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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.
