Media in Flux: The Tale of the Yellow Folio from Kalīla wa-Dimna

Abstract

In the preface to his Arabic redaction-translation of Kalīla wa-Dimna, Ibn al-Muqaffa's included a sub-story about the differences between unthinking rote-memorization of a text versus understanding it in-depth through thorough reading, namely, “The Tale of the Yellow Folio." Due to KD’s complicated textual history, the original words of Ibn al-Muqaffa' are irretrievable. But the proliferating manuscripts from the thirteenth century onward each feature a different version of this sub-story with variously added details. These yield a spectrum of reflections by known and anonymous copyist-redactors' on this dispute, or tension, between the two modes of textual transmission, oral and written, which coexisted and blended in Arabic scholarship and literature over centuries. The article gives an overview of the spectrum of attitudes from extant manuscripts of Kalīla wa-Dimna.