The plain Sanskrit manuscript and the Sinhalese Pali Taliput leaves came from the collection of Dr. The Persian “Gulistan” of Sa’di was left with us seven years ago by a young lady whom we have utterly failed to trace, so we have appropriated her manuscript, and stand ready to make amends.
The Egyptian Koran and the Persian manuscript containing the lives of the Sufis were acquired for us by a discerning agent respectively in Cairo and Constantinople. The Armenian Manuscript, the Algerian Koran and the illuminated Sanskrit manuscript turned up in bookshops respectively in New York, Southampton (England), and out Crystal Palace way in London. The Syriac printed Bible and the Armenian printed Ritual came from the library of the late Professor Yohannan of Columbia University. Certainly no more fascinating field of research lies before the paleographer than the early records of these cradle lands of civilization.Īs Foliophiles is frequently asked how and where the diverse materials used in its collections have been acquired, the following details regarding some of the examples contained in this portfolio may prove interesting: The Syriac Manuscript was purchased on our premises from an eloquent Armenian who tried to hasten the sale by swearing, with a brave disregard of anachronism, that is was Eighth Century Coptic. Whether, on the other hand, we will ever be able to determine the beginnings of writing, and assign primitive inscriptions to exact periods, remains to be seen. Fortunately, however, inscriptions on stone and brick, particularly in India and throughout the Near East, and the perfection of writing materials in the Far East, make it probable that the early written languages of all the Asiatic peoples will eventually be restored to us. Of course, were it not for the advent of written speech, either by means of picturegraphs, ideographs, or by the use of the alphabet, there would be no such science as comparative philology. Greater progress, perhaps, has been made with the languages of the Near East, but here again the scholar becomes less assertive the farther he probes into the past. And there is equal uncertainty about the native tongue of the Japanese, as distinguished from their written language. The conjectures so plausibly elaborated by Lacouperie fifty years ago, for example, have entirely gone by the board, and so far as the Chinese language is concerned, the most that the modern Sinologist can say is that it seems to be of indigenous origin. For if there is anything positive to be stated on the origins of the languages and alphabets of Asia, living or dead, it is that most of the theories of the philologists of a generation ago are today discredited and have been replaced at best by cautious suppositions. In my comments attached to these examples there has been an attempt to describe the development of the various languages represented, but it would be a thankless task to arrange these examples under arbitrary language groupings or to assign a chronological order or too definite a pedigree to the languages themselves. “The Oriental Manuscripts and printed books represented in this portfolio have been gathered from many sources, as will presently be shown, and are fairly representative of the progress of the art of writing, and to a lesser degree of printing, throughout Asia.
Jenkinson Collection in the Special Collections Division of The Newark Public Library.
The Islamic and Oriental manuscripts are part of the Richard C. Tibetan Blue Coloring and Black Glaze (1) +.Reed pen ink on semi-waterproof paper (1) +.Gold Illumination and Colored Illustrations (1) +.Black, Red, and Blue Ink on Paper (1) +.Black and Red Ink on Fragmented Papyrus (1) +.