Miss Bapsy Pavry.is eminently qualified to present these attractive stories to the public. As the daughter of the revered and venera-We head of the Parsee religion in India her scholarship and -enthusjasm in porto delight her friends in three continent, The Parsee community strong in Shanghai and it will apthis charming contribution n literature, Western readers who have been brought up on the magic romanticism of the Arabian Nights will find themselves on familiar ground in these stories from Shahnama of Firdausi has preserved the same succession of events as the pact, and she has merely extracted the complete story of nineteen heroines in order to expound the view that women played an important part in the old history. of Persia. In making the narrative attractive to Western readers, she has not forgotten the requirements of Persian scholars, who will be gratified by her careful annotations at the end of the cha} ter.
'The period covered by the narratives is a long one, beginning with the "earliest times," and' ending with the conclusion of the Sassanian period in A.D. 651, The eternal feminine in Pers as Miss Pavry says ly portrayed in Firdausi's epic, and these Persian heroines have that delightful faculty for knowing what they want and going about it in the most direct manner. Thus there is a story of Manizha, daughter of King Afrasiyab, who' romantically fell in love with a prine> mise, Kidnapped him with a ruth-Tersness which would have done ¢sedit to anyone in Shanghai and felt greatly aggrieved when paternwrath banished her from the palace to that swift transition from one state to another which is. so delightfully characteristic of the Arabian Night. Manizha was at all events, staunch in her irregular love affair, and a3 a pact seldom troubles his head about the rights and wrongs of parenthood, it is quite in keeping with the atmosphere to find that the great hero Rustam coman to the rescue of the lovers and eventually Manizha and her prince aye united in the court of her father-in-law.
More suitable for copybook texts is the story of Shirin, the only woman of the heroic past of whom A statue still stands to-day in Persia, Shirin's love affair came to fa tragic end. Her love was soi invein by a sculptor, who expressed Wis passion in a beautiful statue of adored cne, and by a royal trick on the part of the King Khusran, who happened to be the lady's husband, the sculptor was induced to commit siticide under the belief that the abject of, his passion was dear Shirin was, however, a devoted wife, and although her husband lost Wie crown' and his freedom, and eventually his lie, by the hand of who was tree to his language, given ulptor the slight rament. When ther of the throne, asked the widow to become his queen, she Vareained for the distribution of her wealth to the poor, and the freedom of her slaves. "Then she had one more request to make to her would-be husband. She asked to se the embalmed face of her dead king. The request was rant-1. She took poison at the tomb, snd thus baulked the usurper of the fulfilment of his desire. sides being a copy-book story is a familiar formula in oriental romance and will be recognized by wmudents of Rajasthan. is difficult to select from such gallery of heroines, but possibly the mother of Darius I of Persia may tho considered to stand out in these pages for the combination of ambitious reyalty.and proud mothergle beauteous person, been Humai succeded her husband on the Persian throne, and her coves og a ruler so ministered to love of power that on the birth her son she was impelled to ike away with him just a5 Moses' muther did for far more creditable yeasor, But Darab, or "Recovered from the Water," had the same fortune as Moses, and eventually, when his mother's kingdom was in danger it was his. bravery that saved the royal army, and he appeared triumph "before his mother, who, recognizing him by the jewels which he bore, atoned for her one weakness by abdicating in favour and thus ending her 33, years' reign over Tran, Queen Humai deserves more than the tribute to her romantic story, for hers was the first reign of which there is definite, historical know-Miss Pavry points out, Persepelis comprise buildings which she is credibly recorded to have built.
Tt remains to add that the book appropriately adorned by reproductions of pictures from the Persian manuscripts in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, illustrating varicws episodes in the poem with which it deals
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.