Examples might be multiplied. But they would all prove the same thing.
India and Persia were magic names to conjure with; their languages and
literatures were a book with seven seals to mediæval Europe.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] Indica, ch. 10.

[2] Var. Hist. xii. 48.

[3] De Homero, Oratio liii., ed. Dindorf, Lips. 1857, vol. ii. p. 165.

[4] Apollonii Vita, iii. 19 et passim.

[5] See Jackson, Zoroaster, p. 8.

[6] See Benfey, Pantschatantra, Vorrede, p. xxiv and note.

[7] See Gaston Paris, La Littérature Française au Moyen Age, Paris,
1888, p. 49 seq. A striking illustration of oral transmission is the
origin of the tradition about Prester John, for which see Cathay and the
Way thither, ed. Henry Yule, Lond. 1866, Hakluyt Soc. No. 36, 37, vol.
i. p. 174 and n. 1.

[8] Yule, op. cit. vol. i. pp. 165-167 and p. 197 seq.

[9] Ib. pp. 1-161; Latin text in appendix i of vol. ii.