Masnavi I Ma'navi

The Spiritual Couplets of Maulana Jalalu-'D-Din Muhammad Rumi

E.H. Whinfield

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781136393167
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

First Published in 2000. This text is a compliation of spiriutal couplets and teachings of Maulana Jalalu-'D-Din Muhammad Rumi. The Masnavi is a summary of the religious sentiments and doctrine of Islam as interpreted and modified by Muhammadan Mystics or Sufis. Includes 6 books, from works in 1898.

THE MASNAVI.

Book I.

Prologue.

Hearken to the reed-flute, how it discourses

When complaining of the pains of separation—

“Ever since they tore me from my osier bed,

My plaintive notes have moved men and women to tears.

I burst my breast, striving to give vent to sighs,

And to express the pangs of my yearning for my home.

He who abides far away from his home

Is ever longing for the day he shall return.

My wailing is heard in every throng,

In concert with them that rejoice and them that weep.

Each interprets my notes in harmony with his own feelings,

But not one fathoms the secrets of my heart.

My secrets are not alien from my plaintive notes,

Yet they are not manifest to the sensual ear.

Body is not veiled from soul, neither soul from body,

Yet no man hath ever seen a soul.”

This plaint of the flute is fire, not mere air.

Let him who lacks this fire be accounted dead!

’Tis the fire of love that inspires the flute,¹

’Tis the ferment of love that possesses the wine.

The flute is the confidant of all unhappy lovers;

¹ Love signifies the strong attraction that draws all creatures back to reunion with their Creator.

Yea, its strains lay bare my inmost secrets.

Who hath seen a poison and an antidote like the flute?

Who hath seen a sympathetic consoler like the flute?

The flute tells the tale of love’s bloodstained path,

It recounts the story of Majnun’s love toils.

None is privy to these feelings save one distracted,

As ear inclines to the whispers of the tongue.

Through grief my days are as labour and sorrow,

My days move on, hand in hand with anguish.

Yet, though my days vanish thus, ’tis no matter,

Do thou abide, O Incomparable Pure One!¹

But all who are not fishes are soon tired of water;

And they who lack daily bread find the day very long;

So the “Raw” comprehend not the state of the “Ripe;”²

Therefore it behoves me to shorten my discourse.

Arise, O son! burst thy bonds and be free!

How long wilt thou be captive to silver and gold?

Though thou pour the ocean into thy pitcher,

It can hold no more than one day’s store.

The pitcher of the desire of the covetous never fills,

The oyster-shell fills not with pearls till it is content;

Only he whose garment is rent by the violence of love

Is wholly pure from covetousness and sin.

Hail to thee, then, O LOVE, sweet madness!

Thou who healest all our infirmities!

Who art the physician of our pride and self-conceit!

Who art our Plato and our Galen!

Love exalts our earthly bodies to heaven,

And makes the very hills to dance with joy!

O lover, ’twas love that gave life to Mount Sinai,

When “it quaked, and Moses fell down in a swoon.”³

Did my Beloved only touch me with his lips,

I too, like the flute, would burst out in melody.

¹ Self-annihilation leads to eternal life in God—the universal Noumenon, by whom all phenomena subsist. See Gulshan i Raz, 1. 400.

² “Raw” and “Ripe” are terms for “Men of Externals” and “Men of heart” or Mystics.

³ Alluding to the giving of the law on Mount Sinai. Koran vii. 139.

But he who is parted from them that speak his tongue,

Though he possess a hundred voices, is perforce dumb.

When the rose has faded and the garden is withered,

The song of the nightingale is no longer to be heard.

The Beloved is all in all, the lover only veils Him;¹

The Beloved is all that lives, the lover a dead thing.

When the lover feels no longer Love’s quickening,

He becomes like a bird who has lost its wings. Alas!

How can I retain my senses about me,

When the Beloved shows not the light of His countenance?

Love desires that this secret should be revealed,

For if a mirror reflects not, of what use is it?

Knowest thou why thy mirror reflects not?

Because the rust has not been scoured from its face.

If it were purified from all rust and defilement,

It would reflect the shining of the Sun of God.²

O friends, ye have now heard this tale,

Which sets forth the very essence of my case.

¹ All phenomenal existences (man included) are but “veils” obscuring the face of the Divine Noumenon, the only real existence, and the moment His sustaining presence is withdrawn they at once relapse into their original nothingness. See Gulshan i Raz, 1. 165.

² So Bernard of Clairvaux. See Gulshan i Raz, 1. 435.

Story I. The Prince and the Handmaid (p. 5).

A prince, while engaged on a hunting excursion, espied a fair maiden, and by promises of gold induced her to accompany him. After a time she fell sick, and the prince had her tended by divers physicians. As, however, they all omitted to say, “God willing,¹ we will cure her,” their treatment was of no avail. So the prince offered prayer, and in answer thereto a physician was sent from heaven. He at once condemned his predecessors’ view of the case, and by a very skilful diagnosis, discovered that the real cause of the maiden’s illness was her love for a certain goldsmith of Samarcand. In accordance with the physician’s advice, the prince sent to Samarcand and fetched the goldsmith, and married him to the lovesick maiden, and for six months the pair lived together in the utmost harmony and happiness. At the end of that period the physician, by divine command, gave the goldsmith a poisonous draught, which caused his strength and beauty to decay, and he then lost favour with the maiden, and she was reunited to the king. This divine command was precisely similar to God’s command to Abraham to slay his son Ishmael, and to the act of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Book I
• Book II
• Book III
• Book IV
• Book V
• Book VI