1CHAPTER 2. THE TEXT1. The Sources1. ManuscriptsWe find the oldest texts of the anaphora in three different types of liturgical books: Hudra (literally:circle, cycle, book containing the propers of Divine Office and Qurbana), Taksa d'Kahna (Ritual of thepriest), and Taksa d'Qoudasha (Missal). We will describe here shortly those manuscripts which wereaccessible at the time Dr. S. Naduthadam made his critical study on the anaphora1. To this we add some morerecent editions, of which the most recent one is downloaded from the Internet. Beside the mentionedmanuscripts Fr. Naduthadam enumerates 23 manuscripts, copied between the 12th and 19th centuries, whichhe could not consult due to different reasons2.1. Mosul: Mar Esa'ya, discovered by Macomber in the church of Mar Esaya in Mosul. It is the eldestknown manuscript of the East-Syrian anaphoras. It is the only ancient Hudra containing the three anaphoras.AN is inserted in the liturgy of the feast of Epiphany (ff.37-49). It was written in the tenth or eleventhcentury by a certain Eliya for the use of the Upper Monastery of Mosul. It has 443 folio's3.2. University of Cambridge, Library, Syriac Additional 2046 B, a taksa. AN is bound together with a 19thcentury ritual. Macomber and Webb date it to the 15th Century because of its archaic reading. The kusape aregiven in the margin, a fact may indicate the ancient origin of this text. The manuscript is in a bad conditionand contains only fragments of AN.3. Hyvernat Syriac 4, incomplete hudra, in the Catholic University of Washington (15th C.)4. Vatican Borgia Syriac 150, a hudra. AN is inserted in the liturgy of Epiphany (15th C.).5. Vatican Syriac 83, hudra written in 1538 by the priest Atajae in the monastery of St. Gabriel andAbraham in Gazartha of Zebedee. AN is inserted in the liturgy of Epiphany.6. British Museum Add. (Richiani) 7181 (also called British Museum 37, 1570), ritual composed byThomas in the city of Gazartha-Zebedee.7. Trichur Hudra 27 (also called Trichur Me...