OMAR KHAYYAM

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 July 1930, Page 11

OMAR KHAYYAM

MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN CALCUTTA

At a recent meeting in Calcutta of the Asiatic Society Professor Mahfayul Huq, of tho Presidency College, announced the discovery in Calcutta of an illuminated manuscript of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam of so early a date as to prove that it was tho East rather than tho West which prepared the original illuminated copy of the poem. Th© manuscript in question contains 206 quatrains, and was made in 1505, or only 46 years after the copy that is in the possession of the Bodleian Library at Oxford—a copy that has no miniatures and only a very little decoration at the beginning and at the end. Tho newly-found manuscript,, however, which was transcribed, apparently by Sultan Ah of Murshidabad, is finely illuminated with miniatures which are almost perfect examples of Persian ait. What Edward Fitz Gerald, the translator and immortaliser of the “tentinaker’s” Quatrains, would say about, his claim, no one will ever know, but. it remains undeniable that, the beauty and wisdom of Omar’s thoughts have reached their present, pinnacle of fam&u only by the genius of a Westerner. Yet credit must bo given to the East for producing Omar himself, for it is generally recognised to-day that there- is nothing in Fitz Gerald’s translation which does not appear in some form in tho original poem. Honours, therefore, may be fairly described as equally divided.