I desire to express my obligations to Dr. F. Carr for his many kind suggestions as to the meaning of the Code.
The Index will, it is hoped, serve more or less as a digest of the Code. One great difficulty of any translation of a law document must always be that the technical expressions of one language cannot be rendered in terms that are co-extensive. The rendering will have implications foreign to the original. An attempt to minimise misconceptions is made by suggesting alternative renderings in the Index. Further, by labelling a certain section, as the law of incest, for example, one definitely fixes the sense in which the translation is to be read. Hence it is hoped that the Index
will be no less helpful than the translation in giving readers an idea of what the Code really meant.
No doubt this remarkable monument will be made the subject of many valuable monographs in the future, which will greatly elucidate passages now obscure. But it was thought that the interest of the subject warranted an immediate issue of an English translation, which would place the chief features of the Code before a wider public than those who could read the original. The present translation is necessarily tentative in many places, but it is hoped marks an advance over those already published.
Dr. H. Winckler’s rendering of the Code came into my hands after this work was sent to the publishers, and I have not thought it necessary to withdraw any of my renderings. In some points he has improved upon Professor Scheil’s work, in other points he is scarcely so good. But any discussion is not in place here. I gratefully acknowledge my obligations to both, but have used an independent judgment all through. I hope shortly
to set out my reasons for the differences between us in a larger work. A few of Dr. Winckler’s renderings are quoted in the Index, and marked—Winckler’s tr.
C. H. W. JOHNS.
cambridge,
January 31, 1903.
THE TEXT OF THE CODE
§ [1]. If a man weave a spell and put a ban upon a man, and has not justified himself, he that wove the spell upon him shall be put to death.