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Perry's Index to the Aesopica

Fables exist in many versions; here is one version in English:

THE BLACK MAN IN THE RIVER

Someone saw a black man from India washing himself in a river and said to him, 'You better keep still and not stir up the mud in the water, or you are never going to turn that body of yours white!'
This fable shows that nothing in this world can change its nature.

Source: Aesop's Fables. A new translation by Laura Gibbs. Oxford University Press (World's Classics): Oxford, 2002.
NOTE: New cover, with new ISBN, published in 2008; contents of book unchanged.


Perry 393: Gibbs (Oxford) 361 [English]
Perry 393: L'Estrange 160 [English]
Perry 393: Townsend 91 [English]
Perry 393: Aphthonius 6 [Greek]
Perry 393: Chambry 11 [Greek]
Perry 393: Syntipas 41 [Greek]


You can find a compilation of Perry's index to the Aesopica in the gigantic appendix to his edition of Babrius and Phaedrus for the Loeb Classical Library (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1965). This book is an absolute must for anyone interested in the Aesopic fable tradition. Invaluable.