The Three Fish

Die Before You Die

To die before death is to be safe, O youth: even so hath Muṣṭafá (Mohammed) commanded us.He said, “Die, all of you, ere death come; else ye will die with (the certainty of suffering) sore afflictions (hereafter).”He (the fish) died in that manner and threw his belly upwards: the water was carrying him, now alow, now aloft.Every one of those pursuers (the fishermen) bore great vexation (in his heart), saying, “Alas, the best fish is dead.”He (the fish) was made glad by their saying “Alas”: (he said to himself), “This trick of mine has come off, I am delivered from the sword.”Then a worthy fisherman seized him and spat on him and flung him on the ground.He (the half-intelligent fish), rolling over and over, went secretly into the water; the (entirely) foolish one remained (where he was), moving to and fro in agitation.That simpleton kept leaping about, right and left, in order that he might save his skin by his own efforts.They cast the net, and he (at last) remained in the net: foolishness ensconced him in that fire (of perdition).

Masnavi IV.2272–2280 · tr. R. A. Nicholson, 1930

First attested

1278No autograph survives. The oldest witness is the Qoniya manuscript (G), dated 677 A.H. = A.D. 1278, which Nicholson judged “the most authoritative text of the Mathnawi”; he wrote in April 1930 that his text “from Book III, v. 2836, to the end of Book IV is founded on that ancient and admirable MS.”, so this story, at IV.2202–2300, stands in the stretch he edited from the oldest copy.

Fishermen come to a lake: the wise fish swims for the sea, the half-wise plays dead, and the fool is fried.

Mathnawī IV.2202–2300. Rūmī introduces it as a story the reader will have read in Kalīla, of which his telling is the kernel. Fishermen spot three great fishes in a lake and go for their net. The intelligent one consults no one, since the others' love of home would weaken him, and swims away to the Sea (IV.2206–2240). The half-intelligent one first regrets not following him; Rūmī breaks off to tell the tale of the bird's three counsels (IV.2245–2265), then returns: this fish turns belly-up and plays dead, and when a fisherman spits on him and flings him on the ground he rolls back into the water. The foolish one leaps about, is netted and fried, and vows from the pan to live in the sea if he escapes, a promise Rūmī's heading calls faithless. The passage here is IV.2272–2280.