1904.] 
Bilgrami —Quatrains of Baba Tahir. 
29. 
11 
1. I am that sea which has come in a vessel, 
2. I am that point which has come to be pronounced; 
3. In every thousand (years) an upright statured person appears. 
4. I am the Alif Kad (upright one) that has come in (this) thou¬ 
sand. 
I have discussed this Quatrain at full length on page 2 and 
shown that it gives the poet’s year of birth. Alif Kad is numeri¬ 
cally equal to ^>U5 = 215; Alf is a thousand in Arabic, its Persian 
equivalent being jt/A hazar which according to zabar and baiyyinat is 
l 
equal to 326. The 4th line would thus mean that Tahir has come in 
326. Or taking the numerical values of the letters composing Alf , ac¬ 
cording to Zabar alone, they represent 111, i.e ., I = J; <J = 30; and o, = 80, 
adding to this number the value of 215, i.e., 1 = 1; J = 30; o 80 ; 
O = 100, and a = 4, we get 111+215 = 326, the same number which I take 
to be his year of birth. There was no necessity for making use of such 
words, if the poet really did not mean to convey this idea. 
30. 
1. I am that fire-like bird, that, in an instant, 
2. Will burn the world if I clap my wings together; 
3. And should a painter draw my figure on the wall, 
4. I would burn the house from the effects of my image. 
Mirza Habib’s emendation is very proper, as the context clearly 
proves. Note the word which is the equivalent in Baji of fyi*. 
31. 
1. If my heart is my sweetheart, what is my sweetheart’s name ? 
2. And if my sweetheart is my heart, from what region is my 
heart ? 
3. I have my heart and my sweetheart so intimately interwoven, 
4. That I do not know which is my heart and which my sweet¬ 
heart. 
In the 2nd line I have substituted “ from what country,’ 
as it is not idiomatic to say and I think the scribes are 
responsible for this error. It is not elegant either to use the same 
rhyme twice in one and the same couplet. I think in the 4th line 
j K should be adopted instead of as the j expresses the meaning 
more forcibly. 
