Hager
Hager arabice lapis inde hec.
Apparatus:
Ms. f adds the next entry: hager albezard lapis … on to this entry
Translation:
Hager is Arabic for Latin lapis {"stone"} and the subsequent entries contain it as as the first element.
Commentary:
Wehr (1976): ﺣﺠﺮ /ḥağar/ "stone, weight".
General remark concerning a number of subsequent entries:
The scribes’ treatment of the relevant subsequent entries, i.e. the ones that have Hager as their first element, differs widely:
- Print B repeats Hager at the beginning of every entry.
- In mss. ej Hager is marked prominently as the headword and then not repeated for the following relevant entries. But all entries lacking the headword Hager are connected by lines meeting in the middle on the left hand side of the entries, and then again lines connect to the middle at the right of the entries, where Hager - Haget in j - is written out again.
- Ms. f combines the above entry with the subsequent entry, i.e. hager albezard …. From then on it does not repeat the headword Hager but marks the entries lacking Hager by capital-size initial lower case letters.
- The most likely explanation for the astonishing forms encountered in witnesses ACD and partly in p - e.g. Halcamar etc. - is that at some time Hager was abbreviated to H. or some such device and consequently misunderstood as being the initial letter of the next word. Thus Hager alcamar became Halcamar, etc., cf. Arabic ﺣﺠﺭ ﺍﻟﻘﻤﺮ /ḥağar al-qamar/ "{lit. 'stone of the moon'}, selenite".
- Ms. p has Halbezard < Hager albezard, Halcamar, etc., then two items listed in isolation Sũbedhogi, lẽbem, and finally in a new column on the right encased the list of the remaining types of stone with Hager added only once in the middle to their right side
WilfGunther 23/11/2013
