The Book of Splendours

Introduction. XVIII

A complete collation. As for mss. nos. 4 and 7, I was able to make a quick examination, during which I made a certain number of collations for the characteristic passages of the text; as for nos. 11, 12, 14, and 15, I only know them through small specimens, of which the longest correspond to 7 pages of my edition.

It is upon these materials that I have constructed my text. To properly appreciate the textual differences of these manuscripts, one must consider two kinds of variants that are essentially significant for this work, because of its particular character as a grammar. On one hand, there are numerous lacunae caused by the similarity of sentence endings, especially by frequent repetitions of grammatical terms and stereotypical formulas. On the other hand, there are alterations, retouches, and reworkings of every kind because the copyist had ideas different from the author on the question of grammar or language. I have shown this in detail in my work Buch der Strahlen, p. xxv—xxxv, and I have discussed these two different types of variants. I have also already shown in that work how the widespread use that was made of the Grammar of Barhebraeus as a classroom book and as a study book contributed to the fact that, in most mss. of this grammar, variants of this kind, or other sorts, were abundantly noted in the margins. These numerous marginal annotations could—in the case of a copy—be treated in a very different manner: they could either be left out entirely or they could be taken into consideration by the copyist. In the latter case, they could have been maintained as marginal notes, or they could have been considered as corrections and incorporated into the text in place of another expression, answering to them more or less exactly, which originally belonged to the text, or they could have ended up being considered as additions to the original text and placed in the text at a location that seemed favorable to the copyist for such an addition. In reality, all these different alternatives were utilized by the different copyists, sometimes one and sometimes another. The result is that most mss. offer us a contaminated text, at the