_Stanza 1._—It is related that Ghiyasuddin Purabi, who succeeded his
father to the throne of Bengal in the year 1367, fell sick. During his
illness he was nursed by three faithful handmaidens whose names were
Cypress, Tulip, and Rose, and owing to their care he eventually
recovered. The rest of the Sultan’s ladies were jealous of the gratitude
that the three maidens had earned from Ghiyasuddin, and nicknamed them
contemptuously “the three bath women,” because they had washed the
King’s body while he was ill. He therefore determined to do them honour
by commemorating their devotion in a poem, and to this end he composed
the first line of a couplet, and ordered the poets of his court to
complete the ode. The line ran thus: “Sàki hadisi-sarvo gul o làleh
miravad”—Cup-bearer, a tale runs of a Cypress, a Rose, and a Tulip. But
the poets were unable to perform the task to the King’s satisfaction,
and at length some one suggested that the line should be sent to Hafiz
of Shiraz, the fame of whose great skill had reached Bengal. This was
accordingly done, and Hafiz composed the ode here translated, with which
the Sultan (whose taste seems to have turned towards the discursive in
poetry) was much delighted. The three cups of wine are an allusion to
the three maidens who washed the King’s body; the parrots of India are
the court poets of Ghiyasuddin, and the Persian sweetmeat is the ode
that Hafiz sent to Bengal.
_Stanza 4._—Samir. Al Samiri belonged, say the Mahommadans, to a certain
tribe among the Jews called the Samaritans, whence his name. In this the
Mahommadans strangely betray their ignorance of history, for the
Samaritans were not formed into a people, nor did they bear that name,
until many ages later. Some say that he was a proselyte, but a
hypocritical one, and originally of Kerman or some other country. “His
real name was Musa ibn Dhafar. He was a magician and an alchemist.
Pharaoh employed him as a rival to Moses when the latter worked miracles
with his hand and his staff, but Al Samiri was unable to show wonders as
great as those performed by Moses. It was he and not Aaron, according to
Mahommadan tradition, who cast the golden calf. The calf was made of the
ornaments of gold and silver and other materials which the Israelites
had borrowed from the Egyptians; for Aaron, who commanded in his
brother’s absence, having ordered Al Samiri to collect those ornaments
from the people, who carried on a wicked commerce with them, and to keep
them together till the return of Moses, Al Samiri, understanding the
founder’s art, put them all together into a furnace, to melt them down
into one mass, which came out in the form of a calf. The Israelites,
accustomed to the Egyptian idolatry, paying a religious worship to this
image, Al Samiri went further, and took some dust from the footsteps of
the horse of the angel Gabriel, who marched at the head of the people,
and threw it into the mouth of the calf, which immediately began to low,
and became animated; for such was the virtue of that dust.” (Sale, Notes
to second and twenty-second chapters of the Koran.) Al Samiri is
mentioned by name in the twenty-second chapter of the Koran: “Al Samiri
led them astray.”