Dr. Md. Arshadul Quadri
Assistant Professor
Dept. Of Persian
University of Lucknow
Lucknow
E-mail: sahbanarshad@gmail.com
“Of what use shall be a dish of flower …to thee
Take only one leaf from this garden … of me
A flower endures … but for five or six days
The delight from my garden… always stays”
The above mentioned couplets rightly signify the valuable importance of the Gulistan of Saadi. The garden that Saadi had planted about 1000 years ago in the realm of Persian literature is still fresh in our minds. His tales are, undoubtedly, as sweet as sugar and as valuable as gold. The popularity of Gulistan can be gauged from the fact that it has been translated into almost all the major languages of the world. So far, as the present researcher could gather, more than a dozen English translations of Gulistan have seen the light of the day.
The first English translation of Gulistan appeared in the late 18th century by Stephen Sullivan (1774, selections), and later by other scholars, notably, James Dumoulin (1807), James Ross (1823), S. Lee
