volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

238 Acqusition of Valuable Syriac MSS.
(5) The Book of Governors, by Thomas, Bishop of Marga,
A.D. 840 ;' (6) The Laughable Stories of Bar Hebraeus f
(7) The Life of Rabban Hormizd, in prose" and in
verse ;* (8) Two important apocryphal works -.^ and
many other works which were at that time unknown
in European Libraries. M§.r Milos was a very learned
man and a most competent scribe, and chief among the
fine copies of manuscripts which he had made for his
own use was the great encyclopaedia comprising the
whole of Aristotelian discipline entitled " Khewath
Khechmetha," or the " Cream of Wisdom." Manuscripts
of this work were very scarce, and there was no
complete codex of it in England, and I begged him to
sell me his copy for the British Museum. He resisted
all my entreaties for a long time, but one morning he
brought the large folio manuscript to me and said that
1 should have it for the British Museum in return for
saving his life.' On folio 314& he wrote the following
in Syriac : " Notice ! I, whose name is set down below,
^ See my Book of Governors, or the Historia Monastica of Thomas,
Bishop ofMargd, a.d. 840, vol. i, Syriac text ; vol. ii, English translation
2 vols., London, 1893.
' See my Laughable Stories collected by Mar Gregory fohn Bar-
Hebraeus, Syriac and English, London, 1897.
' See my Rabban Hormizd the Persian, S5niac and English, 3 vols.,
London, 1902.
* By Sergius of Adh6rbaijan ; for the Syriac text see Heft 2, 3 of
Bezold's Semitistische Studien, Berhn, 1894 ; and for the English see
the preceding work.
' See my History of the Virgin Mary, Syriac and English, 2 vols.,
London, 1899.
" In February, 1889, he began to fast the Nineveh Fast. He went
down into an underground cellar of his church and sat there, eating
and drinking nothing for many days. At the end of the eighth day
he collapsed, and was carried to his "cell," and his disciple came to
me and told me his master was dead. I went to see him, and found
him in a pitiable phght, and his disciple and I stripped him, and
rubbed him weU with hot oil, and administered spirit of ginger and
brandy with a teaspoon. By the evening he was better, and we fed
him on mutton broth and rice for some days, and in a week he was
himself again. As my personal " fee " he gave me a copy of the
Book of Galatians written with a dry stilus on strips of palm-leaf,
and as my official " fee " he sold me the " Cream of Wisdom."