SUMMARY OF ARTICLES

The Sermon on Manohmed Ro ¦ § sn Badr-al-Zama¦ n Qarâ¦b Manohmed Ro¦ § sn (in Parthian, or Wahman Wuzurg in Middle Persian) is a rather unknown Manichaean deity. He is usually taken to be a redeeming god of the third creation, who brings gnosis to human beings. In his scholarly book, Der Sermon vom Licht-Nous , Werner Sundermann tries to throw light upon the role of this deity in Manichaean Pantheon. According to him, Manohmed is derived from Av. manaÉho¦ humaiti and means ``the Good Thought of the Mind''. He is the manifestation of the Realm of Light which is ruled over by the Father of Greatness, and is equal to the Great Nous of western Manichaeism. Some Middle Persian Phrases Found in Ancient Persian and Arabic Texts A. Tafaz− − zol⦠Translated by L. cAskarâ¦, F. Pa¦ kza ¦ d For the student of Middle Persian and old Iranian dialects who faces a dearth of surviving texts, the discovery of a new phrase or even one hitherto unrecorded word is news indeed. The late author stresses at the outset the importance of surveying early Islamic texts, in Persian or Arabic, in the hope of coming across some older Middle Persian phrases or words (referred to variously by the earlier writers as cAjam, Fors, Fa ¦ rsi, Fahlavi or Pahlavi) which may have been inserted in conjunction with some anecdote or other from the old times. And he goes on to give us a few instances from such early historians as Ebne K ¢ orda¦ dbeh, Abu¦ Hala¦ l `Askar⦠and Beyhaq⦠. He even quotes an account recorded by Qolqas§ and⦠in which the Prophet Moh ¤ ammad is supposed to have greeted his faithful Persian follower Salma¦ n one day with the words ``drwsth w § s'dth'' (in Latinized

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transliteration). This the author interprets as ``drusti¦ h ud § s¦ adi¦ h'' (health and happiness). The main body of the article, however, is devoted to a systematic scrutiny of two books: a) Ta¦ ri¦ £ k -e Qom (The History of Qom), which has been rendered into Persian early in the 9th century AH by H ¤ asan Ebne cAbd-al-Malek of Qom from the Arabic original of the same title by H ¤ asan Ebne Moh ¤ ammad of Qom, dated 378 AH, which has not survived, and b) Moh ¤ ¦ a− zera ¦ t-al Odaba¦ ß by Ra¦ ¦ geb of Isfahan who lived up to the latter half of the 5th century AH. The author singles out 21 words and 11 phrases from The History of Qom and gives them a thorough linguistic analysis. Likewise he scrutinizes two different short poems that he finds misquoted in Moha¦ − zera ¦ t and tries to restore them to their original form. Ambiguity, Vagueness and Amphiboly in the Persian Language and Literature N. Da ¦ var⦠The authoress starts with basic definitions: ambiguity occurs when a word or linguistic structure is equivocal and capable of more than one interpretation; the same is true of amphiboly, except that the latter is used by the writer or the poet artistically, as a figure of speech; vagueness is cloudy language and occurs when no clear meaning can be assigned to a word or phrase. She then presents a methodical and detailed study of the three key terms, on the basis of the views of experts, such linguists as Joanna Channell, G.N. Leech and G. Lions. Finally she presents the results of her own research on amphiboly from a study of Hafez. From the instances she has found in 500 couplets of the famous poet, she has been able to come up with a classicfication of amphiboly which she presents in ‫ ـ‬a ‫ ـ‬table. We find that she has ‫ ـ‬three ‫ ـ‬major classifications: a) semantic, b) lexical and c) lexico-semantic, with each division then having a number of subdivisions. The table is followed by citations from Hafez exemplifying each subdivision. Metonymy, Painting of Speech T. Va¤ ‫ ـ‬h¦ ‫ ـ‬â‫ـ‬d¦ ‫ ـ‬â‫ـ‬y¦ ‫ـ‬a‫ـ‬n‫ـ‬-‫ـ‬K¦ ‫ـ‬a‫ـ‬m‫ـ‬k¦ ‫ـ‬a‫ـ‬r Metonymy (kena¦ ye in Persian) is a figure of speech that substitutes the name of an attribute, or attributes, of something for the name of the object itself. And from this definition, the author, a professor of Persian literature at the Ferdowsi University of Mashad, proceeds upon a systematic presentation of this important literary ploy, pointing out to us its various types, and quoting copiously from the classical and contemporary Persian poets as he goes along. Among the different

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functions that metonymy can assume, the author cites the following: two-dimensionality, painting of speech, giving an objective aspect to subjective things, ambiguity, substitution of a part for the whole, brevity, hyperbole, alienation and defamiliarization, and finally reasoning. ``The other figures of speech such as simile, metaphor and figurative language affect the sentiments, but metonymy, by virtue of its reasoning nature, addresses not only the sentiments, but also the reason,'' says the author in conclusion. Persian and the Interchange of Bibliographic Information M. ¤ Sadâ¦q-Behza¦ d⦠With the advent of the computer age, Iran's major libraries find themselves compelled to produce machine-readable bibliographic information. The codes and character sets used need to be uniform or at least compatible if this information is to be passed on from one library to another. This necessity becomes more acute when information is to be received from, or passed to, libraries abroad. The authoress, who is an experienced librarian associated with the National Library of Iran, surveys the difficulties which have to be surmounted. These include divergent methods of transcription and transliteration of Persian and non-Persian proper nouns and diverse character sets and control codes used by various software producers. ``With the ever more widespread use of Persian software packages which do not always use the same character sets, it is becoming more and more evident that the stored data is not always interchangeable among the computers using these packages.. The need for the presence of up-to-date systems capable of sharing the same data is being increasingly felt and the creation of a coordinated system of information interchange for the Persian script is becoming ever more urgent.'' Loan-words from Greek in Persian M. H ¤ asan-du ¦ st The author identifies 25 words of Greek ancestry in Persian and traces back their etymology to the original source. These words have entered Modern Persian through either of two routes: a) Parthian and Middle Persian and b) Aramaic and Arabic. The Persian words dealt with are the following: ¦ abnu ¦ s (ebony), ebli¦ s (devil), abu ¦ qalamu¦ n (more common form bu ¦ qalamu¦ n, a textile with shifting colours), at£ ¦ ir (ether), arg ¦ anu¦ n (organ), ari¦ ke (throne, high seat), ost¤ orla ¦ b (astrolabe), ost¤ oqos (foundation), ost¤ ¦ ure (myth, English cognate: history), esfanj§ (sponge), osqof (bishop), at¤ las (Atlas, Atlantic), afyu ¦ n (opium), aqa ¦ qi¦ ya ¦ (acacia), eqli¦ m (climate; continent), oqya ¦ nu ¦ s (ocean), eksi¦ r (elixir), alma¦ s (diamond), enj§ ¦ il

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(evangel, gospel), barbat¤ (barbit, a lute-like many-stringed instrument), borj§ (tower; solar month; English cognate: burg), balasa ¦ n (balsam), balg ¦ am (phlegm), bolu ¦ r (crystal, English cognate: beryl), bayt¤ ¦ ar (veterinarian, English cognate: hippiatric). A Few Words of Hindi Origin Found in Persian Poetry H ¤ . Rez− ¦ a'¦ ‫ـ‬â Ba ¦ ¦ gbâ¦d⦠Some words of Persian origin have found their way into Sanskrit, and words of Sanskrit origin are occasionally encountered in classical Persian poetry. Some of these have even entered the domain of everyday speech. The author identifies some of these Hindi words and gives citations for their use from the works of well-known Iranian poets. Here are a few: pa ¦ n (pa© n: leaf of the betel pepper chewed with lime and betel-nut), pa ¦ ni¦ (water), pa ¦ ni¦ d (alphenic, white barley sugar), pala ¦ rak (a type of 1 tempered steel), ta ¦ l‫( ـ‬tala: musical time or rhythm), ta ¦ l‫ ـ‬2 (a kind of palm with very large leaves), ta ¦ l‫ ـ‬3 (a large circular tray), tanbu¦ l (similar to pa ¦ n above), § c¦ ire (a kind of turban), da ¦ d (a disease of the skin), sa ¦ § J (teak wood), sa ¦ ri¦ (sari), sa ¦ l (sal: a valuable timber tree of India), su ¦ s (porpoise), § sang (a stick, a club), § s¦ ile (a type of cotton fabric), kat (throne, divan; Modern English: cot), ku¦ ri¦ (a type of wild grain), longu ¦ te (langooty), lavand (whore, whore-like), mandal (mandala). An Arabic History of Ancient Iran and Its Persian Translation A. £ Kat¦ ‫ـ‬âb⦠The history in question is Neha¦ yat-al-arab fi¦ Ak £ ba ¦ r-al-Fors wa-al- cArab, and its translation, undertaken in the 8th century AH is entitled Taja¦ rob-al-Omam fi¦ Ak £ ba ¦ r Molu¦ k al-cArab wa-al- cA§ J‫ ـ‬am . Both the author and the translator remain anonymous, and both texts were available to scholars only in manuscript form. Now both have been published. The original has been edited, from an MS in the ¦ £ t¦ a r British Museum, by the late M.T. Da¦ nes§ paz§ ¦u h and published by An§ J‫ـ‬oman-e A va Mafa¦£ ker-e Farhang⦠of Tehran (1996), and the translation has been edited, on the basis of an MS dated 789 AH/1387 CE in the Hagia Sophia Library of Istanbul, by R. Anza¦ b⦠nez§¦ a d and Y. Kala¦ ntar⦠, and published by the Ferdowsi University Press of Mashad (1994). What makes this history especially interesting for the Iranians is not so much the accounts of the first men and the early biblical prophets (which is quite usual in similar Islamic histories), but the legends of the ancient Iranian kings and heroes, which have found their way into the book, the author suspects, from Sassanian sources contained in K £ oda ¦ y Na¦ me, which was later rendered into Arabic by Ebne Moqaffa c under the title of Si¦ yar'ol Molu¦ k. The author reviews the opinions expressed by various European orientalists,

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including E.G. Browne and O. Klima, on the authenticity of Neha¦ yat-al-arab and finally agrees with Christensen that the work appears to have been compiled in the first part of the 5th century AH on the basis of works of Ebne Moqaffa c and two other Arab historians, §Sa cb⦠and Ebne Qerr⦠yya. More is known about the translation. An MS of Neha¦ yat-al-arab is carried from the Abbasid Library in Baghdad to Shiraz in the 7th century AH for the royal library of Ata¦ beg Sa'd ebne Zangi. This is later transported to ¦ Iza§ J, the capital of the Ata¦ begs of Luristan, and there a Persian translation of the work is commissioned. The editors are of the opinion that the ruler who commissioned the translation is Nos¤ rat-al-D⦠n Ah ¤ mad (r. 696-733/ 1297-1332). The author of this review disagrees and claims that a line of poetry included in the introduction contains a clue which points to a later ruler called §Sams-al-D⦠n Pas§ ang (r. 757-792/ 1356-1390), and thus concludes that the 789 MS is indeed the anonymous translator's own presentation copy. K. Ema ¦ mâ ¦