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xvi a matter of practical convenience, to include the commentary in the same volume as the translation, but on the other hand I saw grave objections to annotating part of the poem before the whole had been studied and translated. "The Mathnawí," it has been said, "is easier than easy to the ignorant, but harder than hard to the wise" ; and I confess that for me there are still many difficulties, which may perhaps be removed by further study of the poem itself, of works historically connected with it, and of relevant Persian and Arabic literature. "The Oriental commentaries, with all their shortcomings, give much help. Amongst those used in preparing this translation I have profited most by the Fátiḥu ʾl-abyát (Turkish) of Ismáʿíl Anqiraví and the Sharḥ-i Mathnawí-yi Mawláná-yi Rúmí (Persian) of Walí Muḥammad Akbarábádí; I have also consulted the Mukáshafát-i Raḍawí (Persian) of Muḥammad Riḍá, the Sharḥ-i Mathnawí (Persian) of Muḥammad ʿAbdu ʾl-ʿAlí, who is better known by his title of Baḥru ʾl-ʿUlúm, al-Manhaj al-qawí (Arabic) of Yúsuf b. Aḥmad al-Mawlawí, and for Book the Sharḥ-i Mathnawí-yi Sharíf (Turkish) of ʿÁbidín Páshá.

As stated in the Introduction to the first volume, no finality is claimed for this edition. Where the text is uncertain, the translation can only be provisional; but even where we feel confidence in the text, cases occur in which every translator of the Mathnawí can but offer the rendering that seems to him possible or probable, and take comfort in the reflection that est quadam prodire tenus si non datur ultra. Some passages, I believe, will always remain mysterious, since the key to them has been lost: one knows that words uttered by a great spiritual teacher may be almost meaningless outside the group of his intimate friends and disciples, or may become so by lapse of time. The loose and rambling structure of the poem leads to other perplexities. When our author gives no sign whether he is speaking in his own person or by the voice of one of his innumerable puppets—celestial, infernal, human, or animal—who talk just like himself; when he mingles his comments with their discourse and glides imperceptibly from the narrative into the exposition; when he leave us in doubt as to whom he is addressing or what he is describing—the translator is driven to conjecture, and on occasion must leap in the dark. Hence a translation of the Mathnawí, however careful it may be, is necessarily tentative in some respects and capable of being improved, though the process takes time. The corrections which I look forward to publishing at a later stage, when the commentary on this volume appears, are likely to be fewer, but also more important, than those contained in the long list of textual corrections (vol., pp. 21–28), three-fourths of which any reader could have made for himself.