The Book of Splendours

Restitution of the text. XIX

editing of which chance seems to have presided. Only concerning S can one say that it is a copy of T; concerning B, that it is a copy of D; concerning Sa, that it is a copy not directly of L, but a copy of a ms. very closely related to L which had, however, marginal notes beyond those already found in L. Regarding the other mss.—I speak naturally only of those I can claim to know—one can only say that they offer a text related to such and such a ms. or influenced by it—and unfortunately, most often, one can only say this of certain parts of the text without this remark being applicable to others. In other words, it is not possible to classify the manuscripts of the great Grammar of Barhebraeus into families clearly determined according to the manuscript tradition they represent¹.

It is evident that these relationships between the mss. make the reconstitution of the text difficult. This fact is counterbalanced, however, in the case that occupies us, by the fact that, as the textual collations I have made have shown me, the four oldest manuscripts I cited (DFLT) already contain all the variants of any importance that are not merely copying errors or intentional alterations of a later date. In other words, there should not be found in the rest of the manuscripts any true textual tradition going back to the original text alongside and beyond that which is provided to us, in a more authentic form, in the four oldest mss. we have cited.

In the Buch der Strahlen (p. XLII sq.) I grouped the results of the study I made of the mss., and I was able to present the mss. FLT as the principal guarantors, and the mss. GB(D) as also being of a certain value, although of a lower order, and these six mss. as sufficient for the constitution of the text. My opinion on ms. D was founded exclusively on the indications given by MARTIN on this ms. and on its text, in the Preface of his edition and in his variants. However, I had already at that moment expressed here and there my doubts about the accuracy of

1. Cf. B. d. Str., p. XXXV—XLIII.