THE Asrar- Khudi was first published at Lahore in 1915. I read it soon afterwards and thought so highly of it that I wrote to Iqbal, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at Cambridge some fifteen years ago, asking leave to prepare an English translation. My proposal was cordially accepted, but in the meantime I found other work to do, which caused the translation to be laid aside until last year. Before submit ting it to the reader, a few remarks are necessary concerning the poem and its author. Iqbal is an Indian Moslem. During his stay in the West he studied modern philosophy, in which subject he holds degrees from the Universities of Cam bridge and Munich. His dissertation on the development of metaphysics in Persia an illuminating sketch-ap peared as a book in 1908. Since then he has developed a philosophy of his own, on which I am able to give some extremely interesting notes communi cated by himself. Of this, however, the Asrar-i Khudí gives no systematic account, though it puts his ideas in a popular and attractive form. While the Hindu philosophers, in explaining the doctrine of the unity of being, addressed themselves to the head, Iqbal, like the Persian poets who teach the same doctrine, takes a more dangerous course and aims at the heart.
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