The Book of Splendours

Restitution of the text. XXI

what I have just said (p. x and xv) on the relationship of these two mss. (D and B). Even more significant errors were caused by the inaccuracy of the list of variants provided by Martin in the passage that is found in his edition p. 155, 7 sq., and in mine p. 152, 32—153, 4. There (p. xxxiii) I compared D to mss. 𝔏BPL, but in reality, this manuscript originally has the same text as mss. FTGSHO. This reading was corrected, it is true, at a later time according to the text of the first group of mss. (𝔏BPL) and that perhaps already by the first scribe of the ms. But D belongs in spite of everything, for this passage, first and foremost to the last group (FTGHO).

In the discussion of the passage of Martin p. 31, 4 (in my ed. p. 32, 18) the faulty indications given by Martin also led us to establish inaccurate correspondences, but here of lesser importance. In the work that is cited here, p. xxxix sq., I showed how, due to the inaccuracies of Martin's variants, one cannot have an exact idea of the value of D for the establishment of the text. My personal examination of this ms. confirmed this opinion. Unfortunately, the lack of time prevented me from replacing Martin's list with a more precise and complete collation. But I was, however, able to convince myself that this ms. is of considerable value. It is far from having been revised, secondhand, in as many places as Martin seems to believe. Its text is relatively pure. But, as with regard to all these revisions and marginal notes of the different mss. of the grammar of Barhebraeus, it is important to distinguish between the first hand and the secondary hands. A particular difficulty concerning this ms. is that the primitive writing, in the course of the restoration of the ms. made by Abdallah, was for a large part of the manuscript gone over by a more recent hand, so that it is not always easy to determine if the writing found underneath was from the first hand or from a secondary hand. At first I thought I had noticed, in a certain number of cases, this peculiarity of this ms., that the first scribe had himself transformed the original text, or that he had crossed it out and replaced it with another in the margin. It seemed to me to be so at least p. 122, 24-26, 152, 31 sq., 215, 16. The new