E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Karen Lofstrom, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
Notes: Volume 1 of this work can be found in Project Gutenberg's library. See https://www.gutenberg.org/etext/10315
A few original typesetter's errors (inconsistent spelling, superfluous quotation marks, and the like) have been corrected in the interests of producing a smooth-reading text.
The reader will also occasionally find a line of asterisks between sections. These are found in the original and they indicate a missing section. It is not clear why the translator skipped these sections. Reference to another, complete, translation of the Gulistan shows no appreciable differences, in length or subject, between the sections included and those excluded.
comprising
Revised Edition, Volume 2
1900
With a special introduction by
RICHARD J. H. GOTTHEIL, Ph.D.
Professor of Rabbinical Literature and the Semitic Languages
at Columbia University
Introduction
I. Of the Customs of Kings
II. Of the Morals of Dervishes
III. On the Preciousness of Contentment
IV. On the Benefit of Being Silent
V. On Love and Youth
VI. Of Imbecility and Old Age
VII. Of the Impressions of Education
VIII. Of the Duties of Society
[Translation by James Ross]
The Persian poet Sa'di, generally known in literary history asMuslih-al-Din, belongs to the great group of writers known as theShirazis, or singers of Shiraz. His "Gulistan," or "Rose Garden," is themature work of his life-time, and he lived to the age of one hundred andeight. The Rose Garden was an actual thing, and was part of the littlehermitage, to which he retired, after the vicissitudes and travels ofhis earlier life, to spend his days in religious contemplation, and theembodiment of his experience in reminiscences, which took the form ofanecdotes, sage and pious reflections, bon-mots, and exquisite lyrics.When a friend visited him in his cell and had filled a basket withnosegays from the garden of the poet with roses, hyacinths, spikenards,and sweet-basils, Sa'di told him of the book he was writing, andadded:—"What can a nosegay of flowers avail thee? Pluck but one leaffrom my Rose Garden; the rose from yonder bush lasts but a few days, butthis Rose must bloom to all eternity."
Sa'di has been proved quite correct in this estimate of his own work.The book is indeed a sweet garden of unfading freshness. If we compareSa'di with Hafiz, we find that both of them based their theory of lifeupon the same Sufic pantheism. Both of them were profoundly religiousmen. Like the strong and life-giving soil out of whose bosom sprang therose-tree, wherein the nightingales sang, was the fixed religiousconfidence, which formed the support of each poet'