É. Apor (ed.): Codex Cumanicus. Ed. by Géza Kuun with a Prolegomena to the Codex Cumanicus by Lajos Ligeti. (Budapest Oriental Reprints, Ser. B 1.)
L. Ligeti: Prolegomena to the Codex Cumanicus
6 L. I-IGETI Latin names of the Christian calendar, contrasted with the Persian names of Arabic origin, outline the Muslim calendar. The sequence of the Christian and Muslim months in the Codex correspond only cyclically. Disregarding the earlier (1259 - 1261) and later (1324 1326) concordances, the lists of the months in the Codex coincide only in the years 1292 -1294. 1 3 Through various com1 3 The correspondence between the Latin and Persian names of months listed on p. 72 of the Codex points to the year 1294, Samojlovic suggests (Doklady Ak. Nauk 1924, pp. 86 -88); Malov (Izv . dfc. Nauk SSSR 1930, pp. 347-349) placed this date at 129596. (The questions of the Coman calendar were studied by Kowalski, Zu den türkischen Monatsnamen : Archív Orientálni I (1930), pp. 3 — 26, especially pp. 17 — 26, and by K. Grönbech, Wörterbuch, pp. 30 — 31). The date 1294 — 95 inferred from the Muslim chronology is attractive but, as stated above, not convincing. In the course of copying, ihe list of months got mixed up, as seen in the Coman column. It is also obvious that the copier noticed this, and tried to join the horizontal correlations by adding dashes. The names of the Coman column are, in any case, perplexing. Why, for example, is June an autumn month? Why are throe summer months missing? Other curiosities were referred to by Kowalski along with possible explanations. Ba/.in devoted a whole chapter of his book to the Coman calendar (pp. 624 — 650), and the deficiency of the list did not escape his attention either. He ascribed it to tho careless copier. Ba/.in tried to overcome the difficulties by reconstructing the Coman calendar with 16 months (pp. 642 — 643), in the following manner: one year starts with November and ends with October, then the next year starts with November again, but ends with February (that's all the list of 16 can provide for). The period November — December of t he 16-item list falls in 1293, January — December in 1294, and JanuaryFebruary in 1295. This seems to bolster up the hypothesis of the 1294 — 95 date. Tho problem is, however, that Bazin's cleverly reconstructed list of 16 months can in no way be verified. Another proof of the delicacy of the Coman calendar is the fact that erroneous copying can be clearly shown in the Persian column containing the Moslem month-names in distinct Arabic forms. Lot us start from a tangible point: április — gimediaual (Bazin: Jumàdà I, mai); madius — regep gimedielachel (B: Jumàdà II, mai). The copier left this out, and realized his mistake only after he had put down regep. He corrected the error by inserting it afterwards (B: Rajab, juin). From this point on, the list is one line off, marked by the additional dashes of the copier (the dashes are hardly visible in the facsimile, but much clearer in Kowalski's facsimile); junius — saab'im (B: Sa bán, juillet); julius - ramadá (B: Ramadàn, aoüt); augustus — saugal (B: Sawwal, septeinbre); septemb(e)r — 6il chaade (B: Dü'l qa'da, oetobre); octub(e)r — dilchia (B: Dü'l hijja, novembre) noue(m)ber — mugarà (B: Muharram, décembre); decemh(e)r — the space for the Persian word is blank here. If the word regep is fitted in its right place, the lacuna of December disappears in the Persian column. Bazin's Muslim chronology involves only the year 1294 (excluding 1295). His proposed interpretation of the Persian calendar of the Codex basically agrees with Samojloviő's. Both of them name 1294 as the date in question, and both exclude the years 1295 — 96 suggested by Malov for the date of origin of the calendar. In fact, the date now generally accepted, 1294. is not so convincing, as there are throe successive years in which tho month safar correlates with January, and muharrarn with December: 23. 1. 1292 (Wednesday) — 12. 12. 1293 (Friday); 11. 1. 1293 (Tuesday) — 2. 12. (Wednesday); 1. 1. 1294 (Friday) - 21. 12. (Tuesday). In the Moslem calendar: H 691-1291/2; H 692 - 1293/4, H 693 - 1293/4. Cf V. V. Cybuljskij, Sovremennye kalendari stran Bliínego iSrednego Vostoka, Sinchronisticeskle tablicy i pojasnenija, Moskva 1964, p. 66. Ba/.in chose the last of the possible three. It is hard to toll how this Moslem date found its way into the Codex, and whether or not
