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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
(SEPTEMRER, 1879.
ed. The adult service says: "Cause thou this regarding the missing text. The Dasturs appeardeparted one to possess the solace and the ease, ed to know nothing about it; but Mr. Khurshedji and the mercy and the grace. O God, if she have Rustamji Cama kindly sent me a description of a been a worker of good works, then do Thou add manuscript of the Bundahish, which its owner (a unto her good works. And if she have been an young priest named Tebmuras Dinshahji Ankleyevil doer, do Thou pass it over. And may security aria) had prepared at his request, and Mr. Tehand glad tidings surround her, with honour and muras subsequently sent me a copy of five chapters privilege. And free Thou her from the torment of of his MS. with further information about it. the grave and of hell fires, causing her to dwell in | This MS. was brought from Persia a few years the abode of the paradises, with her children. O ago, and contains not only fifteen more chapters God, make Thou her tomb a garden of the gardens than the MSS. hitherto known, but also much of heaven; and let not her grave be a pit of the additional matter in several other chapters, so pits of perdition. For Thy mercy's sake, O Thou that the text is more than doubled in extent. most Compassionate of the Merciful." Every From a notice of the writer and his contemporMuslim woman's tombstone, like those of the aries contained in the penultimate chapter, it men, ends the inscription with an address to the appears that this version of the Bundahish was pious passer-by to recite a certain passage of the written about the same time as the Dddistan-iQur'an, as an act of charity for the benefit of her Dini-that is about A.D. 880. So far as I can soul. Every Muslim, man and woman, five times judge from the portion of the text (about onea day, after the prescribed service of worship, tenth of the whole) which was kindly placed at offers, as an apostolic custom, a voluntary prayer my disposal, it is hardly possible to distinguish for the forgiveness of his or her sins, of those of the style of the additional matter from that of the their "two parents," and of all "believers and received text; so that there is every probability believeresses." Sa'di, the great Persian poet, has that the MSS. hitherto known consist merely of said in his well-known Bustan, respecting the Last extracts from this longer text. I am however Judgment :
inclined to suspect that this longer text was only "Devout women, the Lord God who've faithfully. a revision of an older work, as there is reason to serv'd,
suppose that the original Bundahish terminated Shall high precedence hold over men that have with the account of the resurrection. swerv'd."
The manuscript belonging to Mr. Tehmuras is, To judge from these specimens, Turkish poetry of course, a comparatively recent copy of the may repay the research of the curious; and from ninth-century recension; it is not dated, but it these arguments, the question of woman's soul, as was written by the granduncle of a writer who viewed in Islam, must be considered as definitely copied another MS. in A.D. 1572. set at rest. THE BUNDAHISH.
THE WÅLIS OF PERSIA, &c. (Letter from Dr. Ed. W. West to the Academy, General A. H. Schindler writes to The 28th April 1879.)
Academy :It may interest Oriental scholars to learn that Muhammad, who commanded part of the Persian a manuscript exists which contains a much more troops at the battle of Gulnabad [March 8, 1723] complete and extensive text of the Bundahish or was Walt of Howeizah or Hawizah, a town and cosmogony of the Pârsis, than that hitberto district at the lower end of the Kerkheh or Kerah known. The most complete MS. of the received river, which flows into the Tigris. The chiefs of text is contained in an old codex now at Copen- the Hawizah Arabs have the hereditary title of hagen, a copy of which was brought from India to Wali; and at times, when they were also GoverParis by Anquetil Duperron more than half a nors of Arabistan, they were called Wali of Arabiscentury before the original found its way to tan, not Viceroy of Arabia (as Malleson writes it] Europe. Unfortunately the old MS. at Copen- but Governor of Arabistan. Arabistan was always hagen has lost one folio of the Bundahish, the and is the Persian province bounded on the north contents of which are not to be found in any other by Little Luristan, on the east by Great Luristan copy known to Europeans.
(the Bakhtiari country) and Fârs; extends in the While recently engaged in translating the south to the Persian Gulf, and joins on the west Bundahish, I made several enquiries in Bombay Turkish territory
The Academy, May 3, 1879, pp. 891, 892. . May 3, 1879, p. 392. * M. Sanson was a French missionary from Louis XIV.
to the Persian court, and as quoted below he speaks of "A viza" as the government of one of the ten Wilis acknowledged in Persia when he wrote in 1688.-ED.
