The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 6, Sir Richard Francis Burton [ebook and pdf reader TXT] 📗

of a Horn) in Preface (pp. xvi.-xviii.) of the Voyage au Darfour, by Mohammed ibn Oman al-Tounsy (Al-Tunisi), Paris, Duprat, 1845.

 

[FN#26] Ibn al-Wardi mentions an “Isle of Apes” in the Sea of China and Al-Idr�si places it two days’ sail from Sukutra (Dwipa Sukhatra, Socotra). It is a popular error to explain the Homeric and Herodotean legend of the Pygmies by anthropoid apes. The Pygmy fable (Pygm�i Spithamai=1 cubit=3 spans) was, as usual, based upon fact, as the explorations of late years have proved: the dwarfs are homunculi of various tribes, the Akka, Doko, Tiki-Tiki, Wambilikimo (“two-cubit men”), the stunted race that share the central regions of Intertropical Africa with the abnormally tall peoples who speak dialects of the Great South African tongue, miscalled the “Bantu.” Hole makes the Pygmies “monkeys,”

a word we have borrowed from the Italians (monichio � mono=ape) and quotes Ptolemy, (Ape-Islands) East of Sunda.

 

[FN#27] A kind of barge (Arab. B�rijah, plur. Baw�rij) used on the Nile of sub-pyriform shape when seen in bird’s eye. Lane translates “ears like two mortars” from the Calc. Edit.

 

[FN#28] This giant is distinctly Polyphemus; but the East had giants and cyclopes of her own (Hierozoicon ii. 845). The Aj�ib al-Hind (chapt. cxxii.) makes Polyphemus copulate with the sheep.

Sir John Mandeville (if such person ever existed) mentions men fifty feet high in the Indian Islands; and Al-Kazwini and Al-Idrisi transfer them to the Sea of China, a Botany Bay for monsters in general.

 

[FN#29] Fire is forbidden as a punishment amongst Mosems, the idea being that it should be reserved for the next world. Hence the sailors fear the roasting more than the eating: with ours it would probably be the reverse. The Persian insult “Pidar-sokhtah”=(son of a) burnt father, is well known. I have noted the advisability of burning the Moslem’s corpse under certain circumstances: otherwise the murderer may come to be canonised.

 

[FN#30] Arab. “Mastabah”=the bench or form of masonry before noticed. In olden Europe benches were much more used than chairs, these being articles of luxury. So King Horne “sett him abenche;”

and hence our “King’s Bench” (Court).

 

[FN#31] This is from the Bresl. Edit. vol. iv. 32: the Calc. Edit gives only an abstract and in the Bul. Edit. the Ogre returned “accompanied by a female, greater than he and more hideous.” We cannot accept Mistress Polyphemus.

 

[FN#32] This is from Al-Kazwini, who makes the serpent “wind itself round a tree or a rock, and thus break to pieces the bones of the breast in its belly.”

 

[FN#33] “Like a closet,” in the Calc. Edit. The serpent is an exaggeration of the python which grows to an enormous size.

Monstrous Ophidia are mentioned in sober history, e.g. that which delayed the army of Regulus. Dr. de Lacerda, a sober and sensible Brazilian traveller, mentions his servants sitting down upon a tree-trunk in the Captaincy of San Paulo (Brasil), which began to move and proved to be a huge snake. F. M. Pinto (the Sindbad of Portugal though not so respectable) when in Sumatra takes refuge in a tree from “tigers, crocodiles, copped adders and serpents which slay men with their breath.” Father Lobo in Tigre (chapt.

x.) was nearly killed by the poison-breath of a huge snake, and healed himself with a bezoar carried ad hoc. Maff��us makes the breath of crocodiles suavissimus, but that of the Malabar serpents and vipers “adeo teter ac noxius ut afflatu ipso necare perhibeantur.”

 

[FN#34] Arab. “Aurat”: the word has been borrowed by the Hindostani jargon, and means a woman, a wife.

 

[FN#35] So in Al-Idr�si and Langl�s: the Bres. Edit. has “AlKal�sitah”; and Al-Kazwini “Al-Sal�mit.” The latter notes in it a petrifying spring which Camoens (The Lus. x. 104), places in Sunda, i.e. Java-Minor of M. Polo. Some read Salabat-Timor, one of the Moluccas famed for sanders, cloves, cinnamon, etc.

(Purchas ii. 1784.)

 

[FN#36] Evidently the hippopotamus (Pliny, viii. 25; ix. 3 and xxiii. 11). It can hardly be the Mulaccan Tapir, as shields are not made of the hide. Hole suggests the buffalo which found its way to Egypt from India vi� Persia; but this would not be a speciosum miraculum.

 

[FN#37] The ass-headed fish is from Pliny (ix. cap. 3): all those tales are founded upon the manatee (whose dorsal protuberance may have suggested the camel), the seal and the dugong or sea calf. I have noticed (Zanzibar i. 205) legends of ichthyological marvels current on the East African seaboard; and even the monsters of the Scottish waters are not all known: witness the mysterious “brigdie.” See Bochart De Cetis i. 7; and Purchas iii. 930.

 

[FN#38] The colossal tortoise is noticed by �lian (De Nat.

Animal. xvi. 17), by Strabo (Lib. xv.), by Pliny (ix. 10) and Diodorus Siculus (iv. 1) who had heard of a tribe of Chelonophagi. �lian makes them 16 cubits long near Taprobane and serving as house-roofs; and others turn the shell into boats and coracles. A colossochelys was first found on the Scwalik Hills by Dr. Falconer and Major (afterwards Sir Proby) Cantley. In 1867 M.

Emile Blanchard exhibited to the Academie des Sciences a monster crab from Japan 1.20 metres long (or 2.50 including legs); and other travellers have reported 4 metres. These crustace� seem never to cease growing and attain great dimensions under favourable circumstances, i.e. when not troubled by man.

 

[FN#39] Lane suggests (iii. 97), and with some probability, that the “bird” was a nautilus; but the wild traditions concerning the barnacle-goose may perhaps have been the base of the fable. The albatross also was long supposed never to touch land. Possible the barnacle, like the barometz of Tartarean lamb, may be a survivor of the day when the animal and vegetable kingdoms had not yet branched off into different directions.

 

[FN#40] Arab. “Zahwah,” also meaning a luncheon. The five daily prayers made all Moslems take strict account of time, and their nomenclature of its division is extensive.

 

[FN#41] This is the “insane herb.” Davis, who visited Sumatra in 1599 (Purchas i. 120) speaks “of a kind of seed, whereof a little being eaten, maketh a man to turn foole, all things seeming to him to be metamorphosed.” Linschoten’s “Dutroa” was a poppy-like bud containing small kernels like melons which stamped and administered as a drink make a man “as if he were foolish, or out of his wits.” This is Father Lobo’s “Vanguini” of the Cafres, called by the Portuguese dutro (Datura Stramonium) still used by dishonest confectioners. It may be Dampier’s Ganga (Ganjah) or Bang (Bhang) which he justly describes as acting differently “according to different constitutions; for some it stupefies, others it makes sleepy, others merry and some quite mad.”

(Harris, Collect. ii. 900.) Dr. Fryer also mentions Duty, Bung and Post, the Poust of Bernier, an infusion of poppy-seed.

 

[FN#42] Arab. “Ghul,” here an ogre, a cannibal. I cannot but regard the “Ghul of the waste” as an embodiment of the natural fear and horror which a man feels when he faces a really dangerous desert. As regards cannibalism, Al-Islam’s religion of common sense freely allows it when necessary to save life, and unlike our mawkish modern sensibility, never blames those who Alimentis talibus usi

Produxere animos.

 

[FN#43] For Cannibals, see the Massaget� of Herod (i.), the Pad�i of India (iii.), and the Essedones near M�otis (iv.); Strabo (lib. iv.) of the Luci; Pomponious Mela (iii. 7) and St. Jerome (ad Jovinum) of Scoti. M. Polo locates them in Dragvia, a kingdom of Sumatra (iii. 17), and in Angaman (the Andamanian Isles?), possibly the ten Maniolai which Ptolemy (vii.), confusing with the Nicobars, places on the Eastern side of the Bay of Bengal; and thence derives the Heraklian stone (magnet) which attracts the iron of ships (See Serapion, De Magnete, fol. 6, Edit. of 1479, and Brown’s Vulgar Errors, p. 74, 6th Edit.). Mandeville finds his cannibals in Lamaray (Sumatra) and Barthema in the “Isle of Gyava” (Java). Ibn Al-Wardi and Al-Kazwini notice them in the Isle Saksar, in the Sea of the Zanj (Zanzibar): the name is corrupted Persian “Sag-Sar” (Dogs’-heads) hence the dog-descended race of Camoens in Pegu (The Lus. x. 122). The Bresl.

Edit. (iv. 52) calls them “Khaw�rij”=certain sectarians in Eastern Arabia. Needless to say that cocoa-nut oil would have no stupefying effect unless mixed with opium or datura, hemp or henbane.

 

[FN#44] Black pepper is produced in the Goanese but we must go south to find the “Bil�d al-Filfil” (home of pepper) i.e.

Malabar. The exorbitant prices demanded by Venice for this spice led directly to the discovery of The Cape route by the Portuguese; as the “Grains of Paradise” (Amomum Granum Paradisi) induced the English to explore the West African Coast.

 

[FN#45] Arab. “Kazd�r.” Sansk. “Kast�r.” Gr. “Kassiteron.” Lat.

“Cassiteros,” evidently derived from one root. The Heb. is “Badih,” a substitute, an alloy. “Tanakah” is the vulg. Arab.

word, a congener of the Assyrian “Anaku,” and “Kala-i” is the corrupt Arab. term used in India.

 

[FN#46] Our Arabian Ulysses had probably left a Penelope or two at home and finds a Calypso in this Ogygia. His modesty at the mention of womankind is notable.

 

[FN#47] These are the commonplaces of Moslem consolation on such occasions: the artistic part is their contrast with the unfortunate widower’s prospect.

 

[FN#48] Lit. “a margin of stone, like the curb-stone of a well.”

 

[FN#49] I am not aware that this vivisepulture of the widower is the custom of any race, but the fable would be readily suggested by the Sati (Suttee)-rite of the Hindus. Simple vivisepulture was and is practised by many people.

 

[FN#50] Because she was weaker than a man. The Bresl. Edit.

however, has “a gugglet of water and five scones.”

 

[FN#51] The confession is made with true Eastern sang-froid and probably none of the hearers “disapproved” of the murders which saved the speaker’s life.

 

[FN#52] This tale is evidently taken from the escape of Aristomenes the Messenian from the pit into which he had been thrown, a fox being his guide. The Arabs in an early day were eager students of Greek literature. Hole (p. 140) noted the coincidence.

 

[FN#53] Bresl. Edit. “Khw�jah,” our “Howajee,” meaning a schoolmaster, a man of letters, a gentleman.

 

[FN#54] And he does repeat at full length what the hearers must have known right well. I abridge.

 

[FN#55] Island of the Bell (Arab. “N�k�s”=a wooden gong used by Christians but forbidden to Moslems). “Kala” is written “Kela,”

“Kullah” and a variety of ways. Baron Walckenaer places it at Keydah in the Malay peninsula opposite Sumatra. Renaudot identifies it with Calabar, “somewhere about the point of Malabar.”

 

[FN#56] Islands, because Arab cosmographers love to place their speciosa miracula in such places.

 

[FN#57] Like the companions of Ulysses who ate the sacred oxen (Od. xii.).

 

[FN#58] So the enormous kingfisher of Lucian’s True History (lib.

ii.).

 

[FN#59] This tale is borrowed from Ibn Al-Wardi, who adds that the greybeards awoke in the morning after eating the young Rukh with black hair which never turned white. The same legend is recounted by Al-Dimiri (ob. A.H. 808=1405-6) who was translated into Latin by Bochart (Hierozoicon ii. p. 854) and quoted by Hole and Lane (iii. 103). An excellent study of Marco Polo’s Rukh was made by my learned friend the late Prof. G. G. Bianconi of Bologna, “Dell’Uccello Ruc,” Bologna, Gamberini, 1868. Prof.

Bianconi predicted that other giant birds would be found in Madagascar on the East African Coast opposite; but he died before hearing of Hildebrand’s discovery.

 

[FN#60] Arab. “Iz�r,” the earliest garb of Eastern man; and, as such preserved in the Meccan pilgrimage. The “waist-cloth” is either tucked in or kept in place by a girdle.

 

[FN#61] Arab. “L�f,” a succedaneum for the