The Eastern Turkic Translation of Kalila wa-Dimna

Abstract

Kalila wa-Dimna is a version of Panchatantra, a work comprising the writings of Indian oral culture, extended across a long period of time. With these extensions of time, in fact, entirely new works were created in different languages and cultures. Translations of Kalila wa-Dimna were made in both the Eastern Turkic areas and in Anatolian lands. For this study, a translation of Kalila wa-Dimna into Eastern Turkish, archived in Sweden with the Lund University Library’s Jarring Collection (Prov.) 46, has been examined. The book contains 97 pages with 10 lines on each page. The work under examination was brought to Sweden from the Eastern Turkistan region by the Swedish orientalist Gunnar Jarring. The language of the work is similar to a dialect spoken in the Kashgar-Yarkant area. Despite having aspects of Eastern Turki, this Kalila wa-Dimna translation contains different phonological features.