Indian Antiquary Vol 11

SR No.: 032503
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 396
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 19 MB

Page 331

OCTOBER, 1882.)
BOOK NOTICES.
303
Invited to Heråt by Sultan Abu Sa'id, the uncle of Timur, he lived there in the company of the nobles and learned men of his time, and wrote many volumes of poetry, grammar, and theology still held in high esteem. He died in 1492.
Like the other poems of the Heft Aurang, the Yilsuf and Zulaikha is a mythical poem intended to represent under an allegorical guise the human soul in love with the highest beauty and goodnessof which Joseph is the Oriental ideal.
Mr. Griffiths has used rhymed heroics in the introductory cantos, and a lighter freer measure in the rest of the poem, which is vigorous and reads easily. He has omitted the 6th and 7th cantos on Muhammad ard his journey to heaven, also other two-a prayer for a blessing on him, and a fulsome eulogy on Sultan Husain, and the last eight cantos of which only two really seem to deserve a careful rendering which few could give better than Mr. Griffiths. The present version stops at the restoration of youth and sight to Zulaikha, when,"The beauty returned that was ruined and dead And her cheek gained the splendour which long
had fled. Again shone the waters which sad years had
dried, And the rose-bud of youth bloomed again in its
pride. The musk was restored and the camphor with
drawn, And the black night followed the grey of the dawn. The cypress rose stately and tall as of old : The pure silver was free from all wrinkle and fold. From each musky tress fled the traces of white : To the black narcissus came beauty and light. The halo of youth round her age was seen : For the forty-years' dame stood agirlof eighteen; Yes, fairer and brighter in loveliness stood Than in days of her ripening maidenhood."
Bauddha works made in Tibet chiefly in the ninth century A. D. These tales are of the ordinary folklore class, such as we find in the Kathdearit. edgara, but with a Buddhist colouring, many of them betraying a very low idea of the fidelity of women.
In an introduction of sixty-five pages, Mr. Ralston has condensed a large amount of very interesting information on the introduction of Buddhism into Tibet, the life and labours of Alex. Csoma Körösi in Tibetan literature, the contents of the Kah-gyur, Baron Schilling de Canstadt's acquisition of the Kah-gyur in Eastern Siberia, Professor von Schiefner's works, and a very full comparison of the tales included in the volume with the folklore of other nations-evincing great knowledge of this interesting branch of literature. The volume has also a good index--an apparatus indispensable to the student, but which is too often left out in such works.
THE GULISTAN : or, Rose-garden, of Shekh Muslihu'd.
din Sa'at of Shiraz, translated for the first time into prose and verse, with an introductory preface, and a life of the Author, from the Atish Kadah. By Edward B. Eastwick, C.B., M.A., &c. Second Edition, London : Trübner & Co.
This volume, included in Trübner's Orientai Series, is a pretty well-known book, having appeared thirty years ago in an edition de luxe,' and therefore hardly needs commendation now. The author's known scholarship is a sufficient guarantee for the accuracy of the translation, and the extraordinary popularity of the original-due to its intrinsic merits, ought to make this version of the most famous work of the immortal Sa'di a welcome volume to many. Mr. Eastwick's version is the fourth that has appeared in English during the present century, the first being Glad. win's excellent one founded on the Rosarium Politicum of G. Gentius (Amsterdam, 1651), but in parts somewhat too free (see Ross's Gulistan, p. 37), this was followed by Dowmoulin's transla. tion (Calcutta, 1807), and those of Ross (London, 1823), and Lee (London, 1827)-neither of them of very great merit, though Ross's has a very valu. able essay prefixed to it on the works and character of Sa'di. M. Semelet, in 1828, published the Persian text of the Gulistan, and in 1834 a translation into French-far surpassing in excel. lence any previous version into any western tongue. But these translations were into prose, and Mr. Eastwick's is the first and only attempt yet made to render the poetical portione into English verse; and though the requirements of strict accuracy have occasionally rendered his lines stiff and artificial, yet the majority of his
TIBETAN TALES derived from Indian Sources. Trang-
lated from the Tibetan of the Kah-gyár, by F. Anton von Schiefner. Done into English from the German with an Introduction, by W. R. S. Ralston, M.A. London: Trübner and Co. 1882.
This is the thirty-fifth volume of Trübner's Oriental Series which already embraces a mass of information on the religion, mythology and literature of India, China, Japan, Assyria, Arabia and Persia, that is not to be equalled in any similar collection.
The present volume supplies us with fifty tales of lengths varying from one to nearly sixty pages, extracted by F. A. von Schiefner from the Kah-gyur or "Translation of Commandments," that huge collection of versions from Sanskrit