book from India and translated it into the written Persian language of
the time, the Pehlevi. The circumstances regarding the mission of Burzoe
to India are still not clear. At any rate Ibn Moqaffa did not write as
we read them now.

Nevertheless it is by no means improbable that he had affixed to his
book a report which, however, wan subsequently mutilated, of necessity,
in diverse ways. The preface by Ala-ibn-Shah or Behbod, which has also
been printed by de Sacy, which is found in a few manuscripts and which
is not known to the ancient translations is a later and entirely
valueless excrescence.

The Introduction of Burzoe stood in the Pehlevi work which Ibn Moqaffa
had before him. According to certain manuscripts this Introduction has
been compiled--or however we translate the ambiguous term _tarjuma_--by
Burzgmihir, the prime minister of Khusrow, much better known in polite
literature than in history.

[Naturally I do not deny altogether that Burzgmihir was a historical
personage but he possessed by no means the importance which the
tradition in question ascribes to him. The ascription is purely an
erroneous inference from the above-mentioned report of the
circumstances touching the mission of Burzoe, has not the slightest
inherent probability, and is besides wanting not only in other
manuscripts but also in all the older translations.]

We cannot question the fact that this section of the Arabic work in the
main reproduces the Introduction composed by the Chief physician Burzoe
himself to the book translated by him into Pehlevi from an Indian
language. That language as Hertel has shown was Sanskrit, which fact,