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INTRODUCTION.
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the end of the volume, it appears that it was written by Dârâshah, son of Mihrbânji, and the first half of the volume was completed at a date corresponding to Wednesday the 9th August 1809.
Another example of the Pârsî-Persian version is found in No. 2769 of the Persian manuscripts in the India Office Library in London, in which manuscript it occupies 75 folios, written eleven lines to the page, and is not dated, though probably written early this century. In this copy the Pârsî text is tolerably complete, but long passages of the Persian translation are omitted; when given, the Persian is usually identical with that in MH7, though some instances of independent translation occur.
In addition to the Pahlavi, Pazand, Sanskrit, Gugarâti, Pârsî, and Persian texts of the prose Dînâ- Maînôg-î Khirad, the popularity of the work is further evinced by the existence of two versions in Persian verse. One of these was described by Professor Sachau in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, new series, vol. iv, pp. 229-283, from a manuscript in the library of that Society in London, written probably near the end of last century. The author of this metrical Persian paraphrase appears to have been a native of Râvar in Sindh, named Marzubân, who composed it from a Pârsî version of the original text, bequeathed to him by his teacher while he was studying the old traditions at Yazd; and the date of his composition seems to have been A. D. 1612. His verses contain only fifty-four questions and answers, but these contain the substance of the greater part of the Mînôkhirad, as the work is called in Persian, with some few additions from other sources.
A copy of the other metrical Persian Mînôkhirad occupied fols. 527-550 in the second volume of B29, a two-volume quarto Rivâyat, No. 29 in the Bombay University Library. It is doubtful whether the original number of folios were twenty-four or twenty-six, but only twenty-two now remain. These contain 497 couplets of introductory matter, 1060 representing the text of the work, and 190 of epilogue; and from 160 to 330 further couplets of the text are missing. According to statements in the introduction and
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