Book Title: Sacred Laws of Aryas
Author(s): Gorge Buhler
Publisher: Oxford


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Page 928
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INTRODUCTION.
xxvii
to the reader. Some doubtful words and passages still defy all attempts at satisfactory solution, but of these the reader is warned; and, no doubt, a few oversights and mistakes will be discovered.
With regard to the original text, we have to recover it from four manuscripts which are, more or less, independent authorities, and may be styled K 20, K20b, M6, and TD. The first three of these have evidently descended, either directly or through one or more intermediate copies, from the same original; but the source of TD, so far as it can be ascertained, seems to have been far removed from that of the others. All the other MSS. of the Bundahis, which have been examined, whether Pahlavi or Pazand, are descended either from K20 or M6, and are, therefore, of no independent authority.
K20 is the very old codex already mentioned as having been brought from Bombay by Rask in 1820, and is now No. 20 of the collection of Avesta and Pahlavi MSS. in the University Library at Kopenhagen. It consists now of 173 folios of very old and much-worn Indian paper of large octavo size, but five other folios are certainly missing, besides an uncertain number lost from the end of the volume. This MS. contains twenty Pahlavi texts, written twenty lines to the page, and some of them accompanied by Avesta; the Bundahis is the ninth of these texts, and occupies fols. 88–129, of which fol. 121 is missing. Three of the texts, occurring before the Bundahis, have dated colophons, but the dates are A. Y. 690, 720, and 700, all within 36 folios; it is, therefore, evident that these dates have been copied from older MSS.; but at the same time the appearance of the paper indicates that the actual date of the MS. cannot be much later than A.Y. 720 (A.D. 1351), and there are reasons for believing that it was written several years before A. Y. 766 (A. D. 1397), as will be explained in the description of M6. Owing to its age and comparative completeness this MS. of the Bundahis is certainly the most important one extant, although comparison with other MSS. proves that its writer was rather careless, and frequently omitted words and phrases. The
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