8 Contributions to Persian Lexicography. [No. 1, 



? * .. * 



" The Sharafnarnah of Ahmad i Munyari is a dress of honor, filled 

 " with the pearls of the Dari-Persian." Hence the dictionary is best 

 known under the name of Sharafnamali i Ibrdlumi. It must not be 

 confounded with the Farhang i Mirza Ibrahim, a later dictionary 

 used by the authors of the FJ. and Sur. 



The birthplace of Ibrahim is unknown. It is however clear that 

 he was an Indian ; for like the A'dat he gives many Hindee equivalents, 

 and mentions Indian pronunciations of Persian words. He lived some 

 time in Persia, and has thus been able to add words and meanings 

 which he heard from natives. He names several times a Shaikh Wahidi 

 of Shiraz, and an Amir Shihabuddin Hakim, of Kirman, whose remarks 

 he enters. Thus 



JUs,^ /*.JjXs< t^i^\ i«j^-«^'*I jt ^.wl fl/oLJ i^j\ j l-mu! ^^(j l$^+*»J 

 The dictionary must have been Avritten during the time of Barbak, 

 who reigned in Bengal from A. D. 1428 to 1445, as it ends with the 

 following verses (metre llamal) — 



The Avork consists of a short treatise on Persian and Turkish 

 terminations, a large number of Persian words and phrases, interspersed 

 with a few Arabic nouns and infinitives, and a collection of Chagatai 

 words. The latter are given separately at the end of each fact of 

 Persian words, which arrangement has been followed in the next 

 dictionary and the Madar. 



In using the dictionary we have to look to the first, last, and second 

 letters of the words. Examples of verses are frequent. The MS. of the 

 Asiatic Society of Bengal. No. 1332, — by no means a good one — has an 

 appendix containing the Turkish numerals, and a list of Persian metres. 



As a peculiarity of this dictionary, we have to mention that the com- 

 piler, though an Indian, follows in the arrangement of the words the 

 rule of Jl:> and Jli. From the time of the introduction of the Arabic 

 characters up to the time of the poet Jami, the last of the classics, the 

 Irani Persian writers used the letter J|i dzaliov Jb dal, after a long 

 a, i, u (**> oj^), as ij-J for ^ bud ; and 2. after every consonant, <_$-, 



