Note 36 — The Tenth New Year’s Festival after my auspicious Accession.

Filūnīyā. The word is not given in ordinary dictionaries, but it is explained in Dozy’s Supplement. It is stated there that it is a sedative electuary, and that the word is derived from the Greek, being φιλωνια, which is the name of an antidote or drug invented by Philon of Tarsus. There is an account of Philon and a reference to his drug in Smith’s Classical Dictionary. Philon lived in or before the first century after Christ, and is referred to by Galen and others. The word as given there is φιλωνειον. We are not told what it was made of. In Price’s Jahāngīr, filuniya, misread there as Kelourica, is described by Jahāngīr as brother’s son to tiryāq, i.e. theriaca (see Price, p. 6). Tiryāk or t̤iryāq is supposed to be a Greek word (see Lane), and means an antidote against poison, etc. It is so used in the verse from Avicenna quoted by Jahāngīr to his son S͟hāh Jahān. See D’Herbelot, s.v. Teriak. But it is also often used apparently as a synonym for opium. The mixing of wine with spirits was intended to dilute the potation, for hitherto Jahāngīr had been taking raw spirit. A mis̤qāl is said to be 63½ grains troy, and so 18 misqals would be about 3 ounces, and the six cups would be about 1½ lb. troy. In Elliot, Jahāngīr is made to say that he does not drink on Thursdays and Fridays. But the s͟hab-i-jumʿa, as Blochmann has pointed out elsewhere, Āyīn translation, p. 171, n. 3, means Thursday night or Friday eve, and this is clearly the case here, for Jahāngīr speaks of the eve’s being followed by a blessed day. It should be noted that there is no connection in Jahāngīr’s mind between abstaining from wine and abstaining from meat. He did not eat meat on Thursdays or Sundays because he did not approve of taking life on these days, but he drank on both of them. ↑