186 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [N.S., XII, 



possible that 'Umar Khayyam or Abu Sa'id composed a far 

 greater number of verses than will ever be known. But it is 

 difficult to imagine how their authorship, once it has been for- 

 gotten, can be re-discovered with any hope of certainty. We 

 cannot say for certain that a really old text of Abu Sa'id's would 

 give us much fewer than the 400 quatrains we now have. But it 

 is at least very probable ; and the fact remains that a consider- 

 able number of theruba'iyat contained in these two MSS. of 

 Abu Sa'id have, as we know, been attributed to other poets. 1 

 And as there is practically no internal evidence to guide us, it is 

 quite impossible to say of many of the verses, with any hope of 

 being accurate, who their author really was. All that can be 

 presumed indeed as a general rule (though it does not take us 

 very far), is that where one and the same quatrain is ascribed 

 both to Abu Sa'id and to some minor poet, it is the work of the 

 latter. For the editors of Oriental anthologies had no very 

 strict regard for historical accuracy, and if they chanced to come 

 across an apt quatrain of whose authorship they were igno- 

 rant, they would not hesitate to give it an honourable place 

 among the work of some revered and famous master. But no 

 one would have any object in ascribing a verse to a compara- 

 tively unknown poet, unless he felt sure of its origin. 



If, then, we must guard ourselves against too readily ac- 

 cepting as genuine an authoritative collection like that of 'Abd-ul 



Wall 



Alas, 1 have no startling discovery of an old and genuine MS. 

 to proclaim . Indeed , I must confess that it is with considerable 

 diffidence that I have thus publicly announced them as the quat- 

 rains of Abu Sa' id. 



Their source is two- fold : 



(DA small volume in the State Library at Hyderabad 



(Deccan), which was lithographed^ at Bombay so 

 recently as 1297 a.h. by Mirza Muhammad 

 SJiirazi, and which contains along with some ruba- 

 'iyat of 'Umar Khayyam, Ansari, and Baba Tahir, 

 "24 quatrains of Prince Abu Sa'id bin Abu'l 

 Khair, which have been proved efficacious for 

 certain purposes." 



(2) A MS. copy containing 161 quatrains of Abu Sa'id 



which I found a year or two ago among the debris 

 °{ an Oriental book-shop in Hyderbad City. This 



Mb., which bears no date but is apparently quite 

 recent, is tht> wnrt ^* o J nijjj liiini. 



ted 



Qadir 



other SKg S U ° teS a, '°" t fe " qUatrftiM that ^ WCrfbed *" 

 feweJlLn^Wrty/ ** Bi(lz - ^ Ar ^n , *** Qui. Khta Hidayat, ves no 



