911 AH. JUNE 4th 1505 to MAY 24th 1506 AD. 287
with him, wtnt to winter in Merv, Bana'i stayed oenind in Herl and so applied himself to study music that before the heats he had composed several works. These he played and sang, airs with variations, when the Mirza came back to Herl in the heats. All amazed, 'All-sher Beg praised him. His musical compositions are perfect; one was an air known as Nnh-rang (Nine modulations), and having both the theme {tukanasli) and the variation {yilct) on the note called rdst(7). Bana'i was 'All-sher Beg's rival ; it will have been on this account he was so much ill-treated. When at last he could bear it no longer, he went into Azarbaljan and 'Iraq to the presence of Ya'qub Beg ; he did not remain however in those parts after Ya'qub Beg's death (896 AH.-1491 AD.) but went back to Herl, just the same with his jokes and retorts. Here is one of them : -'All-sher at a chess-party in stretching his leg touched Bana'i on the hinder-parts and said jestingly, " It is the sad nuisance of Herl that a man can't stretch his leg without its touching a poet's backside." " Nor draw it up again," retorted Bana'i.1 In the end the upshot of his jesting was that he had to leave Herl again; he went then to Samarkand.2 A great many good new things used to be made for 'All-sher Beg, so whenever any-one produced a novelty, he called it 'Alisher's in order to give it credit and vogue.3 Some things were called after him in compliment e.g. because when he had ear-ache, he wrapped his head up in one of the blue triangular kerchiefs women tie over their heads in winter, that kerchief was called 'Ali-sher's comforter. Then again, Bana'i when he had decided to leave Herl, ordered a quite new kind of pad for his ass and dubbed it 'Ali-sher's.
' Other jokes made by Bana'i at the expense of Nawa'i are recorded in the various sources.
" Babur saw Bana'i in Samarkand at the end of 901 ah. (1496 ad. f. 38).
Here Dr. Leyden's translation ends ; one other fragment which he translated will be found under the year 925 ah. (Erskine). This statement allows attention to be drawn to the inequality of the shares of the work done for the Memoirs of 1826 by Leyden and by Erskine. It is just to Mr. Erskine, but a justice he did not claim, to point out that Dr. Leyden's share is slight both in amount and in quality; his essential contribution was the initial stimulus he gave to the great labours of his collaborator.
3 So of Lope de Vega (b. 1562 ; d. 1635 AD.), " It became a common proverb to praise a good thing by calling it a Lope, so that jewels, diamonds, pictures, etc. were raised into esteem by calling them his " (Montalvan in Ticknor's Spanish Literature i>, 270).
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