These
works, the _Ihya-ul-ulum_, epitomized into the _Kimia-i-Saadat_, and
the _Akhlak-i-Nasiri_, with the didactic poems of Sadi,[38] are the
great 'Pierian spring' of moral instruction from which the Muhammadan
delights to 'drink deep' from infancy to old age; and a better spring
it would be difficult to find in the works of any other three men.
It is not only the desire for office that makes the educated
Muhammadans cherish the recollection of the old regime in Hindustan:
they say, 'We pray every night for the Emperor and his family,
because our forefathers ate the salt of his forefathers'; that is,
our ancestors were in the service of his ancestors; and,
consequently, were the _aristocracy_ of the country. Whether they
really were so matters not; they persuade themselves or their
children that they were. This is a very common and a very innocent
sort of vanity. We often find Englishmen in India, and I suppose in
all the rest of our foreign settlements, sporting high Tory opinions
and feelings, merely with a view to have it supposed that their
families are, or at some time were, among the aristocracy of the
land.
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