Sacred Text: Sa'di

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Sa'di's travels (about 1194-1292 CE) and observations of the characters of the people he met, backed by his extensive learning, led him to compose two masterpieces—The Bustan [The Fragrant Place, i.e Flower Garden] and The Gulistan (The Flower Garden). The second, from which this extract derives, is a prose work interspersed with verses that touches on practical wisdom and moral questions in an easy and entertaining style.

Parrot and Crow

They shut up a parrot in the same cage with a crow. The parrot was affronted at the crow’s ugly look, and said: “What an odious countenance, a hideous figure; what an accursed appearance, and ungracious demeanor!

Would to God, O raven of the desert!
We were wide apart as east is from west.
To cross your path by morning,
Changes the serenity of peaceful day
To gloomy night.
An ill-conditioned wretch like you
Should be your companion;
But where could we find
Such a one in this world?”

But what is more strange, the crow was also out of all patience, and vexed to the soul at the society of the parrot. Bewailing his misfortune, he was railing to the revolutions of the skies. Wringing the hands of chagrin, he lamented his condition, saying: “What an unfavorable fate is this, what ill-luck, and adverse fortune! Could they not in any way maintain my dignity, who would in my day strut with my fellow crows along the wall of a garden?

It were sufficient imprisonment
For a good and holy man that
He should be made the companion
of the wicked.

What sin have I committed that my stars in retribution of it have linked me in the chain of companionship, and immured me in the dungeon of calamity, with a conceited blockhead, and good-for-nothing babbler?

Nobody will approach the foot of a wall
on which they have painted your por­trait.
Were you to get a place in paradise,
Others would go in preference to hell.”

All these years later, we now know that corvids (crows, ravens, jays) and parrots are the two smartest bird families on the planet. Both are smarter than most primates. So this is a nice story about egos and attachment.


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