PREVIOUS WORK ON THE HYMN-CYCLES

two major Parthian works, Huwīdagmān and Wazargān Āfrīwan, it included the extensive Middle Persian hymn-cycle Gōwišn īg Grīw Zindag (Speech of the Living Soul). Unfortunately the manuscript is now in a fragmentary state. It is written, moreover, in a cursive hand very difficult to decipher.

The Parthian fragment T II D 178 I contains verses from the end of one canto and the beginning of another. The opening words of the second canto are:

Lentz found a page in the Sogdian MS containing a colophon that read as follows:

i.e. "Finished the fifth limb: āgām kē bōžā". Evidently the opening words of a canto, āgām kē bōžā, had here been used to provide a title for the canto as a whole; and Lentz was able therefore to say that T II D 178 I contained the beginning of a fifth "limb".² On the verso of the Sogdian page bearing this colophon appears the word [γwy]δkm'n. This shows that the canto in question belongs to the cycle Huwīdagmān. Lentz did not, however, pursue Reitzenstein's suggestion that there might be two recensions of the hymn-cycles,³ nor did he seek to distinguish between the different Western Iranian originals represented by the Sogdian translations; for at that time it was not unnaturally assumed that the significant word in the titles of these texts was "handām" (Sogdian 'nδmy), a word which, in addition to its common meaning of "limb," and hence, it seems, of "part, section," has also a particular significance as a religious technical term for a "limb" of the soul.⁴ The occurrence of this word in conjunction with various headings such as Huwīdagmān and Wazargān Āfrīwan was therefore then held to unite what have since been identified as separate texts.

The other text published by Lentz, M 855, was not known to Reitzenstein. This fragment has on its verso page the title: nyš'r'd

¹ Sic (thus); see below, pp. 86 n. 1, 87 n. 1.
² Lentz also assigned T II D 178 II-IV to the fifth canto, naturally believing these fragments to form a continuous text with T II D 178 I. This is not, however, the case; see below, pp. 30-31, 35-36, 38-40.
³ See Erl. Myst., p. 26. Reitzenstein made this suggestion because of the title on M 93 II: "Sixth Limb—Huwīdagmān."
⁴ See W.-L. i, p. 42 ff.