sometimes also contain further embedded tales. The tales, in turn, have known a fame of their own, torn from their context and re-used within other narratives. The present essay considers one particular story: the Tale of the Lion and the Hare, which is one of the most successful stories of the cycle.7 Part of its popularity in the Persian cultural area is surely due to the version Rumi gave of it in the first Book of his Masnavi-H 0D¶QDYL.