A NEW RUBAIYAT

Evening Star, Issue 15542, 11 July 1914, Page 10

A NEW RUBAIYAT

When Dr Hagob Kevorkian, a Persian archaeologist, bought an ancient illuminated manuscript from an old Persian nobleman about a year ago, he did not know that he was "discovering" some quatrains, unduplicated to present knowledge, of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Dr Kevorkian bought the book because it was very old and very strange and more than a little beautifid. After the purchase he came upon the Omar quatrains and brought them to New York. They form the latest discovery in Omar manuscript, verses unknown to our English editions of the Rubaiyat. It is believed that this newest Omar manuscript is very old indeed —possibly the oldest in existence; certainly, Dr Kevorkian says, it contains quatrains that were not included in any collection cither of Omar's poetry alone or of Persian verses generally that either ho or the scholars Irom Columbia University who are working with him have been able to find. The Persian archwologiet'e Rubaiyat form a group of these "wandering-" stanzas of Omar Khayyam, of which, scholars say, thoiisands must have existed. The quatrains of the Persian singer were written clown many years after his death by one and another Qaligraphist of the Persian Courts, included in scores of anthologies, published by twos and threes and halfdozens in scarcely classified books of poems. Dr Kevorkian's manuscript is such an anthology, with a long Persian name that is translated into English as •The Friends of the Liberal Minded in the Shape of Fine Poems,' and it is signed by a poet who was a caligrapher and a collector as" well, Muhamnied-ibn-Badr al-Djadjarmi of Khorassan. The volume itself, according to the preface, is only a fragment of a long series of selections from the works of 200 Persian poets. There are 30 chapters in this book, and one of them is the collection of verse by Omar Khayyam. —Eleven New Stanzas. — Of the 13 quatrains by Omar, Dr Kevorkian explains that two are duplicates of verses existing in other manuscripts. The other 11 he believes to lie absolutely new. They have just been translated literally into English by Professor Abraham Yohannan of Columbia University, who is making a special study of the manuscript, and is preparing a paper on the quatrains for presentation to the American Oriental Society at its meeting this week. The verses, to present knowledge, have never been translated before, never before been exhibited, never published. Dr Kevorkian explained that immediately after the discovery of the quatrains in the book that he had bought, ho set to work to search for like or identical verses in other manuscripts. He could find only two. Not only were the quatrains not contained in the book from which FitzGerald made his English version, and the collection that had been the subject of Hebrew research, but they could not be in any other known manuscript or in any of the groups of " wandering " Rubaiyat. The possibility that the manuscript is of great ago is exceedingly interesting, the investigators say, not only in the matter of the book's comparative antiquity, but in the relation of the probable date of the written poems to the actual years of Omar's composition of them. The Persian poet himself did not, of course, write his verses; a poet who was also a caligrapher was almost unknown in those days in Persia; Omar Khayyam sang his Rubaiyat, recited his verses to listeners and disciples; professional writers of manuscript made the verse 3 into books, and the oldest " oodex" oopy extant of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam bears a date—1460—three and a-half centuries after the poet's death. This manuscript, the famous Omar of the Bodleian Library, is a large collection simply of the quatrains of so is the Calcutta manuscript, the source of the FitzGeald work. There are like collections of Omar's verso in the Bihliotheque Nationale in Paris, and there is one very famous book of the Rubaiyat in Bankipur, India. But in addition to these more or lese complete volumee of the quatrains of Omar Khayyam, there are the hundreds of stray verses, picked up by scholars her© and there, discovered in old anthologies by collectors and archaeologists, perhaps many, eavant6 tells us, yet to be found. Some of these fragments antedate the so-called "complete" manuscripts. There is a probability that Dr Kevorkian's verses may be dated as early as 1340 ; if so they are the oldest known. It must be admitted that the new verses do not add greatly to our present knowkdgo ■of Omar's poetry, either in figure or in theme. Dr Kavorkian has himself called attention to the similarity in metaphor and idea, between these just-discovered verses and these that we know so well through FiazGerald. Although only two of the verses are duplicates, lie says, of any that we know, it is noticeable that Omar uses in these quatrains the forms of speech with which his readers are familiar, and writes upon the same theme. —Discovered hy Accident.—

Dr Kevorkian happened upon the Omar manuscript through his desire to find the book from which some pictures in his collection had been cut. Several years before ho had come upon a curious sot o r six pictures, obviously taken from a book which, as obviously," they had served to illustrate. Ho is himself "an ■excavator of old temples, buried cities of the ancient Persian dynasties, but his interest in manuscripts and pictures is scarcely second to his zeal for strange ruins, and he determined to find the book to which the pictures belonged, and add if to his collection. When he discovered tho _ leatherbound volume, about a year ago, in a private collection, he had no difficulty, through the markings m manuscript and picture, and the stylo of the caligraphy, in recognising the book that he sought. He bought it immediately—and read it afterwards. He values the volume now at 10,000dol, and it forms one of the treasures of his collection. But perhaps the_ chief prize, simply from the collector's point of view, among all Dr Kevorkian's strange manuscript, is the book for which, when it was new, a Mughal Emperor paid a sum of money equal to nearly 65,0C0d01, simply as a piece of penmanship. Subjectmatter and illustrations were alike matters of indifference to the book purchasers of the old East. What mattered was tho caligraphy—the way the writing, as a bit of manual craftsmanship, was done. Writing was tho fine art of tho Mughal Courts. And the man who could charm the royal patron with the beauty of his penmanship was high Court favorite, whose earnings were uncounted, and whose influence was untold. The book for which Akbar the Great, a Mughal ruler of India in the seventeenth century, gladly paid close on 65,000d0l was a work of high art. The story goes that the Vizir Khavadja Malik Ahmad saw a page of writing in the exquisite hand of the master caligrapher Mowlana Shaikh Mahmoud, who was dead, and determined that he must have a like work from the hand of ono or more of his own artists. So he called the four most famous caligraphera of the world and set them to work to copy tho fine writing that he so admired in making selections from four authors. Their work, when'finished, filled only 120 pages 1 of manuscript, but it was of a marvellous beauty that caused all the East to talk of it, and made the Emperor Akbar, who later purchased it at such a high price, attest in nis own hand on the flyleaf of the book: "Such fine writing can hardly be excelled." It is almost impossible to toll, so closely did the four workers copy their model, where one writing ends and another begin*. The hook itself is very beautiful, and is made still more interesting by the collections of seals and autographs on the flyleaves. —Covered with Seals. —■ It was the custom, in the libraries of those days, for the owner of a rare book to place his own seal upon it, and often to add not only the date and the price of ito acquisition, but his personal opinion of the book. The famous book of the Vizir Malik is marked with seals all over both guard-pages, and two Emperors beside Akbar have been its owners. In the preface is the following praise of the manscript: This is a collection, the handwriting of which inspires one like the tender down cm, ih* phwkff oi fi-nd. tfee

sentiments of which stimulate like the kisses of sugared lips. The agreeable, composition givee fruit as worthy of envy as the tree of Touba (tree of life in Paradise). The painting of its sun glows with light like the face of the real sun. The lines of its borders are finer than the locks of the beauties which recall the moon. The verses of these booksi are more dainty than strings of pearls, and more to be admired than necklaces of precious stones. Thou art in the eyes ot the Mind like a Pearl hid by its Mother, Thou art mora beautiful than one can imagine. From the Sea of Ideas and the Mine of Fortune never has A Jewel as beautiful as Thou art ap- \ peared. The cause of the sparkle of these ] brilliant jewels and the reason of the i appearance of such rare art was that in | the halcyon days in which His Excellency, he in whom powerful Sultans like Djamchid have confidence, he who is Protector of the Fettered and -the Euridite, he who unites in himself Fortune and Success, the Refuge of the Literary Eminences, the Support of the Great and Noble, Vizir Khavadia Malik Ahmad, that his power last eternally, who encouraged and protected the caligraphers. THIRTEEN NEWLY-DISCOVERED QUATRAINS BY OMAR KHAYYAM. (Done into English verse for the ' New York i Times' by Joyce Kilmer.) I. Not for your sake alone the World was made, Wise men and fools share with you Light and Shade. You and tho countless others come and go, Pawns in a Game by the great Gamester played. 11. And wherefore, then, should you and I be sad, Because to Life no minute'we can add? | This is true Wisdom, as it seems to me: Grief will not change the world—therefore be gtadl (1) 111. V- j Lady of Love, the Sun begins to shine, Greet him with Song-, and cheer your heart with Wine. i Those who are here To-day will not remain And those who go send back nor Word nor rv. Not always shall this Convent wall us in, So cease to preach that Wine and Love are sin. How long shall old Creeds fetter us, or new? When I am gone, then let the mad world spin! V. Tho Tulips bathe in the soft Rain of May, But for our bathing, founts of Wine shall play. The Grass that flourishes so brightly green Shall rise To-morrow from your sleeping Clay. VI. Last night I dashed the Wine Cup on a stono (Oh, I was drunk; yes, very drunk, I own), And as it fell, "1 was like you," it said, "And soon like me will, all your Flesh have crown." VII. A drop of water mingles with the Lake; To the gray Earth there comes of Dust a flake. What will it do, this mighty Life of ours? Rise like a Bubble, like a Bubble break! VIII. i O, may he feel the lashes of Disgrace Who lets Grief cast a shadow on his Face! Drain the glad Cup and strike the merry Lute, Before stern Fate destroys our Feastingpfece. IX. Out of the Dark ha-s been our journeying; Life is a Bead —for no one knows what String! It is the Darkness in Man's soul that speaks, The light remains a secret, silent thing. X. Rise, Master of Old Wisdom! From the Ground See how that Boy kicks clouds of Dust around ! O, speak to him and say: "Tread gently, Boy, The Brains of Sages form this earthern mound." (2) XI - Not the Beginning nor the End we know Of this blue Vault through which we come' and go. No one has read the secret of the Stars That tells the Whence and Whither of Life's flow. XII. So drink! for this blue sullen Vault of Sky Hates our white Souk and waits to watch us die. Rest on the soft green Grass, my Love, for soon We shall be Dust together, you and I. XIII. Earth, Fire, Air, Water, and the Seven Spheres, These made your Flesh and fill your Soul with fears. Drink Wine! I Ear, a thousand times, drink Wine 1 Before your Dust drifts down the vanished Years. (1) Dr Yohaiman's literal translation of this lino shows that the original contains a play on words that cannot be reproduced in English. He renders it: " Court of mum (wax) we cannot make mini (the letter m)."

(2) Dr Yohannan renders this line : " That dust is Kaiqubad's and Parwiz's finely ground."