Authorial Revision and Textual Evolution in Manuscript Sources

This article examines the textual history of "Qissayi kurash az Xislat" ("The Wrestling Tale by Xislat"), a work by the enlightened poet Sayyid Haybatullahkhoja, who lived and worked in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The study employs comparative-historical, textual-comparative, and statistical methods of analysis. It identifies the reasons for textual differences among the manuscript, lithographic anthology, and published versions of the masnavi, and reconstructs reliable versions of the text in accordance with the original.