Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/123

 THE HISTORY OF SINDBAN AND THE SEVEN WISE MASTERS.

Translated for the first time from the Syriac into English,

By Hermann Gollancz, M.A.

all the versions of the Seven Wise Masters, the oldest that has thus far come down to us is the Syriac version, published for the first time by Baethgen, Leipzig, 1879. This version represents, on the one hand, the supposed Arabic original, reflected in European literature in the old Spanish version; and it represents, on the other hand, the immediate source of the Greek translation made by Andreopolos.

I need not dwell here upon the relation which exists between the various versions of this collection of tales, considering that this subject has been exhaustively treated by Comparetti, whose work has been published by this Society in an English form. Nor need I touch upon the relation in which the Syriac text stands to the Arabic and other Oriental versions (Pehlevi, etc.), as Professor Nöldeke in his review of Baethgen's edition, has referred to these points in his usual masterly manner. Since then, Clouston has translated in part, and Mr. W. Rogers more fully, the Persian version, Clouston adding a sketch of the history of the work; and Paulus Cassel has published a minute comparison between the Syriac, Greek and Hebrew versions, in his Mischle Sindbad, Berlin, 1888. These various researches testify to the high value which attaches to the Syriac text in regard to the history of that world-wide cycle of tales which cluster round the name of Sindbad.

For this very reason I considered that an English translation, prepared from the Syriac direct, might not prove