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NOTES.

NOTES.

QUATRAIN 1.

The numbers in brackets are those of the quatrains in my "Quatrains of Omar Khayyám: Persian Text with English Translation," published by Trübner in 1883.

7.

Lines were engraved on the bowl to measure out the draughts. Blochmann.

14.

"Wheel of heaven," meaning fortune, destiny. Sir Thomas Browne, in the "Religio Medici," speaks of the "wheel of things."

So Job

24.

"Thine hands have made me; yet Thou dost destroy me."

25.

'Isa (Jesus), type of the spiritual guide.

27.

Blochmann quotes similar sentiments from Nizami and Hafiz; it is the view condemned by St. Paul :

"Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?"

H

28.

Meaning, souls re-absorbed in the Divine essence have concern with the material heaven and hell.

31.

See Koran lxxxii. 1.

32.

This refers to the Esoteric doctrine of the Sufis or Mystic

37.

Compare Hafiz, Ode 79—

"Wherever love is, there is the light of the Beloved's face."

38.

Perhaps a hit at the Sufis, who taught annihilation of s in order to obtain communion with the Deity.

39.

So Falstaff

"If sack and sugar be a sin, God help the wicked."

40.

Bahram and Jamshed were ancient kings of Persia.

45.

A play on his patronymic, "Khayyám," i.e., the tent-make

48.

Compare Horace—

"Fecundi calices quem non fecere disertum."

50.

Jihun is the Oxus.

55.

As Canon Mozley says of the Bible, the Koran "is in one department of its language necessitarian, in another it uses the language of freewill." The orthodox Moslem theologians generally adopt the first of these alternatives, and practically stand committed to the view that no events can occur except those that do occur, consequently that Allah is the author of all evil actions as well as good. Thus the Gulshan i Raz, line 631

"The Truth (Allah) now and again manifests itself as evil ;”

and in a remarkable letter of the Sheikh-ul-Islam, a French translation of which appeared in the Spectator, February 11, 1888, occurs the following passage: "Il faut attribuer comme un article de foi, le bien et le mal à la providence de Dieu." Devout Moslems are always labouring, as for instance in the Masnavi, to explain away the difficulties resulting from this doctrine. In this and similar quatrains Omar attacks these same difficulties in his trenchant manner.

61.

The prophet Mohammed never rose to St. Paul's conception, "It is raised a spiritual body." He conceived of the body after the resurrection as the exact counterpart of the present material body, and accordingly made in his Paradise ample provision of carnal and creature comforts to supply its needs. The more reflective Moslems, such as the Sufis, are inclined to explain away the Houris, &c., as merely allegorical, whilst Omar turns the Prophet's Paradise into ridicule. See the "Gulshan i Raz," the mystic "Rose Garden" (Trübner, 1880), p. 89.

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