^{page 436 note 1}The Orbeliani family to which Sulkhan-Saba belonged also bore the name Orbelishvili. For Sulkhan-Saba's biography, see introduction to Die Weisheit der Lüge gesprochen von Sidchan-Saba Orbeliani [trans. Tseretheli, M. von, with critical study by Zurab Avalishvili], Berlin, 1933, 1–10;Google Scholar preface and appendix to Kniga mudrosti i lzhi Savvy-Sulkkana Orbeliani [trans.Tsagareli, A.A.], St. Petersburg, 1878;Google ScholarKekelidze, K. and Baramidze, A., K‘art‘uli literaturis istoria, I, Tiflis, 1954, 390–3.Google Scholar

^{page 436 note 2}Not, as occasionally seen, Saba-Sulkhan; in an autobiographical note inscribed in his Georgian lexicon, he records of himself: ‘Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani was born in the year 346 of the Georgian Paschal Cycle (A.D. 1658), on the 24th of October, which will be the 4th of November according to the Latin Calendar, on a Sunday, in the middle of the night’.

^{page 437 note 1}See the various sources cited in Lang, D.M.,‘Georgian relations with France during the reign of Wakhtang VI (1711–24)’, JRAS, 1950, 114–26.Google Scholar Orbeliani could not, as sometimes asserted, have met La Fontaine when in France, since the French writer had died in 1695.

^{page 437 note 2}This hostility towards Sulkhan-Saba is reflected in a passage in a collection of lives of saints and Church celebrities by the eighteenth century Georgian Catholicos-Patriarch Antoni I: ‘I give no praise to Saba, because he turned into a foe of the Holy Church and became an adversary of truth; the gates of paradise he described in his writing, but in reality it was the door of hell; seeking thereby to damn men's souls, it was himself he damned’. (Text published in Tom. vi of the catalogue of the MSS of the Tiflis State Museum, H Collection, edited by A. Baramidze, Tiflis, 1953, p. 248: MS No. 2854, para. 23.)

^{page 437 note 3}Kekelidze and Baramidze (p. 393) give the date of Sulkhan-Saba's death as 26 January 1725. The date should surely be 1726, as given by Tseretheli, since Wakhtang and his suite did not arrive in Moscow until 10 March 1725. See further Brosset, M.F., Histoire de la Géorgie, II, pt. 1, St. Petersburg, 1856, p. 600;Google ScholarT‘aqaishvili, E., Sak‘art‘velos sidzvdeni (Les antiquités géorgiennes), II, Tiflis, 1909, No. 281;Google ScholarKarst, J., Corpus Juris Ibero-Caucasici, Fasc. 2, Strasbourg, 1935, 345–6.Google Scholar

^{page 438 note 1}First edition Tiflis, 1884; most recent edition by Qip‘shidze and Shanidze, Tiflis, 1928. See the description (based on notes by the present writer) of an early MS of the dictionary in Sotheby's sale catalogue, Fine oriental manuscripts and Moghul miniatures (London, 28 01 1952), pp. 8–9,Google Scholar with one illustration. Orbeliani's original autograph MS of the lexicon, completed at Constantinople in 1715–16, is now in the Tiflis State Museum collection, No. H. 1658. See description in the catalogue of the H Collection, Tom. IV, edited by K. Kekelidze, Tiflis, 1950, pp. 78–80.

^{page 438 note 2}Remaining section edited by S. Iordanishvili, Tiflis, 1940. See further Kekelidze and Baramidze, K‘art‘uli literaturis istoria, I, 403–4; Kniga mudrosti i lzhi, trans. Tsagareli, 210–17.

^{page 438 note 3}Edited by Tchqonia, Ilia, K‘ilila da Damana, Tiflis, 1886.Google Scholar

^{page 438 note 4}Edited for the first time at St. Petersburg in 1859; later editions include that by P. Umikashvili, Tiflis, 1871; N. Mt‘varelishvili, Tiflis, 1892; G. Leonidze and S. Iordanishvili, Tiflis, 1938. Russian translation by Tsagareli, A A., Kniga mudrosti i lzhi, St. Petersburg, 1878,Google Scholar and by Ghoghoberidze, Elene, O mudrosti vymysla, Moscow, 1951;Google Scholar English by Wardrop, Oliver, The Book of Wisdom and Lies, a Georgian story-book of the eighteenth century … ‘Printed by William Morris at the Kelmscott Press, 14,Google Scholar Upper Mall, Hammersmith, in the County of Middlesex; and finished on the 29th day of September, 1894. Sold by Bernard Quaritch, 15, Piccadilly, W.’ German version by von Tseretheli, M., Die Weisheit der Lüge, Berlin, 1933.Google Scholar

^{page 438 note 5}On the title-page of his German rendering, Professor Tseretheli renders the word nat‘k‘vami (or the more or less synonymous variant t‘k‘muli) as ‘gesprochen’. The verb t‘k‘ma does indeed mean ‘to speak’, but the sense here is surely‘composed’ rather than ‘uttered by word of mouth’.

^{page 439 note 1}K‘ilila da Damana, edited by Tchqonia, 68; see further Kekelidze, K., K‘art‘uli literaturisistoria, II, Tiflis, 1924, 303;Google Scholar Kniga mudrosti i lzhi, trans. Tsagareli, vi–vii.

^{page 440 note 1}cf. The history of the Forty Vezirs … done into English by E. J. W. Gibb, London, 1886.Google Scholar

^{page 440 note 2}See Tseretheli, Die Weisheit der Lüge, 30, 45.

^{page 440 note 3}Lang, D.M., ‘St. Euthymius the Georgian and the Barlaam and Ioasaph Romance’, BSOAS, XVII, 2, 1955, 306–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^{page 440 note 4}Avalishvili, in Tseretheli, Die Weisheit der Lüge, 14; A. Baramidze, in O mudrosti vymysla, trans. Ghoghoberidze, 8; Kekelidze, , K‘art‘uli literaturis istoria [new edition], II, Tiflis, 1952, 350;Google Scholar Kekelidze and Baramidze, K‘art‘ literaturis istoria, I, 402.

^{page 440 note 5}In the Greek Barlaam and Josaphat, the king's name becomes Abenner, and the astrologer's, Araches.

^{page 441 note 1}Wardrop, Oliver, preface to The Book of Wisdom and Lies, X.Google Scholar

^{page 441 note 2}Chavchavadze, Ilia, Chveni ekhlandeli sibrdzne-sitsrue ( Our wisdom-lies of to-day [a pamphlet]), 1896.Google Scholar Reprinted in collected works of Chavchavadze, IX, Tiflis, 1928, 270–1. Note also that Sulkhan-Saba's book, under the title Sibrdzne-sitsrue ‘Wisdom-lies’, occurs among a group of Georgian classic works enumerated by the poet Alexander Orbeliani (1801–69) in the Tiflis journal Tsiskari ‘Dawn’, July, 1858, p. 128. Alexander Orbeliani was, of course, a kinsman, albeit a distant one, of Sulkhan-Saba.

^{page 442 note 1}Bibliography in Imedashvili, G., ‘Dsigni sibrdzne-sitsruisa-s sat‘auris gagebisat‘vis’, Sak‘art‘velos SSR Metsnierebat‘a Akademiis Moambe (Tiflis), XV, 5, 1954, 303–9.Google Scholar

^{page 442 note 2}See, for example, Baramidze, A., Narkvevebi k‘art‘uli literaturis istoriidan, II, Tiflis, 1940, 257;Google ScholarMenabde, L., Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani, monograp‘ia, Tiflis, 1953, 80.Google Scholar

^{page 442 note 3}Khelnadsert‘a aghdseriloba, I, compiled by Nikoladze, , edited by Kekelidze, , Tiflis, 1953, 406.Google Scholar

^{page 443 note 1}Orbeli, R.R., ‘Sobranie gruzinskikh rukopisey Instituta Vostokovedeniya Akademii Nauk SSSR‘, Uchenye Zapiski Instituta Vostokovedeniya (Moscow), IX, 1954, 57–8;Google ScholarKniga mudrosti i lzhi, trans. Tsagareli, xiii–xiv.

^{page 443 note 2}Die Weisheit der Lüge, xv.

^{page 443 note 3}Neimani, A., K‘art‘ul sinonimt‘a lek‘sikoni, Tiflis, 1951, 295.Google Scholar

^{page 444 note 1}These examples are taken from Imnaishvili, I.V., K‘art‘uli ot‘kht‘avis simp‘onia-lek‘sikoni (a concordance and lexicon to the Old Georgian Gospels), Tiflis, 1948–1949,540.Google Scholar

^{page 444 note 2}In a posthumous re-issue of Tsagareli‘s rendering, edited by Iordanishvili, S. and Tynyanov, Y. at Tiflis in 1939,Google Scholar the title is quite arbitrarily changed to Mudrost’ lzhi.

^{page 444 note 3}cf. the title adopted by E. Ghoghoberidze for her translation, viz. O mudrosli vymysla.

^{page 444 note 4}Kekelidze, K., K‘art‘uli literaturis istoria, II, Tiflis, 1924, p. 301, n 2.Google Scholar

^{page 445 note 1}Kniga mudrosti i lzhi, trans. Tsagareli, 179.

^{page 446 note 1}In Tseretheli‘s German version, p. 142, No. 59: ‘Der König, der sich für einen Gott hielt, und sein Engel’.

^{page 446 note 2}Tseretheli, pp. 84–5, No. 17.

^{page 447 note 1}cf. Wardrop, Marjory, Georgian folk tales, London, 1894.Google Scholar

^{page 447 note 2}Tseretheli, 185.

^{page 447 note 3}Tseretheli, 193.

^{page 448 note 1}Edited by I. Tchqonia, Tiflis, 1886, 1–2; compare also Anvár-i Suhailí; or, The lights of Canopus, trans. Eastwick, E.B., Hertford, 1854,Google Scholar Preface, 4–5.