The Book of Splendours

The Manuscripts.

text which appears to follow in a continuous manner, a lacuna that runs from p. 15.5 (hānā this) up to p. 17.9 (metḥam ḥā is bounded). This lacuna corresponds, as one can see, exactly to half of the lacuna in D, that is to say, to the last of the two leaves currently missing in this manuscript. The first, fol. 8 of the manuscript, must therefore have still existed when manuscript B was copied from D. If Martin in his edition cites a few readings from these leaves that are missing in D, this does not mean, as will be seen later (see infra, p. XIX and following), that these leaves existed in his time and that he was able to collate them. The "D" in Martin's notes may be an inadvertence.

Aside from the leaves just indicated, no others are missing from manuscript D. But the leaf corresponding in our edition to pages 19.20 (zawē pairs) – 21.20 (dīlhon theirs) is written in another hand, as is leaf Ṭ, corresponding to pages 38.12 (ellā en unless) – 40.12 (neštamlōn they shall be completed), fol. Yh, corresponding to pages 114.32 (lemḥā to strike) – 116.26 (nešlam it is finished), as well as leaves Mʾ–Mb, corresponding in our edition to the passage running from page 251.6 (pšīṭā simple) to the end. Here, manuscript B, in a text that appears to follow continuously, contains in the first case a lacuna of the same extent as that of fol. 9 of D, and in the last case, another one corresponding to pages 251.6 (pšīṭā) – 255.18 (zedqā justice/right) of our edition. This part of the text corresponds better than the text of folios Mʾ–Mb, indicated above, to the normal extent of two leaves of manuscript D. When B was copied from D, two leaves were therefore already missing, but the final part of the text, edition p. 255.18 (neštamlōn) to the end, was still found on another leaf which very likely (see below, p. XIII) also included the subscription of the manuscript. The original leaves of D Ṭ and Yh must also have been missing at that time. But in these latter cases, the copyist (B) noticed the lacuna and left a blank in his manuscript to be able to complete the text later. The first of these two lacunas was filled in the blank left on fol. 31 and fol. 32r, but the handwriting is different from the copyist's usual hand. It was the first hand that continued itself on fol. 32v. The same phenomenon occurred regarding the original leaf Yh, which was also missing. The handwriting is the same in both passages. The