TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
The following translation, begun and completed this summer during a temporary residence at Bath, is a faithful portrait of a beautiful work, which in the opinions of many learned men, natives and Europeans, with whom I had the honour to converse upon the subject before I left Bengal, is the Sanskrit original of those celebrated fables, which after passing through most of the Oriental languages, ancient and modern, with various alterations to accommodate them to the taste and genius of those for whose benefit or amusement they were designed, and under different appellations, at length were introduced to the knowledge of the European world with a title importing them to have been originally written by Pilpay, or Bidpai, an ancient Brahman; two names of which, as far as my inquiries have extended, the Brahmans of the present times are totally ignorant. Sir William Jones, whose surprising talents are ever employed in seeking fresh sources of knowledge, and promoting their cultivation, in an elegant discourse delivered by him the 26th of February, 1786,
