Indian Antiquary Vol 03

SR No.: 032495
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 420
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 19 MB

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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[NOVEMBER, 1874.
tum, which forms the first volume of Professor J. de Goeje's Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum, has been followed by the not less welcome text of Ibn Haukal's Vie et Regna. The third volume of this series, which it is expected will appear shortly, is to contain the highly important independent work of Mukaddassi, edited from two MSS. existing at Berlin and Constantinople. In the succeeding volumes M. de Goeje intends to furnish translations of these three works. Of Professor W. Wright's Kâmil of Al-Mubarrad, published at the expense of the German Oriental Society, one more part, the ninth, has appeared.
The edition and French translation of Mas'audi brought out by our learned foreign associate M. Barbier de Meynard, in the Collection d'Ouvrages Orientau of the Paris Society, have now reached the eighth volume, and will be concluded in the next. In the Recueil des Historiens des Croisades, published under the auspices of the Académie des
1scriptions et Belles Lettres, the first volume of the Historiens Orientaux has made its appearance, containing the Arabic text and translations of the portions from Abulfeda relating to those events, together with a translation of the autobiography of the same author by M. De Slane ; besides extracts from the chronicle of Ibn-al-Athir, by Messieurs Reinaud, De Slane, and Defrémery. The Divdn of Ferazdak, a poet who flourished towards the end of the first and in the beginning of the second century of the Hijrah, is now for the first time made accessible to European scholars by M. R. Bucher. Two parts of the text of these poems, edited from a MS. at Constantinople, with a French translation, have appeared.
M. Garcin de Tassy has published a second edition of his work on the rhetoric and prosody of the Musalman nations, based upon the Hadayik al-balayat.
From the manuscript papers of the late M. Canssin de Perceval, the author of L'Histoire des Arabes avant Mahomet, M. C. Defrémery has printed, in the Journal Asiatique, a highly interesting though unfortunately incomplete essay, which was to contain biographical notices and anecdotes of the chief musicians at the court of the Khalifahs daring the first three centuries after the Hijrah. The paper, which is based on the Kitab Alaghant of Abu'l-Faraj, breaks off at the beginning of the third century in a notice (the 18th) of Abu Muhammad Ishak.
The same Journal (February March 1873) contains a paper, by M. S. Guyard, on the Sufic theologian 'Abd ar-Razzaq, in which an analysis and translation are given of his treatise on predestination and free-will. This Arabic writer was already known from his dictionary of the
technical terms of the Sufis, edited by Dr. A. Sprenger. The latter scholar has also shown that the author did not die in 887 of the Hijrah, as stated by Hajji Khalfa, but that he must have lived between 716-736 (A.D. 1316-1335).
In spite of the great difficulties of his task, Professor E. Sachau, of Vienna, has mula satisfactory progress in preparing editions of AlBiruni's two important works, the Tarikh i Hind and the Athar ul Bakid, and in translating the latter work for our Oriental Translation Fand. The printing of the Athdr, for which a liberal sum has been granted by the Indian Government, is already far advanced, and will probably be concluded in the course of the year. The text of the Tarikh, which is to be published at the expense of the German Oriental Society, and for which M. Schefer bas kindly placed his MS. at the editor's disposal, being also ready for press, it may be hoped that Dr. Sacbau will soon be able to dovote all his energy to the translation of the former work, 80 anxiously looked forward to by Oriental scholars.
Himyaritic-The decided success of M. Joseph Halévy's mission to Yemen has added a mass of new materials to our knowledge of the language and history of the Himyarites. The collection of 686 inscriptions brought away and published by him, with tentative translations, in the Journal Asiatique, have enabled him to enter into an examination of the palæography of these documents, and the grammatical formation of the language. In the Journal of the German Oriental Society, Dr. F. Praetorius has also published some fresh inscriptions, most of them brought home by Baron von Maltzan, with translations and analyses; and 1 paper on the Himyarite views on immortality and worship of saints. To the Trui.actions of the Society of Biblical Archæology (vol. II. pt. i.) Captain F. W. Prideaux has contributed an interesting review of the historical and geographical results of recent discoveries in South-West Arabia.
Turkish.-M. Belin has published, in the Journal Asiatique, another instalment, the fourth, of his useful Bibliographie Ottomane, containing brief accounts of the Turkish books printed at Constantinople during the years 1288 and 1289 of the Hijrah (22 March 1871 to 27 February 1873).
Indo-China-The untimely death of Lieut. Francis Garnier, of the French navy, must have been learnt with regret by all who take an interest in the progress of geographical discoveries in the East. After the death of his chief, the Capitaine de Lagrée, it fell to his lot to conduct to its successful termination the expedition which, leaving Saigon in 1866, mapped the course of the Cam. bodia river as far as it is navigable even by