PREFACE.
THE lines originally laid down for this Dictionary were, to prepare a revised edition of
Johnson's enlargement of Wilkins-Richardson's Persian, Arabic, and English Dictionary, by reducing the Arabic element and increasing the Persian, so as to
produce a volume of moderate dimensions and price, specially adapted to the wants of
the English Student. While the work was progressing, however, it was found that the
mere reduction of the Arabic portion would not suffice to answer the purpose intended.
It became evident not only that much that was superfluous had to be eliminated, but
that, on the other hand, many additions were urgently required, and furthermore that
the material had to be re-arranged on new and distinct principles. At the same time
it was soon felt that the fresh matter to be introduced in the Persian part exceeded the
limits contemplated, and necessitated in this respect a considerable extension of the
primary plan. A few remarks on these points will here be useful, and may also convey
some idea of the amount of extra labour spent on the compilation of the work beyond
that which was originally anticipated.
I. Persian is so deeply imbued with Arabic, and the two languages have, in the
course of time, become so intimately connected in the literature of the former, that
sooner or later the student of Persian must become a student of Arabic also, if he aspires
to take rank as a Persian scholar of real eminence. When this moment has arrived,
he will naturally have need of an Arabic dictionary, constructed on a plan most conducive
to the acquirement of that language, and based on the knowledge of its grammar. But
what he will want until then is a copious Arabic vocabulary, "chiefly in relation (to
quote Johnson's words) to the indefinite extent to which the best Persian writers avail
themselves of the Arabic language, either to enrich their style or to display their
erudition." While fully acknowledging the legitimacy of this object, it has nevertheless
been thought that the accomplished and conscientious scholar who formulated it, in
carrying out his task, has partly gone beyond and partly fallen short of his own standard.
He himself admits that he retained in his work not only "a large number of Arabic
words of very questionable usefulness, merely because they had found a place in the
former editions," but also added "many others which may possibly be foreign to Persian
literature, but which may also be found in it, and of an explanation of which the student
may occasionally stand in heed." To justify this somewhat haphazard mode of proceeding, the plea "that superfluity appeared preferable to deficiency," would only hold
good if this very indictment of deficiency in some essential points could not be urged
against his compilation.
It seemed more advisable to restrict the selection to such words as may either
reasonably be supposed to occur in Persian authors, or which are actually found in the
prescribed text-books, and in those productions of Persian literature, the perusal of which
will be most beneficial to the student. In the former direction it appeared to the present
author that a collection made by a learned Persian for the use of Persians had a paramount claim to serve as a groundwork for this part of the undertaking. ʻAbdu ʼr-Rashīd
al-Ḥusainī, the author of a highly-valued Persian dictionary called the "Farhangi
Rashīdī," has made a collection of this kind under the title of "Muntaḵẖabu ʼl-lug̠ẖāt,"
dedicated by him to Shah Jahān of Dehlī. The following reasons have induced the
author to embody the whole of this compilation in the present dictionary:--
ʻAbdu ʼr-Rashīd professes in the introduction to his work to have made from the
"Qāmūs," the "Surāh," the "Sihāh," and other sources, a selection of those Arabic
words which are "necessary (ẓarūrīyah) and of frequent use (kas̤īratu ʼl-istiʻmāl)," and
to have explained them in Persian equally "comprehensible to the popular understanding
(ʻām-fahm) and approved by the educated (ḵẖāṣ-pasand)." What he means by necessary
and of frequent use becomes evident from the passages which he quotes in support of
his explanations, and which are exclusively taken either from the chief Persian poets,
as Firdausī, Anwarī, Ḵẖaqānī, Nizāmī, Saʻdī, Ḥāfiz̤, &c., or from the Qurʼān and Ḥadīs̤.
This implies that the words selected by him are indispensable to a Persian of a studious
turn of mind who is anxious to understand thoroughly the poetry of his own language,
or who aspires to an initiation into the knowledge most highly prized by Muhammadans,
namely, that of matters theological, moral, and metaphysical, which abounds in quotations
from and allusions to "the book" and the "traditions." If, therefore, an acquaintance
with such words is considered indispensable to the Persian student, it must be so
à fortiori to the student of Persian.
The "Muntaḵẖab," however, takes no notice of a large number of Arabic words
which have become naturalized in Persian, to such a degree that a Persian of average
education needed no explanation on their account. Foremost among these are many
current technical and scientific terms. A discreet choice of vocables of this category
was considered indispensable, especially in reference to grammatical and metrical terminology, with which a student must make himself acquainted if he wishes to understand
the native commentaries on the great Persian poets.
Still greater importance has been placed on including in this dictionary Arabic
words in daily use, such as in reality are met with in the best Persian authors from
the days of the "Shāhnāmah" to the Rūznāmahs (Diaries) of the reigning Shāh. For
this purpose their principal works, especially those read for examination, have been
carefully gone through, with the result that the information given by Johnson under
many of his Arabic headings has been largely supplemented by instances where the
Arabic words enter into Persian phrases of a highly idiomatical character.
There is yet one other point to be noticed with regard to the Arabic element
in Persian. Not only isolated words have to be explained, but in numerous cases combinations of words, that is to say, sentences or parts of sentences, either in quoting
verbatim, or more frequently in merely alluding to, passages of the Qurʼān, the "Traditions," and even of celebrated Arabic poems. To give a rather striking example, the
Persian poet Minūchihrī introduces in one of his odes the beginning of the "Muʻallaqah
of Imru ʼl-Qais": qifā nabki, "stay ye two (friends or travelling companions) so that we
may weep (in remembrance of the beloved, &c.)." The reader who would try to puzzle
this out with the aid of Johnson's dictionary would find for qafā (we must remember
that in the printed texts the short vowels are not indicated) the equivalent "neck," and
for nabk or nabak (here again the final short i does not count) the rendering "hills."
Arabic plurals being frequently used as singular in Persian, he therefore might translate
"the neck of the hill," and thus, speaking figuratively, find himself fairly landed in the
wilderness. Only an intimate knowledge of Arabic grammar, which he must either possess
himself, or which his dictionary must supply instead, can teach him that, in the first
word, the initial and, in the second, the final of the root is suppressed, and that they
belong respectively to the radicals w-q-f "standing, stopping, staying," and b-k-y
"weeping," while the ā at the end of qifā and the n at the beginning of nabki are
extraneous signs of inflection.
It may be objected that this is an extreme case, and that Minūchihrī, although
a distinguished Persian poet, is not likely to be read by a student. Granted! But in
the "Sikandarnāma" of Nizāmī, in the "Gulistān" and "Bostān" of Saʻdī, in the
"Dīwān" of Hāfiz, in the "Anwāri Suhailī," &c., &c., all of which form part of his
curriculum, he will meet with many phrases and fragments of phrases, or even simple
izāfat-constructions, which require a similar elucidation, some of which have led to quite
as ludicrous blunders as the one suggested above, while others have at least been
strangely misunderstood in some of the best-known translations from the Persian, because
the Arabic words were rendered according to their usually current meanings in Persian,
and not in the specific Arabic sense, which they bear in the particular connection or
context. On this point much labour has been spent in assisting the student,--the
student, be it here emphasized, who not merely crams for a more or less successful
examination, but who works with steady and resolute self-exertion in order to become
in time a scholar worthy of that name.
II. As for the Persian part, great obligations are primarily due and gratefully
acknowledged to the excellent Persian-Latin Dictionary, published by Vullers in about
2,500 quarto pages. With infinite diligence the learned author has overhauled the
Persian lexicographical sources from which his predecessors, Johnson included, had worked
before him, giving their explanations in the original, and adducing numerous supporting
passages from them and his own collectanea. It lay, of course, outside the scope of
the present work to follow him in this latter respect, but his results, as far as they
contained additional matter, were adopted, after having been in all cases verified, in
some cases rectified, and supplemented with the necessary translation in other instances,
where he omits to give the Latin equivalent for a Persian word or phrase, but contents
himself with quoting the Persian text. By no means the least important feature of his
work is the extensive use he has made of the "Bahāri ʻAjam," one of the more recent
Persian Dictionaries compiled in India, and including many modern phrases, metaphors,
&c. not to be found in any other lexicon. Owing, however, to the circumstance that
that book did not reach Vullersʼ hand until the greater part of his first volume had been
printed, he could not avail himself of the contents of its first 457 pages, and the very
copious extracts given from this source in our Dictionary form not only an essential
complement to Vullers, but an entirely new contribution to Persian lexicography on
European soil. Other recent publications, consulted with advantage, are the Persian
Dictionary "Farhangi Nāsirī," and Schlimmer's "Terminologie medico-pharmaceutique
Française-Persane," both lithographed in Teheran, the former in 1871, the latter in 1874.
It need scarcely be mentioned that the course of reading undertaken to define
the Arabic portion of this dictionary was equally productive in augmenting the Persian
part, and it can be stated without exaggeration that thousands of words have been added
from this source alone. Many of these are taken from Mirza Jaʻfar's translation of
modern Plays, originally written in Turkish, a translation which, on account of its
thoroughly idiomatic phraseology, has, in successive instalments within the last ten years,
been re-edited, with notes and vocabularies, in England, France, and Germany. A larger
and more important amount, however, has been gleaned from the Shāh's Diaries of his
first two journeys to Europe in 1873 and 1878. Here we see Persia, in the person of
its Sovereign, brought into immediate contact with the advanced civilization of the West;
and as this Sovereign happens to be an exceptionally keen observer, who turned the
immense opportunities afforded to him by his exalted position to the best account, his
impressions, penned down on the spur of the moment, could not fail to enrich and
fertilise the language of his country, which he uses with such unpretending ease and
forcible directness.
III. There are a few more words to be said about the general arrangement of the
book, in order to facilitate its use. It would have been impossible to introduce so much
additional matter if all the entries under the principal headings had been given in
the Oriental character as well as in transliteration. The latter had, therefore, to be
framed not with a view to the exact pronunciation of the words, which in any language
can only be acquired to perfection by oral teaching, but to give accurate equivalents
for the graphical form of the consonants and vowels peculiar to the language in question.
To render the consonants of the Arabic-Persian alphabet in the Roman character,
as employed in English, five compounds had to be used, namely ch for چ, g̠ẖ for غ,
ḵẖ for خ, sh for ش, and zh (pronounced like s in "vision") for ژ. Eight letters are distinguished by diacritical points, namely ḥ for ح, ṣ for ص, s̤ for ث, t̤ for ط, ẕ for ذ,
ẓ for ض, and z̤ for ظ. The Greek spiritus lenis (ʼ) and spiritus asper (ʻ) very appropriately represent اٴ (alif-hamzah) and ع respectively, and ṃ has been chosen to express
the letter ن before a labial. In the comparatively few cases where sh and zh are to be
pronounced as separate letters, a mark is placed between (sˌh or zˌh), showing that the
s or z terminates one syllable, and the aspirated h begins another.
The original Persian vowel-system is that of Sanskrit, with exclusion of the semi-
vowel ṛi, which is peculiar to the latter. It consists of the three elementary vowels
a, i, u, as pronounced in pat, pit, put respectively (in the Arabic-Persian character
fatḥah ــَــ, kasrah ــِــ, ẓammah ــُــ); their long forms ā, ī, ū, as in father, police, prude
(ـــَ ا, ــِـ ی, ــُـ و), and their combination to mixed vowels and diphthongs, e (a + i) as in
where, o (a + u) as in more, both in Persian writing not distinguished from ī and ū;
ai (ā + i) as in aisle, and au (ā + u) as in German, i.e. like ou in stout (ــَـ ی and ــَـ و).
This etymological groundwork of the system, and it alone, determines our transliteration,
leaving, as said before, the question of the actual pronunciation at the present day,
especially of the short vowels, to the grammar and the instruction of a competent teacher
whose proper domain it is. As for the representation of ی and و, when used as consonants, the transliteration of the latter by w instead of v has been preferred on account
of the analogy with y, except at the end of a Persian syllable or word, where v is
written to indicate the somewhat stronger articulation of the letter in this case.
The same need of compactness made it further necessary to unite all the different
words of the same consonantal outline, which are distinguished merely by their vocalisation,
under one heading. Many articles assumed thereby an almost inordinate length; but
in order to furnish the reader with a thread leading him safely through the apparent
labyrinth, any shorter or longer string of constructions and phrases belonging to one
word has been included in crotchets, thus [], so that, whenever the student meets
with this sign, before the explanations given have satisfied his want, he has only to
run down the column to the conclusion of the crotchet, when he will find another
interpretation of the same outline with a different spelling and meaning, perhaps more
in accordance with the exigencies of his text, and so on until the end of the article is
reached. A similar use has been made of parentheses, thus (), where the same phrase
may be expressed in various ways, by substituting one noun or verb for another, in
which case any of the words thus bracketed may take the place of the word immediately
preceding the parenthesis.
Throughout the book a strictly alphabetical order has been observed, in accordance
with the following simple rules:--
1. Compounds have been given as much as possible in their proper order, unless
they serve as examples under one or the other of their components.
2. Any single noun forming part of a heading is first followed by such iẕāfat
constructions and phrases as begin with this noun in the order of the
initial of the succeeding word; then by those in which the noun has a
preposition or another noun in front, in the order of this preceding element.
3. With regard to the iẓāfat constructions of Arabic words, those in which the
governed noun has the definite article al are given in their alphabetical
order in the place assigned to the article, that is to say, at or near the beginning, while in absence of the article the initial of the noun itself determines
the order. This has been done not only for the sake of maintaining the
alphabetical principle in all its strictness, but also in order to show the
student at one glance in which combinations the Arabic or Persian construction is more usual. Neither in this nor in other respects was a uniform
principle of arrangement consistently adhered to by Johnson, whence arose
the necessity of reconstruction, as mentioned on the title-page, and entailing
an amount of labour which only one well versed in these matters can
appreciate.
Words of foreign origin are indicated by capital initials in front of the article,
as A. for Arabic, G. for Greek, H. for Hindī, M. for Mongolian, T. for Turkish, R. for
Russian. Where merely an Arabic element, either as member of a compound or as a
formative, combines with the Persian, or where a word is common to both languages
without proof positive to which it belongs originally, a small a has been prefixed, and
so, mutatis mutandis, in the same case with regard to other languages. The indication
(m.c.) for "modern colloquialism" after a phrase, shows that it has been taken from
recent writings, and does not necessarily imply that it is of modern make, but simply
that it is in actual conversational use, while for all that it may be a Persian idiom
already employed by Firdausī, or an Arabic importation as old as Islām itself.
It is hoped that this Dictionary will justify its claim to comprehensiveness.
It is not and cannot be complete. The complete dictionary of any language has yet to
be written. It far exceeds the powers of any single individual, and depends for its
realisation on the modest, although imperial, motto, viribus unitis. The author's only
ambition was to advance the work close to the point at which the practical adoption of
this motto, with regard to Persian, becomes a necessity, and should be seriously contemplated by Oriental societies and congresses.
In conclusion, I have to express my warmest thanks to Mr. Frederic Pincott
for his careful revision of the proofs, as well as for many a valuable hint on various
important points, of which I have gladly availed myself; and to his well-trained printers,
for their intelligent and patient industry in setting up the copy, which I am afraid must
frequently have proved a most trying task.
F STEINGASS.
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