The Scented Garden

8 Introduction It is the sort of order that acquits a man of the charge of doing nothing for posterity, for assuredly nobody who knows India will try to raise false hopes in me that I may live long enough to see it. I would warn scholars that, unless they are in some way definitely mystics and truly acknowl- edged as such, they will do better to hunt for the lost books of Livy than for the Bagh-i- muattar. There is no copy in any public library here or in the East : not surprising, when one hears Platt in 1874 complain that of so famous a classic as the Gulistan there is no genuine Persian MS., but only the garbled Indian copies, in either the India Office Library or the British Museum. If you question a Persian on the subject, he will “ begin to curse and to swear, saying : I know not the ” book. Of late I have amused myself by asking stray Persians “ Have you ever heard of Abdullah el Haji ? ” and when they denied all knowledge of him quoting : “ Forget, an if thou wilt, the scribe ! The lovely script to heart by laid ! ” The reason is of course that it is held exquisitely sacred : and seeing that the nature of the symbol- ism renders it open to the prurient jest or prudish reproach of the notoriously foul-minded Anglo- Saxon, the Persian, who is nothing if not dignified, is justly chary of casting his pearls before swine. Indeed, a certain scent-seller with whom I once argued against all this secrecy replied by beg- ging my permission to depart, “ for a Jew had promised to spit on his beard before as sohri (noon prayer), and he feared to miss the appointment.” But for all that, no well-appointed private library but has one or more copies of the little master- piece : no travelling merchant but carries at least