MASNAVI. ARAB. A form of poetry where the second line of every distich rhymes with the same letter.
MASNAVI-i-SHARIF, or sacred 3fasnavi, a book of moral doctrine by Maulana, Jalal-ud-Din Muhammad, Rumi, the founder of the sect to which Europeans give the name of dancing or whirling darveshes; the most important of all the orders of oriental illuminati, and known as the Maulaviali, from the founder. Jalal-ud-Din was descended from Abubakr, father-in-law of the reformer Mahomed, and was himself a grand son of the actual Kharezmian ruler of Balkh. He settled at Iconium, where he founded a college, and enjoyed a wide reputation as a saint, a worker of miracles, and an inspired poet. The peculiar philosophical and religious tenets which he pro fessed are better known under the name of Suffietn, and consist chiefly in the assumption that God is the only actual and real existence, everything else being merely hypothetical ; and that man's highest and ultimate aim is reabsorption into the divine principle from which he has sprung. This Masnavi Is a complete exposition of Sufi doctrines, illus trated with numberless tales, .apologues, and scraps of history, and is the work of Jalal-ud-Din himself. Next to the Koran, it is more highly esteemed by the Shiah sect than perhaps any other work. The complete work consists of six books, containing 26,660 couplets, to which some authorities add a seventh book, to make up the number of the seven planets, the seven zones, and the seven heavens. It has been partly translated by Mr. James W. Redhouse. Jalal-ud-Din speaks in the highest terms of his teacher and spiritual guide, Shams-i-Tabriz, whose arrogance and violence led to a tumult, his arrest, and disappear ance. The anecdotes in the Masnavi are remark able, and embody such legends as the following : Solomon, who m as king, not only of men, but of the angels, genii, elements, beasts, and birds, was one day holding a court, when a poor fellow who was present suddenly exhibited signs of the most extreme terror, and declaring that it was the Angel of Death who had frightened him, begged Solomon to command the wind to convey him far away to Hindustan, which was accordingly done. Another day, when the Angel of Death attended the monarch's levee, the latter asked him how it was that he had driven the poor fellow forth from his home to wander like a waif throughout the world. The angel answered that God had com
manded him to Go this very day And take his soul in Hindustan, his debt to pay. In wonder then I said within myself : "Had he A hundred wings, in Hindustan he could not be." But going still to Hindustan, by God's command, There I found him, and took his soul with my own hand.' Jalal-ud-Din revived the use of music and dancing as aids to devotional ecstasy, and his great poem commences with a few stanzas in which the reed-flute is made to complain of its separation from its native reed-bed by the river side, and to declare the harmony of its own musical lament with the varying moods of man, whose soul is likewise ever sighing at its separation from the divine source from which it sprang. This is the-key-note of the mystic philosophy, and forms an appropriate introduction both to the poem and the religious exercises of the sect, the members of which always preface their evolutions by chanting these very verses. The plaintive and traditional melody to which they are sung is given in Carl Engel's work on the music of all nations. Starting from this point, the poet presently leads on to the next great doctrine of Suflisni, and, indeed, of every other form of mysticism, particu larly the Christian, namely, that God is every where and everything is God ; that God is the only legitimate object of man's love and aspira tion, but that the veil of matter and of sense pre vents the union of the two. As the Masuavi puts it ' Nature's great secret let me now rehearse : Long have I pondered o'er the wondrous tale How Love immortal fills the universe, Tarrying till mortals shall his presence hail ; But man, alas 1 hath interposed a veil, And Love behind the lover's self doth hide. Shall Love's great kindness prove of none avail ? When will ye cast the veil of sense aside, Content in finding Love to lose all else beside ? To arrive at this state of emancipation from the trammels of sense, and lose themselves in the con templation of the Infinite, is the object of the darveshes' dance and of other ecstatic perform ances. The incidental stories scattered through the poem are all interesting. But it is the quaint wisdom, the cheerful, though transcendental, philosophy, and the really elevated thoughts, which form the chief charm of the Masnavi.