signifies beloved, or favourite, physician. And he adds that the word

    Pilpay

   , which has taken the place of

    Bidpaii

   in some editions of these fables, is the result simply of a blunder in copying the word

    Bidpaii

   from the original. La Fontaine himself uses the word

    Pilpay

   twice in his Fables, viz., in Fables XII. and XV., Book XII.--Ed.

   Calila and Dimna are the names of two jackals that figure in the history, and Bidpaï is one of the principal human interlocutors, who came to be mistaken for the author. This remarkable book was turned into verse by several of the Arabic poets, was translated into Greek, Hebrew, Latin, modern Persian, and, in the course of a few centuries, either directly or indirectly, into most of the languages of modern Europe.

   Forty-one of the unadorned and disconnected fables of Aesop were also translated into Arabic at a period somewhat more recent than the Hegira, and passed by the name of the "Fables of Lokman." Their want of poetical ornament prevented them from acquiring much popularity with the Arabians; but they became well known in Europe, as furnishing a convenient text-book in the study of Arabic.

   The

    Hitopadesa

   , the fountain of poetic fables, with its innumerable translations and modifications, seems to have had the greatest charms for the Orientals. As it passed down the stream of time, version after version, the ornament and machinery outgrew the moral instruction, till it gave birth, at last, to such works of mere amusement as the "Thousand and One Nights."

   Fable slept, with other things, in the dark ages of Europe. Abridgments took the place of the large collections, and probably occasioned the entire loss of some of them. As literature revived, fable was resuscitated. The crusades had brought European mind in contact with the Indian works which we have already 

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