________________
APRIL, 1876.]
CORRESPONDENCE AND MISCELLANEA.
123
vessel), panchakkt (water-mill), the element pan (or An impartial reader, who attends to the sense pan) is a corruption of the Sanskrit pantya (water). rather than to the cadence, is simply palled and So, again, in Hindi such simultaneous forms as distracted by the sheer absence of order; though dharanhdr and dharanehar are very common. It he would fain discover something that should, will not be disputed that dharan and dharane instead, appeal to his sense of reverence. It is must be the same word, and have the same deriva- unfortunate when a book that demands credence tion, whatever that be. If so, dharan is but a succeeds in merely awakening criticism. One can corruption of dharane; and if there is, phonetically, hardly help surmising that if the Qorån had been no objection to dharane being a contraction of arranged on some principle tending to one uni. Sanskrit dharantya and Prakrit dharanfa or dha- form result-viz. the producing conviction,-a rania, there can be no objection to dharan being different effect might have issued from reading a corruption of dharantya through the intermediate it : and one woald suppose that a man inspired of form (dharania or) dharane; and so in the caso God with a revelation designed for the acceptance of all infinitives in an.
of all mankind, would himself have desired, above A. F. RUDOLP HOERNLE. all things, that the revelation should be chronicled Donnington, 15th January 1876.
and handed on to posterity in exactly the order THE QORÂN.
in which the Divine Being communicated it.
My points, however, are purely of a literary naCould any of your readers supply information
ture, and inasmuch as the same inquiries, if put on the following points -
in reference to the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, 1. When, and by whom, were the chapters
could be readily answered, it seems only rea(sura) of the Qoran arranged in their present sonable that they should, in the case of the Qoran order ?
also, meet with some satisfactory response. The edition now chiefly used throughout the
J. D. BATE. Muhammadan world is the one that was prepared Allahabad. by Zeid bin Thabit, during the Khalifate of Othmân, and under his orders; and the arrangement,
SANSKRIT MSS. referred to in my inquiry, is commonly regarded Babu Rajendralála Mitra says that Sanskrit MSS. as the work of Abu Bigar, the first of the Khalifs. are mostly written on country paper sized with But is this explanation a satisfactory one to the yellow arsenic and an emulsion of tamarind seeds, more enlightened of the Moslims P*
and then polished by rubbing with a conch-shell. 2. Is it possible to arrive at a sound conclusion A few are on white Kåśmiri paper, and some on as to what was the principle which regulated that palm-leaf. White arsenic is rarely used for the arrangement of the súras which was eventually size, but he has seen a few codices sized with it, adopted P
the mucilage employed in such cases being acacia Why the portion which was delivered first in gum. The surface of ordinary country paper being the order of time, viz. some of the earlier verses of rough, a thick coating of size is necessary for easy Súra e-ALAK) should have been put almost at the writing, and the tamarind seed emulsion affords end of the book (chap. xcvi), and the sdra that this admirably. The paper used for ordinary writwas last in the order of time (viz. TANBA, or, as ing is sized with rice gruel, but such paper attracts some hold, MAIDA) should be found almost at the damp and vermin of all kinds, and that great pest beginning (chapters ix. and v., respectively), is of literature, “the silver-fish," thrives luxuriantly not at all apparent from anything in the subject- on it. The object of the arsenic is to keep off this matter.
insect, and it serves the purpose most effectually. 3. These same inquiries might be put in re- No insect or worm of any kind will attack arseni. ference to the verses or texts (dyat).
cated paper, and so far the MSS. are perfectly This point seems the more important when we secure against its ravages. The superior appear. bear in mind that in the case of most of the chap- ance and cheapness of European paper has of late ters, the dyat first revealed' occurs, not at the induced many persons to use it, instead of the beginning of the súra, but somewhere in the body country arsenicated paper, in writing puthte; but of it, and often far on.
this is a great mistake, as the latter is not nearly so 4. Is it possible to decide when, and by whom, durable as the former, and is liable to be rapidly the vowel-pointing was done P
destroyed by insects. We cannot better illustrate 5. What is the ground of the Moslim's objection this than by referring to some of the MSS. in to the Qorån being edited with some regard to the library of the Bengal Asiatic Society. Thero chronological order ?
are among them several volumes written on fools• For a discussion of this and other points, see the lives of Muhammad, by Sir W, Muir, Sprenger, and others.---ED.
