Examining a Misattribution: Translation of Kāshānī’s Talkhīṣ al-Miftāḥ Using a Terminological Approach and Technical Term Network Analysis

Technical Term Network (TTN) is an innovative method to find similarities among texts through matching technical terms and the vocabulary used in them. This method, which is modeled after the semantic network of linguistics, is effective in finding the main sources of a book as well as recognizing the identity of an unknown text. This research is intended to take advantage of the features of the technical term network representation and use it to recognize the identity of a text that remains anonymous or has been wrongly identified. This method is also efficient in finding the similarities among texts in using technical terms, their frequencies, and chronological priorities.

Research Method/Approach: 

The present applied research has employed manuscript contents in the phase of collecting textual evidence with the library-documentary method, and has utilized qualitative and quantitative methods based on terminography in the phase of extracting technical terms and terminology. To this end, technical terms are collected from among the primary sources and after examining the evidence related to each one, the semantic separations are specified and the semantic network of each is delineated, and finally the technical term network is formed on the basis of an extensive and generalized semantic network. Based on the prevailing relationships between terms and resources, this technical term network represents them in a conceptual network. This method is applied in the purposeful collection of technical terms, classification, the discovery of links, and the relation of texts with each other, which makes catalogers and researchers needless of adapting the entire texts.

The treatises of mathematics, especially arithmetic, are very similar to each other due to their logical structure, and this sometimes causes faults in identifying the title and author of the work, considering some original Persian texts as being translations, or confusing works with similar content in cataloging manuscripts in such a way that in many cases, the mistakes mentioned above have been repeated by the researchers who rely on the information of the indexes. The present article examines an example of this deficiency in research and by using terminography and applying TTN, it tries to identify the main identity of the work. Relying on the single copy preserved in the library of the Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia, the work in question is registered under the title "Persian Translation of Talkhīṣ al-Miftāḥ" in the MSS catalogues; whereas, according to the investigations carried out in this research, claiming it to be a translation and attributing it to Ghīyāth al-Dīn Jamshīd Kāshānī's Talkhīṣ al-Miftāḥ is totally incorrect and disapproved. The mentioned manuscript is a brief part of Mullā ʿAlī Ghūshchī's Mīzān al-Ḥisāb, which is not properly identified due to many flaws and omissions in the text.