Choosing Between Two Printed Readings in a Gulistan Bayt
During an editorial workshop at a higher secondary school, an 18-member student committee is preparing a class anthology of Sa'di's Gulistan. They must choose between two printed readings of a bayt in the chapter on social conduct. Edition A (Tehran, 1962, p. 47) reads: «بنی آدم اعضای یک پیکرند / که در آفرینش ز یک گوهرند». Edition B (Lucknow, 1890, p. 63) reads: «بنی آدم اعضای یکدیگرند / که در آفرینش ز یک گوهرند». The second hemistich is identical in both. The anthology can print only one text, and the teacher requires a written justification of no more than 150 words. One student argues for Edition B because «یکدیگر» means 'one another' and sounds more egalitarian; another says the metre should decide. The class has 40 minutes, no facsimile of the oldest manuscript, and a strict rule against silent emendation. The committee must recommend one reading and state what further evidence would overturn the recommendation.
1. Which reading should the committee print, and what metrical and semantic reasoning supports that choice?
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Print Edition A. The decision rests on three checks. (1) Semantic structure: the bayt contrasts body and essence. «یک پیکرند» supplies the body image, and «ز یک گوهرند» supplies the shared origin; the two halves argue that physical plurality does not cancel essential unity. «یکدیگرند» ('are one another') is a relational statement, not an image, and it makes the second hemistich's «گوهر» less pointed. (2) Metre: A fits the hazaj pattern without forcing a short syllable into the third foot; B's «یکدیگرند» adds a syllable that a copyist may have supplied to simplify the sense. (3) Lectio difficilior: «یک پیکرند» is the harder, more specific reading; «یکدیگرند» is the kind of flattening a scribe might produce. The committee should print A and record B in the apparatus, not silently emend.
2. What further manuscript evidence would be decisive, and how should the edition record the rejected reading?
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Decisive evidence would be the oldest dated copy with a colophon and a clear attribution; a stemma showing that B is a late isolated variant; and a survey of scribal habits in the same manuscript (does the copyist elsewhere replace concrete images with abstract phrases?). A single late printed edition is not decisive. The edition should print A in the text and put B in a footnote or apparatus: 'Lucknow 1890 reads یکدیگرند; the reading is metrically and semantically weaker.' If the committee cannot inspect manuscripts, it should say so in the preface and avoid claiming a critical text.