Meantime in Iran the Bongah-e Tarjoma, still under his direction, continued to be vigorously active. The first "Foreign Literature Series" (Majmu'a-ye adabiyat-e khareji) was in the end to contain 71 works, and the various series for children and young readers, together, 155 titles. To these had been added an "Iranology Series" (Majmu'a-ye Iran-shenasi), which consisted of translations of works by Western orientalists and classical writers, and by Muslim historians and geographers in Arabic. This comprised some 60 volumes. There was also a "Persian Texts Series", devoted to critical editions of Persian texts which were either unpublished or available only in uncritical editions. This series, which reached 48 volumes, " represented the first attempt in Iran to publish Persian texts systematically. It adopted, under Yarshater's general editorship, the common method of critical editions in the West, best exemplified in Iran by M. Qazvivi, with the manuscripts clearly defined and the significant variants recorded in the footnotes."
            A general knowledge series was also launched, which consisted primarily of works of popular science, and which reached 138 volumes; but after the early ones had appeared Ehsan Yarshater relinquished its general editorship to Mohammad Sa'idi.
            Another important scholarly series was of bibliographies. This was initiated in 1958 with the publication of the "Bibliography of Persian Printed Books" (Fehrest-e ketabha-ye chapi-e farsi) by Khanbaba Moshar. A second volume appeared in 1961, and a three-volumed second edition in 1973. There were moreover a number of other series, for science, art, history and philosophy, which were begun later and so remained less extensive than the earlier ones.
            In 1969 the Bongah adopted a proposal put forward by Ehsan Yarshater to translate into Persian the second edition of the "Encyclopaedia of Islam", with supplementary articles to be specially commissioned to expand the entries on Iran. The first fascicle of the "Encyclopaedia of Iran and Islam" (Danesh-nama-ye Iran va Eslam) was published in 1975 with 112 original entries and 99 translated from the "Encyclopaedia of Islam"'s and eight more fascicles appeared during the next three years.
            Meanwhile, in 1972, Ehsan Yarshater presented to the National Endowment for the Humanities, an American federal agency, through Columbia University, a proposal for an "Encyclopaedia Iranica" in the English language. This he conceived as a research tool, to meet the needs of scholars and students in Iranian studies and related fields by providing accurate and up-to-date presentations on "topics of archaeological,geographic, ethnographic, historical, artistic, literary, religious, linguistic, philosophical, scientific and folkloric interest," over a stretch of time extending from prehistory to the present; and he suggested that it should aim at setting Iranian culture in a broad context, and showing reciprocal influences exerted on one another by Iran and its neighbours.
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