ana translation

INTRODUCTION
xlv
near Mardin, which was then and still is the headquarters of the
Jacobite Church now a feeble remnant.* However, it was not
there, but in Malabar, that it came into the possession of Dr. Buchanan
in 1806, a gift from Mar Dionysius [Thomas] VI, Metropolitan of
the Syro-Indian Church, the "Christians of St. Thomas." The donor
believed it to be an immemorial heirloom of his Church, " near a
thousand years old," that is, to belong to the ninth century. But
as we have seen, its date is shown by the character of the writing
to be probably three hundred years later. And inasmuch as the
Church of Malabar was Nestorian until Mar Gregorius, the first
Jacobite Metropolitan (whence this Mar Dionysius had his succession),
was sent from Mesopotamia in 1663-5, it may be presumed that this
MS, including as it does the Epistles which are unrecognized by Nestorians,
and written in a Tur'abdinese hand,
before that date.f
did not reach Malabar
Cod. 12. (The "Crawford MS, No. II," now in the John Rylands
Library, Manchester.)
The late Earl of Crawford and Balcarres acquired this MS by
purchase from a dealer, but its previous owners are unrecorded,
except that it was written for one Gabriel, a priest, and that in
1534 it was sold to "Simeon of Hatacha, Patriarch." f It is unique,
* For Tur-'Abdin and its scribes, see the Memoir in T.R.I.A. (cited in note J,
below), p. 356 et sqq.
t That Cod. 9 is of Cent, xn is further indicated by the occurrence in it, in two
places, of notes naming the Patriarch Michael presumably " Michael the Great,"
who transferred his see from Amid [Diarbekr] to Mardin, and died in 1199. See
further in Cambridge Catalogue, as above. See also Buchanan, Christian Researches
(Foy's edition, 1858), p. 40; and Pearson's Memoir of Dr. Buchanan,
vol. ii, pp. 70-115. At first it was " reputed to be as old as the Alexandrine
MS"; another estimate was "as early as the fifth or sixth century," which,
however, Dr. Buchanan rejected as " certainly too high." It was at Caudenate,
a village near Diamper [Udiampur], both close to Cochin in Travancore, that
Buchanan received it from the Metropolitan. Had it been forthcoming in 1599,
it would presumably have been produced at the " Synod of Diamper " held in
the Church of Rome severely censured the
that year, at which the authorities of
Churches of Malabar for (inter alia) the absence of these Epistles from their New
Testament. See Geddes, History of the Church of Malabar (1694), p. 132 et sqq.
(ch. xiv, Deer. n).
| See for a full account of this MS, my Memoir in Transactions of Royal Irish
Academy, vol. xxx, pp. 347 et sqq. ; also, Preliminary Dissertation prefixed to The
Apocalypse in Syriac, from the Craivford MS, ch. viii, pp. cvi ct sqq.