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
18 L. I-IGETI bar, on the other hand, was the third item of the missing second line, whose L and P equivalents escaped the scribe's notice. Kuun's reading errors concerning any item in the Codex, are easy to correct now with the help of the facsimile. Correcting Kuun's mistakes, however, dees not mean in the least that the Coman, Persian, and other material, cleared of subsequent, added mistakes, will be completely authentic. What has been shown of the passage quoted above from the Italian part holds true of the second part too, worsened by the fact that the scribes, well-intentioned but ignorant of the language, added numerous Coman language barbarisms. No one doubts that a distinction must be made between transliteration and transcription. The latter relies on the former; it explains and elucidats it. That is why transcription contains an individual hypothetical element. In any given case it is up to the researcher whether he acknowledges a transliterated Persian or Coman form either as authentic, or considers it an error of the copier. The explanation of the transliteration, either accepting or rejecting, is after all an explanation meant to elucidate the reading as well as explain the string of problems stemming from it. This appears to justify Kuun's method of edition according to which the material of the Codex is published in transliteration, with the editor's transcription and relevant explanations given in the notes. The method used in editing the works of classical authors cannot be imitated: one cannot put the interpreted text, as thought correct by the given editor, in the forefront and relegate the correct or erroneous forms of the transliterated Codex to the footnote section. Scrupulous accuracy in transliteration is naturally not an end in itself, but its purity must be seen to. Washing over the differences between transliteration and transcription could result in incorrect conclusions. W. Bang, whose contribution to interpreting the texts of the Codex is most valuable, committed this mistake. Interpreting the material of the Codex on the basis of the transliteration, he believed the Coman language to be eastern Turkish, although there can be no doubt that it belongs to the Kipchak tongues. By way of illustration, let us compare the strophe, «Ave porta paradisi», as semi-transliterated or semi-transcribed by Bang, and as transcribed by Drimba. 2 2 2 2 In Kuun's edition (see p. 186), the uninterrupted Coman text is divided into verses. He presumed that a line consisted of seven or eight syllables. Bang, the perceptive, severe critic, failed to notice Kuun's priority in these questions. This, however, does not excuse Kuun's readings, poor as they were already in his own time. In his exemplary edition Drimba (op. cit., pp. 265 — 299) included the Coman text, its French translation and the Latin original, but also an accurate list of earlier editions and critical comments, suggested emendations, the transliteration of the Codex (where necessary), and the different readings of the Latin original (pp. 295 — 299).
