[59] This part of Persia also acquires interest from the circumstance of Russia being believed to be looking forward to obtaining it, one day or other, by conquest or cession.
[60] Azed-ud-dowlah, one of the most celebrated of these princes, had a dyke constructed across the river Kur, in the plain of Murdasht, near the ruins of Persepolis, to confine the water, and permit of its being distributed over the country. It was called the Bund-Ameer (Prince's Dyke), and travellers ignorant of the Persian language have given this name to the river itself. We must not, therefore, be surprised to find in "Lalla Rookh" a lady singing,
"There's a bower of roses by Bendameer's stream;"
and asking,
"Do the roses still bloom by the calm Bendameer?"
Calm and still, beyond doubt, is the Bendameer.
[61] Four lines, quoted by Sir J. Malcolm from the Gulistan of Saadi, may be thus literally rendered in the measure of the original:—
The blest Feridoon an angel was not;
Of musk or of amber he formed was not;
By justice and mercy good ends gained he;
Be just and merciful, thou'lt a Feridoon be.
[62] Paradise, we are to recollect, is a word of Persian origin, adopted by the Greeks, from whom we have received it. A Paradise was a place planted with trees, a park, garden, or pleasure-ground, as we may term it.
[63] Hammer has, in his "Belles Lettres of Persia" (Schöne Redekunst Persians), and in the "Mines de l'Orient," translated a considerable portion of the Shah-nameh in the measure of the original. MM. Campion and Atkinson have rendered a part of it into English heroic verse. Görres has epitomised it, as far as to the death of Roostem, in German prose, under the title of "Das Heldenbuch von Iran." An epitome of the poem in English prose, by Mr. Atkinson, has also lately appeared.