Sacred Laws of Aryas

SR No.: 007687
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Gorge Buhler
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1897
Total Pages: 1979
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 36 MB

Page 932

INTRODUCTION.
xxxi
dahis, written in Avesta characters, and likewise derived from M6. One of the best of these is No. 22 of the collection of Avesta and Pahlavi MSS. in the India Office Library at London ; it is old, and has the date A.Y. 936 (A.D. 1567) in a Pahlavi colophon on fol. 111, but this may have been copied from an older MS.; its contents are arranged as follows :-Chaps. XVIII-XXIII, I-XIV, XXIV-XXVII, XXX, XXXII, XXXIV, followed by several short Pâzand texts, only part of which are derived from M6, and the last of them being left incomplete by the loss of the folios which originally formed the end of the volume; instead of these lost folios others, containing Chaps. XV-XVII, have been added and bound up with the rest. Another MS., No. 7 in the same collection, which is dated A.Y. 1174 (A.D. 1805), is a modern copy derived from No. 22 through one or more intervening MSS.'; it contains precisely the same text, but with many variations in orthography, indicative of the very uncertain character of Pazand spelling. Two fragments of the Pazand text are also contained in the MSS. No. 121 at Oxford, already mentioned; they consist of Chaps. V, 3-7 (to would have known the secret') and XXV, 18-22. Another fragment, evidently copied from an old MS., is found on fols. 34, 35 of the Rivậyat MS. No. 8 of the collection in the India Office Library; it consists of Chap. XVIII, 1-8.
The Pazand text of the Bundahis, derived from M6, is also written in Persian characters in M7 (No. 7 of the Haug collection at Munich), dated A.Y. 1178 (A. D. 1809). It is interlined by Persian glosses, word for word, and consists of Chaps. XVIII-XXIII, I-XIV, XXIV-XXVII, and XXX on fols. 81-119, with Chaps. XV-XVII on fols. 120126, a repetition of Chap. XV and part of XVI on fols. 223-227, and Chap. XXXII on fol. 232.
Thus far, it will be noticed, we have two good independent authorities, K20 and M6, for ascertaining the text of the Bundahis in the fourteenth century, so far as Chaps. I
This is proved by an omission in fol. 40, which clearly indicates the loss of a folio in an intermediate MS.
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