IN the Introduction to the present collection will be found the few particulars which are known regarding this romance and its original Persian author. There is, I think, strong evidence of its being of Hindú extraction. In the absence of any similar work in Sanskrit or one of the vernacular languages of India, we can only suppose that the author of the Gul-i Bakáwalí drew his materials from various and more or less distinct, or separate, fictions; and this supposition seems fully borne out by the somewhat loose arrangement of the later incidents. The narrative down to the end of the sixth chapter (p. 315), as I have divided it, is complete in itself: the Prince wins at backgammon the immense wealth of Dilbar, and her own person besides; he is married to the beauteous damsel Mahmúda; he procures the magical Rose; he has a splendid palace erected for him by the fairies, becomes reconciled to his father, and puts his false brothers to shame; and after a number of wondrous adventures is united to the fairy Bakáwalí, and “passed his time with these rosy-lipped beauties, immersed in a sea of bliss.” Surely this is the usual conclusion of a romance, and all that follows was an afterthought. It is, of course, quite in keeping with “the fitness of things” romantic that the hero should have to undergo some tribulation before becoming possessed of Bakáwalí; but that fairy's subsequent punishment by the deity Indra; the hero's marriage with the princess Chitrawat; the re-birth of Bakáwalí— which, as I have already remarked, is quite out of place in a Muslim work, though very proper in a Hindú story; and the love-affair of Bahrám are evidently incidents which have been taken out of different tales, albeit we should be sorry to have them omitted, for they are all very entertaining.