LALLA ROOKH:

AN ORIENTAL ROMANCE

1817.

TO

SAMUEL ROGERS, Esq.

THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED

BY

HIS VERY GRATEFUL AND AFFECTIONATE FRIEND,

THOMAS MOORE.

LALLA ROOKH.

IN the eleventh year of the reign of Aurungzebe, Abdalla, King of the LesserBucharia, a lineal descendant from the Great Zingis, having abdicated_the throne in favour of his son, set out on a pilgrimage to the Shrine of the Prophet; and, passing into India through the delightful valley of Cashmere, rested for a short time at Delhi on his way. He was entertained by Aurungzebe in a style of magnificent hospitality, worthy alike of the visitor and the host, and was afterwards escorted with the same splendour to Surat, where he embarked for Arabia. During the stay of the Royal Pilgrim at Delhi, a marriage was agreed upon between the Prince, his son, and the youngest daughter of the Emperor, Lalla Rookh;-a princess described by the poets of her time, as more beautiful than Leila, Shirine, Dewilde, or any of those heroines whose names and loves embellish the songs of Persia and Hindostan. It was intended that the nuptials should be celebrated at Cashmere; where the young King, as soon as the cares of empire would permit, was to meet, for the first time, his lovely bride, and, after a few months' repose in that enchanting valley, conduct her over the snowy hills into Bucharia.

The day of Lalla Rookh's departure from Delhi was as splendid as sunshine and pageantry could make it. The bazaars and baths were all covered with the richest tapestry; hundreds of gilded barges upon the Jumna floated with their banners shining in the water; while through the streets troops of beautiful children went strewing the most delicious flowers around, as in that Persian festival called the Scattering of the Roses; till every part of the city was as fragrant as if a caravan of musk from Khoten had passed through it. The Princess, having taken leave of her kind father, who at parting hung a cornelian of Yemen round her neck, on which was inscribed a verse from the Koran, and having sent a considerable present to the Fakirs, who kept up the Perpetual Lamp in her sister's tomb, meekly ascended the palankeen prepared for her; and, while Aurungzebe stood to take a last look from his balcony, the procession moved slowly on the road to Lahore.

Seldom had the castern world seen a cavalcade so superb. From the gardens. in the suburbs to the imperial palace, it was one unbroken line of splendour. The gallant appearance of the Rajas and Mogul lords, distinguished by those insignia of the Emperor's favour, the feathers of the egret of Cashmere in their

Dewildé and Chizer, the son of the Emperor Alla is written in an elegant poem, by the noble Chusero.'-Ferishta. 6 Gul Reazee.

7 'One mark of honour or knighthood bestowed by the Emperor is the permission to wear a small kettle-drum at the bows of their saddles, which at first was invented for the training of hawks, and to call them to the lure, and is worn in the field by all sportsmen to that end,'-Fryer's Travels.

"Those on whom the King has conferred the

turbans, and the small silver-rimmed kettle-drums at the bows of their saddles; the costly armour of their cavaliers, who vied, on this occasion, with the guards of the great Kedar Khan,1 in the brightness of their silver battle-axes and the massiness of their maces of gold;-the glittering of the gilt pine-apples on the tops of the palankeens;-the embroidered trappings of the elephants, bearing on their backs small turrets, in the shape of little antique temples, within which the ladies of Lalla Rookh lay, as it were, enshrined;-the rose-coloured veils of the Princess's own sumptuous litter,3 at the front of which a fair young female slave sat fanning her through the curtains, with feathers of the Argus pheasant's wing; and the lovely troop of Tartarian and Cashmerian maids of honour, whom the young King had sent to accompany his bride, and who rode on each side of the litter, upon small Arabian horses;-all was brilliant, tasteful, and magnificent, and pleased even the critical and fastidious Fadladeen, Great Nazir or Chamberlain of the Haram, who was borne in his palankeen, immediately after the Princess, and considered himself not the least important personage of the pageant.

Fadladeen was a judge of everything-from the pencilling of a Circassian's eyelids to the deepest questions of science and literature; from the mixture of a conserve of rose leaves to the composition of an epic poem: and such influ ence had his opinion upon the various tastes of the day, that all the cooks and poets of Delhi stood in awe of him. His political conduct and opinions were founded upon that line of Sadi :-'Should the Prince at noonday say, "It is night," declare that you behold the moon and stars.' And his zeal for religion, of which Aurungzebe was a munificent protector, was about as disinterested as that of the goldsmith who fell in love with the diamond eyes of the idol of Jaghernaut.

During the first days of their journey, Lalla Rookh, who had passed all her life within the shadow of the royal Gardens of Delhi, found enough in the

privilege must wear an ornament of jewels on the right side of the turban, surmounted by a high plume of the feathers of a kind of egret. This bird is found only in Cashmere, and the feathers are carefully collected for the King, who bestows them on his nobles.'-Elphinstone's Account of Caubul.

'When they ascend from the bosom of the vale, they sit forward on the saddle-cloths with every mark of a voluptuous gaiety.

'Now, when they have reached the brink of yon blue gushing rivulet, they fix the poles of their tents like the Arabs with a settled mansion.'

Religion, of which Aurungzebe was a muniKedar Khan, &c.-'Khedar Khan, the Kha-ficent protector. This hypocritical emperor han, or King, of Turquestan beyond the Gihon would have made a worthy associate of certain at the end of the eleventh century), when- Holy Leagues. He held the cloak of religion, ever he appeared abroad was preceded by says Dow, 'between his actions and the vulgar; seven hundred horsemen with silver battle- and impiously thanked the Divinity for a success axes, and was followed by an equal number which he owed to his own wickedness. When he bearing maces of gold. He was a great patron was murdering and persecuting his brothers and of poetry, and it was he who used to preside at their families, he was building a magnificent public exercises of genius, with four basins of mosque at Delhi, as an offering to God for His gold and silver by him to distribute among the assistance to him in the civil wars. He acted as poets who excelled.'-Richardson's Dissertation, high priest at the consecration of this temple; prefixed to his Dictionary. and made a practice of attending divine service there, in the humble dress of a fakeer. But when he lifted one hand to the Divinity, he with the other signed warrants for the assassination of his relations.'-History of Hindostan, vol. iii. p. 235. See also the curious letter of Aurungzebe given in the Oriental Collections, vol. i. p. 320.

The gilt pine-apples, &c.-"The kubdeh, a large golden knob, generally in the shape of a pine-apple, on the top of the canopy over the litter or palanquin.-Scott's Noies on the Bahardanush, The rose-coloured veils of the Princess's litter. -In the poem of Zohair, in the Moallakat, there Is the following lively description of 'a company of maidens scated on camels

"They are mounted in carriages covered with costly awnings and with rose-coloured veils, the linings of which have the hue of crimson Andemwood,

The diamond eyes of the idol, &c.-"The idol at Jaghernaut has two fine diamonds for eyes. No goldsmith is suffered to enter the pagoda: one having stolen one of these ejes, being locked up all night with the idol.'—Tavernier. 21

beauty of the scenery through which they passed to interest her mind and de light her imagination; and when, at evening or in the heat of the day, they turned off from the high road to those retired and romantic places which hal been selected for her encampments-sometimes on the banks of a small rivulet, as clear as the waters of the Lake of Pearl;1 sometimes under the sacred shade of a banyan tree, from which the view opened upon a glade covered with antelopes; and often in those hidden, embowered spots, described by one from the Isles of the West as 'places of melancholy, delight, and safety, where all the company around was wild peacocks and turtle-doves ;'-she felt a charm in these scenes, so lovely and so new to her, which for a time made her indifferent to every other amusement. But Lalla Rookh was young, and the young love variety; nor cou'd the conversation of her Ladies and the Great Chamberlain Fadladeen (the only persons, of course, admitted to her pavilion), sufficiently enliven those many vacant hours, which were devoted neither to the pillow nor the palankeen. There was a little Persian slave who sung sweetly to the Vina, and who now and then lulled the Princess to sleep with the ancient ditties of her country, about the loves of Wamak and Ezra, the fair-haired Zal and his mistress Rodahver, not forgetting the combat of Rustam with the terrible White Demon. At other times she was amused by those graceful dancing girls of Delhi, who had been permitted by the Brahmins of the Great Pagoda to attend her, much to the horror of the good Mussulman Fadladeen, who could see nothing graceful or agreeable in idolaters, and to whom the very tinkling of their golden anklets was an abomination."

3

But these and many other diversions were repeated till they lost all their charm, and the nights and noondays were beginning to move heavily, when at length it was recollected that, among the attendants sent by the bridegroom, was a young poet of Cashmere, much celebrated throughout the valley for his manner of reciting the stories of the East, on whom his Royal Master had con. ferred the privilege of being admitted to the pavilion of the Princess, that he might help to beguile the tediousness of the journey by some of his most agreeable recitals. At the mention of a poet, Fadladeen elevated his critical eyebrows, and having refreshed his faculties with a dose of that delicious opium?

Lake of Pearl.-In the neighbourhood is Notte Gill, or the Lake of Pearl, which receives this name from its pellucid water.'-Pennant's Hindostan.

Described by one from the Isles of the West, &c.-Sir Thomas Roe, ambassador from James 1. to Jehanguire.

3 Loves of Wamak and Ezra.—'The Romance Wamakweazra, written in Persian verse, which contains the loves of Wamak and Ezra, two celebrated lovers who lived before the time of Mohammed.'-Note on the Oriental Tales.

Of the fuir-haired Zal, and his mistress Rodahver.-There is much beauty in the passage which describes the slaves of Rodahver sitting on the bank of the river and throwing flowers Into the stream in order to draw the attention of the young hero who is encamped on the opposite side.-Vide Champion's Translation of the Shah Naméh of Ferdousi.

The combat of Rustam with the terrible White Demon.-Rustam is the Hercules of the Persians. For the particulars of his victory over the Sepeed Deeve, or White Demon, see Oriental Collections, #ol. ii. p. 45. Near the city of Shiraz is an im

mense quadrangular monument in commemora tion of this combat, called the 'Kelaat-i-Deev Sepeed,' or castle of the White Giant, which Father Angelo, in his Gazophylacium Persicum, p. 127, declares to have been the most memorable monument of antiquity which he had seen in Persia. Vide Ouseley's Persian Miscellanies. Idol, or Dancing Girls of the Pagoda, have little 6 Their golden anklets.-The women of the golden bells fastened to their feet, the soft, harwith the exquisite melody of their voices.'— monious tinkling of which vibrates in unison Maurice's Indian Antiquities.

'The Arabian courtesans, like the Indian women, have little golden bells fastened round their legs, neck, and elbows, to the sound of which they dance before the King. The Arabian princesses wear golden rings on their fingers, to which little bells are suspended, as well as in the flowing tresses of their hair, that their superior rank may be known, and they themselves receive in passing the homage due to them.'-Calmet's Dictionary, art. Bells.

7That delicious opium, &c.-'Abou-Tige, ville de la Thebaïde, où il croit beaucoup de pavot noir, dont se fait le meilleur opium.'-D'Herbelot.