The Conference of The Birds [antikvár]

FOREWORDAttar's great philosophical religious poem., Mantiq Uttair, ruas composed probably in the second half of the twelfth century A.D. Since then., a new edition has appeared every few years in one or another of the countries of the Near East.The present rendering was undertaken in the first instance for the benefit of myself and some friends; but it is the fullest version that has yet appeared in English and, as such, may interest a wider public. For the most part I have used Garcin de Tassy's translation into French prose from the Persian, which was collated with Arabic, Hindu, and Turkish texts (Paris, 1863). I have also consulted a Persian text through a Sufi friend, together with extant English translations. Of these latter there are three, all very much abridged. The first is by Edward Fit^erald, in rhyme, and rather sentimental; the second is a very literal translation of 1,170 couplets of the original4,674 Mathnawt, by Ghulam Muhammad AbidShaikhy India, 1911; the third {and the best of the three) is Masani's, in prose, though only about half of the original was translated; this was printed and published in Mangalore, India, 1924, and sheets were imported and published by the Oxford University Press. All three have long been out of print. Garcin de Tassy's translation is complete, and, as he says, 'is as literal as I have been able to make it intelligible'. He has also retained the flavour, the spirit, and the teaching of Attar's poem.I have omitted the second half of the Invocationwhich is missing from the Hindu text and is abridged in the Turkish. The Epilogue is Of/lit ted entirely from the Hindu and the Turkish texts, and varies in other manuscripts; of this I have included only the first part, since the rest, consisting as it does of anecdotes, comes as an anticlimax. Also omitted or condensed are a few anecdotes in the story, either because they seem repetitive, or because the meaning is obscure. But