The title of the book In the Georgian is this: "The Wisdom of Balavari related (thkmoidi) by the father Isaak, son of Sophron of Palestine."
The Georgian text is not divided into chapters, but each parable is headed thus: The first word, The second word, &c. At the end of the manuscript from which Professor Marr published his extracts there is written the following notice by the scribe who wrote it. "In 1860, in October, on the sixth day, this book was written out by the Government Secretary Nobleman, Antony, son of Zacharia Dapkviev. The hand of the labourer is turned into dust, yet this work will remain as a treasure." The manuscript itself is copied from an older one which is still in possession of a Georgian prince, Melitaurov.
In the catalogue prepared by Zagareli of the manuscripts in the Georgian convent on Mount Athos we find the mention of more than one copy of The Wisdom of Balavari. The manuscript from which Professor Marr transcribed the extracts which we have translated is plainly a faulty one. For example, in the middle of the parable of the Man pursued by the Elephant some words have been dropped out; for there is in it no mention, as there is both in the Arabic and the Greek text, of the dragon at the bottom of the well. It is much to be desired, therefore, that a more complete Georgian text should be prepared and printed from older manuscripts than the very modern one which Professor Marr employed.
The Georgian text, as has been noted by Marr and also by Professor Hommel, is much nearer to the old Arabic and non-Christian text than it is to the Greek. And Marr has noticed the following points of contrast between it and the Greek. These we transcribe in brief from his valuable monograph; for he had the Georgian text before him, which we only know through his extracts and remarks concerning it.
In the Georgian, then, the Indian king commits the
