Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/504

 462 Reviews.

The Fables of Wardan, Materials for a History of Medieval Armenian Literature. By N. Marr, Professor of Armenian in the University of Petersburg. (Sborniki Pritch Vardana. . . .) Sanktpeterburg. Tipografia Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk. 3 vols. 1895, 1899.

In medieval Armenian literature we find several collections of fables and allegories, some larger and some smaller, often over- lapping one another in their contents, and ascribed to various authors, among whom Wardan, Mkhithar Gosh, Olympianos, and John Tsortsoretzi are principally named. It is a literary task, as important as it is difficult, to publish these stores of folklore hidden away in the Armenian MSS. of Edjmiatzin, Venice, Vienna, Berlin, and Paris ; to sift and compare the different texts, to ascertain their relation to the literature of fables which exists in other tongues. Professor N. Marr, of the University of Petersburg, is already well known as a student of the Armenian and Georgian literatures, of which he has edited many monuments in the journal of the Petersburg Academy. He has now, after years devoted to it, achieved the task which we have named ; and the result lies before us in the shape of three large volumes, of which the first, in 635 pages, gives us an account of this literature written in Russian, the second and third, in 360 and 202 pages respectively, the Armenian texts; the third also comprises in pp. 1 13-128 a selection of Arabic fables printed from the Karshuni MS. No. 1049 of the library of the India House in London. The whole is a monument of hard work and of profound and varied learning. Both Arabic, Armenian, Georgian, and Russian types are em- ployed ; the Armenian sources have been carefully transcribed and collated, the variants of the several manuscripts being printed at the foot of the text. There is probably no scholar living except M. Marr who would have been equal to such a task.

The ' Fox fables ' of Wardan were first printed at Amsterdam in the year 1668, and at Edjmiatzin in 1698. The tree- and animal-fables of Mkhithar have appeared in print more than once, the last edition being a convenient little volume issued at the Merchitarist press in Venice. The Armenian Physiologus was printed by Pitra in his Spicilegium Solesmense, Paris, 1855, vol. iii., pp. 374-390. But these editions were, all except Pitra's