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The Book Sent For Instead of the Herb of Immortality

A Persian king sent his physician to India to find a plant that raised the dead. He came back with a book of animal fables instead.

Khosrow I, king of Persia, heard that somewhere in India there grew a herb that could bring the dead back to life.

He sent his physician, Borzuya, to find it.

What he found instead

Borzuya searched India and there was no such herb.

What he was told, in the version the tradition preserves, was that the story had been a figure of speech. The mountain was learning; the herb was a book; and the dead who were revived by it were the ignorant.

The book was the Panchatantra.

He learned Sanskrit, obtained a copy, and carried it back to Persia around 570, and translated it into Middle Persian.

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