Rasaratnākara (manuscript)

PREFACE.

They think this referring to a previous philosophical debate most irrationally, up to "since it is very great," we shall say to him that this is missing in the manuscript.

A third manuscript was added from Nuremberg, seemingly from the 14th century, as witnessed by Fabricius (B. G. Vol. IV page 40, edited by Harl.). J. Chr. Kappius, the editor of Aristotle's booklet On the World, had prepared a new edition of Cleomedes and had compared an excellent and clear codex from the Nuremberg library with others, but being intercepted by a premature death, he left that task to others. For this reason, we were pleased to take up the thread begun by Kappius, so that we might also elaborate on the collation of this codex and consult it in doubtful passages. Without doubt, it must be ascribed to the family of more recent manuscripts, as several interpolations amply demonstrate, for which reason we have rarely changed the text based on its authority.

Therefore, equipped with these aids for emendation, and having examined the text of Cleomedes—as published by Bake in 1820 and by C. Th. Chr. Schmidt in 1832, which depends entirely upon it—more than once, we proposed a twofold duty for ourselves: first, that we should express the reading of the Medicean codex as much as possible, as it is the most ancient of all the codices we inspected; second, that we should remove, as far as possible, with the help of two others, the errors born from the negligence of scribes and the corruptions from which not even that best codex is free. Thus, we have dared to bring a remedy to the writer cautiously and providently, and we have intentionally neglected all other codices which we did not examine ourselves, and about whose age it was not permitted to make a certain judgment.

*) We discussed these matters more accurately in the dissertation titled: On the Life and Writings of Cleomedes. Meissen 1878. 8.
**) The codices of the Marcian Library, No. CCXIV and CCCVIII, which Fabricius (loc. cit.) assigns to the 11th–12th century, are, like six others that contain the writings, written in the 14th–15th century.