Images of the Body in Rumi's Mathnavi

The soul-body relation is one of the most significant issues of Mathnavī by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi—near one thousand verses of Mathnavī are devoted to this issue. The terms soul (nafs), corpus (tan), body (badan), flesh (jism), spirit (rūḥ), psyche (ravān), life (jān), and death (marg) are frequently used in Mathnavī. The term soul has a moral use and terms such as spirit, life and psyche function as the philosophical terminology of the soul, and in most verses, the terms ‘corpous’, ‘flesh’ and ‘body’ are used in contrast with life and psyche; and the distinction between their roles might signify Mowlavī’s dualistic position about soul-body relation. Given his allegorical use and his employment of similes and metaphors with respect to soul-body—which is a method for talking about complex issues—the best way to know his view about the soul is via the metaphors and images. Therefore, in this paper I shall introduce his metaphors of the corpus, and talk about its presuppositions and implications for soul-body relation. Mowlavī talks about the corpus as a veil, cage, thorn, solid, pity soil, weak light and timber. These metaphors show his negative perspective to corpus and flesh in contrast with life and psyche. According to him, the only way for human salvation and the only way to eternal and spiritual life is to abandon the body and this can be obtained by abandoning lusts, greed, vices and achieving divine attributes.