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68 THE TARJUMAN AL-ASHWAQ (X l)

the principle in love that thou sliouldst be the very essence
of thy Beloved and shouldat disappear in Hiuk from thyself.
‘ Na'man/ the place of Divine and holy bliss
7. ‘ For the sake of love and anguish,’ i.e. in order to
inspire me with passion.
‘ And kiss my pillars ’ (properly, kiss over the lithdm or
veil covering the mouth), i.e. he is veiled and unable to
behold them except through a medium The ‘ pillars ’
are the four elements on which the human constitution is
based.^
10. ‘ One dyed with henna’ : he refers to sensual influences
such as descended on the soul Avhen Go.d
addressed it and said, ‘ Am not I your Lord ? ’ (Kor. vii, 171);
and received from it a promise and covenant. Then it did
not faithfully keep the station of unification but
followed other gods. No one was exempt fi'om this poly­
theism, for every one said, ‘ I did ’ and ‘ I said ’, at the time
when he forgot to contemplate the Divine Agent and Speaker
Avithin him.
11. ‘A veiled gazelle,’ i.e. a Divine subtlety (A&Jal) veiled
by a sensual state aU^-), in reference to the unknown
spiritual feelings of gnostics, who cannot explain
their feelings to other men; they can only indicate them
symbolically to those who have begun to experience the like.
‘ With Ted finger-tip ’ : he means the same thing as he
meant by ‘ one dyed with henna ’ in the last verse.
of this experience. Gnostics, though they resemble the
‘ And winks with eyelids,’ i.e. the speculative proofs
concerning the principles of gnostics are valid only for
those who have already been imbued with the rudiments

vulgar outwardly, are Divines
,) inwardly.
12. ‘ Whose pasture,’ etc., as ‘All said, striking his breast,
‘ Here are sciences in plenty, could I but find people to carry
them (in their minds).’

' The author leaves the next two verses unexj)lained. ‘ The best of
mankind’ is Muhammad.