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JAINA GAZETTE.
[June & July
Africa to America. All these scholars not only believed in this main result of Benfey's investigations, but they proved its correctness in a very great many of new cases.
In a previous paper published in the Jain Shasan the author of these lines has shown, that such Indian influences are even to be found in our Christian Siddhant, in the Holy Bible, both in the Old and in the New Testament. Arabic and Persian literature teems with Indian stories and it is a proved fact that the most celebrated Arabic story book, the Arabian Nights, which has been translated into several Indian languages is in the main of Indian origin. Throughout the middle ages Christian monks and clergymen used in their sermons a great many stories and parables, which have been handed down to us in many Latin as well as Vernacular books amongst almost all the European nations ; only few of tbem were aware of the fact, that they used Indian stories.
The most celebrated of these story books is the well known book of Kalailah and Damnah, translated about 570 A.D., by a Persian physician Burzoe, from the Sanskrit into the Pahlawi language, and from this into Syriac by Bud and, about 750 A. D., into Arabian, by Abdullah Ibn al Mokaffa. From - Abdullah's translations, mediately or imniediately flowed all the many translations, which made of it the most universally read book of the west. Whoever wishes to inform himself about this interesting fact will find ample inforination in the introduction to Keith-Falconer's introduction to his • Kalilah and. Dimnab' (Cambridge University Press, 1885.)
- Ths Indian origin of Kalailah and Damnah was well known long ago. Silvester de Sacy had given a clear account of the history and of the propagation of this work, and other scholars, in the course of the 19th century, added many new materials.
But on the Indian original of this highly important work and on the fate which it bad in the course of centuries in its Bion country, i. e., in India, there was very little information to be bad. The only printed text was Kosegarten's published
in 1848. This text, I am sorry to say, was a most uncritical Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
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