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
38 L. I-IGETI namaò-pàra «morceau de feu tre»). Analogous forms could be cited from the Ob Ugric languages. 5 4 Examples can also be found for the sporadic r > / change: suldx [sulach] «hole», CI. surdx. It is one of the old variants. Lazard (p. 155) quotes the súlá form from old records, and sl'x from Judeo-Persian. Also Kab. solàx (26). From the Codex: belk [belch] «leaf». According to Lazard (p. 155), balg appeared with barg already in Firdausi's work. He also quotes Judeo-Tj. balg, Maz. valg. Also Lit. P. balg «feuille d'arbre» (Desm.) besides barg ; Haz. balgau «pàtes de farine fine bouillies» (a compound of balg «leaf» and au «water»); Afg. balg «leaf», Kurd, belk «feuille» (Jaba). In the majority of the cases the original r is retained, e.g. diwàr [diuar] «wall», but Kab. déwàl ; zangàr [xangar] «vert-de-gris» but Kab. zangál ; etc. In some cases Bodrogligeti interprets the initial CI. q- (even in words of Arabic origin), as g-. This reading reflects the pronunciation of today's Colloquial Persian. The dictionaries of JunkerAlavi, Haim and Miller also mark it this way. The few examples in the Codex are, however, not convincing. 55 Strangely enough, a similar phenomenon can be detected in the Sino-Persian glossaries of the Ming period, with the difference that g in place of q does not only occur in initial position. Examples: gaz «goose» (55b), Cl. qàz ; gulgàs «the edible root of a plant» (65a), Cl. qulqás; gedeh «tumbler» (70b), Cl. qadah ; nugre «silver» (82a), CI. nuqrah ; gdS «money» (83a), Cl. qdS; galam «pen ; brush» (89), CI. qalam ; gaud «strong» (104), CI. qawi; etc. At this point the questions should be raised: Where was this Persian dialect spoken ? Whose native tongue was it? So far there are only hypotheses instead of precise answers. Salemann located this dialect in Khorasan, while Monchi-zadeh tended to indentify it with the Caspian dialects. Bodrogligeti, an eminent scholar of the Kurdish language, looked for Kurdish affinities in it. His position is compatible with the former ones if we consider the fact that the socalled Kurdish features 5 5 are the specificities of the Persian elements of Kurdish. 5 4 An n preceding the final d is unetymological, but it is still possible that it reflects an actual pronunciation. A similarly unetymological n can be found before the final t in the Persian form borrowed into Vogul. It is also possible, however, that the secondary n developed in Vogul, see Aulis Joki, Uralier and Indogermanen, Helsinki 1973, pp. 290 — 291. It escaped Joki's attention that the form namad exists in old New Persian also; cf. supra. 5 5 Bodrogligoti, pp. 137— 139: gödi (chadi) «judge», CI. qàzì; gahba (chagba) «prostitute», Cl. qahba; gulp (chalp) «false», CI. qalb; garanjul (garanful) «elove», CI. qaranjid; gard (chard) «loan», CI. qarz; ga#ap (hasap) «butcher», CI. qaffub; gasis (chasis) «priest», CI. gissis; göz (chos) «crooked», Cl. qüz. Yet in 23 other words he retained the initial q-. Monchi-zadeh reads q- in all these cases (pp. 122—125). 8 0 The words singled out by Bodrogligeti (pp. 99 100) as elements of Kurdish almost exactly coincide with those thought characteristic of the Caspian dialects by Monchi-zadeh (pp. 17—18). Both arguments point to the same fact, namely, that the enumerated features belong to the phonetic and lexical features of a Persian dialect spoken in some unidentified region.
