[r. Lines addressed to deserting friends!)
A little fragment had been composed suiting the state of those who had gone away during the past year ; I now addressed it to Mulla 'All Khan and sent it to him by Tardi Beg. It is as follows : 2
\h you who have gone from this country of Hind,
Aware for yourselves of its woe and its pain,
With longing desire for Kabul's fine air,
You went hot-foot forth out of Hind.
The pleasure you looked for you will have found there
With sociable ease and charm and delight;
As for us, God be thanked ! we still are alive,
In spite of much pain and unending distress ;
Pleasures of sense and bodily toil
Have been passed-by by you, passed-by too by us.
(s. Of the Ramsan Feast.)
Ramzan was spent this year with ablution and tardzui/13 in the Garden-of-eight-paradises. Since my nth year I had not kept the Ramzan Feast for two successive years in the same place; last year I had kept it in Agra; this year, saying, "Don't break the rule ! " I went on the last day of the month to keep it in SikrI. Tents were set up on a stone platform made on the n.e. side of the Garden-of-victory which is now being laid out at SikrI, and in them the Feast was held.*
(t. Playing cards!)
The night we left Agra Mir 'All the armourer was sent to Shah Hasan {Arghiin) in Tatta to take him playing-cards [ganjifd] he much liked and had asked for.5
1 qita\ for account of which form of poem see Blochmann's translations of Saifi's and Jaml's Prosody, p. 86.
■'Rampur Dlwdn (E. D. Ross' ed. p. 16 and Plate 14a). I am uncertain as to the meaning of 11.4 and 10. I am not sure that what in most MSS. ends line 4, viz. aul dam, should not be read as aiilum, death ; this is allowed by Plate 14a where for space the word is divided and may be aiiliim. To read auliim and that the deserters fled from the death in Hind they were anxious about, has an answering phrase in "we still are alive ". LI. 9 and 10 perhaps mean that in the things named all have done alike. [Ilminsky reads khair nafsi for the elsewhere hazz-nafsl. ]
3 These are 20 attitudes (rak'ah) assumed in prayer during Ramzan after the Bedtime Prayer. The ablution (ghusl) is the bathing of the whole body for ceremonial purification.
1 This Feast is the Td-i-fitr, held at the breaking of the Ramzan Fast on the 1st of Shawwal.
s Erskine notes that this is the earliest mention of playing-cards he can recall in oriental literature.
