[IO Islamic 1474] بهارستان

Jâmî's-Spring-Garden.

This manuscript is now IO Islamic 1383 in the India Office collections.

[metadata: Hermann Ethé, Catalogue of Persian Manuscripts in the Library of the India Office, 2 vols. (Oxford: India Office, 1903): volume 1, number 1474 here with notations and hyperlinks].

1383

Bahâristân (بهارستان).

Jâmi’s spring-garden, in eight rauḍas, a collection of moral anecdotes in prose and verse, in imitation of Sa’dî’s Gulistân, with an anthology of Persian poets in the seventh rauḍah (see a copy of it in No. 1309 above), composed A.H. 892 (A.D. 1487), and beginning:

چو مرغ امر ذی بالی ز آغاز

نه از نیروی حمد آید بپرواز الخ

Another title of it is: روضة الاخيار و تحفة الابرار ; the date of composition (نهصد زهشت) appears on fol. 74b, first line; comp. on this work, Bodleian Cat., No. 894, 27; No. 895, 27; No. 896, 19; and Nos. 962-964; Rieu ii. p. 755; W. Pertsch, Berlin Cat., pp. 882, 883, and 885; G. Flügel i. p. 574, and iii. p. 542; J. Aumer, p. 52; Rosen, Persian MSS., pp. 260, 261, and 293; and Grangeret de Lagrange, in Journal Asiat., tom. vi (1825), pp. 257-267. Parts of it have been published in the ‘Wiener, Anthologie,’ in Wilken’s Chrestomathie,’ p. 172 sq., and in Spiegel’s ‘Chrestomathia Persica,’ Leipzig, 1846, pp. 1-23; extracts in German translation are found in Tholuck’s ‘Blüthensammlung,’ p. 301 sq.; the full Persian text, With German translation, by Schelchta-Wssehrd, appeared, 1846, in Vienna; a literal English translation of the whole work was published by the Kama Shastra Society, Benares, 1887; an English version of the sixth rauḍah, under the title, ‘Persian Wit and Humour,’ by C. E. Wilson (see Trübner’s Record, Nos. 187-190, p. 68b). Eastern editions: Lucknow (without date); Constantinople, A.H. 1252 (with the Turkish commentary of Shâkir Efendî) and A. H. 1295. The Turkish commentary of Sham’î on the Bahâristân has been noticed in Rieu ii. p. 755b, and Turkish Cat., p. 159; W. Pertsch, p. 107, and Berlin Cat., p. 883; G. Flügel i. p. 574, and J. Aumer, p. 52; Cat. Codd. Or. Lugd. Bat. i. p. 357.

The present copy is dated A.H. 1007 (as it seems)= A.D. 1598, 1599. At the end, on ff. 74b-75b a ḳaṣîdah is added, beginning: اى خداى بجز از تو ملك عرش ندانم الخ .

No. 1474, ff. 1-75, ll. 15; Nasta’lîḳ; illuminated frontispiece; size, 61/8 in. by 33/8 in.