HEALTH OF THE SOUL*

When the soul is good and virtuous, loving the acquisition of virtues and desirous of attaining them and longing for the true sciences and for sound knowledge, then its possessor should associate with those who are akin to him and seek those who resemble him, and should not enjoy the presence of others or sit in their company. He should be very careful lest he associate with the wicked and the defective among the frivolous or among those who display enjoyment of disgratieful pleasures and commitment of vile deeds and boast of them and indulge in them. Let him not listen to these peoples' tales with interest, nor recite their poetry with approbation, nor sit in their company with delight; for sitting once in their company, or listening to one of their tales, or reciting one verse of their poetry would attach to the soul such dirt and filth as would not be washed away except with the passage of a long time and with difficult treat­ments. It could be the cause of the corruption of [even] the virtuous and experienced man and the seduction of the discerning knower and might lead to their infatuation--to say nothing of the youth who is growing up and the student seeking guidance. The cause of all of this is that the love of physical pleasures and of bodily relaxations is inborn in man on account of his imperfections. We are inclined to them and we covet them by our primitive nature and our original disposition, and it is only by means of reason's restraint that we keep ourselves from them, stopping at the limits which reason prescribes to us and contenting ourselves with what is necessary.

*Ahmad ibn Muhammad Miskawayh, Tahdhib al-,khlaq [The Refinement of Character, Eng. trans. by C.K. Zurayk (Beirut: The American University of Beirut, 1968], pp. 158.59.

CHINESE ORIGIN CF THE WORD “PATCH” AND OF THE PATCH-WORK COSTUME OF THE SUFI

S. Mandihassan

In the make-up of a personality dress plays such an important role that it seems to qualify the wearer. Thus a soldier is recognised by his military dress while the king has his robe of majesty. Arberry[1] observes that a Sufi, “practicing poverty and abstinence” wore coarse wool, when “Sufi became a nickname, derived from the Arabic word, Suf, wool,” briefly as Mr Wool. However, Jesus, who personified saintliness above all, used to be clad in wool. Now during the time of the Sufi Ḥasan Baṣri there were “certain devotees who wore wool as an imitation of Jesus”. And the elite among the Sufis adopted a costume of patch-work, called khirqah in Arabic. Arberry explains that “initiation into the Sufi mysteries was marked by the investiture of a special frock, khirqhh, symbolizing his acceptance into a tradition of Divine service mounting back, stage by stage, to the prophet Muhammad”.[2] But, instead of khirqah being traced, stage-wise, to the Prophet, that he ever wore a costume to be characterised as the robe of saintliness or of Prophethood, can be openly questioned. Now lbn Sīrīn, a scholar, who died in A.D. 728, was a contemporary of Ḥasan Baṣrī. He used to criticise the latter on his wearing wool. lbn Sīrīn maintained that, as a Muslim, “he preferred to follow the example of our prophet who clothed himself in cotton,” rather than in wool. Thus it appears that the Prophet did not preferably dress himself in wool and probably had no special cloak as khirqah. A woollen cloak can, however, be traced to Jesus, if not even earlier, so that khirqah would appear to be a pre-Islamic costume, indirectly supporting that Sufism itself has a longer past.

We now turn to China for the forerunner of the patch-work cloak, the khirqah. In' a primitive society death-rate among children has always been high and parents were constrained to adopt all means to assure the survival of their issues. One such device in China can be termed “magical dress”. The mother of the child would go, door to door, begging for a piece of cloth, when each donor would offer one with good wishes for the long life of the child. These pieces of cloth, or patches, to use the correct English word, would contribute to the making of a patch-work costume when the dress, as a whole, symbolises the integration of the good wishes of a number of families. The emphasis is easily shifted to the good wishes which the patch-work incorporates. The Chinese term for such a dress is “Pai-Chia-I,” literally, the hundred family (donated) dress. Thus what incorporates the good wishes for longevity, of so many people, becomes a “magical dress” of immortality. Sufism, being a cult of immortality, the Sufi would naturally prefer a patch-work as his overall cloak.

Redhouse[3] translates the word khirqah as rag, tatter and also as dervish's cloak. But Richardson's Dictionary,[4] printed as early as 1777, best renders khirqah=patch, for in English patch= piece of cloth, rather than a rag, or a torn strip, as Redhouse has rendered it. Thus Khirqah is a cloak of patch-work and signifies a “magical dresss” of longevity. It thus becomes the prerogative of an immortal as Sufi to wear such a cloak of immortality. The custom is clearly an import from China. It has been discussed before and aptly illustrated with coloured illustrations of Chinese origin.[5] The etymology of the English word “patch” remains unknown. Dictionary renders it primarily as a “piece of cloth”. When a lay observer sees a patch-work, termed “Pai-Chia-I,” he can easily derive the word “patch” from it for a “piece of cloth”. Patch becomes the unit of a patch-work dress as the real entity. Besides the device of dressing a child in a cloth of patch-work there are others in China by which the longevity of the child is aimed at.

NOTES