PART I.
INTRODUCTION.
§ I.—How the Dabistan first became known—its author—the sources of his information.
It is generally known that sir William Jones was the first who drew the attention of Orientalists to the Dabistán. This happened five years after the beginning of a new era in Oriental literature, the foundation of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta by that illustrious man. It may not appear inopportune here to revive the grateful remembrance of one who acquired the uncontested merit of not only exciting in Asia and Europe a new ardor for Oriental studies, but also of directing them to their great objects—MAN and NATURE; and of endeavoring, by word and deed, to render the attainment of languages conducive to the required knowledge equally easy and attractive.
Having, very early in life, gained an European reputation as a scholar and elegant writer, sir William Jones embarked[1] for the Indian shores with vast projects, embracing, with the extension of science, the general improvement of mankind.[2] Four months after his arrival in Calcutta,[3] he addressed as the first president of the Asiatic Society, a small but select assembly, in which he found minds responsive to his own noble sentiments. A rapid sketch of the first labors of their incomparable leader, may not be irrelevant to our immediate subject.
In his second anniversary discourse,[4] he proposed a general plan for investigating Asiatic learning, history, and institutions. In his third discourse, he traced the line of investigation, which he faithfully followed, as long as he lived in India, in his annual public speeches: he determined to exhibit the prominent features of the five principal nations of Asia—the Indians, Arabs, Tartars, Persians, and Chinese. After having treated in the two following years of the Arabs and Tartars, he considered in his sixth discourse[5] the Persians, and declared that he had been induced by his earliest investigations to believe, and by his latest to conclude, that three primitive races of men must have migrated originally from a central country, and that this country was Iran, commonly called Persia. Examining with particular care the traces of the most ancient languages and religions which had prevailed in this country, he rejoiced at “a fortunate discovery, for which,” he said, “he was first indebted to Mir Muhammed Hussain, one of the most intelligent Muselmans in India, and which has at once dissipated the cloud, and cast a gleam of light on the primeval history of Iran and of the human race, of which he had long despaired, and which could hardly have dawned from any other quarter;” this was, he declared, “the rare and interesting tract on twelve different religions, entitled the Dabistan.”[6]
Sir William Jones read the Dabistán for the first time in 1787. I cannot refrain from subjoining here the opinion upon this work, which he communicated in a private letter, dated June, 1787, to J. Shore, esq. (afterwards lord Teignmouth); he says: “The greatest part of it would be very interesting to a curious reader, but some of it cannot be translated. It contains more recondite learning, more entertaining history, more beautiful specimens of poetry, more ingenuity and wit, more indecency and blasphemy, than I ever saw collected in a single volume;[7] the two last are not of the author’s, but are introduced in the chapters on the heretics and infidels of India.[8] On the whole, it is the most amusing and instructive book I ever read in Persian.”[9]
We may suppose it was upon the recommendation of sir William Jones, that Francis Gladwin, one of the most distinguished members of the new Society, translated the first chapter of The Dabistán, or “School of Manners,” which title has been preserved from due regard to the meritorious Orientalist, who first published the translation of a part of this work. The whole of it was printed in the year 1809, in Calcutta, and translations of some parts of it were published in The Asiatic Researches.[10] It is only at present, more than half a century after the first public notice of it by sir W. Jones, that the version of the whole work appears, under the auspices and at the expense of the Oriental Translation Committee of Great Britain and Ireland.
Who was the author of the Dabistán?—Sir William Jones thought it was composed by a Muhammedan traveller, a native of Kachmir, named Mohsan, but distinguished by the assumed surname of Fání, “the Perishable.”