Note 46 — The Fourteenth New Year’s Feast from the Auspicious Accession

Luqmān is the Eastern Æsop, and there is much about him in D’Herbelot. In the second line the word translated “hollow” is gulūgāh, literally “throat place,” and the word for bosom is sīna, the whole expression being sīna-i-chang. Chang is a harp or lyre, and apparently the expression refers to the narrowness of the space between the horns of a lyre (chang, which appears to be the Jew’s harp), or the sides of a harp. The fourth line is obscure, and the version in text seems corrupt. The words s͟has͟h bidast dū pāy seem unintelligible. They, however, occur in I.O. MS. 181, f. 161a, and in I.O. MS. 305, f. 225a. The only difference is that they have a conjunction after bidast. On the other hand, the Iqbāl-nāma, which inserts the lines into the record of the eleventh year, has, at p. 95, a different reading for the fourth line. The words there are k͟hāna yak bidast u sih pay. Bidast is given in Richardson, and the Farhang-i-Ras͟hīdī as meaning a span, so the line as given in the Iqbāl-nāma may mean 3 feet and 1 span. The author of the Iqbāl-nāma was so struck with the verse of Ḥakīm Sanāʾī and the appearance of Jadrūp’s dwelling, that he composed a mas̤navī on the subject, which he gives at pp. 95, 96. There is a third version in Daulat S͟hāh’s anthology, p. 97 of Professor Browne’s edition. There, in the second line we have ḥalqa (“ring”), or perhaps “plectrum” instead of sīna. We have also two lines not given in the Tūzuk or the Iqbāl-nāma, and the line containing the noodle’s question is given thus: “Kīn chih jāyast yak pūst u dū pay.”