851. “Correction.” Parvardan seems used here in the sense of tarbiyat.

852. “Earthy camp”; i.e., “the world.”

853. i.e., “the world.”

854. i.e., he was raised above the sky by the loftiness of his designs.

855. See the Note on the next distich.

856. i.e., he would give them lightly away. Cf. ba-sar-i tāziyāna giriftan, “to conquer or take at once by striking with the whip without using the sword.”

857. i.e., he was generous and prodigal.

858. i.e., they became self-indulgent and without any kind feeling for the needy.

859. “From stone and iron”; i.e., of a very meagre descrip­tion, or with great difficulty.

860. “So fierce an onslaught made on food”; i.e., made the food-supply so short.

861. “Weight”; i.e., “esteem.”

“From its lightness”; i.e., from there being so light a weight of it.

I have slightly strained the meaning of ‘izzat by translating it “weight”, in order to retain something of the antithesis in the original.

Of course, sabuk-sangī, “lightness,” may have the ordinary sense of the quality for which bread is esteemed.

‘Izzat means also “rareness”, so that another sense is, “bread gained rareness from there being so light a weight of it.”

862. “The comptrollers of the town,” amīnān-i shahr. An amīn is the chief of any special department.

863. Barāt amongst its different meanings has that of “an order on the treasury”.

864. Khāna, “house, room,” means also “a division between two joints of a reed”, so that the sense is that the houses from Isfahan to Rai were nearly contiguous as are the divisions in the reed.

865. Lit., “if this statement is not clear to you.”

866. i.e., the original authority for the statement is responsible.

867. i.e., the more populous the country the greater its prosperity and riches. Quite a socialistic doctrine.

868. i.e., through his sharing the king’s bounty with others, or through his not coveting others’ wealth.

869. “The distress of seventy years,” the cause of which had been the misrule of his predecessors.

870. Before “every town” there is the word savād, which means the precincts or outskirts of a city, town, or village, and also the place itself; but it seems to be almost expletive here, or to mean simply the “extent or expanse” (of the town).

871. Each planet is supposed to rule alone for one thousand years, and then for a period of a thousand years with each one of the other six planets in turn, making a total of seven thousand years for the “cycle”, daur.

It is generally believed that the cycle from the time of Adam till the present time has been that of the moon. The Author probably means therefore by the cycle of Venus that part of the cycle in which Venus is associated in rule with the moon.

The fact that Venus, one of the two most auspicious planets, is the spiritual principle (see the next distich) of this newly commencing (part of the) cycle is apparently made to account for the opening of a new era of prosperity and happiness on the conclusion of the famine.

A “cycle”, daur, is said also to be a period of 360 solar years, but I think this does not concern the present inquiry.

Under the heading “The death of Yazdijard” the Author speaks of a “cycle” as of some indefinite period of time which may be signalized by certain occurrences. (See also Note 319.)

872. Amongst astrologers kadkhudā is the vital and spiritual principle, as kadbānū is the bodily or material principle.

873. “Gūr-hoofed” (onager-hoofed); i.e., swift.

“He dug up gūrs”; i.e., by his horse’s hard trampling he dug up “graves” (for the onagers). “Threw gūrs to the ground”; i.e., overthrew “onagers”.

874. “The Bow”; i.e., Sagittarius. Jupiter is the ruler of Sagittarius, that sign being his own “house”. It gives him great activity and enterprise. Sagittarius being a “fiery” sign, its nature is in harmony with that of Jupiter, who is electric, hot, and sanguine.

875. i.e., the king shot above and beyond Jupiter.

876. “Spot.” Maṭraḥ is “a place of throwing or shooting, a hunting-ground”, and also simply “a place, a spot”.

877. Tīr, here “the plain”, means commonly “an arrow”, hence a species of rhetorical hiccough is produced by the con­junction of the word with shast, “a thumbstall.”

I.O. MSS. 402 and 1491 read, baḥr khālī-u dasht pur mī-kard, “he emptied the sea and filled the plain.” As the arrows, or perhaps rather the bolts or balls (cf. muhra) are called “pearls” in the first hemistich, “sea” in the second hemistich would be the source of them, i.e., in this case “the bow-string”.

878. The Author fancifully conceives that the fire which the king’s weapon strikes out of any stone it may hit is a desirable acquisition for roasting the onagers he kills. (For kabāb, see Notes 568 and 1,340.)

879. Lit., “(who was) quick and active in keeping stirrup by stirrup with the king.”

880. Fitna means “sedition, disturbance”, and, applied to a woman, “seduction, fascination,” with the conjoined idea of “a causer of disturbance to people or among her lovers”.

881. Lit., “as the breeze (passing) over the corn-field.”

882. Pālūda. (See Note 1,634.)

883. Lit., “With all beauty.”

884. By nakhat, “breath,” is meant here also “voice”.

885. “Whatever she had killed”; i.e., by her beauty.

886. In the second hemistich rāh zadan means “to play according to the modes of music”, and also “to make an attack on the road as a highwayman”, so that the literal sense is, “the former struck the road, and the latter struck the game.”

887. Lit., “loosened the thumbstall.”

888. Lit., “used self-restraint in praise.”

889. Lit., “you do not bring my game into your eyes,” which means “you do not think it of any account”.

890. Lit., “from the nature which is habit” (i.e., to women, or, perhaps, to beautiful women).

891. Lit., “you must illumine (your) face.”

892. “Pin”; lit., “sew.”

893. “Like the wind”; i.e., which should give the bolt the velocity of the wind.

894. Lit., “Its brain came into ebullition at the pain of it.”

895. “Stumbled and fell headlong down.” This, I think, is the sense of ba-sar-u sum dar āmad, which does not occur in the dictionaries.

896. “Chinese girl”; i.e., girl of Chinese Turkistan.

897. Lit., “This reply came hard to the king.”

898. i.e., the reply gave him a hard stroke.

899. Lit., “he made his heart without kindness for that moon.”

900. i.e., they should not be precipitate, but wait until the proper time to do things.