FERDUSI
24
apparition in his "
dreams, which said to him,
The kindness and compassion which thou
hast this day shown to a distressed animal has been approved of in the presence of
God the
;
therefore in the records of Providence
kingdom of Ghusni
is
marked
as
a
reward against thy name.
Let not greatness destroy thy virtue, but continue thy benevolence to man."' It is related in a moral, metaphysical, and philosophical work, called Masir ul Maluck, that Mahmoud, when prince, having built
a pleasure-house in an elegant garden, near the city of Ghusni, invited his father to a
magnificent entertainment, which he had prepared for him. The son, in the joy of his heart, desired to know his father's opinion as to his taste in the structure
which had been
The king, to the great disappointment of Mahmoud, told him 'that lauded as inimitable.
he looked upon the whole as a bauble, which any of his subjects might have raised by means of wealth but that it was the business of a prince to erect the more durable structure of good fame, which might stand for ever to be imitated, but never to be ;
equalled.'
The great poet Nizami makes, upon this Of all saying, the following reflection the gorgeous palaces that Mahmoud built '
:
we now
find not
one stone upon another,