He came originally from Marv. Some men regard him, for his qaṣīdahs, as the Salmān* of the age, but this is a great mistake, for his conceits suffer, to an extraordinary degree, from the defects common to the poets of Transoxiana, and are all frigid. He came twice to Hindūstān and left the country again. The following are some of his most pointed verses:—

“Since all the cash that Majnūn had to show for his life was
his grief for his beloved,
May God pardon him in consideration of this cash, for he
loved much.”

“For loving I have found myself much blamed,
I thought love an easy matter, but it proved to be difficult.”*

“Since the meadow each night has lit in the garden the lamp
of the rose.
The tulip's petal has burst into flame and both the petal
and the black scar on it have been consumed.”

He had a subtle tongue in satire, and one of his witty satires was this fragment, which he composed on the occasion of his last visit to India:—

“The land of Ind is a sugar-field, ³²⁹
Its parrots all sell sugar,
Its black Hindūs are like flies
In their turbans and long coats.”*