Vis and Ramin

vi PREFACE
Morgenl Gescllschaft, Leipzig, 1869 (pp. 375-433). In a
short article published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic
.s'r H'it'ty, July, 1902, an effort was made to elicit from Persian
scholars some opinion as to the connection between the
Georgian
text here translated and the modern Persian
poem ; the request met with no response, and subse-
quent endeavours to obtain information on the matter
were equally unsuccessful.
Not only has the book a value as literature of high
quality and as an undoubted antique, but there is reason to
believe that it may have had a good deal to do with
that development of European romanticism which finds
utterance in the songs of the Minnesinger, the lays of
the Troubadours, and the letters of Heloisa. In N. Ethels
Essays und Studien, Berlin, 1872 (pp. 295-801), a com-
parison is drawn between Vis and Ramin and Gottfried
von Strassburg's Tristan und Isolt. Reference may also
be made to the monograph published in Moscow, in 1896,
by Baron R. R. Stackelberg :
Bap. P. P. r
IIlTaKejiL6epr L : H'fecBOiBKO CJIOBTJ o nepcuji.cKOM'L
anoc-fe ,,Bnca H Panim-i," (Moscow Archaeological Society).
The subject of the relation between medieval romance in
Europe and similar literature in the East is worth more
investigation than it has yet received.
The text used for this translation is
*2O UnObdobDO - OO OOObHr8\CO-nOCO-OOOO Opno,
dS JO *S
'Jboou, brrr>. uboobnco onjornoo u rob 3
S y S S
o^onnoou. r&roonnno uo od^ooooo uqpr^boou Ur&boob
S OO S dJQ u US O
1884.
With such editors as Ilia Chavchavadze, Al. Saradjishvili,
and P. Umicashvili, and with Ilia Dchqonia as proof-reader,
it is no wonder that the volume is one of the best ever
printed in Georgia, and singularly free from errors. With
the exception of a short extract in D. Chubinov's Chresto-