Do Tier 1–2 scholarly sources (Encyclopaedia Iranica; de Blois 1990) confirm the Borzuya → Kalila wa-Dimna transmission chain, its dates, and the immortality-herb legend?

Two notes promoted from 10-inbox/raw/2026-07-09-hop-borzuya-kalila-wa-dimna.md rest entirely on Tier 4 Wikipedia ('Borzuya', 'Academy of Gondishapur'):

• claim-borzuya-immortality-herb-was-really-a-book — the legendary quest for a plant that revives the dead, revealed to be the Panchatantra, and the read-but-don't-copy / memorize-and-reconstruct detail.
• claim-kalila-wa-dimna-descends-from-borzuyas-lost-pahlavi — the chain Sanskrit Panchatantra → Borzuya's lost c. 550 CE Pahlavi → Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ's 8th-century Arabic Kalīla wa-Dimna → Syriac/Greek/Persian/ European, with both the Sanskrit original and the Pahlavi lost.

Under 00-meta/sources.md, the first is a surprising historical claim and the second carries specific dates (quantitative) — both floored at Tier 1–2. The capture cleared neither floor.

What would answer it.

• François de Blois, Burzōy's Voyage to India and the Origin of the Book of Kalīlah wa Dimnah (Royal Asiatic Society, 1990) — the standard scholarly monograph on exactly this question. Check how it treats (a) the reviving-plant legend and whether it is a feature of the Pahlavi preface tradition, (b) the memorization-and-reconstruction story, and (c) the historicity of Borzuya's Indian mission.
• Encyclopaedia Iranica entries "Borzūya" and "Kalila wa Demna" (iranicaonline.org) — Tier 2, authoritative on Sasanian intellectual history; should confirm or refine the c. 550 CE Pahlavi dating and the 8th-century Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ Arabic translation, and the losses of the Sanskrit and Pahlavi.
• Ideally pin whether "revives the dead" is the actual preface wording or a Wikipedia gloss, and whether scholars read the metaphor (book = life-giving wisdom) as original to the source or a later interpretive frame.

Why it matters. These two notes are an orphan cluster (no prior vault notes on Sasanian Persia, translation history, or fables). Confirming them above the encyclopedia floor is what would let either move off seedling — and would let the transmission-by-memory detail, currently folded into the first note, stand as its own claim if the primary tradition supports it.

Progress — 2026-07-27 (partial; left open)

A batch capture (10-inbox/raw/2026-07-26-do-tier-12-scholarly-sources-encyclopaedia-iranica-de.md) reached a Tier 1 peer-reviewed source (Gruendler et al. 2020, AnonymClassic project) and a directly-fetched Tier 2 source (Institute of Ismaili Studies), both quoted verbatim, neither reconstructed. This resolves the chain itself, the loss of both the Sanskrit and Pahlavi stages, the Pahlavi's own title (Karīrak ud Damanak), and the round dates (c. 550 CE Pahlavi; c. 750– 757 CE Arabic, via Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ's death date) above the Tier 1–2 floor — see the update to claim-kalila-wa-dimna-descends-from-borzuyas-lost-pahlavi (now budding). It also yielded two genuinely new claims: claim-de-blois-borzuya-mission-historically-plausible-not-proven and claim-al-yamani-disputed-kalila-wa-dimnas-indian-origin, plus claim-two-syriac-translations-of-kalila-wa-dimna-survive-independently.

What remains open, and why this question is not closed:

1. The specific "570 CE" endpoint in the chain note's title is still unsourced above Tier 4 — neither new source narrows past "c. 550 CE" / "6th century."
2. Encyclopaedia Iranica itself remains unread. iranicaonline.org 403'd every direct-fetch attempt this session; the specific Iranica quotes this capture wanted to use (the "apocryphal tale" characterization of the herb legend; de Blois's "neither proven nor falsified" line; the Pahlavi title attribution) were reconstructed from search-index excerpts instead. Per sources.md's quote-provenance rule, a reconstructed quote is not admissible evidence regardless of how consistently it recurs across queries — so claim-borzuya-immortality-herb-was-really-a-book stays seedling, unpromoted on this axis, with the Iranica material recorded only as a flagged lead.
3. What would close this fully: a direct read of iranicaonline.org's "BORZŪYA" and "Kalila wa Demna i" articles — via a library proxy, an institutional VPN, or the Wayback Machine — to either confirm or correct the reconstructed wording. Until then this question stays open.