England. Whatever avails to dissipate misconceptions between them, and
to enlarge their intimacy, is a gain to both peoples; and to this end
the present volume aspires, in an humble degree, to contribute.

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 "Mahabharata" 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 a date of 350 B.C., while he claims
for the "Rig-Veda" an antiquity as high as B.C. 1300. The "Hitopadeśa"
may thus be fairly styled "The Father of all Fables"; for from its
numerous translations have come Æsop and Pilpay, and in later days
Reineke Fuchs. Originally compiled in Sanscrit, it was rendered, by
order of Nushiraván, 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
Acbar, impressed with the wisdom of its maxims and the ingenuity of its
apologues, commended the work of translating it to his own Vizir, 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
Vizir found this advice sound, and followed it, like the present
Translator. To this day, in India, the "Hitopadeśa," under other names
(as the "Anvári Suhaili"[1]), retains the delighted attention of young
and old, and has some representative in all the Indian vernaculars. A
work so well esteemed in the East cannot be unwelcome to Western
readers, who receive it here, a condensed but faithful transcript of
sense and manner.