Muntaḫab al-tavārīḫ - The Muntakhabu-’rukh, Volume 3

He had been brought up by the physician Ṇajmu-d-dīn ‘Abdu-'llāh, the son of Sharafu-d-dīn Ḥasan. He had the disposition of a religious and also sound faith. He was exceedingly well skilled in medicine. He came to Hindūstān from the Dakan and was sent with Sulṭān Murād^230a to Gujarāt and the Dakan. In Mālwa death cut short the (silver) cord of his hope.

He was well skilled both in the theory and the practice of medicine and learned in all traditional learning. He had some acquaintance with the profane sciences, such as exorcism, etymology, and the formation of broken plurals. He is a cheerful soul and a good companion, whose very approach is a blessing. He put forth his best efforts in treating Shaikh Faiẓī in his last illness, but all to no avail. What indeed could he do in the face of the irresistible decree of fate, before which all are helpless and dumb. If medicine could prolong the life physicians should never die.

The ḥakīm sometimes wrote droll verses in Persian, an example of which is the following couplet which he wrote on Kh'āja ¹⁶⁶ Shamsu-d-dīn of Khawāf,²³¹ the Dīvān.

Couplet.

“What overbearing conduct is this of Kh‘āja Shamsu-d-
dīn's?
He intrudes, God forbid it,^231a upon the domain of medicine!”

One day, on seeing an oleander, which in Arabic is called diflā, in bloom, he uttered the following hemistich:—

When the emperor built a dais in the courtyard of the masjid at Lāhōr and issued an order to the effect that anybody who wished to do so might recite their prayers there in his presence, Ḥakīm-i-Miṣrī wrote the following verses:—

“Our king has founded a masjid
O ye faithful, good fortune may it bring!
It is good policy also in this masjid
To recite and reckon up our prayers.”

He was very simple-minded and unselfish, and for this reason acquired but little wealth. He produced, however, some practical treatises on medicine. He died in Burhānpūr in Khāndēsh and was buried in the neighbourhood of that city.^231b

He is sister's son to Ḥakīmn-l-Mulk and was the pupil of his uncle and of Shāh Fatḥu-'llah of Shīrāz, in medicine, and studied traditional learning under Shaikh ‘Abdu-n-Nabī. Notwithstanding his great learning in the holy law and in Sunnī theology, his malignancy in adhering to the Zaidī^232a sect and his obstinacy in the Shī‘ah heresy, in which matters he resembles the other physicians of the age, are as great as ever they were.^232b His excellence in acquired knowledge, and especially in the science of medicine, is extreme, and he is passionately devoted to the practice of the healing art, but as he is but a youth, self-opinionated ¹⁶⁷ and of limited experience, it sometimes happens that a patient, after taking one of his draughts speedily has a taste of the draught of extinction, and notwithstanding the fact that he was the pupil of Shāh Fatḥu-'llāh of Shīrāz, he ordered him, when he was in an ardent fever, a diet of thick pottage,^232c thereby handing him over to death, the executioner.

He obtained favour in the emperor's service to such a degree that he was admitted to his intimate companionship and acquired such influence over him as to render himself an object of envy to all who concerned themselves in the affairs of state. He was highly distinguished for his acumen and quickness of apprehension, and for his proficiency in all worldly accomplishments, prose and poetry. He was no less a byword for his infidelity and all other reprehensible qualities.^233a I heard, when the ḥakīm first arrived at Court, that he used to say, “The only things worth considering are Khusrav and these twelve couplets.” He always spoke of Anwarī as “Anwarīak the flatterer,” and likened him to Mīr Bādanjān, who was the buffoon of his time. Of Khāqānī he used to say, “If he were now living he would be much improved, for whenever he came to my house I would box his ears for him, to arouse him from his sleepiness, and when he went hence to Shaikh Abū-l-Faẓl's house he also would box his ears, and between us we should improve his poetry.

He was noted for his natural quickness of wit, but he had not learning in proportion, though he possessed excellent qualities and praiseworthy attributes.

He was the younger brother of Ḥakīm Abū-l-Fatḥ, and his disposition was better than his brother's. Although it was not naturally good, yet it cannot be said to have been naturally evil. Ḥakīm Ḥasan, Shaikh Faiẓī, Kamālā the Ṣadr, and Ḥakīm Humām^234b all died one after the other within the space of a month, and all the wealth which they had amassed disappeared in a moment, vanishing as completely as though it had been sunk in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, and to them nothing remained but the wind of vain regrets. But this indeed is and has been the common fate of all courtiers, both dead and living, namely, that, in spite of the treasures of Qārūn^234c and Shaddād^234d

which they are enabled to amass, they depart hence often without so much as a shroud, and bearing on their broken necks the affliction of their malignity, the load of eternal disappointment and everlasting ignominy—And this, too, is the saying of ‘Isā (on whom be peace!), which he spoke to the world, likening it in parable to an old woman, “Woe to thy living husbands, they believe not on the fate of thy husbands who are no more!”

“Surrender thy soul to the Beloved, else shall death
snatch it from thee!”
“Judge thou for thyself, my soul, which of the two is
the better.”

The ḥakīm died in Lāhōr, and his body was carried thence to the camping ground of Ḥasan Abdāl, and interred beside that of his brother.

He was a good theologian who was impelled by his own shameless assurance to pose as a physician. His learning was extensive, and he had travelled throughout Arabia and Persia. He was a cheerful soul, but somewhat disordered in mind, a prey to vain desires, and a pretender to honours to which he had no claim. I constantly admonished him, reminding him that he had no right to the rank of a Sayyid, and that groundless claims of this sort met with scant consideration in India. I told him if he had any regard^235a for the faith, to profess himself a true Musal- ¹⁶⁹ mān, for that in these latter days nothing remained of the true faith but its name. But my admonitions availed nothing, and he met with the just reward of his deeds. I saw him after he had received his death-wound from Mīrzā Fūlād,^235b and I swear by God, the God of whose Godhead there is no doubt, that the ḥakīm's face appeared to others, as well as to me, exactly like the head of a hog, and the words “the hellish hog”²³⁶ were found to give the date of his death. Shaikh Faiẓī found another chronogram in the words, “on the twenty-fifth of the month of Ṣafar.”^236a I found two chronograms for the event in the following couplet slightly altered from the Ḥadīqah,^236b which is applicable equally to the slayer and the slain.

Another person found a chronogram in the words, “Hail, dagger of Fūlād!”^236c

He was well known as a clever practitioner, and his learning was very great.

When a young man he was physician to Shāh Ṭahmāsb.^237b He came to India and was here highly regarded. He is a young man of great piety, and lives cleanly. When he attends the sick his very footstep seems to bring them good luck. Although he has not much learning, his practical experience is very great.

He has read very many works on medicine, and his knowledge of astronomy also is great. He has written a Persian commentary on the Qānūn. He has now gone to Kābul to treat Qilīj Khān.

He is the son of Shaikh Ḥasan, the quack doctor of Sirhind. His skill in surgery is great, and in the treatment of elephants he ¹⁷⁰ is one of the wonders of the age. Latterly, he has become the prey of mischievous hallucinations.

There are also among the physicians others, obscure Musal-mans ²³⁸ and accursed Hindūs,^238a from writing of whom my heart revolts.

A full account of the poets of the reign of the Emperor Akbar is given in the Nafā'isu-l-Ma'āṯir, well known as the Taẕkirāh of Mīr ‘Alā'u-d-daulah,²³⁹ which is the source from which the materials for this brief account are extracted. Some of these poets have composed dīvāns. I have written of those with whom I was acquainted, whom I have even seen, whether near or from afar, or who have acquired fame.

When his life was attempted in ‘Irāq on account of his infidelity and intemperance, he fled thence to the Dakan, and afterwards came to Hindūstān. The Khān-i-Zamān sent him one thousand rupees for his expenses, and wrote from Jaunpūr a witty epigram’ which contained an enigma in the poet's name.

“O Ghazālī, I adjure thee by the claims of the lord of Najaf^239b
That thou come to the slaves of the peerless one!^239c
Since thou art without honour in that country^239d
Take thy head,^239e and come out of it.”

He was for some time with the Khān-i-Zamān and afterwards²⁴⁰ entered the emperor's service and received the title of Maliku-sh-Shu‘arā.^240a He compiled several dīvāns and a book of maṯnavīs. It is said that he has written no fewer than forty or fifty thousand couplets.^240b Although his compositions do not rank very high, yet his poems, as regards both quality and quantity, are superior to those of any of his contemporaries. He had great facility of expression in the language of the mystics. He died very suddenly in Aḥmadābād on Friday, Rajab 27, A.H. 980 (Dec. 3, A.D. 1572),^{240c 171} and his majesty ordered that he should be buried in Sarkhej,^240d the resting-place of many of the great saints and famous kings of old. Qāsim Arsalān^240e wrote this chronogram for the date of his death, taking it down from the dictation of Qāsim Kāhī.^240f

“Last night Ghazālī, that accursed dog,
Went drunk and defiled to hell.
Kāhī wrote the date of his death
‘A base infidel departed from this world.’”^240g

Another chronogram—

“Ghuzālī was a treasure-house of hidden meaning,
His resting-place is the pure earth of Sarkhej.
The date of his death, with the difference of one year only,
Is given by the words, ‘Aḥmadābād and the dust of
Sarkhej.’”²⁴¹

The following is the opening couplet of an ode which I have not been able to discover in any dīvān written by him:—

“We heard a noise and opened our eyes from the sleep of
nothingness.
We saw that the night of strife had not passed away, and fell
asleep again.”^241a

Couplets by Ghazālī.

“If in the Ka‘bah thy heart wanders towards any, besides
(the Lord of the Ka‘bah).
The worship is all wickedness, and the Ka‘bāh is to thee no
more than an idol-temple.
But if thy heart is fixed on God, even though thou dwell in
the wineshop,
Drink wine fearlessly, thine end can be nought but good.”

“We fear not death, but this is our misfortune
That we must remain disappointed of regarding the lovely
ones of this world.”

“Those who are at rest in the dust were all slain by thy
sword.
The sword of Death has had no opportunity here.” ¹⁷²

“We are within the compass of a revolving lantern;²⁴² a whole
world remains in astonishment therein,
Man whirls madly therein like the figures on the lantern.”

“The zealot's cloak is stretched over his bent form like the
string on a bow,
But the debauchees fear not the arrows of his prayers.”

A Quatrain.

“My mind is an ocean which contains a gem,
My tongue is a sword which has an edge,
The clarion of my pen has the sound of the last trump,
I am the bird of the angels, my words are winged.”

He has introduced into one qaṣīdah all the numerals from one to a hundred. This is its opening couplet—

“By one word from thy two ruby lips Masīḥ^242a obtained three
favours;
Eternal life, and graceful speech, and power to give life.”
“We are wine, and round our necks is the collar of the wine-
jar,
We have a power of intoxication in which the whole world
is lost.”

He was Miyān Kāhi of Kābul. Although his verses are crude ¹⁷³ and his ideas all stolen from others, yet they are written in a connected style, and in this respect Kāhī had no equal. He was well versed in astronomy, rhetoric, and the mysticism of the Ṣūfīs, and wrote a treatise on music. In short, he had no equal in his time in knowledge of the mysticism of the Ṣūfīs, the art of composing enigmas, history, elocution, and various other arts. Although he had had the advantages of associating with the shaikhs of former days, among them that lord of his age Maulavī Jāmī, (may his tomb be hallowed!) and others, yet all his life was spent in heresy and infidelity. But notwithstanding these ill qualities his liberality, generosity, open-handedness and bounty were extreme, and he was always surrounded by a crowd of qalandars, lewd fellows, and courtezans, and associated unrestrainedly with dogs. It would seem that such conduct is the invariable attribute of one bearing the title of Maliku-sh-Shu‘arā,²⁴³ as has been said in the verses—

“Hearken to this advice from Saifī,
That it may suffice thee all thy life,
On good poetry and a handsome boy,
Pin thy faith, no matter whose they be.”

I have no concern with his religion, but I reproduce the following selections from his verses:—

Couplets.

“Like thy shadow we are with thee, whithersoever thou
goest,
It may be that in time thou wilt shew us some kindness.
O ancient of love, seek the company of one with Yūsuf's
cheeks.
Small wonder were it if so thou becamest young like
Zulaikhā.
Kāhī, thou art the nightingale which adorns the pleasaunce
of Kābul,
No crow or kite art thou that thou shouldst come to Hindū-
stān.”
¹⁷⁴ “Grief for thine absence has reduced my body to the likeness
of a spider's web,
It is for this reason that the corner of a ruin is my dwell-
ing.”

He set the two odes of which the opening couplets are given below to sweet music, so that they have become known throughout the world and are sung in all assemblies, enlivening alike the banquets of kings and the gatherings of mystics.

Opening Couplet of the First Ode.

“The bird which began to flap his wings on the forehead of
Majnūn
Inflamed in his brain the fire of his grief for Lailā.”

Opening Couplet of the Second Ode.

“When the mirror is filled with roses, the reflection of the
loved one's face,
The parrot who looks therein becomes a nightingale.”

The following is an enigma²⁴⁴ on the name of God:—

“Nobody has full knowledge of His essence,
From eternity without beginning has He been, He is limit-
less.”

And the following is another enigma on the name of the prophet:—

“Since I journeyed along the road of the holy law,
My path has been divided from that of Muḥammad the pro-
phet.”

He was the author of a well-known dīvān and has also written a maṯnarī which he has entitled Gul Afshān, a reply²⁴⁵ to the Būstān of Sa‘dī, corresponding with it rhyme for rhyme. Its opening couplet is—

“To the world's Creator be praises from the soul,
To the soul's Creator a hundred worlds of praise.”^245a

The following is another couplet by him—

“My cruel darling has killed thousands with her coquetries,
My spoilt darling still continues her coquetries.”

“The rain of misfortune has broken on my grief-stricken body,
What misfortune is there that the heavens have not rained
on my head?”

“No narcissus blooms in the place of my pilgrimage,
My eyes are whitened with watching for thee.”

The following couplet was written by him on a Hindū youth, a Jōgī:—

“Thy flame-coloured face shines above the ashes on thy body²⁴⁶
like the lotus,
Or it may be that thy head-cloth has been reduced to ashes
by thy resplendent face.”

175 But the idea developed in this couplet very much resembles that which is the motive of the following couplet by Mullā Vaṣfī^246a of Kābul:—

“It is not the burning fever of separation from thee which
has induced me to choose the dust for a bed,
Rather is it that my bed has been burnt to ashes by the
ardent fever which possesses me, sick with my longing for
thee.”

When Mullā Qāsim was told that most of his poetical ideas were stolen from others, he used to reply, “I have never asked you to believe that my poems were wholly my own. If they please you not, take a pen-knife, and erase them from the copies of my divān.” He has an excellent qaṣīdah on the astrolabe, which runs on into an encomium on the late emperor, Humāyūn. His copiousness of diction is well exemplified therein. When Kh'āja Mu‘aẓẓam Khān,^246b notwithstanding his lameness, came to visit Mullā Qāsim-i-Kāhī in his sickness, the Mullā composed the following extempore ode on the event, setting it to music at the same time:—

“Thou did'st halt in affected disdain one pace from the face
of my longing,
May thy foot never pain thee more, my graceful cypress!
Howmuchsoever I recounted, in the night of separation, the
joys of thy presence,
The tale of my long-drawn-out grief was not lessened.”

One day the Mullā was walking in the emperor's garden, on the far side of the Jamna, when the poet Ṣubūḥī^246c met him, and as soon as he saw him said, “Sir, have you heard that a man who accepted Islām late in life²⁴⁷ has died in ‘Irāq?” The Mullā replied, “May you be spared!”^247a

When the imperial army marched to Gujarāt Mullā Ghazālī accompanied it in the early stages of the journey. It so happened that a falso report of the death of Mullā Qāsim-i-Kāhī was spread abroad, and when Ghazālī heard it, he composed the following chronogram, which is, although far-fetched, and based on a false rumour, not without elegance.

“The wretched Kāhī left the world.
Should you wish to know the date of his death,
Know that since he could not help but go he was constrained, ¹⁷⁶
And ‘Qāsim-i-Kāhī went from the world.’”^247b

But before this lying tale became a fact Mullā Qāsim-i-Kāhī was enabled to take his revenge by composing a chronogram on the death of Ghazālī, and a second one also, as full retribution. These have already been cited.^247c But,

“What can a liar tell, but a lie?”
Although the following couplet is true,
“I have seen poets, within my experience,
Without followers, without offspring, and without any snc-
cessful issue of their labours,”

and all the poets of the present age together, both small and great, are, with the exception of three or four aged men, adherents of the Jauratī and Ḥaidarī^247d sects, yet these two whom I have just mentioned were the guides and leaders of all the rest, and left the heritage of their baseness to their followers and dependants, dividing it among them in due proportion to the natural fitness and ability of each one to avail himself of it, and with due regard to the claims which each had acquired by former companionship with them.

When I regard this vile gang I am oppressed by the fear that the poets of old²⁴⁸ (may God protect us from them!) may perhaps have resembled them. God forbid that it should have been so! Yet the experience of ages tells us that worldly people in each particular period follow closely in one another's footsteps and that there are no radical differences of disposition among them.

He was one of the sons of that saint of the Lord and traveller in the path of the Eternal God, Shaikh Ruknu-d-dīn ‘Alā'u-d-daulah of Samanān (may God sanctify his tomb!). In those branches of knowledge which exercise the reasoning faculty, he was the pupil of Maulānā ‘Iṣāmu-d-dīn and Mullā Ḥanafī, and in the study of the holy law he was the disciple of the last and best of the sages and traditionists Shaikhu-bnu-Ḥajar-i-Ṯānī (may God have mercy on him!). His facility in verse, his elegance in literary style, his rhetorical flourishes, his fine delivery, ¹⁷⁷ his polish and copiousness of diction, and his wit, were unrivalled. He composed a dīvān, and his poetry, though not in the first rank, is of respectable quality. The following couplets are by him:—

“O, thou in whose absence the tears drop from my eye-
lashes,
While the thought of sleep²⁴⁹ is banished from my eyes!
Thou didst display thyself to me in such wise as thou wert
not,
Alas! that thou wert not such as thou didst seem.”

It seems likely that this couplet is an imitation of the following quatrain:—

“We say that maybe we are of the faithful,—but we are
not.
And that we are of the truthful and sincere,—but we are
not,
We are adorned outwardly, but inwardly we are otherwise,
Alas! that we are not what we seem to be!”

The following couplets are also by Marvī:—

“With me thy brow is wrinkled like the rosebud,
With others thy lips open in smiles, like the pistachio.”

“I wish that the love which I bear to thee,
Should be known to me, and to thee, and to God.”

The following couplets in praise of Muḥammad are from the translation of the Singhāsan Batīsī,^249a of which His Majesty ordered this poet to make a translation, which was never completed:—

“The sweet-voiced nightingale of the garden of revelation²⁵⁰
Whose eyes were anointed with the antimony of us base
crows,
Who in his unquestionable abrogation of the Psalms of
David,
Has drawn his pen through the copies of the Pentatench
and the Gospels,
To his high court is prophecy entrusted,
To him, the chief of the prophets and the seal of apostle-
ship.”

A Quatrain.

“I am he whose kingdom is the realm of words,
¹⁷⁸ The money-changer of wisdom is the appraiser of my
threaded gems.
The exordium “Be!” is but one leaf of my writings;
The secrets of the two worlds are on the tip of my pen.”

In the year H. 979 (A.D. 1571-72) he obtained permission to depart from Hindūstān and to go to his native land, and Shaikh Faiẓī, who was his pupil, found the date of his departure in the words “may his shadow be extended!”^250a He went to Kābul and was received with consideration and honour by Mīrzā Muḥam-mad Ḥakīm, but when he presented his pīshkash^250b of merchandise, goods, valuables, and precious articles from India, he rose from his place and took the list of his presents from the hands of the registrar of complimentary presents and detailed and explained the quantity, quality and name of each description of cloth, even going so far as to give the price of each. The Mīrzā was much displeased at this breach of decorum, and, rising from an assembly with which he was disgusted, ordered that all who pleased should fall on the spoil and carry off what they could, so that in the space of an hour everything disappeared. The Kh'āja shortly after this died in Kābul.

He wrote poetry under the nom-de-plume of Arsalān on account of his father's claim to descent from Arsalān-i-Jāẕib, one of the great nobles of the court of Sulṭān Maḥmūd-i-Ghaznavī. His native place was Ṭūs^251a and he grew to manhood in Transoxiana. He was a poet sweet of song, welcome to all, both great and small, for his personal beauty and graceful wit, adorned with the ornament of an open and cheerful disposition and with the quality of sociability and social amiability. In the composing of chronograms he had no equal. He was the author of a divān, and the following few couplets are of his making:—

“I wish to raise my head, at the resurrection, from a spot of
earth
On which the foot of a fair one shall be lingering in grace- ¹⁷⁹
ful coquetry.”

“O, thou who hardly givest up but half thy life, what place
hast thou
Where lives are freely given by the hundred for one glance
from the beloved?”

I remember something very like this latter couplet in an ode of the author of which I cannot quite recall the name. It is as follows:—

“What though I be alone with thee in lovers' meeting?
Thy modesty repels me more than a thousand watchers.”

Another couplet by Qāsim-i-Arsalān—

“Both letter and spirit of my reading mourn my lot,
Without thee how can I keep my regard intent on my book?”

“As we passed weeping to the loved one's dwelling,
A hundred times in each step we crossed a river of tears.”

He has written the following verse descriptive of the mountain of Ajmīr, the holy burial place of the Kh'āja, the pole-star of pole-stars, Kh'āja Mu‘īnu-d-din-i-Ajmīri-yi-Cishtī (may his tomb be hallowed!):—

“Lo! The mountain of Ajmīr, a mountain of ambergris,
The lodging of the chief of the leaders of Cisht.
What hill is this, that when it raises its head to the empy-
rean,
Has the ocean of the sky no higher than its midst?
The bodies of the sun and moon appear
From that hill no larger than the eagle's eye.²⁵²
Fountains there are therein, like to the sun in brilliancy,
Their sand^252a is the starry host of heaven,
Heaven's eagle^252b winged his flight,
To seek its summit, but his flight fell short.
Should but a stone be loosened from that fort,
It would in its downward course loosen the strongholds of
heaven from their foundations.
That darting brilliance which issues from the clouds is not
lightning,
It is nought but the sword-like summit of that mountain
striking the sky.

Glancing from that mountain foot the beholder sees ¹⁸⁰
The sky as a clear pool, and the moon as the fish's²⁵³ eye.
The torrents which rush down from that awful stronghold
would carry away a thousand hills such as Alwand and
Alburz.^253a
When the eagle rises from the vase of the fortress' walls,
His shadow falls on the moon and sun.
Arsalān. behold the loftiness of its mere foundations!
The sun seeks protection beneath their shadow.”

The Mulla in the year in which the emperor returned from Ātak took up his dwelling in Lahōr. He died in the year H. 995 (A.D. 1587).

I should state here that the three or four poets whose biographies I have already given have been mentioned first on account of the fame which they acquired as poets only, and of the ill-luck which they brought with them to the world, as they occurred in my mind, and in no particular order. Henceforward for ready reference and for the sake of method I shall mention the poets in the alphabetical order of their poetical cognomina.

He came to Hindūstān with the Emperor Bābar, and was at first a vāqi‘ah-navīs.^253c Subsequently, in the service of his late Majesty also he held several high posts, and died in Lāhōr in the year H. 973 (A.D. 1565-66). Some of his verses are the following:—

“In thine absence my tears by degrees became a sea,
behold!
Come, sit in my eye as in a boat and make a voyage of the
sea!”

“Aye, have a dagger at thy waist, a sword in thy hand, a
frown on thy brow,
Thirst for blood and be cruel and still implacable.”

181 “What can one do with one who knows nought of those who
are faithful?
What can one do with one whose body shines as silver and
who still inclines to wrath?”

“The crescent moon shines in the gloaming on the eve of
‘Id,²⁵⁴
Setting us free to haste to seek a cup of rosy wine.”

At the time when his late Majesty recovered from his indisposition in the Fort of Victory, this poet composed the following quatrain:—

“A thousand thanks to God, that His Majesty the Emperor is
freed from the sorrow of sickness,
That he has arisen and seated himself once more on the
throne of his glory.
The news of his recovery was conveyed to me by the words,
‘Thanks be to God that His Majesty has recovered.’”

He was a Ḥusainī Sayyid of the holy city of Mashhad. He was well qualified to instruct the best calligraphists of the world in the seven different styles of penmanship. He was one of the most trusted among the nobles, and it is a pity that he should have merited the name of poet, but since he had natural poetical ability, the following verses of his are quoted:—

“Before I have received a single cup from the hand of the
cup-bearer of fate,
The stone of reproach strikes my wine-jar. What can I
do?”

“We are those in this world whose hearts are sad,
A heart as sad as our own, we know not of.”

A Quatrain.

“O, Lord! consume me not in the fire of Thy wrath! ¹⁸²
But light the lamp of faith within the house of my heart;
And as for this robe of life which hangs torn on my body,
Of Thy mercy stitch it again with the thread of forgive-
ness.”

Another Quatrain.

“Free from the alloy and like fine gold came love from the
assay,
Well were it to spend the cash of our lives in the business
of love.
Since the expanse of thy beauty blossomed like the rose,
The thorns of love have pierced my breast as that of the
nightingale is pierced.”

He possessed both learning and accomplishments. For some years he studied under Hakīmu-l-Mulk, and was the best of all his pupils. He was one of the most entertaining men of his time. As the climate of India did not suit him, and as he obtained no real promotion in the imperial service, in spite of his having been admitted to the circle of His Majesty's intimates, he went at length to his own country, and in the city of Rai, the native place of his ancestors, he obtained rest from the toils of the world and departed this life. The following verses are quoted as an indication of the copiousness of his imagination:—

“The jealous watcher himself has been our intermediary,
while I suspected no fraud,
He has been enabled to interpose between us his own condi-
tions.”

“'Twas but yesterday that my loved one derided my piteous
lot,
My grief and her derision were plain to see.”

“To-day has my heart's anguish grown more acute,
¹⁸³ For to-day it seems that my loved one is more than ever
bent on my destruction.”

“I am wounded to the heart by the arrow of a fair boy to
whose hands time
Has not yet delivered a bow to sport withal.”

“The hope of union with thee forbade me to surrender my
life,
Else I would gladly have died when I parted from thee.”

“I lament the presence of others when that silver-bodied
one draws nigh,
It would seem that my tongue breaks into speech from
constancy to her.”

“The zest of union with her never leaves my heart,
For she spoke with me in graceful coquetry and looked for
my coming.”

He was a Sayyid of Kābul. In the year H. 981 (A.D. 1573-74) he fell from his horse in Jaunpūr, and died of the injuries which he received. He wrote a dīvān, and the following chronogram which he composed on the death of a graceful boy of rare beauty, named Sulṭān Caghatāī, is well known.

“Sulṭān Caghatā was the rose of the garden of beauty,
But death was his guide to the garden of Riẓwān.^257a
In the season of roses he set forth to journey from this
garden,
Many hearts in mourning for him were drenched with their
blood.
I asked of the mourning nightingale the date of his death,
He broke into lamentations and said, “The rose has left the
garden!”^257b

“How shall I compare thy stature to the letter alif, O palm- ¹⁸⁴
tree of life?
For alif is quiescent^257c while thy graceful form is ever in
motion.”

“My heart in thinking on that sweet mouth is in the straits
of perturbation,
Perturbation has confronted it from the place in which it is
bred.”

“Never do I forget thee, possessor of all sweet attributes.
Though thou forget me, yet do I never forget thee.”

A Quatrain.

“For the proof of His existence what need is there of words,
Since He is all in all, both of what is manifest and what is
hidden?
They tell me to open my mouth in denial of all that is apart
from Him;
But what shall I deny? Where is there a trace of ought
that is apart from Him?”²⁵⁸

Another Quatrain.

“The juggler who sits on the prayer-mat of the blue expanse
of sky
Shines in the morning with the mark of piety on his face,
At midday he straightens himself up in prayer,
And when he, the leader of the prayers, made his inclina-
tion, the rest prostrated themselves.”^258a

He wrote charming verses. He spent twenty years of his life in India, living in religious retirement. The following verses are from his pen:—

“The flood of my tears rushed towards her dwelling,
To wash the dust of strangers' feet from her threshold.”

The water of life is but a type of thy ruby lips,
Where is a Khiẕr²⁵⁹ to give his life in keen desire for them?” ¹⁸⁵

“Like Amānī, in the desire of losing my head by a stroke of
thy sword
I have entered the ranks of the army (of thy lovers) with
nought but my life for my shield.”

“It is not the presence of the stranger in thine assemblies to
which I object,
But thy friendly glances for the stranger which I cannot
endure.”

He was a son of Imām Najmu-d-dīn ‘Abdu-l-Ghaffār, who was the author of a compendium of the Shāfi‘ī^259b doctrines. In learning, in elegance of literary style, in knowledge of history, and in geniality of disposition he was unrivalled. He wrote the Nigā-ristān .^259c a compendium the like of which has not been produced by the wit of anybody in this age, and wherein are related wondrous circumstances and strange occurrences. He also wrote the book Naskh-i-Jahān-Arā,^259d the date of the composition of which is given by the title. It is a cursory history of the world from the time of Adam to the days of his holiness the seal of prophecy (may God bless and save him!). The Qāẓī towards the end of his life gave up the office of vazīr, which he held under the princes of ‘Irāq, and after his resignation proceeded on a pilgrimage to the holy place (Makkah). After attaining the felicity of performing this pilgrimage he came to Hindūstān by way of the port of Dābul,²⁶⁰ when the hand of fate, suddenly loosing the cord of the existence of that incomparable man, led him to the world of immortality. This occurred in the year H. 975 (A.D. 1567-68).

The following couplet is by him:—

“If that fair tyrant sit by me, after a lifetime of expectancy,
¹⁸⁶ My heart will flutter in my breast, lest she should rise too
soon.”

In his poetry he displayed a pleasing fertility of imagination, and he was an imitator of Āṣafī. In Āgra he placed the baggage for his journey to the next world on the back of Death's swift steed. I append some of his verses.

“He whose bosom is rent with grief in thine absence beat his
head with a stone so violently
That the stone became nought but a handful of dust in his
grasp.”

“In grief at thine absence I will smite my head, wretched
being that I am, with a stone.
Should my hand fail of its office I will strike my head upon
the stone.”
“I, thy candle, O my King, am a slave like Nuṣair,
Though decapitated a hundred times I yet live.”
“Those slain by thy cruelty lie scattered here and there like
drunken men,
It would seem that thy sword was tempered with wine in-
stead of water.”

“So much has my body melted away in grief at thine absence,
That if thou castest a chain on my neck it falls about my
fect.”

It is said that when he recited this last opening couplet before Maulānā Ṣādiq in Qandahār, and sought his approbation, the Manlānā said, “You have stolen this idea from Amīr Khusrav of Dihlī, who says—

‘So much has my mournful body melted in thine absence
That if thou placest a collar about my neck it falls to my
feet.’”

Another Couplet by Ashkī.

“If I would fall in following thee smitten with the stone
of calamity,
Stones rain upon me from every hair on my head prevent- ¹⁸⁷
ing me from falling.”

Ashkī seems to have used the metaphor of the stone so much as to leave nothing else for others to say upon the subject.

“See my feeble body among the dogs of thy street,
This one drags it one way, that one another.”

“My hair hangs dishevelled from my head down to my feet,
My body appears in the midst of it like a single white hair.”

He is a Shāmlū Turkmān in the service of the Khān-i-Khānān. He writes pleasing poetry and has composed a maṯnavī. The following verses are his work:—

“My heart is a fire-temple when I think of thee, and on it
Is thy brand, like a black Hindū who tends the fire.”
“When you see a tongue of flame deem it to be a tormented
fire-worshipper
Whose soul has departed, while his body still dances in the
fire-temple.”
“Love is like the loadstone, for when its arrow enters the
[heart,
It cannot be removed till love itself in kindness draws it
forth.”

He is a young man in the flower of manhood. He was for a long time in Gujarāt with Kh‘āja Niẓāmu-d-dīn Aḥmad, and at first assumed the nom de plume of Khanfī, which the Kh‘ājā changed, giving him his present takhalluṣ. He is now in the service of His Majesty's eldest son. His disposition is pleasing. The following quatrain is his:—

“I am one who can treasure up nought but grief;
Though I am all jealousy I cannot renounce the loved one,

Although through my enlightenment of soul I am as
conspicuous as the sun,
Still I know not how to light the lamp of my own lot.”

His assumed name accords well with his nature.²⁶³ He has committed to memory, parrot-like, some phrases from the Futūḥāt and the Fuṣūṣu-l-Ḥikam,^263a and has striven hard, in a polemical treatise, to establish the good faith of Pharaoh,^263b for which reason he has been nicknamed “Pharaoh's Advocate.” The following is the opening couplet of a qaṣīdah by him:—

“Thou saidest, ‘Shall I deal with my lovers faithfully or
cruelly?’
O, impudent one, know that we choose the former!”

He is of the Jān Qurbānī tribe.^263d He is accomplished in learning and the sciences, and is one of the commanders of five thousand. His faith is orthodox. For some time he held the title of Jumlatu-l-Mulk,²⁶⁴ and is now Governor of the Ṣūba of Kābul. He has poetical genius and facility in writing verse. The following few couplets are by him:—

“No sooner had my sun cast the veil from off her face
Than the sun appeared no more than a mote in a sunbeam
in motion.
I am slain by that languid narcissus-like eye, which, in its
heaviness,
Has slain a whole world and composed itself to sleep.”

“Thy two dark languid eyes^264a play havoc with my wit and
my faith,
¹⁸⁹ With drawn bows they lie in wait for me in every corner.”

“It is not the rosebud-like arrow of my slayer that rankles
in my heart,
But my own blood which, while apart from her lips, I have
swallowed, that is clotted in my heart.”

He was well skilled in the exact sciences. He was a companion of the Khān-i-Zamān, and was captured in his rebellion.^264b The emperor spared his life, but death, less merciful, took it from him. The following opening couplets of qaṣīdahs are his:—

“Until like dust I settled on the skirts of the robe of my
beloved,
I had no rest from my wanderings nor ease at my heart.”

“We are but a handful of ashes, but we carry fire in us,
It would be no wonder if we were consumed by the sparks
of our own sighs.”

The Khān-i-Zamān gave him a thousand rupees as a reward for composing this latter couplet.

He was for some time in Kashmīr with Mīrzā Yūsuf Khāu,²⁶⁵ and there he composed a poem on the people of the city in which he dwelt.^265a The following couplet occurs in it:—

“Sarmadī^265b is the squirrel of the tree of the poets,
He loves the stature of Orion and the feelers of the Crab.”

On a youth who was beloved by Mīrzā Yūsuf Khān he wrote the following couplet:—

“Mīrzā Yūsuf, the prince of the age, is in love.
He loves thy pure love, but he loves the beauty of others.”

He was one of the offspring of Mīrzā Jahān Shāh. In wisdom, generosity, sincerity, goodness of disposition, submissiveness, and humility he surpassed all. In early life he was in the service of the emperor Bābar, and in middle age he obtained advancement in the service of emperor Humāyūn, and received the honourable title of Khān-i-Khānān, and his present Majesty added Bābā-am^265d to his titles. He was a great friend to religious, was subject to fits of religious ecstasy, and was a benevolent man. The second conquest of Hindūstān,²⁶⁶ and the building up of the empire were due to his strenuous efforts, his valour, and his wise policy. Learned men came from all parts of the world to visit him and departed happy in the possession of gifts bestowed by his hand, as open as ocean itself, and his high court, lofty as the sky, was the resort of the lords of learning and all perfect qualities. His existence was, indeed, an honour to the age in which he lived. At last vile hypocrites poisoned the mind of His Majesty against him, until his affairs fell at length into the condition of which a brief description has been given in the chronicle of the reign.^266a He has composed a divān in Persian and Turkī which is in every hand, as his verses are on every tongue. This quatrain is his:—

“The masters of self-effacement are both high and low,
It is they who are ever drunken with draughts from the cup
of immortality.
Whatever there may be in the plane of non-existence,
Know for certain that it is they alone who truly exist.”

“Oh! Thou whose street is the Ka‘bah^266b of our happiness,
¹⁹¹ Whose Face is the point towards which we turn in prayer!
Blest will be the time when thou graciously drawest us to
Thyself,
Freeing us from the bonds of ceremonialism and conven-
tionality!”

He wrote an ode in praise of his holiness ‘Ali, the commander of the faithful (may God be gracious unto his countenance!) of which the following are the opening couplets:—

“Though a king be so great that his crown towers over the
nine heavens,
If he be not the slave of ‘Alī let dust be cast upon his head.
Hope not for love for the king of men from one who knows
not his own father,
Cujus matris ignominiam discooperiut alienus.”

The following is the commencement of a qaṣīdah which he wrote on the astrolabe:—

“What globe is this whose axis rests on the centre (of the
universe),
This full moon across whose midst the meteors dart?
Though it vaunts itself the equal of both sun and moon
It gladly enrolls itself among the emperor's slaves.
The sun's resplendent orb looms not so largely in our eyes
As the crescents which surmount the banners of the world-
famed king of kings—
Both sky and earth are ever subject to his authority,
Like the seal of a ring on the hand of a monarch as power-
ful as Jamshīd.
This globe brings with it a golden tray full of ashrafīs
To scatter before the feet of great kings,
The feet of the emperor of exalted dignity, Humāyūn, ¹⁹²
before whom, in order to obtain honour,
The sky itself places the head of humility on the threshold
of the Court.”

They relate that the emperor Humāyūn was one night in conversation with Bairam Khān, who was overcome by drowsiness. His Majesty reprovingly said, “Ha, Bairam Khān! It is to you that I am speaking.” He replied, “Yes, sire, I am attentive, but since I have heard that in the service of kings a watch should be kept over the eyes, and among darvīshes a watch should be kept over the heart, and among learned men a watch should be kept over the tongue. I was just pondering over which I should keep a watch, for Your Majesty is a King, a darvish, and a learned man.” His late Majesty was much pleased with this seemly reply, and expressed his approval of it.

Bairam Khān obtained the blessing of martyrdom²⁶⁷ at Paṭṭan in Gujarāt in the year H. 968 (A.D. 1561) and his bones were, in accordance with his will, taken to Mashhad.

He was known for his varied attainments and numerous accomplishments. He had performed the pilgimage to the two holy places, Makkah and Madīnah, and afterwards came to India. In Arabia he had studied some of the books of traditions such as the Mishkāt,²⁶⁸ and the Shamā'ilu-n-Nabī^268a (may God bless and preserve the prophet!) under Mīr Murtaẓā-yi-Sharīfī^268b and others. Being overcome by the weakness of old age he set out for his beloved native land, his original home, and while halting at Peshāwar on his way thither he heard the cry, “Return to Me!” from the lips of the Angel of Death, and in A.H. 973 (A.D. 1565-66) he withdrew to the Presence of the Merciful God.

The following verses are some of the relies of his copious imagination.

193 “Whether in the idol-temple or in the Ka‘bah I have looked
to none but Thee,
Wherever I have been I have never been forgetful of
Thee.”

“It is not in our age alone that the sky (fate) has been
pitiless,
Since its revolutions first began it has been both pitiless
and faithless.”

“Though Bīkasī should hear the reproaches of his enemies
a hundred times,
It were fitting that he should not allow them to vex or
disturb him,
For the following perfect couplet is well known throughout
the world:
And why, indeed, should not such a couplet have world-
wide fame?

‘Though the worthless stone crush the golden vase
The worth of the stone is not increased nor is that of the
gold diminished.’”

Quatrain.

“Oh heart, give not the rein to thine anguish and grief!
Forgo not one moment of true delight for all the dominion
of Jamshīd;
Should a loved one fall to thy lot, see well
That thou exchange not the dust of her footsteps for all
that both worlds can give.”

Maulānā Bīkasī writes that one day the late emperor Humā-yūn wrote in his own graceful handwriting over the arch of the porch of his palace in the royal residence of Dihlī the following couplet by Shaikh Āẕarī:—

“I have heard that on this gilded dome
Is written ‘At last the actions of all become praiseworthy.’”

The emperor was fated shortly afterwards to leave this narrow dwelling of deception for the sweet abode of bliss,²⁶⁹ and owing ¹⁹⁴ to the exigencies of the time that very palace was utilized as his tomb, and since this action of that enlightened king was attributed to miraculous prevision the chronogram for that event, contained in the following verses, was widely quoted at the time:—

“When the Emperor Humāyūn shortly before he died
Wrote on the door of the dwelling in which he lived,
‘It is written that at the last the actions of all become praise-
worthy,’
He referred prophetically to his own righteous end;
And when that dwelling by the decree of fate became his
tomb
It became the point towards which all turn in prayer, and
the Ka‘bah of their desires.

For this reason I give the following chronogram for his
death,
‘The foundation of the dwelling²⁷⁰ of the Sulṭān whose end
was praiseworthy.’”

He had a natural talent for poetry. The following verses are his:—

“In thine absence I am the slave of a hundred griefs,
Do thou rejoice since I am overwhelmed with anguish.”

“Although the fair to-day do not know my worth,
They will know it to-morrow when I shall be no more.”

“My eyes are suffused sometimes with my heart's blood,
sometimes with blood from my liver,
To me, the wretched one far from her face, even the way
of sight is closed.”

“He never becomes liberal like the cypress in the garden of
the world,
Who, like the narcissus, fixes his eyes always in covetous-
¹⁹⁵ ness on silver and gold.”

Bāqī was a long time in Hindūstān and was killed during the rebellion of Ma‘ṣūm the Kābulī.^270b

He lived in Agra after the fashion of humble men and the style of bygone days. This opening couplet of a qaṣidah is his:—

“Whoever enjoys the fruits of union with that jasmine-
bodied cypress
Owes it to his good fortune. It is his good fortune that
enjoys the fruit.”

On the discussion raised by Kāhī and Ghazālī²⁷¹ he wrote the following quatrain:—

“Kāhī and Ghazālī, those two drunken fools,
Have put hand to pen to belittle Jāmī^271a and Navā'ī.^271b
There has been nobody like them in the world,
For Kāhī^271c is nought but straw and Ghazālī^271d is nought but
a dog.”

He is for the most part an imitator^271f of Kh'āja Āṣafī. He is a skilful painter and has attained by means of studying the outward form to hidden truths, and has written on outward form and hidden essence a poetical treatise which begins as follows:—

“O Lord, I am unable to grasp hidden truth!
Forgive me, for I am too much a worshipper of the out-
ward form
Of thy grace, O most Pure God!
Thou hast so fashioned the outward form of our earthly
tabernacles
That every (fair) form which I see
Points out to me the way to the hidden truths of Thine ¹⁹⁶
Essence.”

Other Verses.

“When is the wine of love given to him who suffers no
pain?
Love for the beautiful is a state of exhilaration. To whose
lot does it fall?”

“In my dream I saw her sitting with the jealous watcher,
and my heart was perturbed.
Had I at that moment awoken from my dream I should
have died, but died too late.”

“When I cast a glance at her moonlike face, even while I
am looking,
She glowers at me angrily, to bid me not to gaze at her.”

“I steal a glance at that graceful one,
And when she looks towards me, I look downwards to the
ground in shame.”

“The child of my tears took his way in the road of my
beloved,
Like a sweet orphan he put his foot forward in this path;
But the delicate child was unable to endure love's tyranny,
And called my beloved cruel and faithless.”

“I am perturbed when she is away from me,
Lest my moon-faced darling should fall in love with
another.”

Pairavī wrote a complete dīvān of ghazals. He died in Hindū-stān.

On first leaving his native land he went to the Dakan, where he was with Malik Qumī, the poet. Thence he went to Gujarāt and was there with Mīrzā Niẕāmu-d-dīn Aḥmad,^273a adopting the nom-de-plume of Mashghūlī. The Mīrzā changed it, giving him ¹⁹⁷ his present nom-de-plume. His poetry is good, and since it is easy and flowing I quote the following excerpts:—

“When love made the eyelashes of the fair ones a lancet,
It caused the blood to flow from my arteries and veins,
Alas, that before I could close my eyes the arrow of
thought of the loved one
Penetrated my eye and thence pierced my heart.”

“In place of tears my wounded heart itself drops piecemeal
from my eyes,
From this fiery cloud all the blood of my liver rains down.”

“So long as the bird of my heart was the prey of that
hunter.
Each separate hair of my head rose up as a bird rising to
flight.”

Baqā'ī has now left the service of the Khān-i-Khānān,^273b and they say that he has come to Āgra and intends to go to Lāhōr.

He was called Safīdonī, and assumed the name of Nūrī as his nom-de-plume. Since he held the pargana of Safīdon in the sarkar of Sirhind²⁷⁴ as a jāgīr for some years, he was spoken of as though he had been a native of that place. He was distinguished for his attainments in geometry, the exact sciences, and astrology, and was one of the intimate companions of the late emperor, obtaining the title of Tarkhān in the course of his confidential association with him. He was unequalled in liberality, generosity, munificence and conviviality, for which qualities he was proverbial. ¹⁹⁸ He had poetic talent too, and composed a dīvān. One day on the polo-ground at Fatḥpūr he was injured by an elephant, and was in great pain. While in this condition he continued to repeat, “Be my witnesses, all of you, that in my present uneasiness I repent of some of my former acts and am resolved to amend my ways.” However much he was pressed on the subject he would not say what those particular acts were of which he repented. I said, “The first thing of which you will have repented will surely be the writing of poetry.” I do not know whether he was pleased with my suggestion, or annoyed, but the others who were present were much pleased. In the days of his authority he dug a canal from the Jamna, fifty kurūh in length, in the direction of Karnāl, and beyond that town. This was the cause of large additions to the cultivated area, and a great increase in the prosperity of the people. As it was dug in the name of the prince Sulṭān Salīm, it was called Shaikhūnai,^274a which word gives a chronogram for the date of its completion. Nai in Hindī means “a stream.” At length cruel fate brought utter ruin upon him so that he endured many hardships and privations. When His Majesty in A.H. 994 (A.D. 1586) departed for Āṭak he appointed Mullā Nūru-d-dīn to the trusteeship of the tomb of the late Emperor in the imperial city of Dihlī, and there the Mullā died. The following verses are excerpts from his poems:—

“Sad at heart am I sitting, far from those smiling lips,
Like the rose-bud am I sitting, with my head cast down to
my collar.”

“In his kindness and generosity
The most just King conferred on Tarkhān²⁷⁵ the title Khān.
Of this Khān-ate he possesses the name alone.
From this name, however full of dignity, what does he gain?
Nay more, he makes this complaint of the tarkhān-ate also
Before the king's perfect wisdom, ¹⁹⁹
That besides the “khān” nothing but desert lands seems to
remain to him,
While with his tarkhān-ate moisture^275a seems to disappear
from them altogether.”

The Khān, when the Emperor was marching against Ḥakīm Mīrzā in A.H. 989 (A.D. 1581), remained behind and returned from the Panjāb to his own jāgīr, a line of conduct which excited suspicion against him, so that after the Emperor's return from this expedition he was summoned to Fatḥpūr, there to be called to account for his monetary transactions and his writings, to be reprimanded, and deprived of his title. In this manner, he was persecuted for some years. Those who are qualified to discriminate attribute his ruin to the impropriety of which he was guilty in lampooning the officials in the imperial city of Dihlī, wherein he was actuated solely by the enmity which he bore to Tātār Khān.²⁷⁶ The satire which he wrote he chose to attribute to Qāsim-i-Kāhī, publishing it as the work of that poet. The grounds upon which his satire was based will be best defined by quoting from the effusion.

“Mīyān Jamāl Khān^276a is the muftī of Dihlī,
But he never yet delivered one of his foolish judgments
gratis;^276b
He is the Governor of the city under Tātār Khān,
And has just such another little donkey's face as his master's.
Shaikh Ḥasan the little decree-writer with his poisoned pen
Spreads on all sides false news and slanderous whispers.
At the very time of prayer he performs, in a perfunctory
manner, his ceremonial ablutions
When the reader has already ascended the pulpit,
It is he, it is he, it is he that oppresses the city,
A vain babbler, with his harlots”^276c

The opening couplet of that effusion, which even to quote is scurrility, is as follows:

“Alas, for Dihlī and its holy shrines,
Alas, for the ruin of its palaces!”

This satire extends to nearly two hundred and fifty couplets. One of the learned men of that city, Shaikh Muḥammad Kambū^276d

by name, wrote an answer to the whole of it in the following two²⁷⁷ couplets:—

“Nūrn-d-dīn is such a blockhead
That it must have been in folly that his father begat the fool. ²⁰⁰
The babbling dolt has been struck on the head with a mallet,
There is no (need to) answer his foolish chatter.”

Praise be to God! These verses are equal to^277a that world-famed fragment of the lord Maulavī Nūru-d dīn ‘Abdu-l-Raḥmān-i-Jāmī (may his tomb be hallowed!), the opening verses of which are given below:—

“Alas for the Love of God, and its ecstasy,
It has consumed my heart with its scorching heat!
Mine eye never glanced towards aught but God.
My lot is cast with God and with His revelations!”

The worthy Maulānā Nūru-d-dīn fancied himself a second Jāmī, both as a story-teller and as a stylist. But how can there be any comparison between the two?

“If in your actions you resemble not the virtuous, of what use
is it to resemble them in name?
“One who bore the title of Masīḥ restored sight to him who
was blind from his mother's womb, but another Masīḥ
had himself but one eye.”

It is to be hoped, however, that as he was not without natural goodness of disposition, he repented of his evil deeds, and that God in His gracious mercy allowed his tribulation and suffering in this world to be an expiation of his sins. May God forgive him When the Maulānā, after being put down from his high place, came to Agra, I was walking in the public market one day, and met him. One of my friends, the genial and witty Miyān Kamālud-dīn Ḥusain of Shīrāz,^277b who was one of the leading men in Āgra, said to him, “Well, my lord Nawwāb, you have written something regarding the officials in Dihlī, and now why should you not bestow the same favour on the officials in Agra, who expect it of you!” I said, “Evidently he has seen nothing in the leading men of Agra which renders them worthy of this honour.” Miyān Kamālu-u-dīn laughed and said, “This is a false charge which you have brought against us.”

He is a native of Transoxiana and is a witty man. He was with Mīrzāyān Ulugh Mīrzā²⁷⁸ at the time when the Mīrzās captured the fort of Bahroc, and wrote the following quatrain on the event:—

201 “The Timurides are unequalled in valour,
Victory smiles on them whithersoever they turn,
When they took Bahroc by storm
This chronogram was found for the event, ‘They captured
Bahroc.’”^278a

His name is Manohar and he is the son of Lon Karan, Rājā of Sāmbhar,^278b a famous salt tract. It may be that the “Attic salt” of his verses is the effect of his native land. He possesses wonderful personal beauty and extraordinary intellectual power. He was called at first “Muḥammad Manohar,” and afterwards received the title of Mīrzā Manohar. His father, in spite of his infidelity, used, by way of honouring and distinguishing him, to glory in calling him Muḥammad Manohar. Although he was not acceptable to the emperor he has poetic genius. These verses are his:—

“The Shaikh is boastful of his religion, the Brahman brags
of his idolatry:
He who is intoxicated with the beauty of the Friend has
naught to do with idolatry or religion.”

Quatrain.

“Without the love of Thee the liver is filled to the brim with
fire,
Without the pain of longing for Thee the thorn is sunk deep
in my brain;
The idol-temple and the Ka‘bah²⁷⁹ alike mean naught to me
but infidelity.
My concern is only with the One-ness of God.”

When they gave him his takhalluṣ (poetical name) he recited these few couplets:—

“O thou who sippest sharbat, visit the assembly of us who
drink the lees!
For our livers supply us with roast-meat, and the wine-
cup is filled with our heart's blood.
It is shameful for men to make mention of soul or heart in ²⁰²
the case of love,
But our hearts are like congealed blood and our souls are
like the bitter blast.
Tausanī,^279a give rein to the steed of desire in the field of love.
Thou shalt safely attain thy desire with Akbar for thy
guide.”

Since a Hindū^279b had so much poetic genius and ecstatic feeling ^279c I have recorded these verses.

He was sister's son to Maulānā Nargisī, and, in accordance with the saying, “the true son resembles his maternal uncle,” he was distinguished by his wit and the strength of his intellect. He came from Turkey to India in the days of Bairam Khān's supremacy, and profited much by his generosity. He was captured in the battle fought beneath the mountains²⁸⁰ by Ataga Khān, and was by him paraded before the emperor, as the chief of his gifts, with the banner of the eighth Imām, ‘Alī-ur-Riẓā^280a (may God accept him). He was very favourably received by the emperor. He composed his treatise on Beauty and Yūsuf for Yūsuf Muḥammad Khān,^280b the son of Ataga Khān. The opening couplet of the poem is as follows:—

“In the name of Him to whom the face of foe and friend
Is turned, in which direction soever He may be.”

He composed some verses descriptive of the members of the beloved, among which are the following couplets:—

“Her face is a mirror, her neck is a shaft of ivory,
Those who are in face like the fairies desire that mirror;
The palm of her hand is, like the sun, a mirror of light,
The fingers of that houri are the rays of the sun
To the eye of understanding the parting of the hair of that
sweet-lipped maid
Is a meteor resplendent in the heart of the night.^280c
Nay, I erred in describing it as a meteor,
Rather is it a stream of fair water traversing a garden of
hyacinths.

Desire fails²⁸¹ in its hope of reaching her navel, ²⁰³
Remaining for ever in the pit of despair.
Desire ever hovers round about her,
Like the thirsty quarry round about the well.
Above her nose is the palm-tree of our desire.
Her arched eyebrows stained with dye:
There grow, in spite of nature's rule,
Two lily petals from a wild rose sprig.
In the eye of that light of my eyes
There appears, as it were, a drop of dew on a rose.
Circumdant pudendum margaritae illius intemeratae,
Lunge velut crescentes duae.
In grace she excels the lily bud,
Tongue placed in palate and lip on lip.”

He has written in reply to the Dihnāma of ‘Imād a maṯuavī in which the following couplets occur:—

“From regret for thy moist^281a ruby lip
And from separation from thy curled looks
His (the lover's) weak body has dwindled to a hair,
In his body there remains no place for his soul.
From vexation and grief his heart is melted to blood,
He drinks his own blood and draws no breath.”

In a description of the morning he has written:—

“The ashes of the morning have gone on the breeze,
Fire has caught the cotton of the morning.”^281b

Couplets.

“When my head droops on my knees in separation from that
faithless one,

My body is reduced to a heap of ashes by my burning
heart.”

“When her cruel sword is raised like a banner to slay me,
I make my complaint of her cruelty, my excuse for falling
at her feet;
For her sake I cheerfully endured the cruelty of the world,
not knowing
How little trust could be placed in her tenderness and
faith.”

“In truth the quiltings of the patched woollen robe of
poverty
Bind upon the hands and feet of avarice the chains of con-
tentment.”

204 “Love's mendicant laughs at the ermine of royalty,
As he comes forth from love's furnace smeared with ashes.”

“The dust of existence has gone on the breeze, but still from
moisture of tears
The feet of Thy humble lovers remain in the mire.”

“The sword of thine eyelashes came as a boon to me when
I was beside myself,
When I came to myself I had a hundred wounds on my
soul.”

By the emperor's order he wrote the following verses, descriptive of an elephant:—

“From the dust of the road of the emperor whose throne is
the sky,
He scatters ambergris on himself by way of perfume.
The constellation of the Eagle appears on his head, without
exaggeration,
Like a midge on the summit of the mountains of Caucasus:
When his body is encircled with its golden chain
The milky way and the heavens come into view.

When he is distressed by the heat of the sun
He pours water over himself like a fountain.
Damsels of fairy form and moon-like countenance
Sit, by the emperor's command, on the throne which he
bears.
They sit there ever in their entrancing beauty
For verily the mountains of Caucasus are a meet resting-
place for fairies.”

One night in the year H. 975²⁸³ robbers put him to death with cruel sword, and he was buried in the building which he had erected for himself in Agra.

He came two or three times to India and left the country again, and now in these days he has returned and attempts to seduce men to heresy, and invites them to join the sect of the Basākh-ānīs. ^283c He has persuaded Shaikh Abū-‘l-Faẓl that he is an ²⁰⁵ infallible spiritual guide and by his means has been enabled to present to the Khalīfah of the age an ode, the object of which was to ask the emperor why he did not devote himself to the overthrowing of the self-styled orthodox, so that truth might be confirmed in its central position and pure monotheism might be established. He also dedicated to Shaikh Abū-‘l-Faẓl a treatise after manner of the Nuqṭawī sect, and their manner²⁸⁴ of writing the letters, all of which is hypocrisy and dissimulation^284a and comparison of the numbers of the letters, and Ḥakīm ‘Ain-ul-Mulk discovered that the sum of the letters in the word Tashbīhī was the same as in the word Taẕrīqī,^284b “the hypocrite”; and the rest of his revelations may be estimated in the same manner. Tash-bīhī wrote a dīvān, and the following few verses are among his ravings:—

“For once, O dust of the graveyard, plume thyself on thy
fertility,
For thou bearest in the tomb a corpse like me killed by that
hand and dagger.”

“Wear those garments of whatever colour pleaseth thee,
For I recognize the majesty of that graceful form.”

“The two hands of this world and of that world are naught,
The ring is in thy hand,^284c both the ring and the hand are
naught.”

At the time when I was writing this hasty compilation he gave into my hand, in the presence of Shaikh Abū-'l-Faẓl, a treatise on Maḥmūd of Basākhẉān, the preface of which was as follows:—

“O God! who art praiseworthy (Maḥmūd) in all Thy doings, I call upon Thee for help, on Thee of whom it is said, ‘There is no God but He.’ Praise be to God whose mercies are visible in all His works, who has shown the existence of all His works. From Him are their* * .²⁸⁵ He knows Himself, but we do not know ourselves, nor Him. He is an existence not existing except through Himself, and a place of existence independent of others; and He is the most merciful. Question:—What is that which is ²⁰⁶ called ‘Nature’? Answer:—“That which is called ‘Nature’ is God.”

Dirt in his mouth, for daring to write such stuff! The point of all this lying is ‘the four nuqṭahs.’ At the end of the treatise I saw, in his own writing, “This has been frequently written with reference to the Persian, the infallible religious guide, Ṭ, b, ā, r, ‘a, lī, a, k, r, b, lt, ash, b, ī, h, ī, Anavī, Ukhravī, Sāḥib Maqām (the representative).^285a And the rest was after the same fashion. We flee to God for refuge from such unbelief!

He has recently entered the imperial service and is well versed both in those sciences which call for the exercise of the reasoning faculty and in traditional knowledge. He is well acquainted with poetry and has poetic genius. The following couplets are his:—

“If I be not enabled to steal a glance at Thy face,
I can at least fill my mouth with sweetness by thinking on
Thy lip:
If Thou hast planted me like a herb on the earth,
Where shall I find the hand and the heart that will enable
me to end my earthly pilgrimage?”

He is at present employed, by the emperor's command, in turning the Shāhnāma into prose, or in other words in converting fine linen into sackcloth, or in unravelling a rope to make oakum.

He is one of the amīrs who have been long in the imperial service, and is well known for his ability, scientific knowledge, and wit. If anybody were praised to him for his learning and accomplishments he would at once say to him, “My love and friendship are conditional on this, that you pay no heed to what the base and vulgar say of me, for such people are a hindrance to ²⁰⁷ friendship and a cause of strife.” His verses are, as it were, disconnected fragments of chaff, but he has nevertheless completed a dīvān.

“O thou whose practice is to vex me, and whose rule of
conduct is injustice!
I cry out against this injustice and against this rule.”

Pass by this bitterness, for in this tardy world no one who
ill-treats the poor prospers.”

“A rival is on the road to salute thee,
O God! Grant that he leave not the road with his life.”

Quatrain.

“I have suffered from separation as even Jacob²⁸⁷ never
suffered,
I have suffered for love what even Majnūn never suffered,
This calamity which thine absence has brought upon me
Was never dreamt of by Farhād nor heard of by Vāmiq.”

His name is ‘Alī Akbar and he has made the fact that he bears the same name as the emperor, an excuse for addressing to him treatises on heresy, in which, agreeably to the system of the Nuqṭawīs,^287a he sets forth both the emperor and himself as that promised person who was to appear, in accordance with the numerical values of the letters composing the word shakhṣ,^287b in the year H. 990,^287c and he quotes the words of Maḥmūd in support of this view:—the curse of God be upon them all! He has versified the Kāfiyyah^287d and a treatise on Ṣūfī-ism, in which occurs the following ridiculous couplet^287e which is made to scan merely by filling in vowels:—

He has apparently, at the latter end of his life, repented of poetry.

His name is Khẉāja Ḥusain. Before he came to India the ²⁰⁸ great men of his country used secretly to assemble at social gatherings to consider and discuss even one couplet by him, and in each gathering his verses were read by way of good augury, and all agreed, both with tongue and pen, in his pre-eminence in poesy, and recorded their opinions. Since his arrival in India all his poetic fancy has been frozen by envy, and he is fallen into the corner of neglect and become the target for a hundred shafts of criticism, and wanders distracted in the way of the vulgar. His dīvān is well known and contains a good maṯnavī, although it is for the most part pointless, and its style is not comparable with that of his loftier odes. He has, however, a poetic nature, and in all subjects save unity, preaching, advice, and direction he has wonderful aptitude. I quote these few couplets as a memorial of him:—

“Such grace rains down from her from head to foot,
That one could sweep grace out of her bed.”

The idea expressed in this couplet, however, very closely resembles that in the couplet of the master-poet:

“She causes blandishments to spring from the ground, she
scatters grace in the air
By means of her graceful gait and her sweet foot on the
earth.”

“If, for example, thou sittest²⁸⁸ behind a mirror, a person
Standing before it sees his own image with the face
reversed.”^288a

‘I shed so much grief abroad from my house
That the difficulties of my house are from without the
door.”

In describing an ambassador he says:—

“Like the sun in the sky thou hast traversed the world,
Like sleep thou art welcome to all eyes. ²⁰⁹
The sun, perchance, is but a distillation from thy hand,
Which washes the whole world with one drop of water,
Such blackness has overspread that tribe whose fate is
dominated by Saturn that if, for example,
Each hair on their bodies became a candle,
The sight of man would not be able to distinguish their
faces.²⁸⁹
The sound of their shoes would snatch Venus away from
life,
Their hideous voices reach not the understanding,
Their gait is like fire, their speech is like war,
The sight of them is punishment and their voice is a
brazen trumpet.
If a thought of them passes through the mind of the
wet-nurse
The child from fear desists from sucking.”^289a

“O thou! from the splendour of the fair candle of whose
face the mirror is illumined,
From whose reflection the mirror seems to cherish a soul,
Place not the mirror before thee for the sake of seeing
thyself,
Reflect rather on my condition and look not in the glass.
Fire has burst into flame in my heart, like its reflection in
a mirror,

Since the sunlight of thy face has been reflected in every
mirror.
²¹⁰ If the burning blast of thy wrath should break into flame,
It will see its reflection in every mirror.”

THE SONG OF THE CUPBEARER.

“Come, my heart, to the wine-shop of the people of the
Secret,
Drink of the cup of truth which melts outward semblance;
So free thyself from the outward form
That thou mayst, like the fairy, become invisible to vulgar
eyes.
Perchance the desire of that guide shall seize thee
So that thou mayst obtain a place in the street of the
wine-shops.
Bring me,²⁹⁰ cupbearer, that candle which lies in privacy,
Which is hidden, like the hand of Moses,^290a in his sleeve:
Give it into my hand and thus make my hand resplendent
That in its light I may stretch forth my hand to perform
miracles.
Come, O cupbearer, and for the sake of the drunken
debauchees
Stretch forth thy hand to shed the blood of the bottle.
Look to the circulation of the bottle and reck^290b not of
punishment.

For in times of famine it becomes lawful to drink blood.
Give me, O cupbearer, that amber of existence
That by means of its attraction I may ascend
And may pitch my tent above this lowly place,
And, like ambition, may set my foot on whatever is!
Bring me, O cupbearer, that warm-blooded wine
Which increases love in my heart.”

This “Song of the Cupbearer” clearly contains many vulgarisms, for everywhere he has used “come” in the sense of “bring,” and he has reproduced the expressions used by masters of poetry on the same subject, forgetting that their expressions are used in brief fragments, of which the second couplet is dependent²⁹¹ on the first.

In his ode on the sun the following couplet occurs:—

“The sun's reflection makes manifest in water the properties
of oil
When he makes of the dust of his worth a crown.”^291a

He has written odes on sublime subjects, but in a mean style, and to him the proverb applies:—

“Their houses are lofty, their spirit is low,
O Lord! make these two things equal.”^291b

He is Mīr Sayyid ‘Alī, the painter, a versatile man, each page of whose paintings is a masterpiece, and who may be described as a second Mānī²⁹² in India. The story of Amīr Ḥamzah in sixteen^292a volumes was illuminated and completed under his supervision. Each volume of it fills a box, and each page of it measures a yard wide by a yard long, and on each page is a picture.

He has completed a dīvān, in which the following verses occur:—

“As the morning broke the thorn boasted of its fellowship
with the rose
And thus pierced with its nail the broken heart of the
nightingale.”

“The beauty of idols is the Ka‘bah to which I journey;
love is the desert by the way,
The railing of rivals^292b is the acacia thorn of that desert.”

“From head to foot we are covered with swellings from the
wounds of love for thee,

We are the merchants of love and these wounds are our
merchandise.”

“I am a quarry half-slaughtered, fallen far from the street
of the Friend,
I stumble along on my way striving to see the face of the
Friend.”

“I wished to describe my circumstances to that ill-natured
one,
She is ever in company with others, what shall I say to
her?

His name is Pādshāh Qulī, and he is the son of Shāh Qulī Khān Nāranjī.^293a He has a poetic^293b turn of mind. The following verses are excerpts from his works:—

“Such sweetness has the Beauty which knows no beginning
conferred on the lovely,
That love reaches a stage at which it gladly relinquishes ²¹²
life.”

“See the extent of my jealousy. From love's madness I
come to myself
If any one perceives that my speech is of the beloved.”

“Thou art the unrestrained hunter and I am the (wounded)
quarry
Which the hunter, from excess of cruelty, neglects to kill.”

“Thou art one who hast not experienced the delicious
torment of the night of separation,
Nor seen thyself shrinking from (the fierce delight of) the
day of reunion.
The thorn of reproach has not detained thy skirt,
Thou hast not seen thyself with thy head drooping on thy
breast like a bud.
Never has thy love been constant,
Thou hast not felt the sweet anguish of the beloved's
neglect;
With no one hast thou held discourse of love,
Thou hast a heart which has nothing to regret.”

“My heart, at the sight of another in the arms of the be-
loved, is like the bird
Which the school-boy, from fear of the master, suddenly
releases.”
“Now that, after an age, my eye falls on the ravisher of my
heart
The veil of shame falls between us, so that I cannot see
her face.”

“I am not one to tell my tale to a messenger,
Or to base pretensions on what a messenger may say.”

“From one glance of thine in the assembly of me and my
friends
²¹³ What quarrels had we not among ourselves?”

His father, Shāh Qulī Khān, composed²⁹⁴ the following quatrain:—

“Sometimes I break my vow of repentance and sometimes
the wine-bottle,
Once, twice, incessantly I break my flute.
O Lord, deliver me from the evil promptings of my spirit!
How often shall I repent and again break my vow of
repentance?”

Praised be God! Even a clod has broken into flame.

One day after the return from the journey to Paṭna²⁹⁵ Jaẕbī, Qāẓī Shams-ud-dīn Qazvīnī, and some other poets, began to argue about a couplet of Ḥusain Ṯanā'ī's, viz.:—

“If, for example, thou sittest behind a mirror, a person
Standing before it sees his own image with the face
reversed.”^295a

When I drew near to them they asked me the meaning of the couplet which formed the subject of discussion. I replied, “Such is the state of things nowadays that it is impossible to draw any distinction between the poetry of one's friends and (the actions of) Tītāl.”^295b Now this Tītāl, who lived in the days of Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā Darharī,^295c was a wag^295d and a linguist, a man of disguises,^295e who used to go into social assemblies and into colleges clad in the turban, the clothes, and the trappings of a learned man and accompanied by a body of pupils. He would first introduce his theses and discuss them in a very orderly manner, thus making himself attractive to all present. He would next introduce sophistries confused with meaningless arguments, until even the most learned doctors were thrown into perplexity.

He is the son of Shaikh Jalāl, Wāṣil, who was the deputy of Shaikh Muḥammad Ghanṯ,²⁹⁶ and took great delight in the ecstatic songs and dances of darvīshes. Jamīlī, though he has very little of the ecstatic piety of his father, is yet not without a love of learning and poetic taste, although he has written some ridiculous ^296a verses.

The following verses are extracted from his works:—

“Whenever I think on the rose of thy face,
Like the broken-hearted nightingale I utter lamentations.
If the joy of union with thee has never been my lot,
I can, at least, indulge my heart with grief for the want of
thee.”

“Since her ringlets have led me into love's madness,
My distracted heart is bound in the bonds of that mad-
ness.”

He has written an ode in praise of Qāsim ‘Alī Khān, the corn-chandler, governor of Kālpī, in the course of which this couplet occurs:—

“To connect thee with the race of Khāns (nobles)
Is most revolting and most unfit.”

This couplet also is attributed to him, but God knows whether correctly or not:—

“The mouse of my heart, which I nourished with blood
drawn from my liver,
Has been suddenly seized by the cat of love,
Pierced by her teeth, and carried off.”^296b

His elder brother, Shaikh Faẓīl, was a wonderful Arabic scholar, and has written some fine poetry in Arabic. The following is the opening couplet of an ode which he wrote in answer to an ode by Mu‘īn-ud-dīn Ṭanṭarānī:—

O beautiful of face, my face, from days of old, has declined,
My soul has descended to the pit and tears have followed
like running water.

One day he recited this couplet, and as both he and his respected brother have very sallow complexions I said, “In this opening couplet you have evidently addressed your younger brother.” This quip was very well received. The opening couplet of the original ode, which was answered, is:—

“O thou of easy circumstances, sure thou hast thrown my
affairs into confusion,
Thou hast disturbed my heart by thine absence and it is
in a decline owing to its palpitation.”²⁹⁷

And Shaikh Faẓīl has written on Faīẓī's commentary^297a an ²¹⁵ essay in Arabic, in prose and verse, which furnishes sufficient proof of his great learning. At the present time both brothers have set out from Lāhor for their native place. If, in the course of following the object which they have in view, which is a review of all the Imāms of India, they do not slay one another utterly, it will be a wonder.

He is Shaikh Ḥusain the Ṣūfī, whose native place is Dihlī, and as he is a disciple of Shaikh Salīm Cishtī^297c he has chosen this poetical name. He was one of the Ṣūfī members of the monastery at Fatḥpūr, otherwise known as Sīkrī. He has composed a dīvān and is the author of several works, one of which is “The Book of the Heart and the Soul” written in verse, but in an Indian style, and since its purport is the same as that of the book “Beauty and the Heart,” in which the master Mīr ‘Alī Shīr²⁹⁸ has displayed his verbosity, it would be a pity to soil one's tongue with the mention of it.

Perhaps this opening couplet is the only one of several thousands of couplets written by Cishtī which is worthy of mention:—

“Such love has Qais^298a for the peacock's feather
That it would seem that he believes its eye to be the foot-
print of Lailā's camel.”

He is a Sayyid of Hirāt and has good taste in poetry and in the composition of enigmas. He was the chief paymaster of Ataga Khān^298c and has written an ode and composed an enigma dedicated to Mīrza ‘Azīz Kūka,^298d containing a list of his titles and prayers for his long life and prosperity. The following few couplets are selected from his poems:—

“Now that the comb has disturbed those musky locks²⁹⁹
Ah, that the wind would bear this message to thine ear!”

“I would not that the dust, even of musk, should settle on ²¹⁶
that cheek,
God forbid that dust should have a place near thy heart.”

“The place of herbage in the garden is beneath the foot of
the rose,
In the garden of thy beauty^299a herbage has settled on the
rose.”

He is well known as Āṣaf Khān the Qazvīnī, and is brother's son to Mīrzā Ghiyāṯ-ud-dīn ‘Alī ‘Āṣaf Khān, the late paymaster-in-chief. He is himself now one of the chief paymasters. So bitter is his resentment at having received no honour in the days in which his uncle was influential at court, that he continues to show it, and to attack his uncle even now that he is dead.³⁰⁰ His poetic genius is greater than that of all his contemporaries, but is restricted by not being exercised, owing to his love of pleasure and ease and the great demands made upon his time by official business. He is also moderately fond of learning. Had he been a man of one occupation he would have enchanted the hearts of many of the poverty-stricken people of this time, which would probably have been worth to him forty tūmāns in cash.^300a (Whenever he made any considerable sum of money by his poetry he would squander it.)^300b

The following few couplets are some of his:—

“My lives are cast to-day in the ways of injustice
For wherever the beloved sets her footheads fall.”

“If, like the moth, I fly distractedly around thy candle,
O obstinate one!
My presumptuous flight will at length land me in death.”

“The roses of all are despoiled by the autumn,
But in my case both the rose-tree and the rose-garden are
gone.”

“Thine affair, O Ja‘far! is fallen into the fire,
²¹⁷ Two hundred songsters are here not worth one sala-
mander.”

“At length the day of resurrection has come for the
reckoning of my sin.
O, tear up the record of the sins of the people.”

“What plain was this and what hunter that always brought
down the game?
No quarry appeared in view, but received an arrow from
him.”

“I must write a letter concerning my grief to her who
possesses my heart;
The grief of my heart is great, I must write to my love
concerning it.”

“If Thou art pleased with Ja‘far, with the faith which he
holds and his heart,
I am deputed by him to say that he freely gives Thee this
faith and heart.”

“Behold my magnanimity! A hundred leaves of the book
of hope
Have I torn into a hundred pieces and washed them with
tears of blood!”

“A rose has now bloomed in the garden afresh,
For last night the nightingale slept not till the morning.”

“Since the city was too small to contain the griefs of my
heart
The open plain was created for my heart.”

“All thy complaints are over, as mine begin,
For the whole of my complaint is that I do not hear the
voice of thy complaint.”

“Come into her heart, O pity, and let not my grief be in
vain!
For I am deeply afflicted while she is occupied with
cruelty.”

“Ja‘far found the way to the street of his love,
Now he will hardly rise to his feet again.”

“She came and distracted me, and remained not for so long
That I could make my heart acquainted with consolation.”

He has performed the pilgrimage to Makkah. He was the pupil of Lisānī, and has written, in reply to the book Sahw-ul-Lisān (‘a slip of the tongue’) by his fellow-pupil Sharīf of Tabrīz, the Lisān-ul-Ghaib (‘a voice from heaven’) in praise of Lisānī. He was for some time in India and then left and returned, and again went away in such sort that he cannot return again. I have seen his dīvān, containing about 14,000 couplets, but with very little good stuff³⁰³ among all these. In an ode describing the imperial elephants he has written:—

“They were not mounds of driven sand—
His elephants, for they are in battle array;
And, for the purpose of engulfing his foes
They are, on every side, the billows of the ocean of cala-
mity.”

As meed for this ode the emperor ordered that a horse and a money reward should be given to him, but the treasurer delayed in carrying out the order, and Ḥaidarī wrote this fragment:—

“I have a difficulty, O King! I wish to present to thee a
petition.
My difficulty imprints on my heart a hundred brands of
regret.
Thou didst command silver and gold to be given to me,
but from thy treasurer
It is hard to get, and yet harder not to get.”^303a

Some of his verses:—

“No trust is to be placed in the love^303b of the moon-faced
beauties of this world
A ray of the sun settles not long on one place.

“I burn ever with an inward fire, such it is.
I am contemned everywhere, such is my miserable lot.

²¹⁹ A fragment.

“Ḥaidarī! Strive, like the virtuous, to the utmost
To attain to some perfection in this world of sorrow;
For to go from this world deficient in anything
Is as though one were to leave the bath unclean.”

He was one of the learned men of ‘Irāq. During the disturbances at Hirāt he left that perilous place to journey towards India, but before he reached his goal he set forth for the desert of non-existence. The following verses are his:—

“Laughter comes upon me when I think on the simplicity
of Ḥuznī,
For he loves, and expects fidelity from his beloved.
The loved one, in her ignorance, rendered fruitless my
efforts on his behalf;^304a
And the strange thing is that he is all the more indebted
to me.”

“I throw my darvīsh's robe on the fire that thou mayest
smell the odour of faith
From the patched garment, every thread of which is a
fire-worshipper's sacred thread.”

He was a sympathetic friend, and excelled in all descriptions of poetry. He entered the imperial service on the recommendation of Ḥakīm Abū-'l-Fatḥ and grew up in that service. He has written a dīvān and is well acquainted with the poetry of the ancients. Although he is entirely destitute of actual learning he is strenuous and has a sound understanding and a well-balanced mind.

The following verses are his:—

“Watch thyself well in every word that thou utterest, ²²⁰
Repent of a speech which gladdens no heart.
What need hast thou of the wing of a bird? If the men
of this age are employed in light talk
Borrow the foot of the ant, and flee.”

“God doth not accustom my tongue to the uttering of com-
plaints.
May He not associate me with complaints, especially of
thee.”

Quatrain.

“Ever hast thou treated me with harshness,—thou art
excused:
Thou hast heard but the name of faithfulness,—thou art
excused:
Thou sayest, ‘I am falsely accused of harshness’;
Thou hast not tried thyself,—thou art excused.”

Quatrain.

“So long as thou art employed in the nurture of vain
desires
Thine axe shall strike no stump but thine own foot.

No enemy works thee such mischief as thou workest thy-
self,
Thy blood is on the head of thine own imagining.”

“We have associated with unbelievers
But found among them no waist worthy of the sacred
thread.”³⁰⁶

An ode.

“I desire a house of mourning that I may shut its door on
myself
But my resolution has peopled it, and now I desire some
desert spot.
The world is disturbed by stories of “to-morrow” and
“yesterday,”
I desire some tale of the speech of my own grief.
²²¹ From the fields of this world, the harvest of ox and ass,
I desire no harvest nor ear of corn nor even a grain.
I am content whether I be killed by the sword of the
warrior of Islām or the arrow of the unbeliever,
I thirst for my own blood and all I require is a cup.
Ḥayātī, sit not before me, prevent not my ravings,
I am a lover and thou art wise, a demented companion
is what I require.”

He was in Gujarāt with Mīrzā Niẓām-ud-dīn Aḥmad.^306a The following verses are by him:—

“The message of the loved one re-opens the wound in my
liver,
And renews the grief of farewells and the pain of the
journey.”

Quatrain.

“The lover pressed his cheek against thy door and went,
He displayed that love which he had for thee and went
One night, having obtained admission to the assembly
and union with thee by a thousand stratagems,
The moth opened his eyes to the candle, and went.”

His name was Yādgār, and he claimed descent from the late Sulṭān Sanjar,^307a though in the Tārīkh-i-Niẓāmī^307b Mīrzā Aḥmad says that he was a Caghatāī. He was known for his sincerity and orthodoxy. He wrote a dīvān. The following verses are his:—

“From weeping there remains not in my liver so much ²²²
moisture
That the bird of thine arrow could wet his bill therein.”

“Would that I could be the string of thy shift
So that thou and I might be enclosed in one garment.”^307c

“That line of dark musk on the page of thy cheek
Is a new revelation from on high.”

“I constantly come behind the rival and cover his eyes in
sport,
That he may have no share in the joy of beholding my
beloved.”

“The dark mole is placed by the corner of thine eye
Like a hunter sitting in ambush for his prey.”

“Again am I weeping for the beauty of that rose,
To-day have I seen the rose, for I have again become the
nightingale.”

“Thy ravishing lip has suffered much from fever spots,
Alas that thy rose-petal has been damaged by hail.”

Ḥālatī's father had the poetical name of Wālihī. This opening couplet is by him:—

“The moon of the ‘Id has shown her eyebrow, and glad-
dened my heart,
Thanks be to God, who has freed me from this thirty
days' grief.”³⁰⁸

His son, although he had the poetical name of Baqā'ī, changed it to Rusvā'ī (‘the blackguard’) on account of his unprofitableness. He met an early death, for having, by instructions from his mother, given his unfortunate father poison, for some fault that he had committed. He was sent, by the emperor's order, from Kashmīr to Lāhor, where the Kotwāl executed him. He had some poetic genius, and wrote the following couplet:—

223 “While thy death-dealing glance is the despoiler of life
Death looks on from afar with regret.”

He is Ataga Khān who, when the imperial army was defeated at Jausā,^308b at the time when the king who had obtained forgiveness, ³⁰⁹ the emperor Humāyūn, fell, like a crocodile, into the river Ganges, and the sun of dignity^309a nearly disappeared for ever in that boundless waste of waters, seized his hand and brought him from that whirlpool of calamity and from the deep waters of destruction to the shore of safety and security. This service led to his very great advancement.

Although his dignity is too great for him to be described as a poet or one given to poetry, still, as he had poetic genius the following verses by him are quoted:—

“My little tear, set not thy foot forth from the house of my
eye.
For well-born children^309b leave the house but seldom.”

“If the full moon in her glory should boast o'er the sun of
thy face
She will at last sink down from the turquoise sky invert-
ed.”

The following quatrain is by his son, Yūsuf Muḥammad Khān:—³¹⁰

“Those who walk self-satisfied in the street of desire are of
one sort,
The paupers of the valley of love of another.
Those who seek aught but the pleasure of the beloved
Differ widely from those who grieve with love.”

He is one of the Caghatāī nobles and is related to Tardī Beg Khān,^310b who has been already mentioned. He has written a ²²⁴ maṯnavī of three hundred couplets on his own condition and containing also the praise of the emperor. He is a versatile man, unequalled in the art of war, in calligraphy, in poetry, in the composition of enigmas, in general knowledge, in the use of the astrolabe, in astronomy, and in handling figures. He is also the author of several works, and he has enumerated his own excellences in the maṯnavī already mentioned. In the art of music he collected information regarding the systems of the Persians and the Indians and particularly regarding the six modes³¹¹ of Hindū music, an undertaking which is impossible except to wealthy men of high rank and exalted position; and, indeed, there is now no trace of that information left in the land.

He had no equal in his time. These few couplets, written for the edification and instruction of the emperor, are excerpted from the maṯnavī already mentioned:—

“O King! The world is a wonderful place,
Every moment it presents some fresh spectacle.
The revolving sky, like a deceitful juggler,
Begins every moment some new prank.
From times of old there have been in the world
Crowned kings, with armies and suites.
Of those old heroes, with all their desires and ambitions,
There remain time-worn histories, naught else.
Had the prophets seen any hope of permanence in the world
Why should they have fled from it?
O King! the works of this world are all envy,
Thus is it now, and was in the past, and ever will be:
Among all these complicated affairs
One's first object should be to acquire a good name, the rest
is naught.
The object of this long harangue of mine is to say
What thou should'st do now that thy turn for sovereignty
has arrived.
In this age, in which the world is adorned by thy presence,
May God be thy protector from harm!
If the humā^311a has flown from this rose-garden
Cast thou thy shadow on our heads.
Since my words are without guile
It is meet that I should offer thee counsel.

Since I strive only for thy welfare,
Why should I conceal from thee the words of truth?
To all words, whether uttered by this one or that one,³¹²
Give ear, if they touch the root of the matter.
It behoves a king, both in season and out of season,
To take heed to himself and to consider both the people
and God.
²²⁵ The poor man's error leads only to the loss of his bread,
The king's error is a calamity to the world.
The beggar takes heed only for his gullet and his patched
robe.
In the king's heart there must be thought for the people.
Kingship is best exercised according to law,
As the king's order is authenticated by his great seal.
Since it is thy turn to exercise sovereignty,
It is necessary for thee to exercise caution and prudence.
Thou art as the candle, thy kingdom as the house,
And thy people are around thee like moths.
The mote in the sunbeam is not seen if the sun shines not,
And where there is no candle there is no moth.
That is to say, the livelihood of all is from thee,
Thou art the shepherd, and thy people are the flock.
The flock has come to thy pasture;
How canst thou leave the flock to wander unrestrained?
God has appointed thee their guardian,
The shepherd's dignity belongs to His prophets;
Neglect not then the practice of the prophets.
But take heed to thyself and also to mankind.
A happy life is a jewel. See that thou value it properly,
And count as gain both wealth and dominion.
Thou art a king with a prophet's attributes,
Thou art in the world for a great work.
Justice and equity, generosity, knowledge, liberality,
Favour and grace, humanity kindness, and faithfulness.

All these thou hast by the grace of God,
What shall I do if thou ignore thine own worth?
Thou ridest, laughing light-heartedly, on thy fierce ele-
phant,
But the people lining the walls to see thee pass are weeping.
Thou layest thy hand on the tusk of the elephant,
But thy people take the finger of anxiety between their
teeth:
Thou layest thy hand on the elephant's trunk,
But our sleeves are shaken free of the world.
Thou boldly facest the raging tiger,
While men flee on every side in terror:
Take thou thy pleasure in the fighting of leopards
While we in fear tear our faces with our hands and our
nails:
Thou withstandest unmoved the attack of the wolf,
While all, both great and small, wonder at thee from afar:
Thou seizest by its neck the snake that has, like the
dragon, an arrow for its tongue,
While the people of the world are writhing in dread:
Thou art swimming in a boundless ocean,
While we, washing our hands of life, stand trembling
on its brink.
Thou enterest the forest intent on the chase, ²²⁶
The people stand at its margin in fear and anxiety.
In one dark night thou travellest a month's journey,
While men struggle after thee sighing for the light of a
torch:
Thou wanderest almost naked in the cold,
While the people are shivering under their wrappings:
Thou runnest, heavily clad, in the heat,
While the people bathed in sweat, take shelter under a tree:
Thou pressest onward in every direction on foot,
While we on our horses are fainting with weariness:
Thou facest the warlike foe on the field of battle,
While the army looks on from every side.

What favour is this, and what sympathy,
That thou hast towards us and towards thyself?
This valour of thine is beyond conception,
This bravery is ever fresh in thee.
Although these things are doubtless a merit,
They are, nevertheless, a defect in a king
While the king remains far removed from hurt,
The people of his land are in safety:
If a king never spares himself,
The whole world is thrown into confusion.
We desire the world and our lives to be blessed with thy
[presence;
Without thee what are the world and our lives to us?
Khanjar, beware of prolixity,
And weary not the king's heart:
This speech of thine has wandered from the point,
And the king has no need of it:
Since he is accepted before God
His wealth consists in devotion to business.
His very sleep is perfect wakefulness
Even when he wanders, it is perfect wisdom.
The right is with him who does his duty
And thus becomes independent of all labour.”

When he recited this maṯnavī he was honoured with various favours. He has also composed a divān, which is well known. The following verses are by him:—

“How often in her street shall my heart secretly heave sighs,
And afterwards how often shall I lament that my life is
leaving me?”

“The waters have passed over my head, and my life has gone
on the breeze;
²²⁷ My body has become dust; yet still the fire of my heart
breaks into flame.”

At the time when the Khānzamān and Bahādur raised their heads as high as the star Capella in turbulence and rebellion³¹⁴

Khanjar Beg was confederate with them, and fled into Bengal, and he has probably disappeared in consequence of those disorders.

He is sister's son to Mīrzā Qāsim of Junābid.^315a He came to India after performing the pilgrimage to the Ḥijāz, and he is in the service of the emperor's eldest son.^315b He is worthy of mention. The following verses are by him:—

“The heart of Khusravī is so inflamed with the light of love
That candles to light his tomb may be made of his bones.”

“The lions of the temple of Makkah will not pollute their
claws with my blood,
Do thou, my companion, regale with this morsel the dogs
of the monastery.”³¹⁶

His name is Sulṭān Bāyazīd, and his title Kātib-ul-Mulk (‘scribe of the kingdom’). It is probable that nobody in Hindūstān has written the nasta‘līq hand better than he, and he has reasonably good taste in poetry. At the end of his life he obtained grace to perform the pilgrimage of Islām. The following verses are by him:—

“At times thou art in my very soul, and at times in my
afflicted heart,
Such is thy levity that thou canst not remain in one
place.”

An ode.

“Had I not been pampered by union with thee,
I had never suffered so much now from parting with thee.^316b
228 The bird of my heart is burnt like a moth. Ah me!
Would that I had never fluttered around that candle which
illumines the night.
Had I not brought blood to my eyes with the arrow of her
eyelashes,
I had never become a mark for her heart-piercing arrow.”

A quatrain.

“Since my love has departed from my sight,
My heart's blood flows from my afflicted eyes.

She has gone from my sight but not gone from my heart.
Nay, surely this cannot be,
For that which goes from the sight goes from the heart.”

One of the Mīr's pupils in calligraphy, who was also one of the writer's companions, was Khẉāja Ibrāhīm Ḥusain the Aḥadī³¹⁷ (may God have mercy on him!), who was a well-born man of the city of Balūṭ,^317a and closely related to Shaikh ‘Abd-ur Raḥmān the Balūṭī of Lāhor, who was, in his time, famed throughout the world as a religious leader and a follower of the saints. Khẉāja Ibrāhīm Ḥusain in the flower of his youth left this world of deceit for the abode of joy, to the infinite regret of his friends; and the writer suffered in one year, and within the space of a few days, the grief of losing him and the grief of losing Mīrzā Niẓām-ud-dīn Aḥmad,^317b and these griefs renewed my regret for the loss of my old friends—a regret which grows stronger every day.

Alas, I see no remedy for my pain!
I had some hope of union:—that is gone
All my concerns are languishing, because
I see that the promise of my friends is unfulfilled.

Alas! Misfortunes have crowded so thickly upon me that I have scarcely the strength left to bewail them. But what cause is there for bewailing, since we are all beneath one dome and have but to pass behind the veil to meet once more?

The following chronogram was composed on Khẉāja Ibrāhīm Ḥusain's death:—

229 “In accordance with the command of the Ruler of the
universe,
In the month of Ṣafar, Khẉāja Ibrāhīm Ḥusain
Journeyed from this world of wickedness and dishonour,
And the date of his death was found in the words,
‘Khẉāja Ibrāhīm Ḥusain.’”³¹⁸

He has recently come from ‘Irāq and has been appointed an Aḥadī,³¹⁹ and before he attained this dignity he wrote the following quatrain on Sharīf-i-Sarmadī^319a the roster-keeper, inspector of the Aḥadīs, who has an enormous moustache:—

“This simpleton will at length become an Aḥadī,
And will be asking for the felt cap^319b
In the depth of his perplexity he will, a hundred times a
day,
Become a sacrifice for Sarmadī's moustache.”

Dānih is a village in the district of Nīshāpūr,^319d where he passed a life of humble contentment in tilling the soil. Suddenly the seed of wandering was sown in his heart and he conceived a desire to visit India and gained no advantage from his husbandry. He has written most of his poetry in his own rustic dialect, but has also composed many odes in more polished language. He gave up the use of his own rustic dialect when he found that it could not be understood by the generality of people. One day a poet with the takhalluṣ of Ulfatī was playing polo, when his stick flew from his hand and struck him on the nose. Dānihī wrote the following epigram on the circumstance:—

“So much bad verse did Ulfatī recite
That all the libertines were delighted with him.
His polo stick by ill chance broke
The bridge of his nose instead of his teeth.”^319e

They say that Qilīj Khān^319f was the subject of this epigram. ²³⁰

He is Ḥakīm ‘Ain-ul-Mulk.³²⁰ He traces his descent on the mother's side to that most learned man Maulānā Jalāl-ud-dīn Davvānī.^320a He is distinguished by his gracious manners and excellent qualities, and in the treatment of ophthalmia his equal has not been seen. Occasionally he occupies himself by writing poetry, and the following are some of his verses:—

An ode.

“It is not only hail that rains down from the cloud of grief
on me in my misery.
But stones that rain down upon me in the form of cala-
mities.
So violent towards lovers is that capricious and cruel
charmer,
That even in the course of familiarity warfare gleams in
her eye.
Davā'ī, it is infidelity to despair at the door of her favour,
For rain from the cloud of her generosity covers leagues.”

“Each night my lamentations, sighs, and weeping reach the
sky.
O Lord! What shall one whose days are as dark as mine
do with such nights as these?”

An ode.

“No waste spot is to be seen which cannot be peopled.
The incurable pain of love is that here no plans avail.
In the night of her dark locks the sleep of death fell upon
me,
A wonderful and confused dream not to be interpreted.
Ah, what a glance was that to slay a lover, and where is
the stage on the journey of love
In which is to be found a breast unpierced by an arrow?”

“Each one who has tasted a drop of the wine of love
Has become more wearied than before, and broken both ²³¹
cup and wine-jar.”

“Awake, my heart, for the beloved is enraged,
And life has become hard for lovers.
For lovers, on the way of devotion,
Every step is a hundred thousand leagues.
The spacious arsenal of love
Is all too narrow for the army of my affection.
The arm of my ambition is long enough,
But what shall I do? For my good fortune is lame.
Davā'ī beware, for in the street of the beloved
Strife is hot and love is in disguise.”

“Bright are those eyes which know how to see,
Happy is that heart which knows how to palpitate.
How shall the torment of this narrow cage
Be endured by the bird of my soul, which has learnt how
to soar?
Never remains in the corner of my eye
That little tear which has learnt how to run down my
cheek.
There is not to be found elsewhere in a house
A wild creature which has learnt how to flee.
Davā'ī no longer has any desire for heaven,
Since he has learnt how to pluck the rose of thy garden.”

“On the day of separation, which is the moment when (the
heart) burns,
The soul's employ is to fan the flame.
In the night of separation, when hope of life must be ²³²
foregone,
The heart's employ is to heap up pain and grief.
Ah separation, such a calamity art thou that ever
Hell is in flames for fear of thee!

From the two magicians, coquetry and blandishment,
The drunkard may learn quarrelsomeness.
Davā'ī, the longing for association with the fair,
Is an attempt to unite flame and cotton.”

He is Mīr Ḥaidar of Kāshān, the composer of enigmas. His understanding is excellent and he has correct taste. He is unrivalled in the art of composing enigmas and chronograms,—^322a

indeed, he does not even know that there are any arts but these two. One day Shaikh Faiẓī told him that the art of composing enigmas had gone out of fashion in Hindūstān and that the practice of it was considered unworthy. He replied, “I have toiled for years in my own country in the study of enigmas, and now that I have grown old in this pursuit, how can I give it up?” He came with Khẉāja Ḥabībullāh from Gujarāt to Lāhor and received a fixed allowance from the emperor's privy purse and from courtiers. He embarked in a ship and set sail for his native land, but, when he had passed Hurmuz and was nearing Kīj and Makrān,³²³ his ship was wrecked and all that he had was lost, among the rest several parts of Shaikh Faiẓī's pointless commentary^323a on the Qur'ān, letters of introduction from learned men, and Faẓiī's dīvān, a copy of which he was sending abroad ²³³ in order to increase his reputation.

The following verses are by Rafī‘ī:—

“I have a tender heart, my sprightly love, what remedy
is there for me?
I am a lover with the nature of one beloved, what can
I do?”

“I was jealous of Rafī‘ī's coffin, for thou
Didst accompany it weeping more bitterly than the
mourners.”

A quatrain.

“The devotee sins not, for Thou art the Avenger,
We are steeped in sin, for Thou art the Pardoner;

He calls Thee the Avenger, and we the Pardoner,
O Lord! say which name Thou preferrest.”

And he has a quatrain which contains twenty-six chrono-grams. ³²⁴

He is descended from Shaikh Zain-ud-din of Khavāf,^324b and he has composed a famous dīvān. The following verses are his:—

“O love, thou didst encourage me to hope for thy favour,
And didst then repulse my hope on every side.”

“I travelled in order to ease my heart of its grief,
How was I to know that a hundred mountains of grief
would confront me on my way?”

“The secrets which I have with that rose are as buds formed
of my heart's blood;
To tell the heart's secrets to all is hard indeed.”

“Pass not from my eyes like tears, my dear,
Be more humane and pass not thus by men.” ²³⁴³²⁵

“In the heat of thy wrath thou throwest me into the fire,
And then coquettishly warmest thy hands at the fire.”

“I have so devoted myself to thankfulness for that small
mouth and that eyebrow like the new moon
That nobody now calls me to mind.”

“I have suffered cruelty not only at the hands of that
faithless and capricious girl
But at the hands of all from whom I hoped for faithful-
ness.”

“Thou, my friend, dost not know all the grief of my heart,
Nor all that I have suffered at the hands of that cruel
moon-faced beauty.”

He was an impudent jack-pudding whose jesting passed all bounds. He was for many years in the service of the emperor. He has written a dīvān containing nearly three thousand couplets. This is one of his couplets:—

“The martyr who suffers death by the sword of his injustice
enjoys life eternal:
Perhaps the master-armourer who tempered the sword
used the water of life.”

The idea contained in this couplet closely resembles that in the couplet of Mīr Ashkī,^325b already quoted, namely:—

“Those slain by thy cruelty lie scattered here and there
like drunken men;
It would seem that thy sword was tempered with wine
instead of water.”

The following verses are also by Raughanī:—

“I weep not for her cruelty, for I fear that my rival
²³⁵ Might guess from my weeping whose cruelty was its
cause.”

“My burning heart in her hands and beneath her feet is
like a live coal,
Which a boy in sport takes up and quickly flings away.”

“Thy dignity so plants upon the mountains the foot of
clemency
That fountains of water flow from each vein of it.”

“O messenger! Give her by word of mouth an account of
my condition,³²⁶ for in my letter
There are many words which have flowed from my pen
while I was beside myself.”

“The messenger gives me news of her coming
In order that the force of my desire for her may draw me
to the road by which she is to pass.”

In the year H. 980 (A.D. 1572), when the imperial army was marching towards Gujarāt,^326a Raughanī died beneath the fort of Ābūgarḥ^326b and was buried there Qāsim Arsalān^326c made the following chronogram on his death:—

“Like a dog he delivered up his soul to the abode of in-
fidelity.”³²⁷

In playing Hindū music, beating the drum, and other accomplishments of that sort he is unrivalled in this age. Although he cannot be said to have any other accomplishments, save calligraphy and transcription, yet he sometimes composes a couplet. The following is one of his couplets:—

“This world, which moves crookedly, gives me no rest,
Until I have threaded my needle with the thread of my
desire.”

Saplak is a village in the Qandahār district. The vulgar in India call him Siplakī (Sipkalī) with a kasr to the bā, which means ‘a lizard,’³²⁸ and this greatly offended him, and he used to say, “What can I do, though they call me by the name of such a dirty carrion creature?” He was a devotee girt as to the loins and unfettered by conventions. On the day on which he saw Mullā Qāsim Kāhī^328a he asked him his age. Qāsim replied, “I am two years younger than God.” Sulṭān said, “My dear sir, I took you to be two years older. I fear you are deducting from your years.” Mullā Qāsim laughed and said, “You are worthy to associate with us.” It may be noted that as Mullā Qāsim Kāhī was a great plagiarist he probably borrowed this speech from Shaikh Bāyazīd of Busṭām^328b who said, “I am younger than my Lord by two years.” This is one of the ravings of the Ṣūfïs, and some men of God have interpreted it to mean, “I am younger than God (may He be honoured and glorified!) by two years, i.e. in two qualities, that is to say self-existence and omnipotence”; for a creature may display all divine attributes and qualities except these two; for the brand of accidental existence and dependence can never be removed from the forehead of a created being. I ask forgiveness of God for this nonsense and these ravings!

Sulṭān had a disposition well attuned to poetry. When he saw the Khānzamān,^328c who also used Sulṭān as a poetical name, and presented to him an ode in his praise, the Khānzamān sent him, as a reward for it, a thousand rupees and a robe of honour, ²³⁷ together with a request that he would, for his sake, change his poetical name. He sent back the gift and said, “Sulṭān Muḥammad is my name, which was given to me by my father. How can I give it up? Moreover, I wrote poetry under this name many years before you did, and obtained much fame by it.” The Khānzamān said, “If you do not give up the name I will throw you under the feet of an elephant,” and being enraged, he had an elephant brought to the spot. Sulṭān said “Ah, what good fortune is mine, that I shall attain martyrdom!” After the Khānzamān had threatened and intimidated him for a long time, Maulānā ‘Alā-ud-dīn Lārī,³²⁹ the Khānzamān's tutor, suggested that an ode should be selected from the dīvān of the reverend Maulavī Jāmī,^329a (may God hallow his tomb!) which was at hand, and that if Sulṭān could answer it extemporaneously he should be pardoned, but if not the Khānzamān should do with him as he had proposed. From the dīvān of the reverend master (may his tomb be hallowed!) this ode was selected:—

The writing of God's creation knew the writing on thy
heart,
And knew the invisible proofs of kingship on the heads
of beardless boys.

Sulṭān Muḥammad recited an extemporary ode, the opening couplet of which is:—

“Whoever has regarded his heart as the shell containing
the pearl of God's secret
Has rightly appraised his own jewel.”

Although this ode was no great matter the Khānzamān was exceedingly pleased and praised it, and, having given the poet twice the reward which he had given before, dismissed him with honour. But Sulṭān could no longer stay in that place, and without the Khānzamān's leave he came thence to Badāon, and afterwards travelled through the country, and went to the Dakan. In the year in which the four kings of the Dakan formed a confederacy and after a great battle in a stricken field ²³⁸ conquered Vijayanagar,³³⁰ and destroyed that famous idol-temple, which was a veritable mine of misbelief, Sulṭān Muḥammad was with their army and acquired great store of plunder, and returned, but no further information regarding him is to be had. It was, indeed, the height of discourtesy on his part to enter into a dispute with his betters and to refuse the request, so courteously made by a man like the Khānzamān, that he would change his poetical name.

In reply to the following opening couplet by Ghazālī,^330a viz.—

“Devotee, true knowledge of God lies not in the patched
robe, the rosary, and the tooth-stick,^330b
Acquire mystical love, for these other things have nothing
to do with the comprehension of God,”

he wrote,

“Though the dust of envy has settled on my rival's heart I
have no fear,
This is clear to me, that the mirror of his heart is not
clean.”

The following are other verses by him:—

“My love sits sometimes in my eyes and sometimes in my
heart,
She rests nowhere, she must be bewitched.”

“How can I liken thy eyebrow to the new moon, for I
Have seen the new moon in every hair of thy eyebrow?”