Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/287

 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF FOLK-LORE. 279

Kishor Press, Lucknow : 40 pp. 8vo. It is an original compo- - sition in elegant Urdu verse on the well-known story of Shirin and Farhad. Farhdd, a mason, and the queen Shirin fall in love, and the latter is killed by a trick devised by the minister Jumas.

Shirin, ths daughter of the king of Arman (Armenia), whose real name was Mahin Bano, was the most beautiful woman of her day, and was married to king Khusrti Parvez of Persia. She subsisted on milk and sugar, and the king directed that a stone channel from the pastures should be made to her palace, down which fresh milk was ever to flow for her. The man employed was the astute mason Farhad, and in consulting over the channel he and the queen fell in love. He used to go wandering about repeating her name, and the king heard of it and tried to induce him to desist. At last to quiet him he agreed to hand the queen over to him if he should throw down the mountain Besatun. This apparently impossible feat Farhad was on the point of accomplishing, when the king requested his minister to get him out of the business. Jumas, the minister, now disguised himself as an old woman sent to say that Shirin had died for love of him, whereon Farhad slew himself. Shirin went mad on hearing of this, and passed the rest of her days as an attendant (mujdwir) at his tomb.

9. QissA Kamrup, by Ahmad Yar ; published at the Qadiri Press, Lahore, in 1881 : 72 pp. 8vo. It is an original work in rough Panjabi verse. It relates the loves of Kamrup, son of Raja Rajpati of Udainagar and the Princess Kamlatan.

The Prince Kamrup, the son of Raja Rdjpati, of Udainagar, who had been locked up in a palace in accordance with the prophecies of astrologers, saw in a dream that he and the minister's son went into a garden, where were the Princess Kamlatan and her attendants, and that he and the princess fell in love with each other. When he awoke he started off with the minister's son to find her across the ocean, and was wrecked off the city of Indravati, ruled over by a princess named Rawati, who fell in love with and married Kamrup. Here Shahpari, a black fairy, fell in love with him, but he was saved from her by a