AN ACCOUNT of the religION, PHILOSOPHY, LITERATURE, LAWS AND ASTROLOGY OF INDIA DR. EDWARD C. SACHAU, Professor in the Royal University of Berlin, and Principal of the Seminary for IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO. LTD DRYDEN HOUSE, GERRARD STREET, W. 1910 Dedicated то CHARLES SCHEFER, MEMBRE DE L'INSTITUT, PARIS AS A HOMAGE BOTH TO THE MAN AND THE SCHOLAR. PREFACE. I. and Fir THE literary history of the East represents the court of Mahmûd King Mahmûd at Ghazna, the leading monarch of Asiatic dansi. history between A.D. 997–1030, as having been a centre of literature, and of poetry in particular. There were four hundred poets chanting in his halls and gardens, at their head famous Unsurî, invested with the recently created dignity of a poet-laureate, who by his verdict opened the way to royal favour for rising talents; there was grand Firdausi, composing his heroic epos by the special orders of the king, with many more kindred spirits. Unfortunately history knows very little of all this, save the fact that Persian poets flocked together in Ghazna, trying their kasidas on the king, his ministers and generals. History paints Mahmûd as a successful warrior, but ignores him as a Mæcenas. With the sole exception of the lucubrations of bombastic Utbî, all contemporary records, the Makâmát of AbûNașr Mishkânî, the Tabakát of his secretary Baihakî, the chronicles of Mullâ Muhammad Ghaznavî, Mahmûd Warrâk, and others, have perished, or not yet come to light, and the attempts at a literary history dating from a time 300-400 years later, the so-called Tadhkiras, weigh very light in the scale of matter-of-fact examination, failing almost invariably whenever they are applied to for information on some detail of ancient Persian literature. However this may be, Unsurî, the pane vii 223031 |