Sun, May 26, 2002 page18

• Scholarly gem with an unfortunate flaw

  John Seyller's otherwise excellent look at a lavishly illustrated masterpiece of Persian literature is marred by the fact that the cover illustrations are confused

  • By Bradley Winterton / CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
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  This book is something rather unusual -- a detailed description of another book. The book it describes is a hand-made, lavishly illustrated, deluxe item completed in Lahore in the late 16th century. This priceless work of

  art from the Mughal period (this spelling, rather than Mogul, is used throughout the book) now resides in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, New Jersey.

  The book contains a classic work of Persian-language poetry, the Khamsa of Amir Khusraw. Khamsa means "five" in Arabic, and the work is so named because it consists of a set of five verse tales. It was written in Delhi at the very end of the 13th century. So for someone brought up in the English literary tradition, it might be helpful to think of it as a poem written by a contemporary of Chaucer being copied and re-illustrated during the

  lifetime of Shakespeare.

  Amir Khusraw's Khamsa had been copied, often in lavishly illustrated editions such as this one, many times before. But, as this book's author points out, the last two decades of the 16th century saw the peak of the art of Mughal hand-made book production. This copy of the poem is the finest in existence. No finer version of this particular classic was produced either before or after the one now housed in Baltimore.

  The reason why this account is so fascinating is that it tells in meticulous detail how this book collector's treasure was produced. And to the layman it's extraordinary how much is actually known.

  It demonstrates, for instance, how the calligrapher who wrote out the text -- and he was the finest calligrapher of his day in the entire Muslim world -- took about 24 months to copy out the complete poem. This has been calculated

  by studying a similar illustrated book, also called Khamsa but by a different poet, Nizami, now in the British Library. That book's calligrapher noted down with a minute number how far he'd got at the end of each day.

  These tiny numbers are still visible on the pages of the book, and it's assumed they represent days because they go up to 30 (or 31) and then begin again.

  But at one point somebody must have complained that this practice impaired the perfection of the final product, because after a certain point the numbers cease, and in their place, at approximately the same intervals, can be detected a small red dot. From these marks taken together scholars are able to estimate how fast a professional calligrapher, intent in this kind of immensely prestigious task, worked.

  Everything about a product such as this was as fine as it was possible to make it -- the paper, the writing, the illustrations, the border decoration, the binding, and so on. All had to be of an unsurpassable excellence.

  And of course, since it was first produced the book has also had a history. Most importantly, 10 of its original 31 paintings have been cut out. What is surprising to discover is that the whereabouts of eight of these missing pages is known -- they were presented to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1913. These are illustrated here alongside their fellows still contained in Baltimore's book. Consequently this new publication re-unites long-separated elements of a great treasure. Two of the paintings that were cut out are still lost.

  The text is merely summarized -- only the pages containing major illustrations are reproduced. The poem is a conscious imitation of Nizami's Khamsa mentioned above, long considered the pinnacle of all Persian literature.

  So why was literature created in India in the 13th century being written in Persian? The answer is that this was the period of Islamic supremacy on the subcontinent, when though most of the people remained Hindus, the rulers and

  their courts were often Muslims. Poetry in Persian was considered "classical" by these sultans, and was what most of them aspired to commission.

  It's interesting to read in this context that, in the Mughal period itself, the Muslim sultans commissioned richly illustrated books containing translations of the Hindu classics in addition to copies of the Persian

  classics such as Khusraw's Khamsa. Art in those days rose above religious differences, and maybe will do so again.

  Given that so much labor was expended on the creation of the original volume, it's not surprising perhaps that the author of this one, John Seyller, writes that he has spent 15 years on the project. All the more pity, then, that the final product contains a gigantic and, to him no doubt

  horrifying, error.

  So that every aspect of the original book was as sumptuous as it was possible to make it, its outer covers too were decorated with elaborate paintings. These are duly described and discussed in the text, and though said to be only dimly discernible against their rich red lacquer background, they are nevertheless easily identifiable in the color reproductions here printed.

  But, tragically for such a noble publication, the two llustrations have been confused, and what the caption describes as the front cover is undoubtedly in actuality the back one, and vice-versa.

  There's no doubt about this. It's hard to confuse the aftermath of a tiger hunt, the subject of the front cover, with fairies frolicking with demons, the subject of the end one. But somehow the editors or designers have

  managed to do it, and it mars what is otherwise an admirable scholarly monograph.

  It is presumably now too late to reprint. The best that can be done is for an old-fashioned "erratum" slip to be pasted into all unsold copies. But what a loss of face for the Walters Art Museum, and for the book's distributors, Washington University Press!

  Finally, a word of explanation about the book's title. "The Parrot on India" was Amir Khusraw's self-styled nickname, and "pearls" was a traditional metaphor for poetry. At his death his oeuvre added up to nearly a quarter of a million lines.

  For your information

  Publication Notes

  Pearls of the Parrot of India By John Seyller 176 pages Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
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