‘So much labor for so little fame.’Footnote 1
The name Edward W. West (1824–1905) might resonate with students of the history of religions and comparative studies who still use the collection of translations Sacred Books of the East (1879–1910), initiated and conducted by Friedrich Max Müller.Footnote 2 A German scholar by origin, Müller continued and finished his career in Oxford, where he directed this outstanding series. Among the total of 50 volumes of the series, eight concerned the lore of Zoroastrian religious literature. Three volumes included translations of the Avesta, prepared by James Darmesteter (1889, 1883) and Lawrence H. Mills (1887). Five other volumes (1880, 1882, 1884, 1892, and 1897) included West’s translations of a good number of important late exegetical works written in Middle Persian by the ninth and tenth centuries. These volumes included the Bundahišn, the works of Manuščihr, a high priestly authority by the ninth century, namely Dadēstān ī dēnīg and the Letters, The Selections of Zādspram, Mēnōg ī khrad, Šāyest nē šāyest, the polemical treatise Škand Gumānīg Wizār (henceforth ŠGW), four of the seven books of Dēnkard (5, 7, 8, 9). This enterprise of five volumes, which was carried out by a single scholar, represented the first layer in the process of maturation of the scientific study of Middle Persian literature and language (in its Book Pahlavi version), the foundation of which had been laid down a few decades previously by Martin Haug.
Through his works, Edward West contributed to a new paradigm in the history of orientalism emerging between the West and India after 1835 (if one were to follow David Kopf’s chronologyFootnote 3) in which the philological work of deciphering, translating, and creating tools such as dictionaries became a priority. Beginning with the 1830s and up to the end of the nineteenth century, various scholarly networks were created between the West and India (Bombay, Pune,Footnote 4 Nawsari). Eugène Burnouf, professor at Collège de France, and Manackjee Cursetjee were constantly in correspondence, one consequence of which was the arrival of some more important Zoroastrian manuscripts in Paris.Footnote 5 Martin Haug (1827–1876) and Friedrich Spiegel (1820–1905) were well known and esteemed among the Parsis. Parsi scholars travelled to Europe, where they achieved new standards of education, and then returned to their homeland with the desire to reinforce their own community from within, both scientifically and religiously. A major exponent of this largely scientific movement was Kharshedji Rustamh Cama (1831–1909). His effervescence eventually led to the creation of the Cama Oriental Institute in Bombay, which opened in 1916.
To the Bengali renaissance (Kopf 1969), one can successively add, in this distinct era, the Parsi enlightenment.Footnote 6 This latter movement was strictly related to the painfully felt experience of the conversion to Christianity of a Parsi boy by the Scottish missionary John Wilson, a brilliant exponent of British orientalism.
The present article is divided into two main parts. The first includes an overview of Edward West’s main periods spent in India. The second, which is partially related to the previous part, is focussed on the first critical edition of the treatise Škand Gumānīg Wizār.
Edard W. West in India
Edward W. West (1824–1905) was a late student in Iranian studies. He graduated from King’s College, London, where he was trained in ‘higher mathematics and other branches of sciences, which are of occasional use to engineers’.Footnote 7 He began his professional career as an engineer. It was in this capacity that he began travelling and working in India.
According to my investigations of the documents preserved in London, the British Library, and the Royal Asiatic Society, West could have travelled to India on four occasions, namely 1844–1850, 1851–1860, ?1863–1866?, and 1874–1876.Footnote 8 This section provides a short survey of how West’s path to the study of Zoroastrianism, as well as its exegetical literature, was opened and crystallised over time.
1844–1850
Edward West first arrived in India in 1844, where he was going to work for the Apollo Cotton Press Co. of Bombay for no fewer than 5 years. The first press of the Apollo Cotton Press company had been established by Edward’s father (William West) and uncle some three decades earlier (1818).Footnote 9 After 1854, the industry of managing the cotton fell mainly under the control of the locals, whether Hindus, Muslims, or Parsis. Cowasjee Nanabhoy Davar opened the first cotton textile mill in 1854 at Tardeo, in Bombay.Footnote 10 From the 1870s to the beginning of the twentieth century, the cotton mill industry of Bombay was governed by ‘an elite oligopoly of Indian firms’, among which ‘Parsi firms controlling thirty-four out of ninety-five mills’.Footnote 11 Dinsha Manackjee Petit controlled ‘half a dozen mills beginning in 1860’—a fact that ensured him the status of being the richest Parsi of Bombay in 1875.Footnote 12 But, by the time the West family had settled down and taken part in the small industry of the cotton press, the pattern in use was that of ‘inter-community cooperation’.Footnote 13
According to some legal documents (1845), in 1836, a network of Europeans, Muslims, Hindus, and Parsis, all interested in the cotton trade, ‘agreed to carry on in co-partnership together at Bombay, from the 1st day of May 1836, until the 30th day of April 1856, the business of storing, screwing, and packing cotton, in certain houses and premises known as the Apollo Cotton Screws’.Footnote 14 In the same document, the Apollo Cotton Press is also mentioned as an entity that was older than the newly founded Apollo Cotton Screws.Footnote 15 As underlined above, the beginning of this huge enterprise had taken place by 1818, possibly as an exclusive British initiative that expanded over time and accepted forms of cooperation that led to the exclusivity of Parsis in certain areas, such as the cotton mills.
An impressive diary of the West family, preserved at the British Library, accompanied by numerous letters exchanged between the members of the family, father, sons, and the three West brothers, Arthur, Henry, and Edward, highlights important elements about the extraordinary biography and the intellectual endeavour of Edward West.Footnote 16
Edward had left England by the end of 1843 and reached Bombay on 6 June 1844.Footnote 17 Within the first six years spent in Bombay, Edward West became more and more familiar with the place and its people. As Apollo Cotton Press was situated in the Colaba, the traditional quarter of the Parsis, the living connections with the Zoroastrians in Bombay were facilitated from the very beginning. The West family seems to have been in close contact with the Parsi community, as some of the employees of their Apollo Cotton company belonged to this branch.Footnote 18
One of the personalities who constantly appears in this diary is John Wilson (1804–1875), the Scottish missionary, who, like other missionaries such as William Carrey and Alexander Duff, arrived in India against the backdrop of the larger project of British orientalism already initiated by the end of the eighteenth century.Footnote 19 Some of the main tools used within this project were knowledge of local languages (Hindi, Persian, Maratha, Gujarati) and interreligious debates involving polemical arguments. Wilson founded and conducted the periodical Oriental Christian Spectator (1830–1862), in which a description of the religions of India was given through a Christian lens.Footnote 20 His 600-page monograph on the ‘Parsi religion as contained in the Zend-Avesta’ (1843) included answers that arose within the Parsi community of Bombay in the wake of 1839, when he had converted two Parsi boys to Christianity.Footnote 21
Edward W. West arrived in India under a completely different intellectual paradigm from that of Wilson, but both of them benefited from the same parameters of British colonialism in India. The confrontation of their different approaches regarding India and its various matters probably became enriching and profitable for both sides. Wilson might have introduced West to the religion of the Parsis, some of whom were company mates at Apollo Cotton Press Company, while the latter possibly instilled more adventure in the daily life of a reverend by organising trips around Bombay.
The West family regularly met Reverend Wilson in Bombay at various events or as part of the journeys they were organising in the surroundings of Bombay.Footnote 22 It was also during this period that the West brothers began travelling regularly to the Island of Salsette,Footnote 23 the location of the Kanheri caves, such as in March 1848 (Rev. Wilson, Arthur, and Edward) and January 1850 (Edward alone).Footnote 24 In other words, the period 1848–1850 represented the beginning of Edward West’s philological interests in monuments bearing the traces (Middle Persian inscriptions) of the migration of Zoroastrians from Iran to India, after the Arab conquest of Iran.
1851–1860
By the end of 1849, due to the ‘reduction of establishment’ at the Apollo Cotton Press, Edward West found himself forced to look for another job. He applied to the Great Indian Peninsular Railway Company, given the fact that he had previously ‘been employed in the locomotive repairing establishment of the Birmingham and Gloster Railway, at Bromsgrove, where I had an opportunity of observing the working of one of the […?] inclines in England, and of becoming generally acquainted with the construction and repair of locomotives’.Footnote 25
However, despite recommendations and qualifications, his application seems to have been either refused or delayed. A few months afterwards, on 25 July 1850, he embarked for England, where he arrived on 5 September 1850.Footnote 26 In the following July, in 1851, he embarked again on the way back to India, this time accompanied by his then 20-year-old brother Henry.Footnote 27
With possible interruptions, he stayed there until early 1860, when, by March, he had left Bombay to arrive in London a few months later. The letters exchanged between Edward and his brother Arthur offer a full testimony of this period.Footnote 28
It is likely that, during this period, West devoted part of his time to work on the Kanheri inscriptions. Soon after his return to England in 1860, the results of his investigations in epigraphy were published in the Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.Footnote 29
?1863–1866?
One year before the second departure of West from India to England, on 6 November 1859, Martin Haug arrived as a superintendent and professor of Sanskrit at the Government College in Pune.Footnote 30 He was going to stay there until 1866, when he would return to Europe. Two years afterwards, in 1868, he was appointed ‘to the newly established chair of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology in the University of Munich and held this position until his premature death in June 1876’.Footnote 31 As underlined by Clarisse Herrenschmidt a long time ago, Haug worked under the influence of two main scholars: Theodor Benfey and Heinrich Ewald, a professor in Sanskrit and Hebrew.Footnote 32 From the former, Haug inherited the sharp criticism against Friedrich Spiegel.Footnote 33 This quarrel was transplanted to India within the Parsi community. Haug seems to have contributed a great deal to antagonising the small network of friends and disciples of one or another.Footnote 34
After 1861, and before beginning his doctoral period (1867–1871), West returned to India. He appears to have been there already by 1863–1864, when, according to his personal papers, he made a tour of Gujarat.Footnote 35 Later on, he found himself in Pune, where, according to A. W. Jackson, he ‘made the personal acquaintance of the author (Martin Haug) at Pune in 1866’.Footnote 36 In other words, West first met Haug in India and not in Europe. It is possible that the mediator of their meeting might have been Dastur Hoshangji JamaspAsana, who had himself settled down in Pune.Footnote 37
It might be significant that, in the same year of 1866, Hoshangji’s cousin Dastur Minocherji JamaspAsana published an edition and translation of the inscriptions of the Kanheri caves.Footnote 38 Further research could establish the reason for West’s trip to Pune in 1866—a place to which he regularly returned during his fourth and possibly last stay in India (see below).
It is possible that this third period spent in India lasted some four years, so a little beyond the data for which there are testimonies—1863 (West’s diary) and 1866 (Jackson’s testimony on West’s meeting with Haug in 1866). This is arrived at through a simple algebraic operation. By 1871, when he published his first edition of the Zoroastrian text Mēnōg ī xrad, in its Pāzand and Sanskrit versions, West confessed to having spent some 20 years in Bombay:
Some knowledge of three of the Indian vernaculars, and of the elements of Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic, acquired in a desultory manner, during twenty years active professional life in Bombay, has been supplemented by further (but not very regular) study of Sanskrit, Zand and Pahlavi, during the last four years. Add to this the professional habits of method and common sense and of tracing every effect to its cause, which are indispensable to the engineer, with an instinctive distrust of all mere dogmatic assertion tempered by a due consideration for the views and opinions of others, and from the sum total, the reader will learn the extent of my qualifications, and at the same time, will become aware that I am no regular philologist, in the ordinary acceptation of the term.Footnote 39
In 1871, West had already spent five to six years on a first visit (1844–1850) followed by nine to 10 years on a second visit (1851–1860). Summing up the ‘20 years’ before 1871, one counts four to five years on the third trip to India. Future research will shed more light on the matter.
1874–1876
In 1874, West returned to India for a fourth time, now no longer as an engineer, but rather as a scholar in Iranian studies. The information on this trip is provided by documents preserved in the West Nachlass at the library of the Royal Asiatic Society in London, notes, and a short Indian diary, according to which the purpose of his trip appeared to have been multifold:
1. To copy various manuscripts. In a note written by 1903, he mentions that he copied a manuscript of the Pahlavi Rivayat from the library of Dastur Minocherji JamaspAsana. He also writes distressing stories about the loss of important manuscripts.Footnote 40
2. To meet Dastur Hoshangji JamaspAsana and probably other members of the Parsi community. During one of the conversations, Dastur Hoshangji shared with him the story of the division of the manuscripts between the JamaspAsana brothers from the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries.Footnote 41
3. To gather evidence about the major Zoroastrian rituals. His Indian diary includes the short description of the Hōm Footnote 42 or the kustīg ceremony.Footnote 43
In Bombay, West also met Carl Friedrich Andreas (1846–1930). By the autumn of 1875, both West and Andreas had found themselves in India. A note in West’s Indian diary refers to a discussion with Andreas that took place on 31 October 1875. West summarises Andreas’s views regarding a couple of linguistic matters and Avesta, which he thought ‘was probably first written in Pahl. characters without vowels, as best explaining some corruptions by miswriting of letters’.Footnote 44 West’s note is fully confirmed in Andreas’s Indian journal, in which he simply writes about taking dinner with West between 5 and 11 pm: ‘Sonntag, 31. Oktober. Briefschreiben. Untersuchung von Khorde Avesta in der Mulla Firoz Library. Fahre um 5 zu West, wo ich zu Tisch und dann bis 11 bleibe. Besehe Handschriften (Schahname etc.) vom Dastur. Pahlevica und anders besprochen.’Footnote 45
In his diary, West gives a list of manuscripts that were supposed to have been bought by Andreas:
Oct. 20—at D. Jámáspji’s house.—Books intended to be purchased by Dr. Andreas: 1. Vendiád Sádeh with Pahl. Kirya. 2. Dádistán-i Díní complete (perhaps unique) Pahl. 3. Riváyat-i D. Dárab Hormazdyán. Pers. 4. Sad-dar naẓm. Pers. 5. Sad-dar nasr. Pers. 6. Zaratusht Námah nazm. Pers. Guj. 7. Mínokhard nazm Pers.Footnote 46
From other published documents, it appears that, by that period, Dastur Minocherji JamaspAsana (settled in Bombay), Hoshangji’s cousin, was very much involved in the publication of a Pahlavi dictionary that comprised 260 words.Footnote 47 Both West and Andreas were certainly informed and praised him with flattering words.Footnote 48 At the same time, West shared with Minocherji the manuscript ‘of his partly finished Pahlavi Dictionary, a collection of about 6000 words’.Footnote 49 Thus, the ongoing projects were numerous. No trace certifying that ŠGW, its manuscripts, and unpublished critical edition count among them has yet been found.
Remarks on the first critical edition of ŠGW
ŠGW (The doubt-dispelling explanation, according to West’s translation) is the only surviving Zoroastrian polemical treatise. It was originally written down in the ninth to tenth centuries, in Middle Persian, probably in Baghdad or within an intellectual environment related to those of Baghdad. Over time, the original was lost and, today, only Pāzand (Middle Persian in Avestan character) and Sanskrit versions can be accessed. There are also Gujarati and Persian versions. The work polemically addresses the three monotheistic religions, as well as Manichaeism, the Dahriyya (a general designation of groups with materialistic views) doctrines, and the atheists. The classical view is that its author, Mardānfarrox, was a layman, who had access to means of education that were specific to the Islamic schools and different from those of the Zoroastrian priests. However, this paradigm has been recently challenged by Christian Sahner, who advocates the idea that Mardānfarrox was himself a priest, but ‘disguised his identity, possibly because his work was so innovative and divergent from other examples of priestly literature’.Footnote 50
The first critical edition of this text was issued in 1887 in a joint publication co-signed by Edward West and Dastur Hoshengji JamaspAsana. One of the less well-known facts is that a first version of the critical edition of ŠGW had already been accomplished by Dastur Hoshangji JamaspAsana alone, in Bombay, 20 years before the publication of the co-authored work with West. At that time, West was just about to begin the work for his doctoral dissertation under the guidance of Martin Haug. Hoshangji’s individual work is mentioned by West:
Twenty years ago (i.e. 1866) the Pāzand and Pahlavi texts of this work, with a glossary of the latter, were prepared for publication by Dastūr Hōshangji Jāmāspji, being the first of the Pahlavi texts, after the two old Glossaries, which he was appointed to edit for the Government of Bombay, on the recommendation of the late Professor Martin Haug of Munich. (München, December 1886Footnote 51)
It is also confirmed by a couple of letters from Dastur JamaspAsana addressed to Martin Haug. These letters also provide the reason why such an edition could not be published:
The shikangumânî is still lying I believe, upon the tables of some Educational functionary! but I saw the resolution of Govt to print all works in India instead of Ewrope, of course they all must come to you for revision, but after your revision it will be printed in India. I have finished today my ardâe virâf nâmeh with index and glossary. I will report it to Govt in a day or Govt (Dastur Hoshang JamaspAsana to Martin Haug, Pune, 28 February 1867Footnote 52)
Some years later, the situation was the same:
On account of the sudden departure of Dr Kielhorn, of course the printing of Shekand gumânî is left off. I hope you will have seen him before this, he is a very amiable, & frank hearted gentleman. (Dastur Hoshang to Martin Haug, Pune, 9 March 1871Footnote 53)
On the one hand, the work needed to undergo revisions by Martin Haug. This fact is confirmed by documents that were part of Haug’s personal library, such as the excerpt, ‘the Pahlavi portion of the book, prepared by Dastur Hoshangji Jamaspji in 1868’, which was preserved among Haug’s papers.Footnote 54 On the other hand, according to the rules of the Indian government, the publication of documents preserved in the Indian libraries could not take place anywhere else but in India, as it depended on local financial resources.
As a matter of fact, a similar procedure was followed for the first critical edition of Ardā Wīrāz Nāmag, the Pahlavi text of which was first established by the same Dastur Hoshangji JamaspAsanaFootnote 55 before it was revised and collated with other manuscripts by Haug and West. The same scenario was probably intended for the ŠGW edition as well, but, as Haug died in 1876, the work could only be accomplished by West.
For the moment, it is important to underline that the most important manuscripts that were used for the ŠGW edition, namely AK, JJ, and JE, were consulted in India, certainly by Dastur Hoshangji JamaspAsana and possibly by West, in a selective way, during his fourth trip to India in 1875–1876 (see above). Another manuscript that is important because it contains the whole text of the treatise, namely AK2, was the only one that travelled from India (Bombay) to Europe (Munich) and was either returned to India or remained in Europe. This statement of the facts may explain why the most important manuscripts of ŠGW are no longer accessible today (see also below). Hopefully, they are still located in unknown private collections, either by inheritance or by purchase.
As already illustrated in the previous part, Hoshangji JamaspAsana became one of West’s main contacts in India. He possessed at least two of the most important manuscripts of this text in his own personal library,Footnote 56 now lost, namely AK, which is the oldest manuscript (end of fifteenth century) that one has/had for this text,Footnote 57 and JE, which is a manuscript that is said to have been copied after the Āsadīn Kākā version in the sixteenth century; this is the so-called ‘AK2’, in which the whole text was included in two versions: Pāzand and Sanskrit.Footnote 58 Another important manuscript used for the critical edition, JJ, now lost, belonged to Dastur Khursedjee Jamshedji of Nawsari.Footnote 59
One thing is unfortunately certain: none of these most important manuscripts of ŠGW is currently accessible. How did these manuscripts circulate and how they were transmitted through the last century and a half, as the publication of the critical edition in 1887 remains a mystery? The best-documented trajectory is that of AK2, a more detailed description of which would be helpful here.
AK2 is the manuscript that was sent to Munich in 1886, so it might have been checked for the final form of the critical edition. It remains unknown why Dastur Minocherji JamaspAsana sent it to Munich and not to London, for instance, as West was its main recipient. One possibility could be that some Parsis remained in contact with Spiegel, who, himself a Bavarian, spent his last years of his life in Munich. But, in 1886, he was still teaching in Erlangen (1849–1890).Footnote 60
It would be logical to presume that AK2 was sent to Europe because West had neither seen nor checked it in detail during his presumably last trip to India (1874–1876). It is also possible that the manuscript was the copy of a version (possibly J135, see below) preserved in India, in the JamaspAsana (wherefrom J) library. If this assumption is correct, then there is a good chance that AK2 (a copy of J135) remained in Europe in a still unidentified place, possibly Munich:
As the edition was passing through the press, a manuscript derived from an early copy of AK, made while that manuscript was still nearly complete, was kindly sent to Munich for examination by Dastur dr. Jamaspji Minocheherji from his library in Bombay (…). This manuscript may be called AK2, because it ends with the colophon of Āsadīn son of Kākā, which has been supposed to belong to AK. It contains 357 folios (8 1/2 in. by 6 in.) of old Indian paper of a light brown colour, written thirteen lines to the page, and very much darkened by damp in many places, especially in the earlier half of the manuscript, where the center of each folio is often broken into holes.Footnote 61
Among West’s papers at the Royal Asiatic Society one finds a similar description, but for a manuscript that has a different name—J135:
Dastur Jamaspji’s old MS of Shikand-gumānī, marked J135 on first folio. 357 folios of Indian paper, 8 ½ in. high x 6 in. wide, written 13 lines to the page. Paper rather yellowish-brown from age, but not as dark or reddish as that of AK. Most of the folios are more or less discoloured to a dark sepia-brown by damp, and some are much damaged thereby and parts of the middle broken away into holes.Footnote 62
It is hard to believe that two different manuscripts had such similar descriptions. I am thus inclined to consider that AK2 became a second name for J135. It is likely that, between the preparatory work and the publication of the edition itself, West renamed J135 as AK2. This might have happened after he read the colophon and identified the authorship of the manuscript, namely that its scribe had been Āsadīn Kākā (hence AK). This latter personage was a sixteenth-century priest of the Bhagaria family, the most important copyist of Avestan manuscripts, who knew both Middle Persian and Sanskrit.Footnote 63
As West provides such a detailed description of J135, this suggests that he saw the manuscript while he was in India, and going back and forth between Bombay (where Jamaspji and his library were) and Pune (where Hoshangji and his library were). But, if this is true, then why was no manuscript J135 mentioned in the critical apparatus of his co-edition? Its description appears to contain enough technical detail to be based upon a more profound investigation by West. If J135 appears to be AK2, then why was it sent to Europe, with the result that, eventually, neither J135 nor AK2 might be mentioned at all in the critical apparatus of the 1887 critical edition?
Further useful information might be provided by the catalogue of Dastur Hoshangji’s library published by Friedrich Müller in 1889, two years after the publication of the critical edition of ŠGW (1887). Müller mentions three manuscripts of ŠGW, all of which were copied by Dastur Jamshed Edal JamaspAsana. One is said to be in Pahlavi, one has no specific description, and the third, said to be in Pāzand, has a longer description: ‘copied from MSS. of Kākā Āsdin. The copy which was sent to Dr. West.’Footnote 64 Hoshangji’s library would have also included two glossaries of the text: Farhang ī Shikand Gūmānīk Vijār.Footnote 65
If this reading is right, then the manuscript that was ‘sent to Dr. West’ and that West called ‘AK2’ in the introduction to his critical edition was just a copy of the original manuscript written by Āsadīn Kākā. It is understandable that the members of the JamaspAsana family might have ordered a copy to be sent to Europe in order to avoid the loss of such an important manuscript. But, while West states that the manuscript (just a copy) was sent from Bombay from Minocherji’s library, Müller locates the respective copy in Pune in Hoshangji’s library. Does this mean that Dastur Minocherji JamaspAsana’s (1830–1898) manuscript that was sent to Europe in case it went back to India was directed not to Bombay, but to Pune so that Müller could register it in Hoshangji’s library? Who is delivering some rather unreliable information: West or Müller?
Intriguingly enough, a manuscript called ‘AK2’ is listed in the catalogue of the manuscripts that belonged to the library of Dastur Minocherji JamaspAsana and that his widow proposed to sell to A. V. Jackson in 1932:
Shikane Gumanik Vijar with Pazend Sanskrit and old Gujarati Version the writing beautiful, folios 1–8 contain besides the Pahlavi text the Gujarati Version written in Devnagari in the outer margin is evidently by a different and later hand and stops at folios 136. There are 606 sections of Gujarati. Versions numbered in Balbodh figures. The subsequent sections trest [treat?] of Indian Philosophy. First folio is missing Mass. is 9′′ x 6′′ x 2 1/2′′ leather cover loose, lines 13 a page and catchword folios 356 very badly damped, defaced torn worn end in a crumbling state. Mass at little worm eaten Sanskrit written upside down unfortunately the last folio, which contains the colophone which was extend the time when this very Mass was collected by Dr. West [] [from?] a Dastur Hoshangji as AK2 is missing at present.Footnote 66
The description matches perfectly with that given by West in the printed critical edition (see above).
An important manuscript of ŠGW is referred to by Jamshed Cavasji Katrak in his contribution to Oriental Treasures, preserved in Indian (private) libraries, in the description of the manuscript with entry no. 602. I quote:
Amongst the Pahlavi Mss. of value may be mentioned the Shikand Gumanig Vijar Ms. No. 602 including Pazend-Sanskrit-Old Gujarati versions. It seems 300 years old. This Ms. must have been directly copied from Asdin Kaka’s Ms. referred to by Dr. E. West in his ‘Pahlavi Literature’, p. 107. Asdin’s Ms. was examined by me in the late Dastur Minocheher Jamaspji’s collection some years ago. Unfortunately, the folio including the colophon is now lost.Footnote 67
In West’s article quoted by Katrak (‘Pahlavi literature’), two manuscripts are mentioned: AK2 (1569), which was written by Āsadīn Kākā, and AK, the oldest manuscript of ŠGW. It is possible that the manuscript consulted in Dastur Minocherji’s library, with a lost colophon, was AK2 or J135. However, Katrak’s manuscript, which is listed under no. 602 and comprises only 161 folios, appears to be a seventeenth-century (circa 1641) copy of the first part of the treatise.Footnote 68
Concluding remarks
The present article has brought to light the fact that Edward West went to India on at least four occasions. A provisional record of these periods can be found at the end of this article. In this way, this article usefully complements Almut Hintze’s work, according to which ‘West spent the years 1844–1851, 1852–1866 and 1874–1876 in India’.Footnote 69
The short investigation on the ŠGW manuscript AK2 has defended at least two hypotheses:
a. If my assumption that AK2 was previously known as J135 is correct, then it is possibly under this name that one should look for it through the Indian catalogues (published or handwritten) and this might be a significant clue for future research.
b. The information given in the catalogues is not always fully reliable. It remains indeed uncertain whether the search for ‘J135’ instead of ‘AK2’ would shed more light on the matter. The manuscript seems to have been sufficiently damaged by damp that a member of the family, who was less in the know, might have thrown it away, as happened with the Dēnkard in the same JamaspAsana family (see above, note 41).
The difficulties in dealing philologically with the text of ŠGW are numerous. These are not only due to the fact that the Pahlavi original was lost and its reconstruction, according to the Pāzand version, is often problematic, but also because most of the best manuscripts that provided the basis for the critical edition, being initially used by Hoshangji Jamaspji and later consulted by West during his last stay in India, are either lost or preserved in unconventional, as yet unidentified places. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, no copy since these manuscripts has been filed in the European libraries. AK2 (which may correspond to J135) travelled to Munich and possibly returned to Bombay because it was not meant to remain in Europe. For the moment, no trace of its passage through Europe has been identified.
At the end of his introductory study to the critical edition, West gave a gentle message to the Parsi community by underlining at least two main points:
a. Every edition will be inferior if better manuscripts of a text are not provided to the scholars working on it: ‘At present every editor of such texts has to regret much time and labour wasted in the study of inferior manuscripts, when others of much greater importance could have been made available if he had been aware of their existence.’Footnote 70
b. It is well known that manuscripts preserved in public libraries have a better chance of survival than those kept in private libraries: ‘private libraries have to pass through a period of loss and destruction at every change of ownership, which must occur at least once in every generation, so that many of the really valuable manuscripts, now existing in private hands, may possibly be lost in the next fifty years.’Footnote 71
It is possible that many of the most important manuscripts of ŠGW, which were located in private libraries, might have undergone a process of destruction. However, there is still some hope that somewhere, in the private or public libraries of India, these most important manuscripts are still preserved. This is one of the reasons for the present article: to raise interest and open up paths to forgotten matters.
Acknowledgements
The present article is based on the investigations I pursued during two previous research fellowships: one in Paris (2014–2015), while I was an associated researcher at the Collège de France, and the other in Berlin (2017–2018), while I was an Alexander von Humboldt fellow. These previous inquiries concerned two main areas: 1. the manuscripts of the ninth- and tenth-century polemical treatise ŠGW preserved in European libraries (Copenhagen, London, Munich, Paris); and 2: the Nachlass of various scholars, including Martin Haug and Edward W. West.
In April 2015, I went through the documents concerning Edward W. West, preserved at the British Library, with the hope that some more information on the constitution of his co-authored (together with Hoshengji JamaspAsa) critical edition of ŠGW could be obtained. In fact, they revealed less than I had expected. However, they brought forward significant elements concerning the biography and works of Edward W. West. In October 2016, I undertook another research trip to London, to consult the Nachlass of West preserved at the Royal Asiatic Society. The content of this archive was previously described at length by Jean de MenasceFootnote 72; see J. de Menasce, ‘A provisional list of the late Edward W. West’s papers’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland I (1974), pp. 53–63. See also A. Hintze, ‘Edward William West and the Pahlavi Codex MK’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society XXXI.3 (2021), pp. 545–557, and the link given in her article to the full inventory of West’s papers, on the RAS’s Archive Hub (https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk).
This article was completed during my Humboldt fellowship (2 September–2 December 2022) at the Institut für Iranistik, Freie Universität. I would like to thank my colleagues Benedikt Peschl (Institut für Iranistik, Freie Universität, Berlin) and Daniel Sheffield (Princeton University) for their useful remarks on a previous version of this article.
Conflicts of interest
None.
Unpublished documents
Nachlass, Edward W. West
British LibraryFootnote 73
IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.1 The Diary of the West family
IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.6(?) 49 letters from Edward W. West (20.05.1945–26.04.1858)
IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.19 Letters from Arthur West to Edward W. West (1849–1853)
IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.20 108 letters from Edward W. West to Arthur A. West (09.01.1852–03.12.1960)
Royal Asiatic SocietyFootnote 74
West 25 ‘Manuscript of the Shikand Gumanik Wizar’
West 17 ‘Pazand Sanskrit Mss of the Shikand Gumanik Wizar’
West 33 ‘A Copy of the Shikand Gumani in Haug’s writing after (…) MS 28 collated by West’
West 57D ‘Personalia’, ff. 35–38 (travel book of his journey through India, 1875–1876)
Nachlass, Friedrich Carl Andreas, Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek GöttingenFootnote 75
Cod. Ms.F.C. Andreas 1:296, f. 199d–199c
Letter from Dastur Jamaspji Minochecherji to Friedrich Andreas, Bombay, 30th November 1877.
Cod. Ms.F.C. Andreas 1:458, f. 122
Letter from Edward W. West to Friedrich Andreas, Bombay, May 21st 1876.
JamaspAsana 1932
Catalogue of the Mass. & Books owned by late Dastoorji Minocherji JamaspAsana, B.A., 1932 (it includes ‘Life Sketch of my late husband as it appeared in the volume H.I.M. King George V and Princes of India and Indian empire published at Lahore 1937’. This could be the ante quem date of the Catalogue).
Appendix A
The diary of the West family
An impressive diary of the West family, preserved at the British Library, accompanied by numerous letters exchanged between the members of the family, father, sons and the three West brothers, Arthur, Henry, and Edward, recounts important elements about the extraordinary biography and intellectual endeavour of Edward West. The diary was written at a date later than the events related and in the third person. It seems more likely that the author was Edward’s brother Arthur, as one can deduce by comparing the handwritings of Edward and Arthur with that of the diary.
Edward had left England by the end of 1843 and reached Bombay in 1844, on 6 June:
Edward W. West, voyage to Bombay in 1844.
Towards the close of the year 1843, Edward W. West, then in his twentieth year, was employed by the Apollo Cotton Press Co. of Bombay, to be assistant superintendent of their machinery and works in Bombay. It was however arranged that he should not leave England until after the lapse of a few months.Footnote 76
The next morning, 7th June, 1844, Edward first called at the office of Mr Remington, to report his arrival, and saw Mr Crawford, one of the partners […].Footnote 77
The rain began, he was told, on 4th June, two days before his arrival at Bombay […].Footnote 78
During the first six years spent in Bombay, he became more and more familiar with the place and its people. As the company Apollo Cotton Press was situated in the Colaba, the traditional quarter of the Parsis, living connections with the Zoroastrians in Bombay were made possible from the very beginning. The West family seems to have been in close contact with the Parsi community for a long time. Some of the employees of their Apollo Cotton company belonged to this branch:
At an early date Edward introduced Arthur to Iranjee Cowasjee, a very old Parsi gentleman, and a great friend of their father and uncle when they were in Bombay, twenty-five to thirty years before. He was a large shareholder in the Apollo Co. but sold his shares in April 1848.Footnote 79
The West family diary contains details on marriages among the Parsis:
In the native town he (Arthur) saw the procession of a Parsi wedding a little way off and reached it just as, preceded by a band, dressed up like […?], it began to enter the garden of a house. The Parsi gentlemen, in their best clothes, long white dresses and purple turbans. The ladies, following them, dressed in coloured silk sáris, red, pink, and yellow predominating, made a brilliant effect. There might have been 350 people altogether, including the children. Someone called out ‘Arthur,’ and the word being repeated Hormusjee appeared with three of his children […]: They were all carrying flowers.Footnote 80
The priests recited alternately a number of sentences in a sort of sing-song manner; the first part of each sentence being spoken very rapidly, and the last word drawn out to a great length, and when pronouncing this last word of each sentence, one priest threw a piece of cocoa-nut at the bride or the bridegroom, and the other tossed a handful of rice over them. This continued for about twenty minutes, each priest saying different words from the other, and evidently repeating the sentence over and over again.Footnote 81
The diary also describes an iconic place for the Zoroastrian community in Bombay, known as Malabar Hill:
One of the pleasantest walks in the daytime was on the top of the Malabar Hill, distant about a mile and a half from the house, round the innermost angle of Back Bay at Chowpati, the great landing place for firewood. The summit of Malabar Hill in those days was in a wild state, consisting of good […?] fields of day grass, enclosed by low walls of dry stone, 3 or 4 feet high […]. The view was very fine: to the westward, the open sea, to the eastward, over Back Bay, beyond the Fort, and the long tongue of land called Colaba, in the distance, beyond them the harbour.Footnote 82
After dinner, Arthur went to Malabar Hill to resume a sketch he began the previous Sunday, of Bombay, as seen from a sort of temple on a steep path up the hill side not far from Chowpati.Footnote 83
It also reports on its northern part, including the Tower of Silence:
The northern part of Malabar Hill was strictly tabooed to trespassers being the Parsi burial ground, occupied by their towers of silence, in which the body of the dead are laid to be devoured by the vultures, large numbers of which could be seen at times, perched upon the adjoining trees.Footnote 84
Edward’s brother Arthur:
Describes the Parsis, eating with their fingers, marrying when children, women speak one language, men another; the men are not buried, but laid out in a large circular building to be eaten by vultures which are hold sacred.Footnote 85
It also provides references to John Wilson:
Early in DecemberFootnote 86, Dr Wilson begun a series of lectures, every Wednesday evening, describing his recent visit to the Holy Land, on the route of the Israelites from Egypt. Edward, Mary and Arthur attended these lectures regularly, and on nearly every occasion, upon the conclusion of the lecture, were invited upstairs, with other friends, to tea, and conversation, concluding with evening prayer. They have met and became acquainted with many persons.Footnote 87
He was a good linguist in Oriental languages and quite at home with the notions in Arabic. He naturally became one of the leading men among the passengers for the rest of the journey, and following this casual introduction, Dr and Mrs Wilson became valued friends and counsellors to Mary and Arthur during many succeeding years.Footnote 88
During the period 1844–1850, the West brothers began travelling rather regularly to the Island of Salsette,Footnote 89 the location of the Kanheri caves. For instance, trips are noted for March 1948 (Rev. Wilson, Arthur and Edward) and January 1850 (Edward alone):
(March 1848) The interior of it (Chaitya cave) is in the shape of a church, with an arched roof, and a row of columns down each side and round the inner end.Footnote 90
(January 1850) Edward occupied himself in studying the inscription in the Chaitya Cave. He found that he could identify about four letters in every five, and detected some errors in the copies of some of them that had been made by other persons and published. He spent some time in an endeavour to take impressions of them on wetted paper, but found the surface of the rock too rough.Footnote 91
The diary of the West family is also a fresco of Bombay, mostly of the years 1844–1850. For instance, while trying to obtain a job for his brother Arthur, Edward made annotations on the works in progress in Bombay, the Colaba quarter, in terms of building construction:
The ruins of the Bombay Hotel were being cleaned out, and the foundations being laid for godowns to be built on the site under Parsi superintendence. Some large godowns were being erected for Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy (1783–1859) at the back of Dady’s […?], and being roofed in. The iron-roofed godown at Colaba was nearly finished. Some of the roads had lately been […?], and the corner of the road at the Church Gate was then being rounded off. A few houses were being built on Malabar Hill. A new church was to be built on Colaba island, plans for which had been prepared. A proposal for a new pier at the Apollo Co.’s premises at Colaba was in abeyance. There were also pier works going on at the Dockyard. A few days later Dr. Wilson mentioned that it was intended to erect new buildings for the Free Church school and college, but this was talked about for some years before anything could be done. The proposed railway was still in abeyance, and likely to be so for some years to come.Footnote 92
Appendix B
West 57D ‘Personalia’, ff. 35–38—travel notebook during his journey in India, autumn 1875–May 1876
//f. 35// Nov. 3rd 1875. Called on Dastur Hoshangji, near the Agiary in Rana Pet, Poona. He says his ancestor (in 5th generation) Jámásp Asá collected more than 1000 Mss., and had 3 sons by his first wife, namely Jamshéd, Behrám & Nóshirwán, the last of whom died early; when elderly he married a daughter of the Mihirji Ráná family, given to him in return for instruction in Pahlavi & other learning; by her he had a fourth son Rustam who was only a boy when his father died. According to Jámásp Asás will his books were to be divided among those only of his sons who could read them; this led to disputes, as Jamshéd, thinking to keep the whole library to himself, insisted upon this provise […?] observed; he therefore locked up the books for 12 years till a new governor coming //f. 36// to Náwsári was induced to take his view of the matter, and to settle the dispute called Rustam, and opening the book case took out of each class of book, Avestan, Pahlavi, Persian, Pázand & Sanskrit, and asked him to read them, which not being able to do he was dismissed with the remark that he could not claim any of the books he was unable to read, that he had already had a larger share of the other property of his father than his brothers, according to his father’s will, and must remained satisfied. The books were then divided between the two remaining brothers, Jamshéd & Behrám, and each having 3 sons, they were again subdivided on their deaths, and again on their sons’ deaths among their sons, this subdivision often leading to the separation //f. 37// of a MS. into several portions, so that Dastur Hoshangji himself possesses some of Jámásp Asás’ MSS. of which portions have been removed. One of Jámásp Asás′ descendants, who had a larger share of the MSS. than his cousins, owing to his having had only one brother, being poor, secretly sold many of his MSS. to Mulla Firoz, who was a friend of his, at the Mulla’s own prices, and this accounts for several of Jámásp Asás MSS. being now in the Mulla Firoz library. The copy of the Nírangistán, originally brought from Iran by Dastyr Jámásp Viláyati, and presented by him to Dastur Jámásp Asá, is not in the library of Dr. Noshirwanji & Dr. Hoshangji, but they have a copy written by Jámásp Asá in A.Y. 1097 probably copied direct from that // f. 38// original MS. which was brought from Iran in A.Y. 1090.Footnote 93
Appendix C
Cod.
F.C. Andreas 1:458 (f. 122)
Bombay May 21st 1876
My Dear Sir,
As I am leaving Bombay by tomorrows’ mail steamer I write to inform you that my address henceforth will be at the care of (…) West & co., Crown Place, Kentish Town Road, London. I wrote to you some three or four months ago, but have as yet no reply, though I should be very glad to hear how you have been getting on. You have probably met with more difficulties than you expected. A paragraph in a Gujarati nespaper was pointed out to me by a Parsi, which states that you had returned from the Sindh frontier to Karáchi in consequence of fever, and had embarked on a steamer for Guader.
Since I wrote last I have collated the old Yasna of Dastur Jamaspji with Spiegel’s Pahlavi text (why bye the bye is pretty full of blunders) also the earlier part of a Pahlavi Vendidad from Teheran (some 300 years old) with Spiegel; this Pahlavi Vendidad is a copy of one of the older ones in Europe, and supplies the earlier portion which has been (…) in those old copies. I have also copied the greater part of the so-called complete Dádistán-i Díní, but have not had time to finish all the middle portion of which part Haug has a copy. The author of the Dádistán appears to have lived about A.Y. 340 (…).
I have also copied & collated several minor pieces and have a print copy of the Vajarkard i Díní. I shall be very glad to hear if you are able to copy any of the Sasanian inscriptions, as I think they are the only means of setting many disputed readings which now depend entirely on (…).
Wishing you success, I remain, in haste,
Yours very truly,
E.W. West
