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INTRODUCTION.
xlix
texts which usually precede them, and three-fifths of those which usually follow them, are still remaining. This MS. has lost its date, but a copy' of it exists in Bombay (written when it was complete) which ends with a colophon dated A.Y.941 (A.D. 1572), as detailed in p. xxxiii; this may either be the actual date of that copy, or it may have been merely copied from K35, which cannot be much older. The latter supposition appears the more probable, as this colophon seems to be left incomplete by the loss of the last folio in the Bombay copy, and may, therefore, have been followed by another colophon giving a later date.
This copy of K35 was, no doubt, originally complete, but has lost many of its folios in the course of time; most of the missing text has been restored from another MS., but there are still twelve or more folios missing from the latter part of the work; it contains, however, all that portion of the Selections which is translated in this volume, but has, of course, no authority independent of K35. The other MS. in Bombay, from which some of the missing text was recovered, is in the library of Dastur Jâmâspji Minochiharji; it is a modern copy, written at different periods from forty to sixty years ago, and is incomplete, as it contains only one-fourth of the texts which usually follow the ninety-two questions and answers, and includes no portion of the Selections of Zad-sparam.
Another MS. of the Dadistân-i Dînîk and its accompaniments, written also at Kirmân, but two generations earlier than K35 (say, about A.D. 1530), has been already mentioned (see p. xxxiii). It is said still to contain 227 folios, though its first seventy folios are missing ; it must, therefore, begin very near the same place as K35, but extends much further, as it supplies about half the text still missing from the
· The fact of its being a copy of K35 is proved by strong circumstantial evidence. In the first place, it contains several false readings which are clearly due to mis-shapen letters and accidental marks in K35, so that it is evidently descended from that MS. But it is further proved to have been copied direct from that MS., by the last words in thirty-two of its pages having been marked with interlined circles in K35; the circle having been the copyist's mark for finding his place, when beginning a new page after turning over his folios.
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