History of Aristakes Lastivertts'i

the genuine readings, away from the many scribal errors which have been noted in the footnotes. A few readings, which have not been preserved in the manuscripts but were determined through an examination of the original text, are printed in spaced type. Thus, the current edition of Aristakes Lastiverttsʻi’s History has been carried out in the exact manner in which Agathangelos, Ghazar Pʻarpetsʻi, Movses Khorenatsʻi, Yeghishe, and Kirakos Gandzaketsʻi were published.

It must be said, however, that this principle—to note in the footnotes only those readings that were considered scribal errors—has been applied with some exceptions. For instance, it is impossible to determine in which cases the letter l was represented by 'l' and when by 'gh' referring to the Armenian letters 'լ' and 'ղ'. We have been forced to maintain current orthographic rules. Furthermore, archaic forms have been preserved in some codices, which most likely originate from the original text: koren they died, aghber springs, etc. However, these forms may also be determined by the scribe’s own orthography, so we have avoided introducing them into the main text.

Regarding the letter 'o', we have retained it to facilitate reading, even though this letter only appears in the 13th century. In the variants, the spellings 'o' and 'aw' are not specifically noted.

The etymological ending of the present active participle should be 'awgh', e.g., grogh writer, khndrawgh petitioner, etc. 1, but in the time of Aristakes Lastiverttsʻi, this rule had long been forgotten in scribal practice. Therefore, in the current edition, we have left the words mainly in the form in which they were read in the oldest manuscript, A.

As mentioned, the footnotes note those readings that are not genuine to Aristakes's original text and are viewed as scribal errors. However, codices C, D, E, F, H, and I have corrections made by a later hand, which are indicated by the letters c, d, e, f, h, and i and are presented without exception, regardless of whether they coincide with the original text or not.

The same applies to the footnotes of the first printing; they are marked with the letter 'Ts' (Tsanotʻagrutyun Note), and the numeral placed above that letter indicates how many manuscripts contain such a reading.

All errors are noted in the footnotes; only such absolute mistakes as, for example, dzeamb by hand vs. dzeamb by hand the transcription refers to minimal spelling variations of the same word, amatsʻutsʻen vs. amratsʻutsʻen to strengthen, etc., are ignored. The absence of a final 'y' in words like zghjana vs. zghjanay to repent and vera vs. veray upon, and a few other insignificant differences, are also not noted. The slightest variants in proper names are noted.

Quotations from the Old and New Testaments are cited everywhere; only literal quotes are placed in quotation marks (and cited), which, by the way, often differ significantly from the canonical text.

1 N. Marr, Grammar of the Ancient Armenian Language. St. Petersburg, 1903, p. 229.