The thirteenth-century Gulistan (“Rose Garden”), a didactic prosimetrum by Sa‘di of Shiraz (1210-1291 or 1292 CE), is among the best-known and most widely read works in the history of Persian literature. For centuries, study of this mirror for princes was a traditional staple of education throughout the Persianate world. Its status as a core text for teaching literary and social sensibilities in India made it the subject of particular interest for British Orientalists, who translated the Gulistan into English on more than ten separate occasions before the twentieth century. This paper looks closely and comparatively at several nineteenth-century English translations of the Gulistan, examining choices made in translation and analyzing the various approaches to translation. In doing so, it sheds light on the enterprise of translation in British India, and considers how English fit in to an evolving Persianate ecumene.