Global InformationCalila e Dimna information
Calila e Dimna is an Old Castilian collection of tales from 1251, translated from the Arabic text Kalila wa-Dimna by the order of the future King Alfonso X while he was still a prince. The Arabic text is itself an 8th-century translation by Ibn al-Muqaffa' of a Middle Persian version of the Sanskrit Panchatantra from about 2nd-century BCE.[1]
It is linked with the wisdom manuals of prince's education through the eastern method of questions and answers between the king and a philosopher that leads to exemplary tales or exempla told by and featuring animals: an ox, a lion and two jackals called Calila and Dimna, which are who tell the majority of the tales. This structure is used in Don Juan Manuel's Tales of Count Lucanor.
- ^ Juan Manuel Cacho Blecua y María Jesús Lacarra, «Introducción», ed. lit. de Calila e Dimna, Madrid, Castalia (Clásicos Castalia, 133), 1984, pág. 10.