237

" lion of material substance/' or Enka.1 According
to the. SiiGs, matter is mddum, cc not eternally ex-
" istent." They call the absolute body " the uni-
" versal body." The Siifis say, as is found in,.the
Favdtah, that the spirit of mankind is the absolute
spirit of the divinity; thus the spirit of mankind, for
the sake of elocution - that is, excellence—expresses
itself by sound; and sound, for the sake of elocu-
tion, by various distinct modulations, which in utter-
ance are made sensible, becomes a word, and by the
combination of words a language acquires reality.
The Shaikh Muhammed Ldhaji* says, in his Com-
mentary on Gulshen raz,3 Ct the Mystery of the Rose-
<c bower," that the meaning of the expression " the
" divine spirit," is " the revelation of truth in the
" circus of multiplicity," and in the Shark mahtaser,
" abridged Commentary (epitome)" on Gulshen, is
found that, in like manner as the spirit of mankind
becomes sound, and sound a word, so also the divine

1 See hereafter an explanatory note upon Enka.

2 See page 141, note 3.

3 A work already quoted (vol. I. p. 82) composed by Mahmud Shebis-
ten'. His native place was Shebister, distant eight parasangs (about
twenty-eight miles) from Tabriz, near which place he was buried in A. D.
1320. He wrote the Gulshen-raz three years before his death, as an
answer to fifteen questions addressed to him by the great Shaikh Hus-
sein, of Khorassan, who died A. D. 1318, one year after the composition
of the just-mentioned most celebrated didactical work upon the doctrine
of the Sufis.