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

(John Holland in 1575); the “Seven Wise Masters” and a host of minor romances. The Persian Sindib�d-N�mah assumed its present shape in A.D. 1375: Professor Falconer printed an abstract of it in the Orient. Journ. (xxxv. and xxxvi. 1841), and Mr. W. A. Clouston reissued the “Book of Sindibad,” with useful notes in 1884. An abstract of the Persian work is found in all edits. of The Nights; but they differ greatly, especially that in the Bresl. Edit. xii. pp. 237-377, from which I borrow the introduction. According to Hamzah Isfah�n� (ch. xli.) the Reguli who succeeded to Alexander the Great and preceded Sapor caused some seventy books to be composed, amongst which were the Liber Maruc, Liber Bars�nas, Liber Sindibad, Liber Shim�s, etc., etc.

 

[FN#154] Eusebius De Praep. Evang. iii. 4, quotes Prophesy concerning the Egyptian belief in the Lords of the Ascendant whose names are given {Greek letters}: in these “Almenichiaka” we have the first almanac, as the first newspaper in the Roman “Acta Diurna.”

 

[FN#155] “Al-Mas’�di,” the “Herodotus of the Arabs,” thus notices Sindibad the Sage (in his Mur�j, etc., written about A.D. 934).

“During the reign of Kur�sh (Cyrus) lived Al-Sindibad who wrote the Seven Wazirs, etc.” Al-Ya’ak�bi had also named him, circ.

A.D. 880. For notes on the name Sindibad, see Sindbad the Seaman, Night dxxxvi. I need not enter into the history of the “Seven Sages,” a book evidently older than The Nights in present form; but refer the reader to Mr. Clouston, of whom more in a future page.

 

[FN#156] Evidently borrowed from the Christians, although the latter borrowed from writers of the most remote antiquity. Yet the saying is the basis of all morality and in few words contains the highest human wisdom.

 

[FN#157] It is curious to compare the dry and business-like tone of the Arab style with the rhetorical luxuriance of the Persian: p.10 of Mr. Clouston’s “Book of Sindibad.”

 

[FN#158] In the text “Isf�d�j,” the Pers. Isped (or Saf�d) �b, lit. = white water, ceruse used for women’s faces suggesting our “Age of Bismuth,” Blanc Rosati, Cr�me de l’Imp�ratrice, Perline, Opaline, Milk of Beauty, etc., etc.

 

[FN#159] Commentators compare this incident with the biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife and with the old Egyptian romance and fairy tale of the brothers Anapon and Saton dating from the fourteenth century, the days of Pharaoh Ramses Miamun (who built Pi-tum and Ramses) at whose court Moses or Osarsiph is supposed to have been reared (Cambridge Essays 1858). The incident would often occur, e.g. Ph�dra-cum-Hippolytus; Fausta-cum-Crispus and Lucinian; Asoka’s wife and Kun�la, etc., etc. Such things happen in every-day life, and the situation has recommended itself to the folk lore of all peoples.

 

[FN#160] Another version of this tale is given in the Bresl.

Edit. (vol. viii. pp. 273-8: Night 675-6). It is the “Story of the King and the Virtuous Wife” in the Book of Sindibad. In the versions Arabic and Greek (Syntipas) the King forgets his ring; in the Hebrew Mishl� Sandabar, his staff, and his sandals in the old Spanish Libro de los Engannos et los Asayamientos de las Mugeres.

 

[FN#161] One might fancy that this is Biblical, Bathsheba and Uriah. But such “villanies” must often have occurred in the East, at different times and places, without requiring direct derivation. The learned Prof. H. H. Wilson was mistaken in supposing that these fictions “originate in the feeling which has always pervaded the East unfavourable to the dignity of women.”

They belong to a certain stage of civilisation when the sexes are at war with each other; and they characterise chivalrous Europe as well as misogynous Asia; witness Jankins, clerk of Oxenforde; while �sop’s fable of the Lion and the Man also explains their frequency.

 

[FN#162] The European form of the tale is “Toujours perdrix,” a sentence often quoted but seldom understood. It is the reproach of M. l’Abb� when the Count (proprietor of the pretty Countess) made him eat partridge every day for a month; on which the Abb�

says, “Alway partridge is too much of a good thing!” Upon this text the Count speaks. A correspondent mentions that it was told by Horace Walpole concerning the Confessor of a French King who reproved him for conjugal infidelities. The degraded French (for “toujours de la perdrix” or “des perdrix”) suggests a foreign origin. Another friend refers me to No. x. of the “Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles” (compiled in A.D. 1432 for the amusement of the Dauphin, afterwards Louis XI.) whose chief personage “un grand seigneur du Royaulme d’Angleterre,” is lectured upon fidelity by the lord’s mignon, a “jeune et gracieux gentil homme de son hostel.” Here the partridge became past�s d’anguille. Possibly Scott refers to it in Redgauntlet (chapt. iv.); “One must be very fond of partridge to accept it when thrown in one’s face.” Did not Voltaire complain at Potsdam of “toujours perdrix” and make it one of his grievances? A similar story is that of the chaplain who, weary of the same diet, uttered “grace” as follows:—

 

Rabbits hot, rabbits cold,

Rabbits tender, and rabbits tough, Rabbits young, and rabbits old�

I thank the Lord I’ve had enough.

 

And I as cordially thank my kind correspondents.

 

[FN#163] The great legal authority of the realm.

 

[FN#164] In all editions the Wazir here tells the Tale of the Merchant’s Wife and the Parrot which, following Lane, I have transferred to vol. i. p. 52. But not to break the tradition I here introduce the Persian version of the story from the “Book of Sindibad.” In addition to the details given in the note to vol.

i., 52 {Vol1, FN#90}; I may quote the two talking-birds left to watch over his young wife by Rajah Ras�l� (son of Shaliv�hana the great Indian monarch circ. A.D. 81), who is to the Punjab what Rustam is to Persia and Antar to Arabia. In the “Seven Wise Masters” the parrot becomes a magpie and Mr. Clouston, in some clever papers on “Popular Tales and Fictions” contributed to the Glasgow Evening Times (1884), compares it with the history, in the Gesta Romanorum, of the Adulteress, the Abigail, and the Three Cocks, two of which crowed during the congress of the lady and her lover. All these evidently belong to the Sindibad cycle.

 

[FN#165] In the days of the Caliph Al-Mustakf� bi �llah (A.H.

333=944) the youth of Baghdad studied swimming and it is said that they could swim holding chafing-dishes upon which were cooking-pots and keep afloat till the meat was dressed. The story is that of “The Washerman and his Son who were drowned in the Nile,” of the Book of Sindibad.

 

[FN#166] Her going to the bath suggested that she was fresh from coition..

 

[FN#167] Taken from the life of the Egyptian Mameluke Sultan (No.

viii, regn. A.H, 825= A.D. 1421) who would not suffer his subjects to prostrate themselves or kiss the ground before him.

See D’Herbelot for details.

 

[FN#168] This nauseous Joe Miller has often been told in the hospitals of London and Paris. It is as old as the Hitopadesa.

 

[FN#169] Koran iv. 81, “All is from Allah;” but the evil which befals mankind, though ordered by Allah, is yet the consequence of their own wickedness (I add, which wickedness was created by Allah).

 

[FN#170] The Bresl. Edit. (xii. 266) says “bathing.”

 

[FN#171] This tale is much like that told in the Fifth Night (vol. i. 54). It is the story of the Prince and the Lamia in the Book of Sindibad wherein it is given with Persian rhetoric and diffuseness.

 

[FN#172] Arab. “Wa’ar”= rocky, hilly, tree-less ground unfit for riding. I have noted that the three Heb. words “Year” (e.g.

Kiryath-Yearin=City of forest), “Choresh” (now Hirsh, a scrub), and “Pardes” ({Greek letters} a chase, a hunting-park opposed to {Greek letters}, an orchard) are preserved in Arabic and are intelligible in Palestine. (Unexplored Syria, i. 207.) [FN#173] The privy and the bath are favourite haunts of the Jinns.

 

[FN#174] Arab history is full of petty wars caused by trifles. In Egypt the clans Sa’ad and Har�m and in Syria the Kays and Yaman (which remain to the present day) were as pugnacious as Highland Caterans. The tale bears some likeness to the accumulative nursery rhymes in “The House that Jack Built,” and “The Old Woman and the Crooked Sixpence;” which find their indirect original in an allegorical Talmudic hymn.

 

[FN#175] This is “The Story of the Old Man who sent his Young Wife to the Market to buy Rice,” told with Persian reflections in the “Book of Sindibad.”

 

[FN#176] Koran xii. 28. The words were spoken by Potiphar to Joseph.

 

[FN#177] Koran iv. 78. A mis-quotation, the words are, “Fight therefore against the friends of Satan, for the craft of Satan shall be weak.”

 

[FN#178] i.e. Koranic versets.

 

[FN#179] In the Book of Sindibad this is the “Story of the Prince who went out to hunt and the stratagem which the Wazir practised on him.”

 

[FN#180] I have noted that it is a dire affront to an Arab if his first cousin marry any save himself without his formal leave.

 

[FN#181] i.e. the flowery, the splendid; an epithet of Fatimah, the daughter of the Apostle “the bright blooming.” F�timah is an old Arab name of good omen, “the weaner:” in Egypt it becomes Fatt�mah (an incrementative= “great weaner”); and so Am�nah, Khad�jah and Naf�sah on the banks of the Nile are barbarised to Amm�nah, Khadd�gah and Naff�sah.

 

[FN#182] i.e. his coming misfortune, the phrase being euphemistic.

 

[FN#183] Arab. “R�y:” in theology it means “private judgment” and “R�y�” (act. partic.) is a Rationalist. The Hanaf� School is called “Ash�b al-R�y” because it allows more liberty of thought than the other three orthodox.

 

[FN#184] The angels in Al-Islam ride piebalds.

 

[FN#185] In the Bresl. Edit. “Z�jir” (xii. 286).

 

[FN#186] This is the “King’s Son and the Merchant’s Wife” of the Hitopadesa (chapt. i.) transferred to all the Prakrit versions of India. It is the Story of the Bathkeeper who conducted his Wife to the Son of the King of Kanuj in the Book of Sindibad.

 

[FN#187] The pious Caliph Al-Muktadi bi Amri �llah (A.H. 467=A.D.

1075) was obliged to forbid men entering the baths of Baghdad without drawers.

 

[FN#188] This peculiarity is not uncommon amongst the so-called Aryan and Semitic races, while to the African it is all but unknown. Women highly prize a conformation which (as the prostitute described it) is always “either in his belly or in mine.”

 

[FN#189] Easterns, I have said, are perfectly aware of the fact that women corrupt women much more than men do. The tale is the “Story of the Libertine Husband” in the Book of Sindibad; blended with the “Story of the Go-between and the Bitch” in the Book of Sindibad. It is related in the “Disciplina Clericalis” of Alphonsus (A.D. 1106); the fabliau of La vieille qui seduisit la jeune fille; the Gesta Romanorum (thirteenth century) and the “Cunning Siddhikari” in the Kath�-Sarit-S�gara.

 

[FN#190] The Kashmir people, men and women, have a very bad name in Eastern tales, the former for treachery and the latter for unchastity. A Persian distich says:

 

If folk be scarce as food in dearth ne’er let three lots come near ye:

First Sindi, second Jat, and third a rascally Kashmeeree.

 

The women have fair skins and handsome features but, like all living in that zone, Persians, Sindis, Afghans, etc., their bosoms fall after the first child and become like udders. This is not the case with Hind� women, Rajp�ts, Mar�th�s, etc.

 

[FN#191] By these words she appealed to his honour.

 

[FN#192] These vehicles suggest derivation from European witchery. In the Bresl. Edit. (xii. 304) one of the