The Sufistic Quatrains of Omar Khayyam

by Omar Khayyam

The influence of the Ouseley MS. upon the poem forms the subject of the volume to which I have referred, and, save in so far as it recurs in the parallels which give excuse for the present work, may be dismissed, but the doubts which have sprung up as to the extent to which Edward FitzGerald took, as his editor, Mr. Aldis Wright, says, «great liberties with the original,» have arisen in consequence of the vicissitudes which have befallen the rest of the material from which the poet worked during the construction of his first edition. We know that Prof. Cowell made a copy of the Ouseley MS. for Edward FitzGerald just before he went to India in August, 1856. In another letter he says «I got a copy made for him from the one MS. in the Bengal Asiatic Society's Library at Calcutta soon after I arrived in November, 1856. It reached FitzGerald June 14th, 1857, as I learn by a note in his writing. Some time after this I sent him a copy of that rare Calcutta printed edition which I got from my Munshi.» To possess oneself therefore of full information as to what material Edward FitzGerald really worked from in making the original edition of his poem, it was necessary to consult, line by line, and word by word, the Calcutta MS. (noted as No. 1548 in the Bengal Asiatic Society's Library) and the Calcutta printed edition of 1836,—in addition, of course, to the Ouseley MS. Prof. Cowell most generously placed at my disposal his copy of the Calcutta MS., but, as he himself has recorded, the copy was made by an inferior scribe in a hand which is exceedingly difficult to read. I therefore communicated with Mr. A.T. Pringle, Director of Indian Records in the Home Department at Calcutta, himself a keen and critical student of Omar Khayyam, with a view to getting either a photographic reproduction, or a clean copy of this MS. made for me. Careful search and widely spread enquiry brought to light the fact that the MS. was lost, stolen, or strayed, so that Prof. Cowell's copy was the only record left of this portion of Edward FitzGerald's material. This copy I sent out to India, and had copied by a good writer, a copy being made at the same time to replace that which had been stolen.

I next addressed myself to the discovery of «that rare Calcutta printed edition,» of whose existence, after searching in vain every European State library and many others, and every library in India of which I could learn, I began to have grave doubts, thinking that Prof. Cowell had inadvertently confused it with an edition lithographed simultaneously at Calcutta and Teheran in 1836. In the summer, however, when I had given up all hope, one of Mr. Pringle's clerks picked up a copy of the long sought book in the Bazar at Calcutta, printed from type at Calcutta in 1836. A circumstance that greatly adds to the interest of this discovery, whilst at the same time it very greatly lessened my labours, lies in the fact that this edition is evidently printed from the lost Calcutta MS. itself, both introduction and quatrains being identical in readings and sequence. A few quatrains, including the repetitions, forming part of the MS. and nearly all those written in the margins of the MS. are omitted, but nearly all of these are added as an appendix to the book, the printer explaining in a short note that they were found in a bayaz (or book of extracts), and were added in that place instead of in their diwan (or alphabetical) order on account of their more than ordinarily antinomian tendency. A very interesting question arises hereon, whether these latter were printed into the book from the margins of the MS. after being purposely or accidentally omitted, or whether they were written on to the margin of the MS. from this book at some date between 1836 and 1856. I think that the former is the more likely explanation, but in the absence of the MS. this question cannot be solved.

I find myself therefore in the interesting position of having the whole of FitzGerald's material before me; and though (so perfectly did Edward FitzGerald identify himself with his author's habit of mind) many other MSS. contain quatrains that closely resemble his marvellous paraphrase, there is nothing written by or attributed to Omar Khayyam which served FitzGerald for inspiration in making his first edition, other than what is to be found in the three, or rather two, texts above referred to. I have spoken already (and at length, in the Terminal Essay to my former volume) of the influences exerted by other Oriental poets upon his work, and especially that of the Mantik ut-tair, or Parliament of Birds of Ferid ud din Attar; where it was direct or exclusive I have set it down in the parallels which follow. The result of my observations may be summarised as follows:

Of Edward FitzGerald's quatrains, forty-nine are faithful and beautiful paraphrases of single quatrains to be found in the Ouseley or Calcutta MSS., or both.[14]

Forty-four are traceable to more than one quatrain, and therefore may be termed «composite» quatrains.

Two are inspired by quatrains found by FitzGerald only in Nicolas' text.

Two are quatrains reflecting the whole spirit of the original poem.

Two are traceable exclusively to the influence of the Mantik ut-tair of Ferid ud din Attar.

Two quatrains primarily inspired by Omar were influenced by the Odes of Hafiz.

And three, which appeared only in the first and second editions and were afterwards suppressed by Edward FitzGerald himself, are not—so far as a careful search enables me to judge—attributable to any lines of the original texts. Other authors may have inspired them, but their identification is not useful in this case.