He was Miyān Kāhi of Kābul. Although his verses are crude ¹⁷³ and his ideas all stolen from others, yet they are written in a con­nected style, and in this respect Kāhī had no equal. He was well versed in astronomy, rhetoric, and the mysticism of the Ṣūfīs, and wrote a treatise on music. In short, he had no equal in his time in knowledge of the mysticism of the Ṣūfīs, the art of composing enigmas, history, elocution, and various other arts. Although he had had the advantages of associating with the shaikhs of former days, among them that lord of his age Maulavī Jāmī, (may his tomb be hallowed!) and others, yet all his life was spent in heresy and infidelity. But notwithstanding these ill qualities his liber­ality, generosity, open-handedness and bounty were extreme, and he was always surrounded by a crowd of qalandars, lewd fellows, and courtezans, and associated unrestrainedly with dogs. It would seem that such conduct is the invariable attribute of one bearing the title of Maliku-sh-Shu‘arā,* as has been said in the verses—

“Hearken to this advice from Saifī,
That it may suffice thee all thy life,
On good poetry and a handsome boy,
Pin thy faith, no matter whose they be.”

I have no concern with his religion, but I reproduce the follow­ing selections from his verses:—

Couplets.

“Like thy shadow we are with thee, whithersoever thou
goest,
It may be that in time thou wilt shew us some kindness.
O ancient of love, seek the company of one with Yūsuf's
cheeks.
Small wonder were it if so thou becamest young like
Zulaikhā.
Kāhī, thou art the nightingale which adorns the pleasaunce
of Kābul,
No crow or kite art thou that thou shouldst come to Hindū-
stān.”
¹⁷⁴ “Grief for thine absence has reduced my body to the likeness
of a spider's web,
It is for this reason that the corner of a ruin is my dwell-
ing.”

He set the two odes of which the opening couplets are given below to sweet music, so that they have become known through­out the world and are sung in all assemblies, enlivening alike the banquets of kings and the gatherings of mystics.

Opening Couplet of the First Ode.

“The bird which began to flap his wings on the forehead of
Majnūn
Inflamed in his brain the fire of his grief for Lailā.”

Opening Couplet of the Second Ode.

“When the mirror is filled with roses, the reflection of the
loved one's face,
The parrot who looks therein becomes a nightingale.”

The following is an enigma* on the name of God:—

“Nobody has full knowledge of His essence,
From eternity without beginning has He been, He is limit-
less.”

And the following is another enigma on the name of the prophet:—

“Since I journeyed along the road of the holy law,
My path has been divided from that of Muḥammad the pro-
phet.”

He was the author of a well-known dīvān and has also written a manarī which he has entitled Gul Afshān, a reply* to the Būstān of Sa‘dī, corresponding with it rhyme for rhyme. Its opening couplet is—

“To the world's Creator be praises from the soul,
To the soul's Creator a hundred worlds of praise.”*

The following is another couplet by him—

“My cruel darling has killed thousands with her coquetries,
My spoilt darling still continues her coquetries.”

“The rain of misfortune has broken on my grief-stricken body,
What misfortune is there that the heavens have not rained
on my head?”

“No narcissus blooms in the place of my pilgrimage,
My eyes are whitened with watching for thee.”

The following couplet was written by him on a Hindū youth, a Jōgī:—

“Thy flame-coloured face shines above the ashes on thy body*
like the lotus,
Or it may be that thy head-cloth has been reduced to ashes
by thy resplendent face.”

175 But the idea developed in this couplet very much resembles that which is the motive of the following couplet by Mullā Vaṣfī* of Kābul:—

“It is not the burning fever of separation from thee which
has induced me to choose the dust for a bed,
Rather is it that my bed has been burnt to ashes by the
ardent fever which possesses me, sick with my longing for
thee.”

When Mullā Qāsim was told that most of his poetical ideas were stolen from others, he used to reply, “I have never asked you to believe that my poems were wholly my own. If they please you not, take a pen-knife, and erase them from the copies of my divān.” He has an excellent qaṣīdah on the astrolabe, which runs on into an encomium on the late emperor, Humāyūn. His copiousness of diction is well exemplified therein. When Kh'āja Mu‘aam Khān,* notwithstanding his lameness, came to visit Mullā Qāsim-i-Kāhī in his sickness, the Mullā composed the following extem­pore ode on the event, setting it to music at the same time:—

“Thou did'st halt in affected disdain one pace from the face
of my longing,
May thy foot never pain thee more, my graceful cypress!
Howmuchsoever I recounted, in the night of separation, the
joys of thy presence,
The tale of my long-drawn-out grief was not lessened.”

One day the Mullā was walking in the emperor's garden, on the far side of the Jamna, when the poet Ṣubūḥī* met him, and as soon as he saw him said, “Sir, have you heard that a man who accepted Islām late in life* has died in ‘Irāq?” The Mullā replied, “May you be spared!”*

When the imperial army marched to Gujarāt Mullā Ghazālī accompanied it in the early stages of the journey. It so hap­pened that a falso report of the death of Mullā Qāsim-i-Kāhī was spread abroad, and when Ghazālī heard it, he composed the following chronogram, which is, although far-fetched, and based on a false rumour, not without elegance.

“The wretched Kāhī left the world.
Should you wish to know the date of his death,
Know that since he could not help but go he was constrained, ¹⁷⁶
And ‘Qāsim-i-Kāhī went from the world.’”*

But before this lying tale became a fact Mullā Qāsim-i-Kāhī was enabled to take his revenge by composing a chronogram on the death of Ghazālī, and a second one also, as full retribution. These have already been cited.* But,

“What can a liar tell, but a lie?”
Although the following couplet is true,
“I have seen poets, within my experience,
Without followers, without offspring, and without any snc-
cessful issue of their labours,”

and all the poets of the present age together, both small and great, are, with the exception of three or four aged men, adherents of the Jauratī and Ḥaidarī* sects, yet these two whom I have just mentioned were the guides and leaders of all the rest, and left the heritage of their baseness to their followers and dependants, dividing it among them in due proportion to the natural fitness and ability of each one to avail himself of it, and with due regard to the claims which each had acquired by former companionship with them.

When I regard this vile gang I am oppressed by the fear that the poets of old* (may God protect us from them!) may perhaps have resembled them. God forbid that it should have been so! Yet the experience of ages tells us that worldly people in each particular period follow closely in one another's footsteps and that there are no radical differences of disposition among them.