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326
EPISTLES OF MÂNUSKIHAR.
and.... by me from1. . . . and...., would have been quite desirable to increase my gratitude unto the sacred beings for the health and salutation of your priestly lordship, though it had been merely to write intelligence of your own condition; for your writing of the epistle is not such as that of the distant who write in duplicate, but like that of neighbours who think that everything new should always be really mutual information. 3. As to that, too, which you ordered to write about omens and such occurrences-for which my form of words is not as is twice specified within the epistle, and from henceforth one should order to write intelligence more clearly-moreover, on account of want of leisure on many subjects, my heart is not disengaged even for the understanding of omens.
4. I apprize your priestly lordship that in this
certain whether a man or a city is alluded to. The text, as it stands in the MSS., is as follows:-'Nâmako zîtano dên bidanâ ÂvânŎ mûn Nivshahpûhar nipistano farmûdo va mado.' This can be translated as in our text, if the word va be omitted; but, if this word be retained and mûn be changed into min, the translation would be as follows:-'The epistle which some one was ordered by you to write in the month Avân from Nivshahpahar, and which came.' Now it is evident from Ep. I that Zâd-sparam must have been in Sîrkân for some time previous to the date of that epistle, 15th March 881, and, therefore, probably in the previous November; but, at the same time, it must be noticed that there are allusions in this second epistle (see Chaps. I, 12, V, 3) to his having been formerly at Sarakhs and among the Tughazghuz, that is, in the extreme east of Khurâsân; it is, therefore, just possible that he may have been at Nivshahpahar, on his way to Sirkân in the south, in November.
1 J and BK attempt to fill up the blank with the words kêshvar arg, 'the value of the realm;' but the original text probably stood thus:-' and was received by me from so and so,' the names having been torn off in some intermediate MS.
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