When this Bagh O Bahar was finished, the year was 1217; do you now stroll through it night and day, as its name and date is Bagh O Bahar; the blasts of winter can do it no injury; for this Bahar [414] is ever green and fresh; it hath been nourished with the blood of my heart, and its (the heart’s) pieces are its leaves and fruits;—­all will forget me after death;—­but this book will remain as a souvenir; whoever reads it, let him remember me.  This is my agreement with the readers; if there is an error, excuse it; for amidst flowers lie concealed the thorns; man is liable to faults and errors, and he will fail, let him be ever so careful.  I have no other wish except this, and it is my earnest prayer.  O my Creator, that I may ever remain in remembrance of Thee, and thus pass my nights and days!  That I may not be questioned with severity on the night of death, and the day of reckoning!  O God, in both worlds shower thy favours on me, through the mediation of the great prophet!

SUPPLEMENTAL NOTE

It must be allowed, that the author has displayed great adroitness in the “denouement” of his tale.  In the course of a few pages all the principal characters, male and female, are suddenly produced, safe and unscathed, before the reader.  To be sure, this is done by the aid of a little “diablerie,” but then it is done very neatly,—­much more so than in some of the clumsy fictions of the late Ettrick Shepherd, to say nothing of the edifying legends about the Romish saints which the good people of southern Europe are taught to swallow as gospel.  Finally, be it remembered, that Oriental story-tellers have never subscribed to Horace’s precept,—­

    “Nec deus interait, nisi digens vindice nodus
    Inciderit”

On the contrary, their rule is, when, by a free use of the supernatural, you have got the whole of your characters into a regular fix, it is but fair that you should get them off by the same means.

THE END.

NOTES

[1] The proclamation of the Marquis Wellesley, after the formation of the college of Fort William; encouraging the pursuit of Oriental literature among the natives by original compositions and translations from the Persian, &c, into Hindustani.

[2] “The Bagh O Bahar,” i.e.  “The Garden and Spring;” which may be better called, “The Garden of Spring,” or the “Garden of Beauty.”  The less appropriate title of “Bagh O Bahar” was chosen merely in order that the Persian letters composing these words, might, by their numerical powers, amount to 1217, the year of the Hijra in which the book was finished.—­Vide Hind.  Gram., page 20.

[3] Mir Amman himself explains the origin and derivation of these words in his preface, and we cannot appeal to a better authority.

[4] Literally, “in consequence of its being traversed or walked over.”