Sir William Jones read the Dabistán for the first time in 1787. I cannot refrain from subjoining here the opinion upon this work, which he communicated in a private letter, dated June, 1787, to J. Shore, esq. (afterwards lord Teignmouth); he says: “The greatest part of it would be very interesting to a curious reader, but some of it cannot be translated. It contains more recondite learning, more entertaining history, more beautiful specimens of poetry, more ingenuity and wit, more indecency and blasphemy, than I ever saw collected in a single volume;[7] the two last are not of the author’s, but are introduced in the chapters on the heretics and infidels of India.[8] On the whole, it is the most amusing and instructive book I ever read in Persian.”[9] We may suppose it was upon the recommendation of sir William Jones, that Francis Gladwin, one of the most distinguished members of the new Society, translated the first chapter of _The Dabistán_, or “School of Manners,” which title has been preserved from due regard to the meritorious Orientalist, who first published the translation of a part of this work. The whole of it was printed in the year 1809, in Calcutta, and translations of some parts of it were published in _The Asiatic Researches_.[10] It is only at present, more than half a century after the first public notice of it by sir W. Jones, that the version of the whole work appears, under the auspices and at the expense of the Oriental Translation Committee of Great Britain and Ireland. Who was the author of the Dabistán?――Sir William Jones thought it was composed by a Muhammedan traveller, a native of Kachmir, named _Mohsan_, but distinguished by the assumed surname of _Fání_, “the Perishable.” Gladwin[11] calls him _Shaikh Muhammed Mohsin_, and says that, besides the Dabistán, he has left behind him a collection of poems, among which there is a moral essay, entitled _Masdur ul asas_, “the source of signs;” he was of the philosophic sect of Súfis, and patronised by the imperial prince _Dara Shikoh_, whom he survived; among his disciples in philosophy is reckoned _Muhammed Tahir_, surnamed _Ghawri_, whose poems are much admired in Hindostan. Mohsan’s death is placed in the year of the Hejira 1081 (A. D. 1670).