[IO Islamic 1413] بكاولى

• Bakâwalî.
• This manuscript is now IO Islamic 828 in the India Office collections.
• [metadata: Hermann Ethé, Catalogue of Persian Manuscripts in the Library of the India Office, 2 vols. (Oxford: India Office, 1903): volume 1, number 1413 here with notations and hyperlinks].

828

Bakâwalî (بكاولى).

The story of prince Tâj-almulûk, Bakâwalî and her rose, translated from Hindûstânî into Persian by Shaikh ‘Izzat-allâh Bangâlî, who had commenced this story in or before A.H. 1134 (A.D. 1722) at the request of a friend of his, Muḥammad, and completed it after the latter’s sudden death (the first of Dhû-alḥijjah, A.H. 1134=A.D. 1722, Sept. 12), obeying the earnest entreaty of some other friends, although he himself, in his first bitter grief, would have wished to do away with his work altogether.

Two other copies of this story are described in W. Pertsch, Berlin Cat., p. 996, where the fuller title, قصّۀ گل بكاولى, is given, and the author’s name appears as ‘Inâyat-allâh Bangâlî. This Persian version has again been translated into Hindûstânî by Nihâl Ćand, under the title of مذهب عشق (‘Gooli Bukawulee,’ Hindustani, by Nihal Chund, preface by J. Gilchrist, Calcutta, 1804, translated into French by Garcin de Tassy in the ‘Revue d’Orient,’ 1858), see W. Pertsch, loc. cit., and Zenker ii. 3920 sq. Another, still more modern, Hindûstânî adaptation of the same story is the گلزار نسيم, the rose-garden of Nasîm, in verse, composed A.H. 1254 (A.D. 1838), by Pandit Dayâ Shankar Nasîm, see A. Sprenger, Catal., p. 629.

Beginning (different from that in the Berlin copy): گلزار هميشه بهار حمد و ثناى باغبان حقيقى را سزد كه اين طرفه بوستان جهان از انواع حسن الخ.

No date. Worm-eaten.

No, 1413, ff. 76, ll. 17; Nasta’lîḳ; size, 10^3/4 in. by 8 in.