NATURAL DESCRIPTIONS IN THE PERSIAN WRITERS. 409 



to the middle ages, whilst the great literature of India apper- 

 tains in the strictest sense to antiquity. 



In the Iranian elevated plateaux nature has not the same 

 luxuriance of arborescent vegetation, or the remarkable diversity 

 of form and colour, by which the soil of Hiudostan is embel- 

 lished. The chain of the Vindhya, which long continued to be 

 the boundary line of the East Arian nations, falls within the 

 tropical region, whilst the whole of Persia is situated beyond 

 the tropics, and a portion of its poetry belongs even to the 

 northern districts of Balkh and Fergana. 



The four paradises celebrated by the Persian poets,* were 

 the pleasant valley of Soghd uear Samarcand, Maschanrud 

 near Ramadan, Scha'abi Bowan near KaVeh Sofid in Fars, 

 and Ghute, the plain of Damascus. Both Iran and Turaii 

 are wanting in woodland scenery, and also therefore in the 

 hermit life of the forest, which exercised so powerful an in- 

 fluence 011 the imagination of the Indian poets. Gardens 

 refreshed by cool springs, and filled with roses and fruit-trees, 

 can form no substitute for the wild and grand natural sceneiy 

 of Hindostan. It is no wonder then that the descriptive 

 poetry of Persia was less fresh and animated, and that it was 

 often heavy and overcharged with artificial adornment. If in 

 accordance with the opinion of the Persians themselves, we 

 award the highest praise to that which we may designate by 

 the terms spirit and wit, we must limit our admiration to the 

 productiveness of the Persian poets, and to the infinite diver- 

 sity of forms imparted to the materials which they employ; 

 depth and earnestness of feeling are wholly absent from their 

 writings.f 



Descriptions of natural scenery do but rarely interrupt the 

 narrative in the historical or national epos of Firdusi. It 

 seems to me that there is much beauty and local truthful- 

 ness in the description of the mildness of the climate and the 

 force of the vegetation, extolled in the praise of the coast-land 

 of Mazanderan, which is put into the mouth of a wandering 

 bard. The king Kei Kawus is represented as being excited 

 by this praise to enter upon an expedition to the Caspian Sea, 



* Journal of the Royal Geogr. Soc. of London, vol. x. 1841, pp. 

 2, 3; RUckert, Makamen Hariri's, s. 261. 



t Gothe, in his Commentar zum west-ostliclien Divan, bd. vi. 1828, A. 

 73, 78, and 111. 



