A literary history of Persia

BIBLIOGRAPHY 495For the study of Arabic the best grammar is Wright's (3rd ed.,revised by W. Robertson Smith and M. J.de Goeje 2 vols.,:Cambridge, 1896-98) Palmer's (London, 1874), though neither so;full nor so accurate, is easier and pleasanter reading. Ol Dictionariesthe only small, inexpensive, and yet fairly complete one isBelot's Vocabulaire Arabe-Franfais a I'usage des Etudianls (4th ed.,Beyrout, 1896 : pp. 1,001 price about ten : shillings). There arealso a Diclionnaire Franfais-Arabe (Beyrout, 1890 pp. 1,609) and:a Cours pratique de la Langue Arabe (Beyrout, 1896), by the sameauthor. Fuller, larger, and even better, but about four or five timesas costly, is A. de Biberstein Kazimirski's Dictionnaire Arabe-Franfais (2 vols., pp. 1,392 and 1,638:Paris, 1846-60). Dozy'sSupplement aux Dictionnaires Arabes (Leyden, 1881 2; vols., pp. 864and 856) is invaluable for later Arabic writers. Lane's great Arabic-English Lexicon (London, 1863 ), is a magnificent torso. Thereare also Arabic- English Dictionaries by Steingass (London, 1884),and Salmone (London, 1890).For Persian the number of dictionaries and grammars is legion,but it is much harder to name the best than in the case of Arabic.Persian is so simple a language that almost any decent grammarwill serve the purpose, and a really scientific grammar of first-classmerit yet remains to be written. In England the grammars ofForbes (4th ed., London, 1869), Mirza Ibrahim (Haileybury andLondon, 1843 : Fleischer's German version of the same, Leipzig,1847 and 1875) and Plaits (Part i : Accidence : London, 1894) aremost used, with Rosen (English translation by Dr. E. Denison Ross)for more colloquial purposes. In French there is the truly admirablework of A. de Biberstein Kazimirski, Dialogues francais-persans,precedes d'un precis de la Grammaire persane, et suivis d'un Vocabulairefranfais-persan (Paris, 1883),as well as the Grammars of Chodzko(1852 and 1883), Guyard (1880) and Huart (1899), with the Dialoguespersan-francais (1857), and the Dictionnaire francais-persan (1885-1887) of J. B. Nicolas. In German, besides the two already mentioned,there is Wahrmund (Giessen, 1875) ; in Italian, Pizzi'sManuale (see above, No. 1 13) ; and in Latin Vullers' GrammaticaLingua Persicce (Giessen, 1870), written chiefly from the point ofview of the Comparative Philologist.In English the best small dictionaries Persian- ( Engl. andEngl.-Persian) are by E. H. Palmer ; larger ones are the Persian-Engl. Dictionary of Steingass (1,539 PP- > London, 1892) and thetwo English- Persian Dictionaries (a larger and a smaller, London,1882 and 1889) of Wollaston, who was assisted by Mirza MuhammadBaqir of Bawanat (see p. 390 of this book).Vullers' Lexicon Persico-