216 REV. W. ST. CLAIR TISDALL, D.D., ON THE BOOK OF DANIEL ! 



17. Sarbdl (Dan. iii, 21, 27) is doubtless the Avestic sdra- 

 vdm"^, literally " head-covering." In the Avesta itself the word 

 means helmet. In later Avestic the word sar- in the dual number 

 denotes the body, hence the word sarbdl seems to have had several 

 difierent meanings at difierent times. The LXX render it by 

 ava^vpiBei'f, tight trousers, and apparently also by vTroBr/fiara, 

 shoes. Its modern Persian form, corrupted into shalvdr, means 

 trousers. Herodotus (vii, 61, 62) says that the Persians and 

 Medes in Xerxes' army wore trousers. But these private soldiers 

 would not wear the same dress as did the learned men of Babylon. 

 Regarding the Babylonians, Herodotus informs us (i, 195) that 

 their long hair was bound round with tiaras'^ {which word has 

 many significations in Greek), and gives other details of their 

 dress. Theodotion uses the Persian word itself in Dan. iii, 21. 



18. HammJcd ; in Dan. v, 7, 16, 29, is variously read. The 

 KthTb has HamonTka, Ham5nka, or Hamnoka ; the Qri has 

 •Hammka ; this the LXX and Theodotion render by fiaviCLKr]^, 

 The Syriac word is Hanmlka, which in the Targums becomes 

 Manik, probably shortened from the Greek. In the Talmud 

 the forms Hamnikka, Monyaq, monyaq, and munyaq occur. 

 Poly bins uses the Greek form of the word to denote the armlet or 

 necklet (torques) worn by the Kelts. It has long been known that 

 the word in Daniel means necklace, but what is its origin ? The 

 B.D.B. Hebrew Lexicon suggests that in its indefinite form 

 the word in the text should be read Hamyanak, and that it is 

 " a diminutive of the Persian Hamyan." But Hamyan is merely 

 the modern Persian pronunciation of the Arabic Himyan, which 

 is a genuine Arabic derivative from the Arabic root hama^ (to 

 fall, etc.), and means (1) a loincloth. (2) a girdle, (3) a purse 

 hanging from the girdle. Now Arabic words taken into modern 

 Persian only very rarely take the diminutive -ak, which seems 

 much more recent as forming diminutives than ev^en the " time 

 of Alexander the Great."' Moreover we lack the very slightest 

 proof that Arabic vocables had won an entrance into Old Persian 



* In Vendidad XIV, § 9, the sfiravara is the turhan of a charioteer, and 

 so, perhaps, sarbal here. But there are two difficulties in the way of a 

 Persian derivation of sarbal: (1) that b can hardly represent the Persian 

 V ; and (2) there is no I in Old Persian in either dialect, and the only way in 

 which the second r in sOravdra can be accounted for changing into I is by 

 supposing that the change was made to prevent the repetition of the r. 



t In some MSS. 



