The other point to be considered is the dialect in which the rubā‘iyāt of Bābā Ṭāhir are written. He is often called “Lurī,” and Steingass gives “Lurī Ṭāhir Tātī” as the name of one of the tribes of the Lurs. Accordingly, Cte. de Gobineau states that he wrote in the Luri dialect, whilst Chodzko, in his “Popular Poetry of Persia” (London 1842, p. 434), says that he wrote in Māzandarānī dialect. We may, however, I think, adopt the view expressed in the introduction to the quatrains in the Ātash Kadah, that they are written in the Rājī (or Rey) dialect.* This dialect is one of the north Persian group which M. Huart (loc. cit.) proposed to class under the generic term “Pehlevi Musulman”; for a fuller explanation of the term the reader is referred to the article of M. Huart already quoted, in which his contentions in favour of this somewhat dubious expression are ingeniously set forth and its use justified.

A learned Sheikh of Kirmān, writing to Mr. E. G. Browne under date July 30, 1891, concerning these dialects, says: “The dialect about which you wrote for information is the Lūrī patois of Shīrāz and Isfahān, which is the Pahlavī dialect. Many poets, such as Sa‘dī, Abū Is-ḥāq, Ḥāfiẓ, and Khwājū (of Kirmān), have composed verses in it.”*

It is not expedient, in the introduction of a book primarily intended to present to the occidental reader the sentiment and beauty of a comparatively unknown collection of oriental quatrains, to go into the features of the dialect itself. The student who is interested in this branch of the subject is referred to the text which forms part of this volume. In the notes elucidating that text the dialectal forms are picked out and restored to ordinary Persian; it may be said, however, in this place, that these quatrains having been trans­mitted through perhaps nine hundred years by recitation and oral tradition, have suffered the usual vicissitudes which affect such folk-songs when reduced to writing. Successive scribes, ignorant perhaps of the dialect they were transcribing, and careless perhaps of the historic value of a scrupulous exactitude, have produced a number of extremely variant texts, the variations, however, being fortunately confined within certain limits. The MS. of Mirzā Ḥabīb Isfahānī, from which M. Huart largely took his text, is apparently for the most part in pure dialect, whilst that of ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib, in Paris, appears to be frankly translated into pure Persian. It is for this reason that I have, wherever possible, given the text of M. Huart “in chief,” noting the variants to be found in the other texts that I have used in compiling that which appears in this volume, and in arriving at its meaning.

When we come to the discussion of our translation, which purports to place before our readers the senti­ments of Bābā Ṭāhir, we get on to exceedingly delicate ground. I must say at once that I alone am responsible for the actual translation of the quatrains, and that Mrs. Brenton has rhymed my literal inter­pretations with a fidelity and exactitude which is often but little short of amazing. Whatever errors of inter­pretation are to be found in this volume (and I am exceedingly conscious that they are many), are entirely due to my lack of a just comprehension of the original. It is for this reason that, after very serious consideration, I have at last, and somewhat reluctantly, decided, on the advice, and at the request, of several students of the language, to append after the text my own measured prose rendering of the quatrains.

The initial difficulty with which one is confronted when attempting to translate a Persian dialect is the absence of any text-book dealing with the subject in anything like a complete form. An invaluable “Table of Phonetic Equivalents” forms part of Mr. Browne’s article above referred to, and M. Huart’s already quoted article discusses these variants at some length. Besides these sources of information, we have the important work of Berésine, “Recherches sur les Dialectes Persans,” printed at Kazan (Casan) in 1853, which gives us elaborate vocabularies of the dialects of Gīlak and Māzandarān, Gabrī, Kurdish, Tālish, and Tātī. Some observations of Mr. Browne upon these difficulties will not be out of place. They are as follows:—“Not only does the Arabic character, especially when unpointed, afford a very imperfect means of repre­senting graphically the finer shades of pronunciation, but every scribe, when he has to do with dialects not used for literary purposes, where he has no fixed rule to guide him, employs his own system, and is usually not consistent even in that. It is bad enough when the scribe is thoroughly familiar with the dialect which he wishes to express in writing, and far worse when (as is generally the case) we have to deal with copies more or less remote from the original draft, made by persons ignorant of the dialect before them, into which all sorts of clerical errors are almost sure to have crept” (loc. cit., p. 782). “I have learned by expe­rience that the publication of even a very faulty and imperfect account of a matter which is interesting in itself, often suffices to elicit from other workers in the same field valuable communications and criticisms which might otherwise never be made … The English rendering which I give must, in some cases, be regarded as rather of a tentative character, though I believe that they fairly represent the general sense of the poems” (loc. cit., p. 783).

With these preliminary observations by way of introduction, we must leave our “Lament of Bābā Ṭāhir” in the hands of the amateur of verse, and the student of the Persian language. My own interpre­tations of the quatrains have been versified with conspicuous success (I speak of course from the philo­logical point of view, and not in any way presuming to encroach upon the domain of the literary critic), by Mrs. Elizabeth Curtis Brenton, whose paraphrase of the accepted renderings of the “Rubā‘iyāt of ‘Omar Khayyām” (by “Elizabeth Alden Curtis”) attracted so much attention when issued by “The Brothers of the Book” at Gouverneur (New York, U.S.A.) in 1899. My own translation has been added at the last moment under circumstances already alluded to. I had not intended that it should form part of this volume, but having been commanded to make a draft of it for the pleasure of a friend, it fell into the kind of measured prose in which it now stands. The result having been (as a fulfilment) a failure, it was cast aside, but was rescued from destruction, and, in a revised form, included herein for the assistance of students who may care to have a guide through the intricacies of the text. The quatrains being in the nature of independent aphorisms have no proper order of their own. Mrs. Brenton has arranged them as they fell into place during the process of constructing her poem; my prose version follows the order of the text, which I have arranged to some extent so as to bring together such sets of quatrains as appear to deal with certain attitudes of mind, e.g. Addresses to God, to himself, to his Beloved, and so on.

It may be observed, in conclusion, that it is often very difficult to determine whether an earthly or a heavenly object of adoration is the object addressed in any particular rubā‘ī, but this is a difficulty which is incidental to all oriental poetry in which a mystic or Sufistic tendency is observable.

It only remains for me to record in this place my great indebtedness and sincere gratitude to Mr. E. G. Browne for his invaluable assistance in the compilation of this work.

EDWARD HERON-ALLEN.

VENICE,

April, 1901.