Info & Extras

The goal of the Kalīla Reader app is to collect a range of published versions of the text of Kalīla and Dimna—and translations and adaptations thereof—within a simple framework that facilitates cross-referencing and comparative reading. (To make effective use of limited screen area, only one text is displayed at a time. But the user can open multiple instances of the app in separate browser tabs or windows and switch among them.) Rather than loading the full PDF of a given version of Kalīla and Dimna, which could become overwhelming, this utility is designed such that the user first chooses a chapter of the book, then the desired version.

As of June 2024, the following versions have been incorporated:

Further texts will be added over time. This page will also be updated soon to share a few ancillary resources. With so many renderings of Kalīla and Dimna having been collected, it will be helpful to assemble spreadsheets that indicate which versions are available for each chapter, and the order in which the chapters occur in each version. (There is significant variation on the latter point…)

Disclaimer

If you are reading this, you may have clicked on a warning indicator on the main page. There are certain older editions and translations of Kalīla and Dimna that present the text of the book in ways that could be confusing to a nonspecialist. For example, Louis Cheikho has added the chapters of “The Dove, the Fox, and the Heron” and “The King of the Mice” to his edition, although they are not found in his primary manuscript. It was rather out of a desire for comprehensiveness that Cheikho took the text of those chapters from other sources. He does explain this in notes—but again, it might not be clear to a reader who is not immersed in the world of Kalīla and Dimna.

I hope to add more detailed discussion of these issues in the future. For the time being, a simple warning indicator will appear when a potentially problematic edition or translation has been selected for reading.