Editorial note — The Fourteenth New Year’s Feast from the Auspicious Accession

In the Nawalkishor edition of Ḥakīm Sanāʾī’s poem the lines are entered as in the seventh book of the Ḥadīqa, but in two B.M. MSS. (Add. 25,329, f. 145a, and Or. 358, f. 172b), they are placed in the fifth book. Both of these MSS. have bidast, apparently, and Add. 25,329, has s͟has͟h (“six”), but Or. 358 has s͟hass. There is such a word, meaning hard ground. Both MSS. have sih (“three”). Bidast may properly be bad-pus͟ht (“bad-backed”), or it may be bad-past (“bad and mean”). The reference in verse may be rather to the curvature of the chang (Arabic, ṣanj) than to its narrowness, for Jamī speaks of the back “being bent like a harp.” ↑