Nothing, however, can impose upon the present enlightened age, and our antiquaries have long been and are still occupied in detecting thefts committed twenty centuries ago. In spite of the Persian and Arabian cloaks in which tales and fables have been enveloped, the trace of their Hindu origin has been discovered in the various customs and usages referred to, and it has been decided that almost all the ancient tales are taken from the Hitôpadêsa, and that still more famous work, the Pancha-Tantra, or more properly the Panchôpâkhyân, or Five Tales; while many of the more modern are stolen from the Kathâ-Sarit-Sâgar, or Ocean of the Stream of Narration, a well-known work, which was compiled about the middle of the twelfth century by order of that equally well-known Prince Sree Hertha of Cashmere! I have sometimes had doubts whether it was quite fair to rake up the ashes of the long-departed Pehlevee writers; more particularly as there does not now exist one solitary book in their language which we could compare with the Hindu MSS., of which we have lately become enamoured; but reverence for the learning of those who have decided this question, and dread of their hard words, with the very spelling of which I am always puzzled, has kept me silent. As I am, however, rather partial to my Persian friends, I must vindicate them from this general charge of robbery and fraud. They certainly acquired one of their most celebrated works of imagination from India, under circumstances that do equal honour to the just king Noosheerwân, his wise minister Boozoorchimihr, and the learned doctor Barzooyeh. The work to which I refer is the Kartaka-Damnaka of the Brahmins, the Kalîla-wa-Damna of the Arabians, and the Fables of Pilpay of Europe. This book, originally written in the Sanscrit, was first translated into Pehlevee, from that into Arabic, and next into Persian. So many learned Oriental critics, French and English, have given the names and dates of the translations, that I shall not repeat them, but give a short account of the first introduction of these famous fables into Persia, with some facts of the life and opinions of the wise and disinterested man through whose efforts his native country became possessed of this treasure. Noosheerwân, deservedly styled the Just, who governed Persia in the beginning of the seventh century, hearing of the fame of a work which a Brahmin of Ceylon had composed, employed the celebrated physician named Barzooyeh to obtain for him a copy of this production. This was a delicate and hazardous enterprise, for the work, ever since the reign of a certain Indian King, named Dabshileem, for whom it was written, had been guarded with great care and jealousy, lest the profane should learn the wisdom that ought only to appertain to the wise and holy.