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INTRODUCTION.
lation at the time when he wrote it. Also, in Chap. LXXVII, a blank having been left for some illegible word in the Avesta-Persian text, a similar blank has been left in the Gugarâti translation, although it is hardly possible that any mere copyist would have found the same word illegible in both versions.
With regard to the source whence the Avesta-Persian text of La was derived, there can be little doubt that it was originally transliterated from a manuscript written in the Perso-Arabic character, as there are several blunders in La which can be best explained as owing to the mutual resemblance of certain letters in that character. Thus, the fact that the modern Persian letters b, n, t, y differ only in the number and position of certain dots, which are sometimes omitted or misplaced, accounts for such blunders as bâ and yâ for tâ, khâna for 'hâyah. While, owing to similar resemblances, the transliterator has written kustî for gêtî, muluk for balkih, guza for gôsh, and having been doubtful, in one place, whether to read rôz or zôr, he has written both words, one above the other.
Somewhat more recent than this Avesta-Persian manuscript is Lp, No. 2506 of the Persian manuscripts in the India Office Library in London, which was presented to the Library by Mr. J. Romer at the same time as La. This manuscript is a small octavo volume, in which the prose Sad Dar occupies the first forty-six folios of Indian paper, written generally fifteen lines to the page in the Perso-Arabic character. In its present state it contains no date, the last folio of the colophon being lost, but the paper is not much newer than that of La. The colophon is written in the Avesta character, and is to the following effect :- This book is the book Sad Dar, a Nask of the religion of Zarathustra, the good religion of the Mazdaworshippers. These hundred questions of the proper and improper are extracted from this good religion of the Mazda-worshippers, and frân-shâh, son of Yazad-yâr, ...;' the rest being lost.
Another important copy of the Persian text of the prose Sad Dar is contained in B29, a two-volume, quarto Rivåyat,
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