Page:Quatrains of Omar Khayyam (tr. Whinfield, 1883).djvu/42

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INTRODUCTION.
I. The Bodleian MS., No. 140 of the Ouseley Collection, containing 158 quatrains.
II. The Calcutta Asiatic Society's MS., No. 1548, containing 516 quatrains.
III. The India Office MS., No. 2420, ff. 212 to 267, containing' 512 quatrains.
IV. The India Office MS., No. 2486, ff. 158 to 194, containing 362 quatrains.
V. The Calcutta edition of 1252 A.H., containing 438 quatrains, with an appendix of 54 more, which the editor says he found in a Bayáz, or common-place book, after the others had been printed.
VI. The Paris edition of M. Nicolas, containing 464 quatrains.
VII. The Lucknow lithographed edition, containing 763 quatrains.
VIII. A fragment of an edition begun by the late Mr. Blochmann, containing only 62 quatrains.

I have also consulted the Cambridge MS., for the purpose of settling one or two readings, but have not collated it throughout.

I have not given the various readings, except in cases of special importance. For every reading in the text there is MS. authority of some kind or other: there are only two cases, or three at the most, in which I have been driven to "the desperate resource of a conjecture," and these are indicated in the notes. The authorities for each quatrain are also given in the notes.

In editing the text, I have paid special attention to the prosody, marking all poetical contractions, and noting all peculiarities of metre and scansion.