124 Badaoni and his Works. [No. 3, 



bearers attending on the kings of the world, with staffs in their hands, 

 got hold of me, and hurried me about, when one of the writers who 

 looked over a sheet of paper, said, li This is not the one." Trembling 

 all over I opened my eyes ; but from that moment I felt relieved, and 

 the story which I had often heard when a child, proved true."* 



The perusal of this ' lovescrape' makes upon us a different impression 

 from what it will make upon a Muhammadan. First of all, 'Abdul 

 Qadir's " beloved" was a young boy. But whilst we, in censuring 

 'Abdul Qadir, would expect that the thought of his family and his 

 office, his education, and his religious sincerity, should have pro- 

 tected him against committing or attempting an unnatural crime, a 

 Muhammadan would rather look upon the whole story as a mere 

 example of the power of love. In the East, it is a recognized fact 

 that love to a boy renders a man mad, and makes him in the eyes 

 of his neighbours an object of sympathy rather than of censure. 

 The element of immorality enters but slightly. Even now-a-days, 

 when such cases come to the notice of educational officers, the 

 excuse constantly brought forward is, that the offender had tem- 

 porarily become a hafir — a phrase only too frequently borrowed 

 from the poets, — and that such love scandals are matters of fate as 

 every thing else, so that the ends of justice are better met with by 

 watching or locking up the boy than punishing the offender. As 

 'Abdul Qadir has related the story himself, we might feel inclined to 

 give him the credit of being an unbiassed historian who will even relate 

 events to his own disadvantage. He certainly might have suppressed 

 it ; but the story is related as a ' dreadful event,' and deals more with 

 the thrashing and the wounds he got than with the crime itself. 



Later, in 989, when he was forty-two years old, 'Abdul Qadir once 

 more experienced the power of love (II, p. 297) ; and though he 

 wilfully absented himself from Court, in order to be near the beloved 

 boy, the affair was more platonic, and ended in a few ghazals and an 

 often repeated desire of dying during a meeting with the beloved. 



* I. e., that when a man dreams of death, it signifies life. The study of 

 dream books is as profitable as the study of the proverbs of a nation. If we 

 compare the interpretations which different nations attach to one and the same 

 dream, we discover most curious coincidences and contrasts indicating a differ- 

 ence in national character. Lithographed Khwdbndmahs command a most 

 extensive sale in the bazars of India. 



