The Anwár-i-Suhailí, or, Lights of Canopus commonly known as Kalilah and Damnah

commonly known as Kalílah and Damnah : being an adaptation by Mullá Husain bin ʼAlí al Wáiʼz-al-Káshifí of the fables of Bídpáí.  Translated from the Persian by Arthur N. Wollaston, M.R.A.S. London : Wm. H. Allen & Co., publishers to the India Office, 1877. Quarto, gilt-decorated cloth over bevelled boards (spine sunned, flecked), recased, hinges strengthened, elaborately gauffered gilt edges, inscription in Arabic to preliminary blank, pp. xviii; 504, errata slip, all pages printed in elaborate gilt and coloured decorative borders, a very good copy.

The Anwár-i-Suhailí is a classic Persian text being a collection of moral lessons in the form of fables with animal characters, being an adaptation of the ancient Indian Panchatantra of the circa fifth century CE. It was compiled by Kamāl al-Dīn Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī Kāshifī in the fifteenth century. This translation into English was compiled by Arthur Wollaston. As noted in his obituary, quite extraordinarily: ‘Appointed to a post in the India Office at the age of sixteen, Wollaston served for forty-eight years in that Department. Wollaston, in addition to his official duties, became an admirable Persian scholar, though he never had the good fortune to visit the East.’. For someone who never visited Persia or India, Wollaston was an accomplished linguist, publishing over thirty translations of Persian texts and a monumental 1500 page English-Persian dictionary.