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92
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[MARCH, 1874.
Likewise some cheese with bread and greasy cakes So nice with leaven or with ourdled milk. These make and bring I would each morn and eve; I would supply and you might eat the food; My goats would all I sacrifice to you; My exclamations all are prayers to you." Thus senseless that poor shepherd spoke; But Moses said :-"O man, whom do you mean P" He answered :-"Him who has created us, Who has produced this earth and wheeling sky!” Moses replied :-"Your head is going daft:" Eslám you left, an infidel you turned; What idle and blasphemous words are these ? Your mouth with cotton ought to be gagged ; Your unbelief will fill the world with dust; Your infidelity revives the Dibadin.. In need of quilted coats and socks you stand. How could such things befit the Sun P If you these ravings do not cease, The world will be consumed by flames; If fire has not appeared, then whence this smoke, This life so black and spirit so perverse ? If you believe that God a bounteous giver is, How can you belch out such stolidity ? A stupid friend is like an enemy. Such adoration God does not require. To father's or to mother's brother do you speak? Of body and necessities to God Most High P Milk is the beverage of a growing youth, And trowsers are required for the legs; But if a human being you did mean, Has not God said :-I am he, and he I? When I was sick ye visited me not: † Not only he; but I was sick also." To him who neither sees nor hears your words, To man, I say, they likewise nonsense are. To speak unkindly to a bosom-friend Deadens the heart and friendship kills. If Fatimah a man you choose to call, Though mules and females both one genus are, He will, should he be able, drink your blood, In spite of his mild temper and religion ; Fatimah is a praise in female names, Applied to men it is like wounds of spears. To men their hands and feet all comfort bring; The purity of God they would defile, He unbegotten is, begetteth not, I But giveth life to parents and to sons. All bodies must be witnesses of Him; For, everything produced here beneath Created is and must corruption bear,
But made it is, and must a maker want." He said:--"O Moses, you have sowed up my mouth, By this repentance you have burr.t my soul." He rent his clothes and heaved a fervent sigh, Towards the desert looking, sped his way. A revelation Moses heard from God :"My servant you have driven away from me; You have arrived the union to prepare, And not for separation's sake : If help you can, abstain from severing, Divorce I hate more than all other things. On each man I his nature did bestow, To everybody an expression I impart, Which seems great praise to him, but blame to you; He thinks it honey, you as poison deem; It light to him must be, and fire to you; But roses bright to him, and thorns to you, What he deems good, as wicked you condemn; What he applauds, you often disapprove; We from pure and all impure things are free, As well as from anxiety and speed. I man have not produced for gain of mine, But blessings to bestow on those who worship me. To Hindus their expression serves for praise ; The Sindhis by their own expression laud; Their adoration does not make me pure, They also puro will be and shedding pearls. Externals, words alone we disregard ; The soul within, its state, must give account ; At hearts we look, whether they humble are, Though speech may perhaps too bold be; For heart is essence, speech but accident : Thus qualities are not essentials. But why so many words and metaphors P Flames, flames I want, comform yourself to them; The fire of love you in your soul must raise, Burn up your meditations, all your tropes. O Moses, formalists quite different are From those whose inmost svuls do burn with fires ! Always to glow befits the lovers' hearts. No taxes, tithes are asked from empty towns. || If sin he speaks, do not him sinner call; If martyred and fall of blood then wash him not: Blood martyrs better fits than water does; This wrong outweighs a hundred-fold reward. In the Kabah the Qeblah cannot be looked at. What matters it if divers do not gork their feet? You must not guidance seek from the inebriate, Who rend their clothes; can they be asked to mend? From all religions love's belief differs; The lovers' sects and rites are God alone.
• Alluding to pro-Islamitic times, when Dibadin was worshipped.
+ There is a tradition very closely corresponding to what occurs in Matt. xxv. 45: "Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me." I Qordn, cxü. 3.
There in addition Haut odwid the above words.
| Empty towns are persons who have received no reli. gious instruction and therefore no ritul worship, here expressed by taxes and tithes, can be required of there.
The Kabah is the Qeblab, le direction in which Mos. lems look when they pray, therefore a person already within the Kabala cannot look towards it.
