Vis and Ramin

42 VISRAMIANI
Khuarasan. However many days thou shalt live, we shall
pass them in pleasure and love in this fleeting world. All
the lands shall be happy 1
through us, and soldiers and
lands shall be calm. When the land feeds in pleasure,
hostility is folly on the part of any man."
When Shahinshah had leisure from this letter, he emptied
out treasure and gold. He sent such wealth to Shahro
that human tongue could not tell it. A hundred camels
wearing howdahs, 2 three hundred camels laden with
treasure, a hundred geldings, 3 and three hundred amblers, 4
all adorned with complete trappings.
Five hundred mules,
all loaded with stones, pearls, and diadems, were fitted out.
With these presents were also two hundred chests of gold
tissue for head-coverings, and one great chest was filled with
priceless gold ornaments ; seven hundred crystal vessels,
each so beautiful that it was like a star in the heavens. There
were forty bales 5 of Greek cloth of gold, each of a different
kind ; besides this, there were many other kinds of kingly
things, whose marvellousness cannot be spoken by man. It
had sent all the
46 seemed as if from every land |
stones and pearls to Shahro, and there were none left
anywhere else.
When Shahro saw so many precious stones, gold, and
royal gifts of all kinds, so many loaded camels and mules
with treasure, she lost her wits like one drunken, and forgot
both son and daughter. When night fell she opened the
door of the fortress and gave the flashing moon (Vis) into
the hands of Moabad ; she feared God, and the letter from
Moabad had changed her humour. The air began to turn
in a fateful way over the castle. Shahro was taught by the
constellations different conduct from moment to moment
When she opened the door of the fortress and gave the girl
into Moabad's hands, in darkness it was black like the
i MordchmWh, 88. E., 303, 449.
Moabad
2 Cubo, 47.
3 Taidchi, hackneys.
4 T'hukliarigi (t'hokharigi, Vliokliarici) Cf. Sven Hedin, " Through
Asia." ? Turkestan horse.
6 Sapalne, 197. ? 1,000 Ibs.