Pata Khazana

Pata Chazāna ( Pashtun: پټه خزانه - " The Hidden Treasure ", other transcriptions: Peta Chazāna, Pata Khazana, Pata Xazāna ) is the title of a controversial manuscript in Pashto. The font contains, according to its discoverer Abdul Hay Habibi a written in the eighteenth century anthology of Pashto poetry. The manuscript mentioned in the emergence times of the compiled works preceded the earliest known Pashtun literature to a few hundred years, so the discovery sparked controversy about the authenticity of the signature from. The anthology and the fact bandied older writings have not yet been authenticated and are considered in the Iranian than likely fake.

Discovery

The Afghan literary scholar Habibi discovered the manuscript by its own account in 1944. Habibi said that the document was a copy of a written in 1886 written in Kandahar from Shah Hussain Hotak in 1729 anthology. The document works previously unknown Pashtun poet are listed that date back to the eighth century. The manuscript published as a facsimile Habibi 1975, he made inaccessible the original allegedly discovered by him.

Reception

The previously oldest known document in Pashtun language dates back to the sixteenth century, compiled in Pata Chazāna works extend the history of the Pashtun literature in order to 800 years. Therefore, the alleged discovery caused a controversy, the authenticity of the manuscript was controversial from the start. The first translation into a European language only appeared in 1987, it was published by the Italian Iranistin Lucia Serena Loi with a detailed critical comment. The most important critical analysis in the paschtunischsprachigen Science wrote in 1988, the Pakistani literary scholar Qalandar Mohmand.

Since the original manuscript of Habibi is not accessible, could be made only on the basis of orthography and style of the facsimile verification of authenticity. Given the many found in the facsimile anachronisms and errors the genuineness of the manuscript is barely held still possible in the Iranian Studies; individuals, among them the Iranist Manfred Lorenz, do not completely rule out an authenticity of at least parts of the compiled Pata Chazāna works.

About the time of manufacture, there is no consensus. Loi classifies the manuscript as a forgery of the late nineteenth century. In contrast, the Iranist David Neil MacKenzie excludes the anachronisms that the document had been fabricated until shortly before his alleged discovery in 1944. MacKenzie's central argument is the use of two letters used only in modern Pashtun font Dze and Only. These letters were introduced only in 1936 with the reform of orthography Pashtun in Afghanistan and could be detected in any previous manuscript simultaneously.