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INTRODUCTION.
xxxi
several cases he has also substituted the correct abstract suffix -îh for the usual incorrect -îk, but this correction is generally confined to abstract nouns in common use.
As none of these Pahlavi manuscripts can be considered otherwise than as reproductions from the Pazand, it is to the Pazand-Sanskrit version of Nêryðsang that we must still look for the nearest approach to the original text of the work. It is in this version, too, that we find the greatest extent of text still extant, although the Sikand-gümanik Vigår seems to possess the peculiarity of wearying out all its copyists at some point or other, so that not only is there no complete copy of the work known, but also nearly every copyist has stopped his work at a different place.
The oldest known manuscript of the Pazand-Sanskrit version belongs to Dastar Hôshangji Jamaspji of Poona, and is called AK, because it is supposed to have been written by Åsadîn, son of Kaka. In its present state this manuscript consists of seventy-seven small quarto folios of very old, discoloured, Indian paper, written sixteen lines to the page, and containing the Pazand version in short sentences, alternating with a word-for-word Sanskrit translation of each sentence; the Sanskrit being written upside down, for the sake of forming a continuous line with the reversely-written Avesta characters of the Pazand. From other manuscripts it is known that this Pazand-Sanskrit version was compiled by Nêryôsang, son of Dhaval, but in this manuscript his usual Sanskrit introduction is lost with the first three folios of the text, and the existing seventyseven folios contain only Chaps. I, 16-XI, 145. As this extends only one folio beyond the middle of the whole of the text that is extant, it is supposed that this old manuscript was divided into two nearly equal moieties on the occasion of some division of property, of which the earlier moiety has been preserved, and the later one either lost, or destroyed, or buried in some inaccessible library.
In consequence of the imperfect state of this manuscript it bears no date, but an old Sanskrit colophon has been copied by the writer of JE (one of the more modern manuscripts that are evidently derived from AK through one or
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