the Oriِental editions is their ambiguity. The Mathnawí demands thought and intelligence from those who study it, and they on their part have the right to expect that its meaning shall not be obscured by doubts as to orthography and syntax, due to omission of the iẓáfat, absence of vowels, and the fact that ك not distinguished from گ. For example, in these editions ک, besides its ordinary uses as a pronoun and conjunction, represents five separate words, namely, گ, straw, ڴ, time, ک, little, گ, mountain and ڱ, dung; and it may occur, with different meanings, twice or thrice in the same verse. Where the sense is plain, such uncertainties do not matter, but in the Mathnawí the sense is often anything but plain. I have endeavoured to provide students with a text which will not puzzle them unnecessarily. The verses in each Book are numbered from beginning to end, so that henceforth it will be easy to refer to any particular verse or passage.
So far as the present volume is concerned, I have used five manuscripts, four of which were written within some seventy years after A. H. 672, the year in which Jaláluʾddin died. Three of the five, designated A, B, and L respectively, contain the Mathnawí complete:
Manuscripts used for the present edition.
| A | (British Museum, Or. 5602), 290 ff., 25 lines = 50 verses on a full page, written in four columns in a small distinct hand by ʿAli b. Muḥammad(?), who finished the transcription towards the end of the year 718 (A. D. 1318–19). پ not, as a rule distinguished from ب, nor چ from ج; but the post-vocalic ذ is absent. |
| B | (Munich), Nº 35 in Aumer's Cat. of the Persian Manuscripts in the Staatsbibliothek in München, 281 ff., 25 lines = 50 verses on a full page, elegantly and correctly written in four columns by Muḥammad b. al-Ḥájj Dawlatsháh b. Yúsuf al-Shírází, who completed the transcription on the 15th of Dhu ʾl-Ḥijja in the year 744 (29th of April, A. D. 1344). پ is distinguished from ب, چ from ج, and ذ is written for د after vowels. |
