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COLEBROOKE'S IN T R O DU o To R Y RE M A R K S, Prefixed to the Edition of the Hitopadesa, PUBLISHED AT CALCUTTA, 1804. To promote and facilitate the study of the ancient and learned language of India, in the College of Fort William, it has been judged requisite to print a few short and easy compositions in the original Sunskrit. The first work chosen for this purpose, and inserted in the present volume, under its title of Hitopades'a, or ‘Salutary Instruction,” had been translated by Mr. WILKINs, and by the late Sir WILLIAM Jones, as the text of a very ancient collection of apologues, familiarly known, in the numerous versions of it, under the name of ‘Fables of Pilpay.” The great advantage, which may be derived by students, from consulting correct translations, at their first acquaintance with Sanskrit literature, has indicated this work as the fittest for selection; although it be not strictly the original text, from which those beautiful and celebrated apologues were transferred into the languages of Persia, and of the West. se In the coneluding line of the poetical preface to the Hitopades'a, it is expressly declared to have been drawn from the Panchatantra and other writings. The book, thus mentioned as the chief source, from which that collection of fables was taken, is divided into five chapters, as its name imports: it consists, like the Hitopades'a, of apologues, recited by a learned Bráhoman married Visut N'U s'ARxTAN, for the instruction of his pupils, the sons of an Indian monarch ; but it contains a greater variety 40f fables, and a more copious dialogue, than the work, which has been chiefly compiled from it , and, on comparison with the Persiau translations now extant, it 器 found to agree with them more nearly, than that compilation, both in the order, and the manner in which the tales are related. To compare them, it has been first necessary to exclude all the additious, which have been made by translators, These have been explained by ABu’rfAZL, with the history of the publication itself, in the preface to his own version, entitled Ayár dánish; and by HusAIN WA'Ez, ". tite ·i#roduction to the Anwári Suhailí. They recite from"ApulatAIA's preface to his translation of the Calilah * Damnah, that BARZu’YArt, an eminent and learned physician, being purposely seut iuto Hindustán by Nu'sııı'nvA'N, king of Persia, brought