The Sufi's Donkey
He Sang His Own Loss
Masnavi II.559–568 · tr. R. A. Nicholson, 1926“By God,” said he, “I came several times to inform you of these doings,(But) you were always saying, ‘The ass is gone, O son,’ with more gusto than all (the others) who said it.(So) I was (always) going back, (thinking), ‘He himself is aware; he is satisfied with this (Divine) judgement: he is a man that knows (God)’.”The Ṣúfí said, “They all were saying (it) merrily, (so) I also took delight in saying it.Blind imitation of them has brought me to ruin: two hundred curses be on that imitation!Especially (on) imitation of such good-for-nothing rascals—the wrath of Abraham be on them that sink!The delight of that company (of Ṣúfís) was casting a reflexion, and this heart of mine was becoming delighted by that reflexion.”The reflexion (cast) from goodly friends is necessary until you become, without (the aid of any) reflexion, a drawer of water from the Sea.Know that the reflexion first cast is (only) imitation, (but) when it has become successive (continually recurrent) it turns into (direct) realisation (of the truth).Until it has become realisation, do not part from the friends (by whom you are guided); do not break away from the shell: the rain-drop has not (yet) become a pearl.
- First attested
- 1278The text is Mathnawī II.559–568. 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. He translated Books I and II in 1926 from other copies; in 1930 he printed an Appendix “showing the changes required in order to bring the translation of Books I, II and III (vv. 1-2835) into agreement with” G, and it lists no change for these lines. Every English phrase quoted here is Nicholson's, from the 1926 translation.
- Claimed
- the 1260sasserted by Rūmī's own proem to Book II dates its beginning: “The date of beginning this gainful (spiritual) traffic was in the year six hundred and sixty-two” (II.7, Nicholson 1926) — A.H. 662, a year that began in 1263 and ended in 1264; C. E. Wilson's commentary (1910, p. 5, note 11) gives it as “the year 1263 A.D.” Book II carries no later date, and Rūmī died on 17 December 1273.
Rūmī introduces this guest as “not such a Ṣúfí as the one we told of before” (II.515): the Sufi of II.156, who left his ass to a monastery servant and it spent the night fed on “Lá ḥawl”. This one waters and feeds his beast himself, and loses it anyway, not to a servant's neglect but to his own singing.
Mathnawī II.515, and the earlier tale at II.156–250 (Nicholson 1926); C. E. Wilson, The Masnavi, Book II, vol. II: Commentary (1910), p. 78, note 263.
Poor Sufis sell a guest's donkey for a feast and a dance; he sings their refrain, “The ass is gone”, loudest.
Mathnawī II.514–584, told, Rūmī says, “that you may know the banefulness of blind imitation”. A travelling Sufi reaches a monastery and waters and feeds his beast with his own hand. The resident Sufis, destitute, sell it — “of necessity a carcase is lawful” — and spend the price on dainties, candles and a samāʿ. When the dance has run its course the minstrel strikes up “The ass is gone, and the ass is gone”, and the guest, by imitation, sings it with more gusto than any. At dawn the stable is empty. The servant says he came several times to warn him, but heard him singing and took him for a man content with God's judgement. The passage runs from that answer through the Sufi's curse on imitation to Rūmī's gloss (II.559–568).
Light
It lets the dupe explain himself — “They all were saying (it) merrily, (so) I also took delight in saying it” — and does not sneer at the joy he borrowed: the company's delight was casting a reflexion, and Rūmī calls such reflexion necessary until it becomes realisation.
Shadow
Its dervishes sell a guest's only beast for a feast and a dance, and the narrator half-excuses them: “poverty almost comprises an infidelity” (II.517), which Wilson reads as an allusion to a Tradition. The guest who fed his beast with his own hand bears the whole loss.
