Iranian Influence on Moslem Literature, Part I | Page 2

are
intended to be supplementary and to be at once a continuation and a
possible key--continuation of the researches of the Russian scholar and
key to the contemned store-house of Arabic letters.
Professor Inostranzev is in little need of introduction to English
scholars. He has already been made known in India by the indefatigable
Shams-ul-Ulma Dr. Jivanji Modi, Ph.D., C.I.E., who got translated, and
commented on, his Russian paper on the curious Astodans or
receptacles for human bones discovered in the Persian Gulf region. He
shares with Professor Browne of Cambridge and the great M. Blochet a
unique scholarly position: he combines an intimate knowledge of
Avesta civilization with a familiarity with classical Arabic. It is not
wilfully to ignore the claims of Goldziher, Brockelmann or Sachau or
the Dutch savants de Goeje and Van Vloten. Deeply as they
investigated Arabic writings, it was M. Inostranzev who first revealed
to us the worth of Arabic: he unearthed chapters embedded in Arabic
books which are paraphrase or translation of Pahlavi originals. He had

but one predecessor and that was a countryman of his, Baron Rosen.
* * * * *
In preparing the Appendices, which are there to testify to the value of
Arabic literature especially the annals and the branch of it called Adab,
I have availed myself of the courtesy of various institutions and
individuals. 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. 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.
Some of the libraries in Upper India in Hyderabad, Rampur, Patna,
Calcutta possess along with manuscript material cheap mutilated
Egyptian reprints of magnificent texts brought out in Leiden, Paris and
Leipzig. 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.
Moulvi Muhammad Ghulam Rasul Surti, of Bombay, himself a scholar,
lent me from his bookshop expensive works which few private students

could afford to buy. No western book-seller could have conceived a
purer love of learning or a gaze less rigidly fixed on "business". Sir
John Marshall, Director General of Archaeology in India, continued
very kindly to permit me use of books after I had severed official
connection with his library at Simla. Dr. Spooner who acted for him
obligingly saw that as far as he was concerned no facilities were
incontinently withdrawn from me at Benmore. I have particularly to
thank the Librarian of the Imperial Library, Calcutta, who not only
posted me books in his charge but went out of his way to procure me
others. Mrs. Besant and her wealthy adherents have created at Adyar
the atmosphere associated with the Ashramas and the seats of learning
in ancient India so finely described by Chinese travellers. The Oriental
Library there is unsurpassed by any institution in British or Indian ruled
India. It is to be wished in the interests of pure scholarship that some
one succeeds--I did not--in prevailing on the President of the
Theosophical Society to lend books to scholars who may not be equal
to the exertion of daily travelling seven miles from Madras to Adyar.
Her insistence on a rigid imitation of British Museum rules in India,
mainly because so many of the Theosophical fraternity cut out pages
and chapters from books once allowed to be borrowed by them, inflicts
indiscriminate penalty on honest research and seals up against
legitimate use books nowhere else to be found in India.
I reserve for the Second Part of this book some observations on the
Russian language with reference to Orientalism, and Arabic and
Persian literatures