Ba'l-a-i-bal-an

Hi all,

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Having seen a brief mention of "Balaibalan", as the
earliest written conlang, I thought I would investigate.

Wikipedia was disappointing, at least in English, though
the Norwegian version does have an article which I
understand only imperfectly.   Would some list member
be able to translate this: http://tinyurl.com/r9zxg and
add the result to http://en.wikipedia.org ?

Google gave me a usable reference at Langmaker:
http://tinyurl.com/le7uu which in turn points to another
at CONLANG (though it says its at AUXLANG):
http://tinyurl.com/lsrce.  From these I garner that
Ba'l-a-i-bal-an is a relex of Arabic.  Interestingly,
another reference from Google, which points to a cache
of a now-vanished page on "The Dabistan, or School of
Manners" and "The Desatir", *seems* to say that
Ba'l-a-i-bal-an is a relex of classical Persian ... but they
might be talking about "the Mahabadian lan­guage" ie
that of the Dabistan itself: http://tinyurl.com/gszzm.
I haven't yet determined the author of this, but it's a
safe bet that he was a 19th Century English orientalist
... will look further.  Here goes ... I found a brief article
at wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabistan-e-Madahib

which points to the Packard Humanities Institute's
online edition:

THE DABISTÁN,
OR SCHOOL OF MANNERS.
TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL PERSIAN,
... BY DAVID SHEA, ... AND ANTHONY TROYER ...
EDITED, WITH A PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE, BY THE LATTER.
1843.

Full text is at http://persian.packhum.org/persian/.

Here's a translation exercise worthy of any philologer:
"In this manner, one day, when the discourse fell upon this subject in the service
of the master of favour, the head of the sages of the age, the une­qualled
jewel of the multitude of the possessors of beneficence, the ornament of the
council of experi­ence and of success, the splendor of the assembly of the
distinction of merit and of happiness, the man of exalted designs, knowing the
enigmas of science and wisdom, and endowed with eminent virtues, WILLIAM BAYLEY
SAHEB, (may his prosperity be everlasting in the ways of celebrity), I
expressed my sentiments as follows: That whích embraces the dif­ferent tenets
and sects, demonstrating in what respects they are either agreeing or
conflicting with each other, is an object not destitute of difficulty nor of
pretension; but the book called Dabistán, is incomparable for the assemblage
of various tenets, and of general and particular creeds. " ;-)

It's from the epliogue written by the editor of
the Persian version, MOULAVI NAZER USHRUF,
which you can see in its entirety at:
http://tinyurl.com/zvjx2

Well, I still don't know very much about the
Ba'l-a-i-bal-an language! :-(

Regards,
Yahya

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