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Romanised transliteration as printed by the translator, not the original script. This is what we hold.
1Its author, having had access to other MSS. (descended from M6) at London and Oxford, was able to rectify many of the deficiencies in Windischmann’s translation ; but, otherwise, he made but little progress in elucidating difficult passages. Other European writers have published the result of their studies of particular parts of the Bundahis, but it does not appear that any of them have attempted a continuous translation of several chapters. Whether the existence of previous translations be more of an assistance than a hindrance in preparing a new one, may well be a matter of doubt. Previous translations may prevent oversights, and in difficult passages it is useful to see how others have floundered through the mire; but, on the other hand, they occasion much loss of time, by the necessity of examining many of their dubious renderings before finally fixing upon others that seem more satisfactory. The object of the present translation is to give the meaning of the original text as literally as possible, and with a minimum of extra words; the different renderings of other translators being very rarely noticed, unless there be some probability of their being of service ‘ Der Bundehesh, zum ersten Male herausgegeben, transcribirt, iibersetzt, und mit Glossar versehen, von Ferdinand Justi; Leipzig, 1868, INTRODUCTION. XXVii to the reader. Some doubtful words and _ passages still defy all attempts at satisfactory solution, but of these the reader is warned; and, no doubt, a few oversights and mistakes will be discovered. With regard to the original text, we have to recover it from four manuscripts which are, more or less, independent authorities, and may be styled K20, K2ob, M6, and TD. The first three of these have evidently descended, either directly or through one or more intermediate copies, from the same original; but the source of TD, so far as it can be ascertained, seems to have been far removed from that of the others. All the other MSS. of the Bundahis, which have been examined, whether Pahlavi or Pazand, are descended either from K20 or M6, and are, therefore, of no independent authority.
2All the other MSS. of the Bundahis, which have been examined, whether Pahlavi or Pazand, are descended either from K20 or M6, and are, therefore, of no independent authority. K20 is the very old codex already mentioned as having been brought from Bombay by Rask in 1820, and is now No. 20 of the collection of Avesta and Pahlavi MSS. in the University Library at Kopenhagen. It consists now of 173 folios of very old and much-worn Indian paper of large octavo size, but five other folios are certainly missing, besides an uncertain number lost from the end of the volume. This MS. contains twenty Pahlavi texts, written twenty lines to the page, and some of them accompanied by Avesta; the Bundahis is the ninth of these texts, and occupies fols. 88-129, of which fol. 121 is missing. Three of the texts, occurring before the Bundahis, have dated colophons, but the dates are A.Y. 690, 720, and 700, all within 36 folios; it is, therefore, evident that these dates have been copied from older MSS.; but at the same time the appearance of the paper indicates that the actual date of the MS. cannot be much later than A.Y. 720 (A.D. 1351), and there are reasons for believing that it was written several years before A. Y. 766 (A.D. 1397), as will be explained in the description of M6. Owing to its age and comparative completeness this MS. of the Bundahis is certainly the rhost important one extant, although comparison with other MSS. proves that its writer was rather careless, and frequently omitted words and phrases. The XXVIII PAHLAVI TEXTS. loss of fol. 121, though it has hitherto left an inconvenient gap in the text (not filled up by other MSS.), is more than compensated by the three extra chapters which this MS. and its copies have hitherto alone supplied. The text on the lost folio was supposed by Anquetil to have contained a whole chapter besides portions of the two adjacent ones; this is now known to be a mistake, Anquetil’s Chap. XXVIII being quite imaginary; the end of Chap. XXVII has long been supplied from other MSS., but the beginning of the next chapter has hitherto been missing. Only two copies of K20 appear to be known to Europeans ; the best of these is the copy brought from Surat by Anquetil, No. 7 of his collection of manuscripts, now in the National Library at Paris; this was written in A.D. 1734, when K20 appears to have been nearly in its present imperfect state, though it may have had some 15 folios more at the end. This copy seems to have been carefully written; but the same cannot be said of the other copy, No. 21 in the University Library at Kopenhagen, which is full of blunders, both of commission and omission, and can hardly have been written by so good a Pahlavi scholar as Dastdr Dérab, Anquetil’s instructor, although attributed to him.
321 in the University Library at Kopenhagen, which is full of blunders, both of commission and omission, and can hardly have been written by so good a Pahlavi scholar as Dastdr Dérab, Anquetil’s instructor, although attributed to him. K2ob consists of nineteen loose folios!, found by Westergaard among some miscellaneous fragments in the collection of Avesta and Pahlavi MSS. in the University Library at Kopenhagen, and now forming No. 20b in that collection. The first two folios are lost, but the third folio commences with the Pahlavi equivalent of the words ‘knew that Aharman exists’ (Bund. Chap. I, 8), and the text continues to the end of Chap. XI, 1, where it leaps at once (in the middle of a line on the fifteenth folio) to Chap. XXX, 15, ‘one brother who is righteous,’ whence the text continues to the end of Chap. XXXI, 15, which is followed by Chaps. XXXII, XXXIV, as in K20, This 1 Tam indebted to the late Professor N. L. Westergaard for all information about this MS., and also for a tracing of the Pahlavi text of so much of Chap. XXXI as is contained in it, INTRODUCTION. XXI1X MS. is not very old, and contains merely a fragment of the text; but its value consists in its not being a descendant of either K20 or M6, as it clearly represents a third line of descent from their common original. It agrees with K20 in the general arrangement of its chapters, so far as they go, and also in containing Chap. XX XI; but it differs from it in some of the details of that chapter, and agrees with M6 in some verbal peculiarities elsewhere; it has not, however, been collated in any other chapter. The omission of nearly twenty chapters, in the centre of the work, indicates that some one of the MSS. from which it is descended, had lost many of its central folios before it was copied, and that the copyist did not notice the deficiency ; such unnoticed omissions frequently occur in Pahlavi manuscripts.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
Romanised transliteration as printed by the translator, not the original script. This is what we hold.
1Its author, having had access to other MSS. (descended from M6) at London and Oxford, was able to rectify many of the deficiencies in Windischmann’s translation ; but, otherwise, he made but little progress in elucidating difficult passages. Other European writers have published the result of their studies of particular parts of the Bundahis, but it does not appear that any of them have attempted a continuous translation of several chapters. Whether the existence of previous translations be more of an assistance than a hindrance in preparing a new one, may well be a matter of doubt. Previous translations may prevent oversights, and in difficult passages it is useful to see how others have floundered through the mire; but, on the other hand, they occasion much loss of time, by the necessity of examining many of their dubious renderings before finally fixing upon others that seem more satisfactory. The object of the present translation is to give the meaning of the original text as literally as possible, and with a minimum of extra words; the different renderings of other translators being very rarely noticed, unless there be some probability of their being of service ‘ Der Bundehesh, zum ersten Male herausgegeben, transcribirt, iibersetzt, und mit Glossar versehen, von Ferdinand Justi; Leipzig, 1868, INTRODUCTION. XXVii to the reader. Some doubtful words and _ passages still defy all attempts at satisfactory solution, but of these the reader is warned; and, no doubt, a few oversights and mistakes will be discovered. With regard to the original text, we have to recover it from four manuscripts which are, more or less, independent authorities, and may be styled K20, K2ob, M6, and TD. The first three of these have evidently descended, either directly or through one or more intermediate copies, from the same original; but the source of TD, so far as it can be ascertained, seems to have been far removed from that of the others. All the other MSS. of the Bundahis, which have been examined, whether Pahlavi or Pazand, are descended either from K20 or M6, and are, therefore, of no independent authority.
2All the other MSS. of the Bundahis, which have been examined, whether Pahlavi or Pazand, are descended either from K20 or M6, and are, therefore, of no independent authority. K20 is the very old codex already mentioned as having been brought from Bombay by Rask in 1820, and is now No. 20 of the collection of Avesta and Pahlavi MSS. in the University Library at Kopenhagen. It consists now of 173 folios of very old and much-worn Indian paper of large octavo size, but five other folios are certainly missing, besides an uncertain number lost from the end of the volume. This MS. contains twenty Pahlavi texts, written twenty lines to the page, and some of them accompanied by Avesta; the Bundahis is the ninth of these texts, and occupies fols. 88-129, of which fol. 121 is missing. Three of the texts, occurring before the Bundahis, have dated colophons, but the dates are A.Y. 690, 720, and 700, all within 36 folios; it is, therefore, evident that these dates have been copied from older MSS.; but at the same time the appearance of the paper indicates that the actual date of the MS. cannot be much later than A.Y. 720 (A.D. 1351), and there are reasons for believing that it was written several years before A. Y. 766 (A.D. 1397), as will be explained in the description of M6. Owing to its age and comparative completeness this MS. of the Bundahis is certainly the rhost important one extant, although comparison with other MSS. proves that its writer was rather careless, and frequently omitted words and phrases. The XXVIII PAHLAVI TEXTS. loss of fol. 121, though it has hitherto left an inconvenient gap in the text (not filled up by other MSS.), is more than compensated by the three extra chapters which this MS. and its copies have hitherto alone supplied. The text on the lost folio was supposed by Anquetil to have contained a whole chapter besides portions of the two adjacent ones; this is now known to be a mistake, Anquetil’s Chap. XXVIII being quite imaginary; the end of Chap. XXVII has long been supplied from other MSS., but the beginning of the next chapter has hitherto been missing. Only two copies of K20 appear to be known to Europeans ; the best of these is the copy brought from Surat by Anquetil, No. 7 of his collection of manuscripts, now in the National Library at Paris; this was written in A.D. 1734, when K20 appears to have been nearly in its present imperfect state, though it may have had some 15 folios more at the end. This copy seems to have been carefully written; but the same cannot be said of the other copy, No. 21 in the University Library at Kopenhagen, which is full of blunders, both of commission and omission, and can hardly have been written by so good a Pahlavi scholar as Dastdr Dérab, Anquetil’s instructor, although attributed to him.
321 in the University Library at Kopenhagen, which is full of blunders, both of commission and omission, and can hardly have been written by so good a Pahlavi scholar as Dastdr Dérab, Anquetil’s instructor, although attributed to him. K2ob consists of nineteen loose folios!, found by Westergaard among some miscellaneous fragments in the collection of Avesta and Pahlavi MSS. in the University Library at Kopenhagen, and now forming No. 20b in that collection. The first two folios are lost, but the third folio commences with the Pahlavi equivalent of the words ‘knew that Aharman exists’ (Bund. Chap. I, 8), and the text continues to the end of Chap. XI, 1, where it leaps at once (in the middle of a line on the fifteenth folio) to Chap. XXX, 15, ‘one brother who is righteous,’ whence the text continues to the end of Chap. XXXI, 15, which is followed by Chaps. XXXII, XXXIV, as in K20, This 1 Tam indebted to the late Professor N. L. Westergaard for all information about this MS., and also for a tracing of the Pahlavi text of so much of Chap. XXXI as is contained in it, INTRODUCTION. XXI1X MS. is not very old, and contains merely a fragment of the text; but its value consists in its not being a descendant of either K20 or M6, as it clearly represents a third line of descent from their common original. It agrees with K20 in the general arrangement of its chapters, so far as they go, and also in containing Chap. XX XI; but it differs from it in some of the details of that chapter, and agrees with M6 in some verbal peculiarities elsewhere; it has not, however, been collated in any other chapter. The omission of nearly twenty chapters, in the centre of the work, indicates that some one of the MSS. from which it is descended, had lost many of its central folios before it was copied, and that the copyist did not notice the deficiency ; such unnoticed omissions frequently occur in Pahlavi manuscripts.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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