The fact is, these fables had found several other channels through which, as early as the thirteenth century, they reached the literary market of Europe, and became familiar as household words, at least among the higher and educated classes. We shall follow the course of some of these channels. First, then, a learned Jew, whose name seems to have been Joel, translated our fables from Arabic into Hebrew (1250?). His work has been preserved in one MS. at Paris, but has not yet been published, except the tenth book, which was communicated by Dr. Neubauer to Benfey’s journal, “Orient und Occident” (vol. i. p. 658). This Hebrew translation was translated by another converted Jew, Johannes of Capua, into Latin. His translation was finished between 1263-1278, and, under the title of “Directorium Humanæ Vitæ,” it became very soon a popular work with the select reading public of the thirteenth century.[23] In the “Directorium,” and in Joel’s translation, the name of Sendebar is substituted for that of Bidpay. The “Directorium” was translated into German at the command of Eberhard, the great Duke of Würtemberg,[24] and both the Latin text and the German translation occur, in repeated editions, among the rare books printed between 1480 and the end of the fifteenth century.[25] A Spanish translation, founded both on the German and the Latin texts, appeared at Burgos in 1493;[26] and from these different sources flowed in the sixteenth century the Italian renderings of Firenzuola (1548)[27] and Doni (1552).[28] As these Italian translations were repeated in French[29] and English, before the end of the sixteenth century, they might no doubt have supplied La Fontaine with subjects for his fables. But, as far as we know, it was a third channel that really brought the Indian fables to the immediate notice of the French poet. A Persian poet, of the name of Nasr Allah, translated the work of Abdallah ibn Almokaffa into Persian about 1150. This Persian translation was enlarged in the fifteenth century by another Persian poet, Husain ben Ali called el Vaez, under the title of “Anvári Suhaili.”[30] This name will be familiar to many members of the Indian Civil Service, as being one of the old Haileybury class-books which had to be construed by all who wished to gain high honors in Persia. This work, or at least the first books of it, were translated into French by David Sahid of Ispahan, and published at Paris in 1644, under the title of “Livre des Lumières, ou, la Conduite des Rois, composé par le Sage Pilpay, Indien.” This translation, we know, fell into the hands of La Fontaine, and a number of his most charming fables were certainly borrowed from it.