{"id":82949,"date":"2020-02-17T10:37:08","date_gmt":"2020-02-17T17:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=82949"},"modified":"2020-02-17T23:22:28","modified_gmt":"2020-02-18T06:22:28","slug":"the-ravens-gait","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2020\/02\/the-ravens-gait.html","title":{"rendered":"“The Raven’s Gait”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Tucson<\/a>
Some time ago, I participated in a Mormon-Muslim event at this mosque in Tucson, Arizona (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019m using portions of Munther A. Younes, Tales from Kalila wa Dimna: An Arabic Reader<\/em> (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989) as material for one of my classes. \u00a0The Kalila wa Dimna<\/em> is a collection of animal fables, the core of which derives originally from India. \u00a0It was translated into Middle Persian and then famously rendered from Middle Persian into Arabic and probably supplemented with an undetermined number of original Arabic tales by Ibn al-Muqaffa\u2018 (d. ca. AD 756 or 759). \u00a0Kalila wa Dimna<\/em> is generally considered the first great literary masterpiece of Arabic prose.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Munther Younes\u2019s \u201creader\u201d is a selection of stories, somewhat simplified but graded by increasing length and difficulty, from the original by Ibn al-Muqaffa\u2018. \u00a0So what you\u2019ll get in just a second \u2014 a translation of Younes\u2019s retelling of the early medieval Arabic \u2014 is a few times removed from the eighth-century first version, to say nothing of the intermediate Middle Persian translation and the Sanskrit basis before that. \u00a0But I give you my rendering of the short and simple little anecdote that appears first in Tales from Kalila wa Dimna<\/em>. \u00a0I think it both charming and, despite its brevity, meaningful:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

There was a raven who lived in a tree, and in the tree there were many other birds. \u00a0One day, the raven looked beneath the tree and saw a partridge walking. \u00a0And he fell in love with its gait. \u00a0The raven said to himself, \u201cI want to walk like this partridge.\u201d \u00a0So he tried and he tried, day after day. \u00a0But he was unable to walk like the partridge. \u00a0Then he tried to return to the gait to which he was accustomed \u2014 and he found that he had forgotten it. \u00a0His gait had become the ugliest gait among the birds. \u00a0It was neither the gait of a raven nor the gait of a partridge.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And here are three links of vaguely Middle Eastern relevance:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Religion News Service: \u00a0\u201cA priest\u2019s anti-Muslim comments reveal US Catholics\u2019 Islamophobia problem\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

From The Times of Israel<\/em>: \u00a0\u201cThe Jewish nightmare of Bernie vs. Trump:\u00a0In his first months in office, President Trump emboldened the far-right fringe. President Sanders would do the same with the far left\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Dispatch: \u00a0\u201cReligious Liberty: Not Just for Social Conservatives:\u00a0An Arizona federal court flips the script.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Posted from Phoenix, Arizona<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 I\u2019m using portions of Munther A. Younes, Tales from Kalila wa Dimna: An Arabic Reader (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989) as material for one of my classes. \u00a0The Kalila wa Dimna is a collection of animal fables, the core of which derives originally from India. \u00a0It was translated into Middle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[198,2091,6327,6330,6324,644,8477,8474],"class_list":["post-82949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-arabic","tag-arabic-literature","tag-dimna","tag-ibn-al-muqaffa","tag-kalila","tag-literature","tag-partridge","tag-raven"],"yoast_head":"\n"The Raven's Gait"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    I'm using portions of Munther A. 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