I. ARABIC AND MODERN PERSIAN LANGUAGES.

As before said, Arabic and Persian works which have not been translated into some European language are excluded from the above list, since their inclusion would have greatly increased the size of the Bibliography without advantage to the majority of readers, who are ignorant of these languages. Some readers of this class may, perhaps, desire to begin the study of one or both of these languages, and for their benefit I will add a few words as to suitable grammars, dictionaries, and other text-books; a subject on which I constantly receive inquiries, even from complete strangers.

Excellent small grammars of both languages are included in the Porta Linguarum Orientalium Series published by H. Reuther (Carlsruhe and Leipzig). All the volumes in this series are originally in German, but some (including the Arabic Grammar of Socin) exist also in English. The Persian Grammar, by Salemann and Zhukovski (1889), is only published in German. The earlier (1885) edition of Socin's Grammar contains a much better Chrestomathy than the later one, from which the best Arabic extracts were removed to form part of a separate Arabic Chrestomathy, by Brünnow (1895) in the same series. The student who wishes to get some idea of Arabic will find the 1885 edition sufficient by itself; but if he cannot obtain it, and has to be content with the later edition, he must get the Chrestomathy as well.

Both of these Grammars, the Arabic and the Persian, contain excellent Bibliographies of the most important and useful books for students of the respective languages, and it is not necessary for me to repeat here the ample information on this subject which can be found in these small and inexpensive but most meritorious volumes.

For the study of Arabic the best grammar is Wright's (3rd ed., revised by W. Robertson Smith and M. J. de Goeje: 2 vols., Cambridge, 1896-98); Palmer's (London, 1874), though neither so full nor so accurate, is easier and pleasanter reading. Of Dic­tionaries the only small, inexpensive, and yet fairly complete one is Belot's Vocabulaire Arabe-Français à l'usage des Étudiants (4th ed., Beyrout, 1896: pp. 1,001: price about ten shillings). There are also a Dictionnaire Français-Arabe (Beyrout, 1890: pp. 1,609) and a Cours pratique de la Langue Arabe (Beyrout, 1896), by the same author. Fuller, larger, and even better, but about four or five times as costly, is A. de Biberstein Kazimirski's Dictionnaire Arabe-Français (2 vols., pp. 1,392 and 1,638: Paris, 1846-60). Dozy's Supplément aux Dictionnaires Arabes (Leyden, 1881; 2 vols., pp. 864 and 856) is invaluable for later Arabic writers. Lane's great Arabic-English Lexicon (London, 1863 —), is a magnificent torso. There are also Arabic-English Dictionaries by Steingass (London, 1884), and Salmoné (London, 1890).

For Persian the number of dictionaries and grammars is legion, but it is much harder to name the best than in the case of Arabic. Persian is so simple a language that almost any decent grammar will serve the purpose, and a really scientific grammar of first-class merit yet remains to be written. In England the grammars of Forbes (4th ed., London, 1869), Mírzá Ibráhím (Haileybury and London, 1843: Fleischer's German version of the same, Leipzig, 1847 and 1875) and Platts (Part i: Accidence: London, 1894) are most used, with Rosen (English translation by Dr. E. Denison Ross) for more colloquial purposes. In French there is the truly admir­able work of A. de Biberstein Kazimirski, Dialogues français-persans, précédés d'un précis de la Grammaire persane, et suivis d'un Vocabulaire français-persan (Paris, 1883), as well as the Grammars of Chodzko (1852 and 1883), Guyard (1880) and Huart (1899), with the Dialogues persan-français (1857), and the Dictionnaire français-persan (1885-1887) of J. B. Nicolas. In German, besides the two already men­tioned, there is Wahrmund (Giessen, 1875); in Italian, Pizzi's Manuale (see above, No. 113); and in Latin Vullers' Grammatica Linguæ Persicæ (Giessen, 1870), written chiefly from the point of view of the Comparative Philologist.

In English the best small dictionaries (Persian-Engl. and Engl.-Persian) are by E. H. Palmer; larger ones are the Persian-Engl. Dictionary of Steingass (1,539 pp.; London, 1892) and the two English-Persian Dictionaries (a larger and a smaller, London, 1882 and 1889) of Wollaston, who was assisted by Mírzá Muḥammad Báqir of Bawánát (see p. 390 of this book). Vullers' Lexicon Persico- Latinum Etymologicum (2 large vols., Bonn, 1855-67), though cum­brous and badly arranged, is on the whole indispensable until the student has learned enough Persian to use the native dictionaries (Burhán-i-Qáṭi', Farhang-i-Rashídí, &c.) from which it is chiefly compiled. As a reading-book nothing on the whole excels the Gulistán of Sa'dí, of which there are good editions (furnished with full vocabularies) and translations by Eastwick and Platts.