Kalila and Dimna, selected fables of Bidpai, retold by Ramsay Wood

Kalila and Dimna, selected fables of Bidpai, retold by Ramsay Wood

In her introduction to this modern retelling of the great Sufi classic, Doris Lessing writes: "It is contemporary, racy, vigorous, full of zest... I defy anyone to sit down with it and not finish it at a sitting."

Ramsay Wood here restores to our world a major, self-contained section of the Tales of Bidpai - the charming-quirky, humorous cycle of fables which originally appeared in Sanskrit nearly 1,700 years ago and has since been translated through the centuries everywhere from Ethiopia to China (there are more than twenty versions in English, the last of which appeared in 1888!). It is difficult to trace their earliest beginnings, but incidents from the tales can be identified in sculpture near Buddhist shrines built before 200 B.C., and all our beast fables from Aesop to La Fontaine to Uncle Remus suggest a debt to them. Taken together, the tales ostensibly constitute a handbook for rulers, illustrating and explaining a series of admonitions on how to run a kingdom, on the conduct proper to a king, on the use of spies, on the legal system, on how to create a village, etc., etc. But in their slyly profound grasp of human nature at its best-and, more often, at its worst—they are clearly meant as good counsel for all of us.

At the heart of Kalila and Dimna is the incorruptible sage Bidpai, sugar-coating the advice he is offering his king, Dabschelim, with these stories of two jackals, the cunning brothers Kalila and Dimna. And within the stories, the jackals themselves tell stories (all living creatures need instruction!). Here we meet an old crow, a miserly wolf, iron-eating mice, apes, busybody birds, a turtle, a cormorant, a bedbug, a flea... As layer upon layer of tales unfolds, we are exposed to animals and men who are wise or foolish, naive, greedy, impatient, and wrongheaded in endlessly different ways characters who have all the flaws (and even a few of the virtues) of human nature, and whose adventures and fates amuse as they illumine the mystery of human life.

And to accompany and embellish his adaptation, Ramsay Wood has added a wonderful selection of epigraphs to the fables: quotes ancient and contemporary from sources including Cicero, Gilgamesh, Spenser, Freud, Dryden, Mark Twain, and J. D. Salinger. The spontaneity and humor of these glosses on the text, and the contemporary rhythms and vocabulary of the translation, make this rediscovery of the Tales of Bidpai a special pleasure for the modern Western reader.

Details

• Hardcover with dust-jacket (good, has a tiny tear on the top part of the spine)
• Condition: Very good, no notes/stamps
  
• Margaret Kilrenny 
• ISBN: 0394506936
• Publisher: Alfred A Knopf