Vol 2, No 1 (2016)

The article is devoted to the publication of two leaves of a manuscript in Tocharian B from the Petrovskii collection, which is kept in the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in St. Petersburg, known under the call numbers SI P/1b (SI 1903) and SI P/2b (SI 1904). These two leaves are consecutive and almost complete. The text is being published here for the first time in its entirety, with full transliteration, transcription and translation. It is part of a Buddhastotra, a poem of praise addressed to the Buddha, the stanzas of which are parallel to several stanzas of the Varṇārhavarastotra by Mātrceṭa.

The article deals with the manuscript IOM, RAS Syr. 34, one leaf of parchment originating from the collection of Nikolai Likhachev. It contains a Syriac translation of selected documents of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (AD 325): the introduction to the canons, a bilingual Greek-Syriac list of 42 bishops, and the first five canons of the council. Most of the texts are incomplete and damaged. The present article focuses mainly on the study and commented publication of the five Nicaean canons from IOM, RAS Syr. 34. On the basis of comparative textual research the author aims to show the place of the St. Petersburg manuscript in the history of Syriac translations of the canons.

The text “The Pahlavi Lapidary” is difficult for translation and interpretation because different properties are attributed to stones of the same colour and the same properties to stones of different colours. Correct translation of Pahl. sāyišn as a concrete noun ‘a powder’ appears to explain the lapidary and to show that it is not only a question of stones of different colours, but of different coloured powders of these stones. Pahl. muhrag used not in its meaning of ‘a seal’, but in the meaning ‘a stone’ appears to suggest that this text may have been translated from a language in which there is one noun for these two meanings.

The article introduces a Japanese manuscript containing maps of China and the world along with depictions of the inhabitants of 25 countries and brief descriptions of those countries. On the basis of the information about Russia and the Ainu lands, the author puts forward a hypothesis about the date of the manuscript.

Abstract

Abstract