601. Lit., a scholastic Magian.
602. I.O. MS. 1168, only, reads,
603. i.e., lay open before him like caskets of jewels.
604. “Lines geometrical”; i.e., “geometrical figures, geometry.”
“The Mijastī”; i.e., Ptolemy’s work on astronomy
605. Āb-gūn, “water-coloured,” means “blue”, and also “lustrous”. Cf. ābī, “watery, blue.”
606. i.e., he had studied the sky in full detail.
607. The “store-houses” are the “stars”—“far-seeing” as knowing future events.
608. i.e., by the guidance of the astrolabe and astronomical tables he would obtain a clear view of the mysteries of the heavens.
609. Lit., “the polo-stick=playing sky.” The polo-stick of the sky is its curve.
“To bear off the ball” means “to excel”, and the sense of the hemistich is that he exceeded the sky in rapidity.
610. i.e., by skill in arms and horsemanship.
611. “Dawn’s sword”; i.e., the white streak of the dawn. “Despaired”; lit., “threw away (its) shield,” “its shield” being presumably “the sun”.
612. Ja‘b, an Arabic verbal noun, means “throwing prostrate, knocking down”. Ja‘ba would therefore signify “one act of knocking down”. The ordinary meaning of ja‘ba is “quiver”, so that the apparent sense is, “he planted a quiver upon the mark.”
613. i.e., it turned into a stream of fiery sparks.
614. i.e., curls from the manes.
615. The “lock” is supposed to be a padlock with a ring, which is cut through by his sword.
616. i.e., presumably, would split a hair.
617. “From him”; i.e., as if he were the lion, and they boasted of being like him.
618. “Yaman’s star”; i.e., Canopus. (See Note 536.)
619. Adīm, “goats’ leather,” for which Yaman was famous, means also a “tract, a surface, an expanse”, so that it may be rendered “tracts, land, or regions”.
“(all) rawness took away”; i.e., “brightened.”
In connexion with the other sense of adīm, namely, “leather,” it should be explained that the rays of Canopus were supposed to have a brightening effect upon raw leather.
620. Nu‘mān, the son of Munẕir, and the grandson of the Nu‘mān to whom Bahrām was entrusted.
621. i.e., to give éclat to society.
622. Lit., “gave him the delight of riding.” This might mean “taught him riding”, if it had not previously been stated that he had acquired perfection in that art. (But see the next distich.)
623. All the I.O. MSS. and printed copies I have consulted read,
Murda-yī gūr būd dar nakhchīr murda-rā kai buvad zi-gūr guzīr.
“He was the dead one of the onager in the chase—how can the dead avoid the tomb?”
Seeing no sense in this, I have translated from the reading of the B. ed. of 1328, except in substituting mard for murda in the second hemistich:
Mard-i dah gūr būd dar nakhchīr mard-rā kai buvad zi-gūr guzīr.
The sense and rhetorical merit of the distich depend upon the two meanings of gūr, namely, “onager” and “tomb”.
624. i.e., the arrow was entombed in the eye of an onager, the first gūr meaning “onager”, and the second, “tomb.” (See the last Note.)
625. i.e., the fairy was hopeless of her beauty before its superior beauty and symmetry, and the hurricane was powerless to compete with it in swiftness: its occupation was gone.
626. i.e., surpassed the sun and moon in rapidity.
627. i.e., it was related to the sky in fleetness, and could afford to give the wind a stage’s start, lit., precedence.
628. Lit., “It’s tail had produced the writhings of a hundred snakes.”
In this hemistich the double meaning is fairly well represented. The sense is that the twistings of its tail surpassed the writhings of the snake, and so produced writhings in the snake, namely, those of envy.
In the second hemistich allusion is made to the strenuous galloping and hard trampling of the horse, which dug graves (gūr), as it were, for the onagers (gūr).
Another sense may be that its hoofs were so superior to those of the onager that they killed it with envy. (See Note 623.)
629. An expression of its swiftness, the onager being one of the fleetest of animals.
630. Lit., “from weariness of things.”
631. i.e., from its galloping all over the hunting-ground the latter became filled with designs made by its shoes.
632. The word gard has here apparently the senses of gardīdan, “revolving,” of ravāj, “passing current, currency, briskness of market,” and of raunaq, “glory, splendour,” the last two senses deriving from the first. It may also have, fourthly, the sense of ghubār, “dust.”
First, compared with the swiftness of the horse the sky did not (seem even to) revolve.
Secondly, on account of that swiftness the sky had no market.
Thirdly, compared with that swiftness it had no glory or splendour.
Fourthly, it did not see the dust raised by it (in its swift galloping), much less could the dust overtake it.
For the first three senses cf. dar gard būdan; silsila-yi fulān chīz ba-gard āmadan; and az gard uftādan. For the fourth, ba-gard rasīdan.
633. Az sar afgandan means “to throw down forcibly”. Az sar-u pusht afgandan would be a stronger expression of the same.
634. Lit., “the officership of the plain.”
635. I.O. MS. 402, and the B. ed. of 1328, have banda-ī-rā zi-band bi-g’shādī, “he would loosen a captive from (its) bonds.”
636. “King,” Gūrkhān; a title assumed (though not in that form) by Yelui Tashi, the founder of the Qārā-Khiṭāy dynasty in Chinese Turkistan. After the defeat of King Sanjar, the Seljūqide, in 1141 by the then Qārā-Khiṭāy ruler, the latter took possession of Transoxiana, which was held by the dynasty till their downfall in 1210. The title Gūrkhān, which is said on Muslim authority to mean Khān-i Khānān, “King of Kings,” is applied here to the dedicatee as a compliment. (See also supplementary Note at end of Commentary, and Note 2,002.)
637. “A place of tombs,” gūr-khāna (lit., “house of tombs”), means here “the world”.
Ants and snakes are supposed to abound in cemeteries.
638. “That land”; lit., “that country and the house-surroundings,” if diyār-u diman be the correct reading. Or since diyār is a plural of dār, “house,” and diman means “rubbish or débris lying about houses”,—one might say “surroundings”,— we may render, “the houses and their surroundings,” but the idea is “the land or country” generally.
The B. ed. of 1328 has, however, ān diyār-u zaman, “that country and time.”
639. i.e., who himself, Bahrām, surpassed the sky in swiftness and exaltitude, in contradistinction to Bahrām (Mars), who is not supposed to do so.
640. i.e., was enjoying the pleasure of the chase.
641. Lit., “the sky became completely one with the earth.”
642. “Like flowing water”; i.e., “swiftly.”
643. Panja is “the open hand; the hand of man, or the foot of beasts and birds viewed as an instrument of prehension”. That it also means “claws” is evident from the terms panja tīz kardan and panja zadan.
644. “From above”; i.e., from the onager’s back.
645. I take the reading of I.O. MS. 1168, and point as follows:
reading sfta as safta in the first hemistich, and as sufta in the second, and rendering suft in the first hemistich “shoulder”, and in the second “hole”.
646. Lit., “the story of the lion and onager became long.”
647. “The picture”; lit., “that embroidery.”
648. I read,
Kashtī means “a ship” and also “a wine-bowl of that shape”.
Rauẓa means “a garden” or “a grove”, but here, as in a previous passage, it apparently means “the palace”.
The preposition az before rauẓa seems to point to the action’s beginning.
649. i.e., prepared to kill them.
650. i.e., by her beauty.