Original content

English translation

Ibn Muqaffa says: The library of the sages of India used to be carried on a hundred camels. Their king asked for it to be abridged, and they brought it back to two camels; and upon his repeated request, it was settled upon four sayings:

The first saying, on guiding kings toward justice and the nurturing of subjects: When the king of the world takes up the practice of justice, ease becomes ever-present, time after time. When a heart-stricken one moans from a wounded breast, it is all from the sting of one who practices tyranny. For deliverance from the world's twist upon twist, from kings, justice is needed — nothing else at all.

The second saying, in counseling the subjects toward good conduct and obedience: The seed of a king's oppression is the disobedience of the people; when you sow barley, how could its harvest ever be wheat?

The third saying, on preserving the health of bodies: that until they are hungry they should not reach out their hand to food, and when they eat, before they grow full they should withdraw their hand from the food: Better that you abstain from the causes of illness, and flee from the disgrace of deceitful physicians. Do not sit at the table before your stomach is empty, and rise up before you fill your stomach.

The fourth saying, in advising women to keep their eyes away from the faces of strangers and their faces veiled from the eyes of the unrelated: A woman is she who, to anyone who is not her intimate, even though he be the pupil of the eye, does not show her face. To the face of anyone who is not her mate — though in beauty he be like the moon of the peerless sky — she does not open her eye.