The Embryo in the Womb

Told of a World Outside

If any one were to say to the embryo in the womb, “Outside is a world exceedingly well-ordered,A pleasant earth, broad and long, wherein are a hundred delights and so many things to eat,Mountains and seas and plains, fragrant orchards, gardens and sown fields,A sky very lofty and full of light, sun and moonbeams and a hundred stars.From the south-wind and from the north-wind and from the west-wind the gardens have (the appearance of) wedding-feasts and banquets.Its marvels come not into (are beyond) description: why art thou in tribulation in this darkness?(Why) dost thou drink blood on the gibbet of this narrow place (the womb) in the midst of confinement and filth and pain?”—It (the embryo), in virtue of its present state, would be incredulous, and would turn away from this message and would disbelieve it,Saying, “This is absurd and is a deceit and delusion,” because the judgement of the blind has no imagination.Inasmuch as its (the embryo's) perception has not seen anything of the kind, its incredulous perception would not listen (to the truth);Just as in this world the Abdál speak of that (other) world to the common folk,Saying, “This world is an exceeding dark and narrow pit; outside is a world without scent or colour”:Naught (of their words) entered into the ear of a single one of them, for this (sensual) desire is a barrier huge and stout.

Masnavi III.53–65 · tr. R. A. Nicholson, 1930

First attested

1278The text is Mathnawī III.53–65. No autograph survives. The oldest witness is the Qoniya (Konya) manuscript, which Nicholson designated G and describes as “transcribed in A.H. 677-A.D. 1278”, five years after Rūmī died. His 1930 edition follows G only from Book III, v. 2836; for the earlier part he printed an Appendix of every change G's readings would require in the English of Books I, II and III (vv. 1-2835), and it lists none for these lines. Every English phrase quoted here is Nicholson's, from his 1930 translation.

Claimed

the 1260sasserted by Book III carries no internal date. Its proem asks Ḥusām al-Dīn to “bring (into verse and writing) this Third Book” (III.1, Nicholson 1930), so it was begun after Book II, whose proem dates that book's beginning to “the year six hundred and sixty-two” (II.7, Nicholson 1926) — A.H. 662, a year that began in 1263 and ended in 1264. Rūmī died on 17 December 1273.

Tell an embryo of sky and orchards outside and it would call it a lie — as crowds do when saints speak.

Mathnawī III.53–65, near the opening of Book III. It follows a short ladder of weaning: the embryo fed on blood is weaned to milk, then to solid food, then becomes, like Luqmān, “a seeker (hunter) of the hidden game” (III.50–52). Rūmī imagines someone describing the world outside to the embryo — a pleasant earth, mountains and seas, orchards, sun and moonbeams and a hundred stars — and asking why it drinks blood in that narrow place. The embryo would call it absurd, a deceit and delusion, “because the judgement of the blind has no imagination”. So, Rūmī says, the Abdāl, the exalted saints, speak of the other world to the common folk, and nothing enters their ears. The story of the travellers who ate the young elephant follows at III.69.