404 Literary Intelligence. [No. 4. 



printed, the work being intended only for distribution among Scien- 

 tific Institutions and eminent orientalists. The descriptions of the 

 Turkish, Arabic and Persian MSS. which compose the bulk of the 

 volume are by Dorn ; they are very complete, embracing the notices 

 given of the Ardebil and Akhaltisk MSS. by Prahn in 1829 and 1830. 

 The Indian MSS. were all taken to London for examination, and the 

 notices of these are by a young German Doctor, Eeinhold Eost. 



The Quran alsa'dayn, a Dilly periodical in Hindustany, announces 

 the publication at Dilly, of the first volume of a Persian Diction- 

 ary which has the title p^j [ & ^ lar j2 ^ /0 ; it comprizes 817 pages of 28 

 lines. The author of this important work is Tek Chand, whose 

 takhalluc was Bahar — a Khatry of Dilly. He flourished in the second 

 half of the last century, after he had completed the first copy of his 

 work, continued his lexicographical labours and made numerous addi- 

 tions and improvements, and found himself compelled to write out a 

 second copy, but even here his lexicographical researches did not 

 stop. He made successively seven copies or editions of his work, of 

 which the last is of course the most perfect. At the time of his 

 death the autograph of the seventh edition was in the hands of 

 one. of his pupils, whose name is Inderman, and he made an abridg- 

 ment of it, and it is this abridgment which is now generally known 

 in India as the Bahare 'ajam, and is considered the best Persian 

 Dictionary that exists. Yet it is only the shadow of the work 

 of which now the first volume has been published. Tek Chand had 

 critically studied the whole Persian literature, and had travelled 

 in Persia in order to make himself fully master of the Persian 

 language and its dialects. The spoken language of Persia is simple 

 enough, and so are some of their prose writers. To understand these 

 writers, or the 'urf of the language, almost any dictionary is sufficient, 

 but in their great poets there occur many verses which are perfectly 

 unintelligible, and though the copies of their works agree generally 

 very well, you find almost in every copy a different reading. "We 

 have very few ancient commentaries on Persian poets (the only very 

 valuable books on this subject are the j]/» $\j*\y* by Adzory, and 

 Abti-1- iZasan's commentary on An wary, few other commentaries 

 known in India have much critical value), and it is therefore only 



