1916.] Quatrains of 



187 



somewhat slovenly manner of transcribing him. 

 What and where the MS. was from which he copied, 

 he does not tell us ; and we shall never know. 



These two texts then, between them, give us as many as 

 183 quatrains of Abu Sa'id (for two are common to both) ; and 

 as the lithographed volume is probably extremely rare, and the 

 MS. unique; and as they are both, practically speaking, inacces- 

 sible to orientalists, I think that the publication in the J.A.S.B. 

 of such of them as have not already appeared in 'Abd-ul 

 Wall's collection, may be not without interest. 



I have omitted therefore 83 quatrains l which are among the 

 400 ruba'iyat previously printed in this journal; as well as two 

 which are foreign to all that we know of Abu Sa'id and his work, 

 and which have no literary value. Of the 98 * quatrains which 

 are now printed not all are " new " by any means. As many 

 as 44 I have found attributed either to Abu Sa'id or to other 

 writers in various memoirs, and elsewhere. But the remaining 

 54 I have not been able to trace to their source. 3 It is certain 

 that they are all to be found somewhere, scattered among 

 tadhkiras, or in the Diwdns of quatrain writers, such as Kha- 

 qani, Sarmad, or Farid-ud-Din 'Attar with his reputed 10,000 

 ruba'iyat ; and were an indefatigable and systematic search to 

 be made in all their possible hiding places, in all the oriental 

 libraries, each one of the 54 would doubtless, in time, be hunted 

 down. 



Whether we should be much wiser or happier for the labour, 

 I am doubtful. It is not at all likely that we should be any 

 more certain than we are now of the authorship of the quat- 

 rains. But after all does that matter very much ? As a poet 

 has said, if the words are worthy why should we ask the author's 

 name ? We do not know so much of Abu Sa'id's life, that we 

 could feel great regret at learning that some quatrains we had 

 imagined to be his are the work of another poet. Nor would the 

 quatrains themselves lose interest or value thereby. I think it 

 may be said that they nearly all share in common a religious 

 and emotional atmosphere, a certain poetic quality which are 

 distinctive. If they are not, in fact, the work of Abu Sa'id, 

 they might have been. 



The truth is that at this distant date, the name of Abii 

 Sa'id belongs not only to the individual but to a phase of 

 thought and experience, sombre, austere, and devout, which 

 gives its character to a certain period of Persian literature; 



1 9 from the smaller collection and 74 from the MS. 



2 These 98 are made up as follows: — 



84 from the Hyderabad MS. 

 12 from the lithographed volume. 

 2 which are common to both. 



3 37 of the 44 are attributed to Abu Sa'id : and 7 to other writers 

 The authority for each quatrain is indicated in the notes to the text. 



