208 Translations from the Tdrilch i Firuzshdhi. [No. 3, 
weight enough to secure its execution. But all that I have en¬ 
joined cannot become possible to you until you abstain from wine¬ 
drinking in excess. 
“ The fourth thing I had to say to you is, that I have heard that 
you repeat no prayers, and do not keep the fast of '.Ramazan, and 
you cheat yourself with the excuses suggested by sciolists, dishon¬ 
est, false to their creed, led by the lust of silver coins, and the 
glittering lure* of wealth, who have given you a dispensation to 
eat in fast time, and have told you to set free a slave or give vic¬ 
tuals to sixty poor every fast day that you eat. You have listened 
to the voice of those birds of evil omen, and have not heeded the 
saying of true and honest men, that every one who eats during the 
fast of the month of Ramazan will die young. My boy, many is 
the time your grandfather said, kings and true Musalmans should 
trust and act on the sayings of those who are spiritually wise, and 
not admit to their presence those servants who deal in casuistries 
and teach awry, nor act on the sophistries and glosses of dishonest 
men. Often have I heard from my father that wise men are of 
two kinds, the spiritually wise whom their God keeps apart from 
the world, and the love of the world and the lust of worldly things, 
and the worldly wise, who, from avarice, and friendship for the 
world and desire of the world, like dogs, violently and in hot haste 
hurry from door to door, dealing in death and calamity and here¬ 
sies and mischievous doctrines which form their stock in trade. 
One can only call him a discriminating and pious king, who does 
nothing according to the saying of these worldly wise, and does 
not allow doctors, who hold the world dearer than their souls, to 
busy themselves with the divine precepts and commands, and suffers 
not the law of the blessed prophet to be robbed of its lustre in 
their leadership,—who asks no advice concerning his own religious 
conduct of covetous and avaricious men, who count the world their 
god; and if he desire his own salvation in matters of faith and 
matters of the world, entrusts the commands of the law of the 
blessed prophet to those sages who have turned away their faces 
* Murdahreg. This is possibly the same word as murdahre which is ex¬ 
plained by Richardson to be the effects of a dead person. Thei’e may be a re¬ 
ference to fortune-hunting, but I prefer the rendering of “ mirage” given by 
some of the best Persian dictionaries. 
