23 April 2015
Culture & Antiquities Authority Anchors Values of Goodness, Beauty, and Wisdom Reflected through ‘Kalila wa Dimna, Fables Through Time’ Exhibition
Using stories from the famous collection of fables known as Kalila wa Dimna, this interactive exhibition brings the characters and their relationships and lessons to life on 24 April 2015 at Bahrain National Museum. The display showcases digitally reproduced manuscripts from collections around the world, enriched by original illustrations, and a digital guide to these stories. Originating at the Children’s Museum in Indianapolis, the exhibition will travel to destinations across the United States after its premiere in Bahrain. A startling combination of text, multi-media and a live musical score, this modern theatrical fable is a timely exploration of the mechanics of Empire and the narratives of power, providing a passionate argument for cultural and religious tolerance in the modern Arab and Western worlds.
On the occasion of the opening of the exhibition ‘Kalila wa Dimna, Fables Across Time’, Dr. Sabiha Al-Khamir gives the following talk: Heritage and Modernity (al-truth wa al-hadatha) which introduces the fables of ‘Kalila wa Dimna’ and presents the concept and content of the exhibition, highlighting the role of its diverse aspects. The talk offers insights into the role played by creativity in the perpetuation of heritage, bringing to the fore the significance of this kind of project at this moment in time.
Dr. Sabiha Al-Khamir is a writer, artist, and expert in Islamic art whose work is concerned with cultural bridging and dialogue. Dr. Al-Khamir was the founding director of the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar, and is the author of The Blue Manuscript, a work of fiction. She has curated several exhibitions and authored their catalogs including, in the United States, the exhibition ‘Beauty and Belief, Crossing Bridges with the Arts of Islamic Culture’ and the international exhibition ‘Nur: Light in Art and Science from the Islamic World’. Dr. Al-Khamir has illustrated several books, including Le Nuage Amoureux and The Island of Animals. She is the curatorial director of the exhibition ‘Kalila wa Dimna - Fables Across Time’ which includes art work she created especially for this exhibition. Currently she is Senior Advisor of Islamic Art for the Dallas Museum of Art, USA.
The talk introduces the fables of Kalila wa Dimna and presents the concept and content of the exhibition, highlighting the role of its diverse aspects. The talk offers insights into the role played by creativity in the perpetuation of heritage, bringing to the fore the significance of this kind of project at this moment in time. Part political fable, part historical epic, the drama explores the creation of these tales amidst the very real tragedy that unfolds around the author himself, as Al-Muqaffa battles for reform in the midst of fervent revolutionaries, heretic poets, religious propagandists, and a ruler who names himself none other than ‘God’s Shadow on Earth’. A startling combination of text, multi-media and a live musical score, this modern theatrical fable is a timely exploration of the mechanics of Empire and the narratives of power, providing a passionate argument for cultural and religious tolerance in the modern Arab and Western worlds.
Kalila wa Dimna one of the most beloved and well-illustrated fables of all time. Ultimately derived from the Indian Panchatantra and Mahabharata written in Sanskrit around the year 200 CE, the fables were adapted and translated into numerous languages including Persian and Arabic. They address the moral education of princes through two jackals, Kalila and Dimna, and a host of animal protagonists, but they are more than just a mirror for princes. They illustrate universal human strengths and weaknesses, as well as aspirations for justice and truth. In this particular episode, the ailing lion sought a cure from the heart and ears of a donkey. The donkey was tricked by the lion’s wily courtier, the fox, who proceeded to take its heart and ears for him while the lion washed before his meal. The fourteenth-century Persian painting with its uneven, thinly applied color provides a direct and vivid illustration to the tale. The enormous, many-leaved plant acts as a figural axis to ground the pictorial composition and contributes to the dynamism of the painting.
Historically, this book of fables, also known as the Fables of Bidpai (or Baydabā), originated in India from the Sanskrit classics the Pañcatantraand Mahābhārata between the first century BC and 500 AD. Chandra Rajan in the introduction to his translation of the Pañcatantra explains that this Sanskrit classic traveled from the land of its origin to other lands and peoples, as did many Indian texts during the early centuries AD. Pañcatantra started its itinerary before 759 AD, initially as a version in Pahlavi (Middle Persian) executed under order of Khusraw Anūshīrwan (550–578 AD), emperor of Iran, by his court physician, Burzöe (Barzawayh). Before the original Pahlavi was lost, a priest named Bud rendered a Syriac version in 750 AD, one that he entitled Kalilag wa Dimnag, the names given to two jackal narrators appearing in it. Another rendition in Arabic followed, the Kalila wa Dimna of Abdallāh ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, a Zoroastrian convert to Islam in 759AD.
Though the core of Kalila wa Dimna is the five stories that make up the Pañcatantra (the five books of wisdom), three other tales come from the Mahābhārata and one from the Buddhist legend of the king Canda Prodoya. As for some of the remaining stories, scholars conjecture that they are of Indian origin based on internal evidence. Still some other tales were added in the course of transmitting the book from Middle Persian into other languages.
Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, in his Arabic rendition, has also woven his own fables into the text and prefaced the book with a fourth introduction; the first chapter of Kalila wa Dimna is preceded by three introductions that have their roots in the Indian and Persian traditions.
The fables were translated into Arabic in the eighth century by the Persian Ibn al-Muqaffa’, a highly educated writer and influential courtier. To this day, al-Muqaffa’s translation is considered an unsurpassed masterpiece of Arabic artistic prose, and numerous translations into European and Oriental languages dating from the 10th to the 14th centuries derive from his version. Influences of al-Muqaffa’s translation are apparent in such important Western literary works as La Fontaine’s Fables and Goethe’s Reinecke Fuchs.
Kalila wa-Dimna is a kind of mirror for princes. Questions of social life and of princely wisdom are explained on the basis of stories taken from the animal kingdom. This well-known manuscript, produced in Egypt circa 1310, is probably the oldest of the four known Arabic Kalila wa-Dimna manuscripts from the 14th century. One of the relatively few Arabic texts to be illustrated, it contains 73 miniatures, which have a high artistic quality and are thus an important monument of Arabic book decoration.
