Konstantin Aleksandrovich Inostrantzev

“ But should he have nothing to fear from all this and were he secure with regard to these calamities, when he thinks of the moment when death must come and he musk give up the world, what a miserable plight is his, at the thought of the hour he has to separate himself from family, friends, and relations and all that is precious on the earth, and when he reflects that there is in store for him after death fearful horrors? ”

“ They are like a hair which men cherish so long as it remains on the head but cast it off as impure as soon as it falls. O soul, be steadfast in treating the diseased and give it not up because thou findest that the physician's profession is arduous and people do not recognise its uses and high value. Judge only thyself whether a man who cures in another a disease making him feel once more fresh and whole is not worthy of a great reward and handsome remuneration. ”

“ The Bombay Government have expended enormous sums in collecting Sanskrit manuscripts—a most laudable pursuit—and have published a series of admirable texts edited by some of the eminent Sanskrit scholars, Western and Indian. But the numerous Moslem Anjumans do not appear to have demonstrated to the greatest Moslem Power in the world, or its representative in Bombay, the necessity of a corresponding solicitude for Arabic and Persian treasures which undoubtedly exist, though to a lesser extent, in the Presidency. And what holds true of Bombay holds good in case of the rest of India. ”

“ When that day comes a wind acquires control of the womb, that child acquires strength to rise, turns the head towards the opening and experiences in this confinement the pain of one forced into a distressing torture. Should it fall to the ground or be touched only by a breath of wind or should it come in contact with one's hands it feels greater pain, than a person that is flayed alive. ”

“ We noticed above the revival of scientific activities in Sasanian Persia. This activity for the most part has its significance in its quality of being a connecting link, in the first place, as the transmitter of Greek knowledge to the East, and secondly, as the unifier of this knowledge with the heritage which Sasanian Persia had received from scientific works belonging to Semitic culture, as well as from the science of India. The principal representatives of this activity were not Persians, but Christians, mainly the Syrian Nestorians, and Monophysites from the school of Edessa. ”

“ This distinguished man who only late in life exchanged the faith of his forbears for that of Islam, and who never professed the latter with over much zeal, translated a series of Pahlavi writings into Arabic including the Khoday-Nameh. He was a courtier, and passed for a good Arabic poet and one of the best rhetorical writers of his time. The famous Wazir Ibn Mukla counted him among "the ten most eloquent men." He must consequently have striven to suit his rendering of the book of Persian kings to the taste of his contemporaries. ”

“ Tabari, mainly occupied with theological tradition, was no man of original research or of historical acumen even in the sense applied to a few other Persian scholars in those centuries. His annals are a compilation, a mass of rich material put together with extraordinary industry. He does not work into unity the various versions in his divergent sources, but simply brings them up in order one after another. But it is just this circumstance which considerably enhances in our eyes the value of the work ”

“ Upon this Bishtasb called upon Isfandiyar who was the strongest man of his time and said to him, "Oh son, the kingdom will be entrusted to you. But the affairs will not improve except by killing Rustam, and you know his strength and vigour. But you are his match in power and prowess. So do you choose from the army whomever you like and then proceed against him." So Isfandiyar selected 12,000 Persian knights from the forces of his father, and marched against Rustam. And Rustam proceeded towards him between the boundaries or Sagistan and Khorasan. ”

“ In the choice of my calling the decisive factor was my experience that men of understanding praise medicine and that the adherents of no religion censure it. I found, however, in medical literature that the best physician is he who by his devotion to his vocation strives only after a reward in the next world ”

“ Mohl translated the passage as follows: "There was an aged man named Azad Serw who lived at Merv in the house of Ahmad son of Sahl; he possessed a book of kings in which were to be found the portraits and figures of the Pehlwans. He was a man with a heart replete with wisdom and a head full of eloquence, and a tongue nourished with ancient tradition; he traced his origin to Sam, son of Nariman, and he knew well the affairs regarding the fights of Rustam." ”

“ Who indeed merits larger reward and nobler retribution? O soul, do not put away from thy sight things of the next world because thou hungerest after passing life. For thou, in thy haste to acquire a triviality surrenderest the valuable ”

“ And then once more thinking of the joys of the world I exclaimed, How bitter and pernicious they are which lead to perpetual perdition and its horrors; how can a man not regard as sweet the little bitterness which is succeeded by sweet that endures and how can a man not regard as bitter a bit of sweet that ends in greater and abiding bitterness? ”

“ He was one without a companion, without an opponent, and without anyone who was his like, and that it was not possible to trace to him the existence of darkness in the way in which the Zarwanites trace it, but that good and evil, pure and impure, holy and unholy, were brought forth only by the co-mingling of light and darkness, and had not the two fore-gathered the world would not have come into existence. ”

“ They were pitched each against the other and they fight each other till light shall overcome darkness, and good evil. And then the good will be liberated and come to its own, and the evil will be hurled down to its own world and that will be the cause of the emancipation. ”

“ Reflect on the fact that our body is destined to all manner of unhappiness and permeated with the four perishable and impure principles which are enclosed in it, which struggle against each other, defeating each other by turn, and thus support life which itself is transient. Life is like a statue with several limbs. When properly adjusted each in its right place, they hold themselves together on a single pivot but which, when the latter is taken off, fall to pieces. ”

“ It is like a ladle which men use for hot soup, so long as it is new but when it breaks they have done with it—burn it. O soul, allow not thyself to be moved by family and relations to amass property for them so that thyself should perish. ”

“ It played its part, most beneficial for Persia, holding back on the one hand Roman-Byzantine onrush from the West, and on the other restraining the perpetual attempts at irruption into Persian territory by Arab nomadic tribes. Not long before the appearance of Islam, Sasanian influence was extended to the Arabs and the South as well as Yemen passed into the sovereignty of the Persians. Khusro and his Court appeared to the Arab an unattainable ideal of grandeur and luxury. ”

“ It will not do that I should seek refuge from the world in asceticism when I think of the evils of the world and then again seek refuge in the world from asceticism when I consider the privations and discomforts of the latter. I continued in a state of prolonged vacillation without firm determination like the Kazi of Merv who at first heard one party and decided in his favour and against the other and then heard the other and gave judgment in favour of the latter as against the first. ”

“ If it was offered to a man that he should live a hundred years but that every day he should be hacked to pieces and should be called to life again the following day and so on, provided that at the close of the century he should be delivered from the torture and pain and be in security and delight, he would account as nothing the whole years. ”

“ I will pretend to sleep, wake me up in a voice loud enough to be heard by those on the roof and say to me, 'My husband, do tell me how you came by so much wealth and property.' When I make no reply whatever ask me very pressingly again. ”

“ The more one drinks of it the more thirsty one becomes; like a bone found by a dog on which he still sniffs the flavour of flesh, he bites to get at it but only to tear the flesh of his teeth and make his mouth bleed and the more he struggles the more he makes it bleed; like the vulture that has found a piece of flesh, it attracts other birds in a flock so that for a long time it is in trouble and flies till at last, quite exhausted, it drops its prey ”

“ The rapid conquest of Persia by the Arab warriors proved a complete catastrophe to the Sasanian empire. But Persian culture was not to be extirpated by the success of Arab arms. Persia was overwhelmed only externally and the Arabs were compelled to preserve a considerable deal of the past. Having lost the position of rulers, the Persian priesthood preserved intact its control of the indigenous populace in the eyes of the latter as well as of the foreign Government. The same remark holds good of the class of landed proprietors. [1] Iranian tradition continued to live In and with them. ”

“ However, it occurred to me to compare the discomforts and straits of monasticism, which I feared I should be unable to support, with the wants of those who remain in the world. Then it became clear to me that all the joys and pleasures of the world turn to discomforts and bring sorrow. For the world is like salt water. ”

“ Among the subjects of the great Persian sovereigns in the western provinces of their empire there were a large number of Arabs who in commercial intercourse carried, to tribes of the Syrian desert and further south to the Arabian peninsula, reports regarding the great Iran Shahar. Not only legends of the heroic figures of the Iranian epic—Rustam and Isfandiar—but religious views and persuasions of the Persians found a place and were spread among the Arab clans. Thus we know that "fire-worshippers" were settled among the Arab tribe of the Temim. ”

“ Arabic literature teems with allusions to the religions, dogma, customs and the court of Sasanian Iran. Once intended for contemporaries equally at home in the Arabic and Persian idioms these references have in course of time grown obscure to copyists who have mutilated Iranian names of persons and places and specific Zoroastrian terms which had become naturalised in the language of the ruling Arabs. It is scholars like Baron Rosen and Rosenberg who have adequately appreciated the value of Arabic texts in which are interwoven verbal translations of celebrated Pahlavi treatises. ”

“ ARABIC WRITERS AS SOURCES OF SASANIAN CULTURE. To the Iranian element belongs a very rich rôle in the external as well as the internal history of Islam. Its influence is obvious and constant in the history of the Moslem nations' spread over centuries. Whenever the circumstances have been favourable it has been clearly manifest; when the conditions have been hostile it is not noticeable at the first glance but in reality has been of great consequence. ”

“ He is equally circumspect, mighty, magnanimous, profound examiner, upright, humane, liberal, a lover of truth, grateful, of broad comprehension, mindful of right and duty, indefatigable, strenuous, with insight, helpful, serene of mind, intelligent, thoughtful, gentle, sympathetic, kind, one who knows man and things, friend of learning and the learned, of the good and of benevolent people, but severe to the oppressor, not timid, nor backward, dexterous in granting in abundance to his subjects what they desire and averting from them what they do not like. ”

“ For I saw that asceticism is a garden the hedge of which keeps off at a distance eternal evils, and the door through which man attains to everlasting felicity. And I found that a divine tranquility comes over the ascetic when he is absorbed in meditation ”

“ Western provinces owing to their proximity to the centre of the Arab ruling life had more than the rest to mingle with, the Arab stream, and to participate in the cycle of events in the Arabic period of the history of the Musalman East. Central Persia, owing to its geographical position, could not constitute the point d'appue of the Persian element. For the latter the most favourably situated provinces were those in the North, East, and South, Tabaristan, Khorasan, and Fars. ”

“ To the same type of literary monuments we have to add the vast field of story literature. Although a considerable portion of it belongs to the province of migratory subjects, and although to Persia belongs often only the rôle of the transmitter, nevertheless, collections of stories of this class undoubtedly had their assigned place in the Sasanian epoch and the dependence of the core of the Thousand and One Nights on the Persian stories collected in the Hazar Afsan [1] is indisputable. ”

“ Nowhere in India is available to a research scholar a complete set of European publications in Arabic, which a few thousand rupees can purchase. The state of affairs is due to Moslem apathy, politics claiming a disproportionate share of their civic energy, to Government indifference and to some extent Parsi supineness and prejudice which, despite the community's vaunted advancement, has failed to estimate at its proper worth their history as enshrined in the language of the pre-judged Arab. ”

“ I turned away my mind from wickedness and adhered energetically to good, perceived that there is no better associate or friend than righteousness and that it is easy to acquire it with the help of God. ”

“ Bombay, perhaps the wealthiest town in the East where prosperous Musalmans form a most important factor of its population, has not one public library containing any tolerable collection of Arabic books edited in Europe. Time after time wealthy Parsis whose interest I enlisted have received from me lists of books to form the nucleus of an Arabic library but apparently they need some further stimulus to appreciate how indispensable Arabic is for research into Iranian antiquities. ”

“ Wide imperial aims were united with a plenitude of solid organisation of government so perfect that it passed into a proverb among the Arabs. In this last connection the Sasanian tradition survived for a long time a number of Moslem dynasties. The powerful influence which Iranian tradition exercised was felt by the Abbaside Khahlifs and after them by the Turkish Seljuks. But not only the science of government, a good deal of other matters of cultural and historical importance in the latter times have their explanation in the Sasanian epoch. ”