The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c24.19

v3.c24.19

recovery to the auspicious influence of the three girls, made them his favourites. Their advancement excited the jealousy of the other inmates of the harem, who applied to them the odious epithet *ghassāla*, or corpse-washer. One day the king, in merry mood with his three favourites, uttered as an impromptu the opening hemistich for the ode, ‘Cupbearer, the tale now runs of the Cypress, the Rose, and the Tulip,’ and finding that neither he nor any poet at his court could continue the theme satisfactorily, sent his effusion to Hāfiz at Shīraz, who developed the hemistich into an ode and completed the first couplet with the hemistich: