PREFACE.

THE full and sympathetic "Life of Edward Henry Palmer" which Mr. Besant has lately brought out exonerates me from adding any biographical notice of my friend to his posthumous work. It will, therefore, only be needful to explain what my task has been in preparing this Dictionary for the press.

On my return to London from the East in November, 1882, I learned that all hope had been abandoned, and that there was no doubt that the three brave men, Gill, Charrington and Palmer, had met their fate in the Wady Sudr. A few weeks later I was requested by Mr. N. Trübner to see through the press this Second Part of the Persian Dictionary, some pages of which had already been set up in type. On consulting Mrs. Palmer as to her wishes, I was happy in being able to obtain her full consent to the proposal of Mr. Trübner, and was immediately placed in possession of the slips which Professor Palmer had prepared, the greater portion of which I found had remained at his house, though some were already in the hands of the Publisher.

As long ago as the spring of 1880, Professor Palmer had shown me many bundles of these slips, and fortunately then explained to me the method he intended to pursue in the compilation of the second, or English-Persian part of the Dictionary.

The basis of the work was the First Part, the PersianEnglish, a copy of which had been cut up, and each paragraph pasted on a separate slip in order that the English renderings might be arranged alphabetically.

In this manner a good stock of words was acquired, but much still remained to be done in the way of elimination and addition, while some considerable alterations also were needed to render the English word-list complete; this last especially, inasmuch as in Persian the number of simple verbs is extremely limited, and further, the majority of the Persian compound verbs would only occur in the reversed Dictionary, under the English noun or participle, not under the more appropriate infinitive: e.g. "To advise' would be represented by 'Advice,' because the Persians, to express the verb, make use of the phrase 'To give advice.' In 1880 I discussed this with my friend, and remember his then telling me that he intended merely to indicate in its proper place the auxiliary verb to be used with the noun or participle, avoiding thus the repetition involved by adding separate paragraphs for each compound verb; but I found that up to the time of Professor Palmer's last

ill-fated journey no steps had been taken to indicate these auxiliary verbs, though the word-list proper had been considerably augmented by him.

No one can be better aware than myself of the disadvantages under which the book labours in never having been revised by the hand of its learned author. I have endeavoured to carry out what I believe to have been the intention of my friend. I have made additions to nearly every paragraph for the purpose above indicated, such as he would assuredly have made had he lived; and I have also completed the list of words from my own reading and colloquial knowledge, and from the works of my predecessors, Messrs A. N. Wollaston, A. Bergé, J. B. Nicolas, and others.

The Persian Grammar which stands at the head of this work originally appeared as the second section in the "Simplified Grammars of Hindustani, Persian and Arabic," published in 1882. For this such slight alterations as were needed in the references have been made, and on one or two occasions I have added an explanation of my own in square brackets [ ]. In all other respects this portion is merely a reprint, for the benefit of those who may be learning Persian but not Hindustani and Arabic.

Furthermore, I have written out a Table of the Persian (so-called) Irregular Verbs, and also a short note with reference to the years of the Hejrah.

As regards the transliteration employed in the work— bearing in mind that the object was merely to give the pronunciation, and that the Persian original invariably preceded, it has been deemed sufficient to use but one dotted letter (k), consequently the Persian homophones of the Arab Alphabet have not been indicated. Furthermore, as in Part I., no difference is shown in the Persian character between the G and K, since the diacritical bar is never written in Modern Persian, while the letter to be pronounced is clearly indicated in the transliteration following.

46, CHARLES STREET, MAYFAIR,

LONDON.

September, 1883.

G. LE STRANGE.

POSTSCRIPT.

MR. N. TRÜBNER has lately called my attention to a work professing to be the composition of Sorabshaw Byramji Doctor, but which is in fact no more than an incorrect reprint of Professor Palmer's Persian-English Dictionary. Mr. S. B. Doctor is "Persian Teacher" in the "Surat High School," and his book is printed at the "Irish Presbyterian Mission Press," at Surat, in the year 1880.

Professor Palmer in 1881 had seen this Dictionary, and had some intention of seeking legal redress, but other matters had occupied him up to the time of his last disastrous journey; and it therefore remains to me, in vindication of the literary honour of my friend, to warn the public of this attempt to take away from Professor Palmer the fruit of his labours. Mr. S. B. Doctor, it is true, does notice Johnson's Persian and Arabic Dictionary, together with some others as having "been consulted in the preparation of this Manual;" and here and there in his work we find some pages so altered as to imply that they were borrowed elsewhere; but there is no mention of the work of Professor Palmer, from which has been copied