Diyā-yi Fārsī

Extract

AS Professor Robertson in his note on Ḍiyā-yi Fārsī (JRAS., Pts. I and II, 1951) referred to the MS. of the Majmū'a-i Ash'ār in the collections of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, I consulted the Majmū'a to find out anything that could throw further light on this little-known Persian poet. But unfortunately the MS., which bears no date of transcription and neither the name of the compiler nor of the copyist, is silent regarding the poet. The book is a mere collection of poems and fragments of famous as well as obscure poets who have been dealt with in no chronological order and with no scheme whatsoever. Only four odes or rather the fragments of four odes are recorded under the name of Ḍiyā'u'd-Dīn Fārsī. The first two of these do not occur in Badā'ūnī's Muntakhabu't-Tawārīkh where alone, so far as my information goes, his poems are accessible in print. The three couplets in the third fragment form the first three verses of the second ode in the Muntakhab which consists of twenty-two. In the fourth fragment, containing eight verses, only five, viz. the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 8th (with slight variations and one or two careless omissions) are found in the 1st ode of the Muntakhab, again comprising twenty-two verses.