Page:Quatrains of Omar Khayyam (tr. Whinfield, 1883).djvu/42

xviii :I. The Bodleian MS., No. 140 of the Ouseley Collection, containing 158 quatrains.
 * II. The Calcutta Asiatic Society's MS., No. 1548, containing 516 quatrains.
 * III. The India Office MS., No. 2420, ff. 212 to 267, containing' 512 quatrains.
 * IV. The India Office MS., No. 2486, ff. 158 to 194, containing 362 quatrains.
 * V. The Calcutta edition of 1252, containing 438 quatrains, with an appendix of 54 more, which the editor says he found in a Bayáz, or common-place book, after the others had been printed.
 * VI. The Paris edition of M. Nicolas, containing 464 quatrains.
 * VII. The Lucknow lithographed edition, containing 763 quatrains.
 * VIII. A fragment of an edition begun by the late Mr. Blochmann, containing only 62 quatrains.

I have also consulted the Cambridge MS., for the purpose of settling one or two readings, but have not collated it throughout.

I have not given the various readings, except in cases of special importance. For every reading in the text there is MS. authority of some kind or other: there are only two cases, or three at the most, in which I have been driven to "the desperate resource of a conjecture," and these are indicated in the notes. The authorities for each quatrain are also given in the notes.

In editing the text, I have paid special attention to the prosody, marking all poetical contractions, and noting all peculiarities of metre and scansion.