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Thy prayer-mat stain with wine, if so |
THE verse above quoted, like most Oriental poetic writings, is susceptible of a mystical and much higher interpretation than appears from a merely superficial perusal. It is peculiarly illustrative of the allegorical form under which the intellectual life of the Religious Philosopher is treated by the Persians, namely that of a journey, the ultimate object of which is the knowledge of the Infinite Majesty of God; a plan similar to that adopted with reference to the moral life by our own John Bunyan in the Pilgrim's Progress. At the outset of their treatises the term Traveller is applied to the intellectual man only, but the word is afterwards used in a more
general sense, just as in Christian writings man is not unfrequently called a Wayfarer; it becomes often identical with Disciple. M. Garcia de Tassy, in a work already referred to in the preface, has very appropriately quoted a verse of St Thomas illustrating this point:
The second, the Sufiistic account of, 1, The Nature; 2, The Attributes; 3, The Works of God; 4, The Four Universal Sources.
The third, a definition of, 1, The Saintly; 2, The Prophetic Office.
The fourth, a dissertation on the Influence of Early Prejudice upon Belief.
The fifth, the Study of Man.
For the benefit of those who study oriental poetry I have added an Appendix, containing a glossary of allegorical and technical terms in use among the Sufiistic writers.