The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume X Part 65

were first printed in 1724, 2 vols. in 12mo. Hence, I presume, Lowndes' mistake.

[FN#214] M. Caussin (de Perceval), Professeur of Arabic at the Imperial Library, who edited Galland in 1806, tells us that he found there only two MSS., both imperfect. The first (Galland's) is in three small vols. 4to. each of about pp. 140. The stories are more detailed and the style, more correct than that of other MS., is hardly intelligible to many Arabs, whence he presumes that it contains the original (an early?) text which has been altered and vitiated. The date is supposed to be circa A.D.

1600. The second Parisian copy is a single folio of some 800 pages, and is divided into 29 sections and cmv. Nights, the last two sections being reversed. The MS. is very imperfect, the 12th, 15th, 16th, 18th, 20th, 21st-23rd, 25th and 27th parts are wanting; the sections which follow the 17th contain sundry stories repeated, there are anecdotes from Bidpai, the Ten Wazirs and other popular works, and lacunae everywhere abound.

[FN#215] Mr. Payne (ix. 264) makes eleven, including the Histoire du Dormeur eveille = The Sleeper and the Waker, which he afterwards translated from the Bresl. Edit. in his "Tales from the Arabic" (vol. i. 5, etc.)

[FN#216] Mr. E. J. W. Gibb informs me that he has come upon this tale in a Turkish storybook, the same from which he drew his "Jewad."

[FN#217] A litterateur lately a.s.sured me that Nos. ix. and x.

have been found in the Bibliotheque Nationale (du Roi) Paris; but two friends were kind enough to enquire and ascertained that it was a mistake. Such Persianisms as Codadad (Khudadad), Baba Cogia (Khwajah) and Peri (fairy) suggest a Persic MS.

[FN#218] Vol. vi. 212. "The Arabian Nights' Entertainments (London: Longmans, 1811) by Jonathan Scott, with the Collection of New Tales from the Wortley Montagu MS. in the Bodleian." I regret to see that Messieurs Nimmo in reprinting Scott have omitted his sixth Volume.

[FN#219] Dr. Scott who uses Fitnah (iv. 42) makes it worse by adding "Alcolom (Al-Kulub?) signifying Ravisher of Hearts" and his names for the six slave-girls (vol. iv. 37) such as "Zohorob Bostan" (Zahr al-Bustan), which Galland rightly renders by "Fleur du Jardin," serve only to heap blunder upon blunder. Indeed the Anglo-French translations are below criticism: it would be waste of time to notice them. The characteristic is a servile suit paid to the original e.g. rendering hair "accomode en boucles" by "hair festooned in buckles" (Night ccxiv.), and ile d'ebene (Jazirat al-Abnus, Night xliii.) by "the Isle of Ebene." A certain surly old litterateur tells me that he prefers these wretched versions to Mr. Payne's. Padrone! as the Italians say: I cannot envy his taste or his temper.

[FN#220] De Sacy (Memoire p. 52) notes that in some MSS., the Sultan, ennuye by the last tales of Shahrazad, proposes to put her to death, when she produces her three children and all ends merrily without marriage-bells. Von Hammer prefers this version as the more dramatic, the Frenchman rejects it on account of the difficulties of the accouchements. Here he strains at the gnat-- a common process.

[FN#221] See Journ. Asiatique, iii. serie, vol. viii., Paris, 1839.

[FN#222] "Tausend und Eine Nacht: Arabische Erzahlungen. Zum ersten mal aus einer Tunisischen Handschrift erganzt und vollstandig ubersetzt," Von Max Hab.i.+.c.ht, F. H. von der Hagen und Karl Schatte (the offenders?).

[FN#223] Dr. Hab.i.+.c.ht informs us (Vorwort iii., vol. ix. 7) that he obtained his MS. with other valuable works from Tunis, through a personal acquaintance, a learned Arab, Herr M. Annagar (Mohammed Al-Najjar?) and was aided by Baron de Sacy, Langles and other savants in filling up the lacunae by means of sundry MSS.

The editing was a prodigy of negligence: the corrigenda (of which brief lists are given) would fill a volume; and, as before noticed, the indices of the first four tomes were printed in the fifth, as if the necessity of a list of tales had just struck the dense editor. After Hab.i.+.c.ht's death in 1839 his work was completed in four vols. (ix.-xii.) by the well-known Prof. H. J.

Fleischer who had shown some tartness in his "Dissertatio Critica de Glossis Hab.i.+.c.htianis." He carefully imitated all the shortcomings of his predecessor and even omitted the Verzeichniss etc., the Varianten and the Glossary of Arabic words not found in Golius, which formed the only useful part of the first eight volumes.

[FN#224] Die in Tausend und Eine Nacht noch nicht ubersetzten Nachte, Erzahlungen und Anekdoten, zum erstenmal aus dem Arabischen in das Franzosische ubersetzt von J. von Hammer, und aus dem Franzosischen in das Deutsche von A. E. Zinserling, Professor, Stuttgart und Tubingen, 1823. Drei Bde. 80 .

Trebutien's, therefore, is the translation of a translation of a translation.

[FN#225] Tausend und Eine Nacht Arabische Erzahlungen. Zum erstenmale aus dem Urtexte vollstandig und treu uebersetze von Dr. Gustav Weil. He began his work on return from Egypt in 1836 and completed his first version of the Arabische Meisterwerk in 1838-42 (3 vols. roy. oct.). I have the Zweiter Abdruck der dritten (2d reprint of 3d) in 4 vols. 8vo., Stuttgart, 1872. It has more than a hundred woodcuts.

[FN#226] My learned friend Dr. Wilhelm Storck, to whose admirable translations of Camoens I have often borne witness, notes that this Vorhalle, or Porch to the first edition, a rhetorical introduction addressed to the general public, is held in Germany to be valueless and that it was noticed only for the Bemerkung concerning the offensive pa.s.sages which Professor Weil had toned down in his translation. In the Vorwort of the succeeding editions (Stuttgart) it is wholly omitted.

[FN#227] The most popular are now "Mille ed una notte. Novelle Arabe." Napoli, 1867, 8vo ill.u.s.trated, 4 francs; and "Mille ed une notte. Novelle Arabe, versione italiana nuovamente emendata e corredata di note"; 4 vols. in 32 (dateless) Milano, 8vo, 4 francs.

[FN#228] These are; (l) by M. Caussin (de Perceval), Paris, 1806, 9 vols. 8vo. (2) Edouard Gauttier, Paris, 1822-24: 7 vols. 12mo; (3) M. Destain, Paris, 1823-25, 6 vols. 8vo, and (4) Baron de Sacy, Paris. 1838 (?) 3 vols. large 8vo, ill.u.s.trated (and vilely ill.u.s.trated).

[FN#229] The number of fables and anecdotes varies in the different texts, but may be a.s.sumed to be upwards of four hundred, about half of which were translated by Lane.

[FN#230] I have noticed these points more fully in the beginning of chapt. iii. "The Book of the Sword."

[FN#231] A notable instance of Roman superficiality, incuriousness and ignorance. Every old Egyptian city had its idols (images of metal, stone or wood), in which the Deity became incarnate as in the Catholic host; besides its own symbolic animal used as a Kiblah or prayer-direction (Jerusalem or Meccah), the visible means of fixing and concentrating the thoughts of the vulgar, like the crystal of the hypnotist or the disk of the electro-biologist. And G.o.ddess Diana was in no way better than G.o.ddess Pasht. For the true view of idolatry see Koran x.x.xix. 4. I am deeply grateful to Mr. P. le Page Renouf (Soc. of Biblic. Archaeology, April 6, 1886) for identifying the Manibogh, Michabo or Great Hare of the American indigenes with Osiris Unnefer ("Hare G.o.d"). These are the lines upon which investigation should run. And of late years there is a notable improvement of tone in treating of symbolism or idolatry: the Lingam and the Yoni are now described as "mystical representations, and perhaps the best possible impersonal representatives of the abstract expressions paternity and maternity" (Prof. Monier Williams in "Folk-lore Record" vol. iii.

part i. p. 118).

[FN#232] See Jotham's fable of the Trees and King Bramble (Judges lxi. 8) and Nathan's parable of the Poor Man and his little ewe Lamb (2 Sam. ix. 1).

[FN#233] Herodotus (ii. c. 134) notes that "aesop the fable-writer ( ) was one of her (Rhodopis) fellow slaves".

Aristophanes (Vespae, 1446) refers to his murder by the Delphians and his fable beginning, "Once upon a time there was a fight;"

while the Scholiast finds an allusion to The Serpent and the Crab in Pax 1084; and others in Vespae 1401, and Aves 651.

[FN#234] There are three distinct Lokmans who are carefully confounded in Sale (Koran chapt. x.x.xi.) and in Smith's Dict. of Biography etc. art. aesopus. The first or eldest Lokman, ent.i.tled Al-Hakim (the Sage) and the hero of the Koranic chapter which bears his name, was son of Ba'ura of the Children of Azar, sister's son of Job or son of Job's maternal aunt; he witnessed David's miracles of mail-making and when the tribe of 'ad was destroyed, he became King of the country. The second, also called the Sage, was a slave, an Abyssinian negro, sold to the Israelites during the reign of David or Solomon, synchronous with the Persian Kay Kaus and Kay Khusrau, also Pythagoras the Greek (!) His physique is alluded to in the saying, "Thou resemblest Lokman (in black ugliness) but not in wisdom" (Ibn Khallikan i.

145). This negro or negroid, after a G.o.dly and edifying life, left a volume of "Amsal," proverbs and exempla (not fables or apologues); and Easterns still say, "One should not pretend to teach Lokman"--in Persian, "Hikmat ba Lokman amokhtan." Three of his apothegms dwell in the public memory: "The heart and the tongue are the best and worst parts of the human body." "I learned wisdom from the blind who make sure of things by touching them" (as did St. Thomas); and when he ate the colocynth offered by his owner, "I have received from thee so many a sweet that 'twould be surprising if I refused this one bitter." He was buried (says the Tarikh Muntakhab) at Ramlah in Judaea, with the seventy Prophets stoned in one day by the Jews. The youngest Lokman "of the vultures" was a prince of the tribe of Ad who lived 3,500 years, the age of seven vultures (Tabari). He could dig a well with his nails; hence the saying, "Stronger than Lokman" (A. P. i. 701); and he loved the arrow-game, hence, "More gambling than Lokman" (ibid. ii. 938). "More voracious than Lokman" (ibid i. 134) alludes to his eating one camel for breakfast and another for supper. His wife Barakish also appears in proverb, e.g. "Camel us and camel thyself" (ibid. i. 295) i.e.

give us camel flesh to eat, said when her son by a former husband brought her a fine joint which she and her husband relished.

Also, "Barakish hath sinned against her kin" (ibid. ii. 89). More of this in Chenery's Al-Hariri p. 422; but the three Lokmans are there reduced to two.

[FN#235] I have noticed them in vol. ii. 47-49. "To the Gold Coast for Gold."

[FN#236] I can hardly accept the dictum that the Katha Sarit Sagara, of which more presently, is the "earliest representation of the first collection."

[FN#237] The Pehlevi version of the days of King a.n.u.s.h.i.+rwan (A.D.

531-72) became the Humayun-nameh ("August Book") turned into Persian for Bahram Shah the Ghaznavite: the Hitopadesa ("Friends.h.i.+p-boon") of Prakrit, avowedly compiled from the "Panchatantra," became the Hindu Panchopakhyan, the Hindostani Akhlak-i-Hindi ("Moralities of Ind") and in Persia and Turkey the Anvar-i-Suhayli ("Lights of Canopus"). Arabic, Hebrew and Syriac writers ent.i.tle their version Kalilah wa d.a.m.nah, or Kalilaj wa d.a.m.naj, from the name of the two jackal-heroes, and Europe knows the recueil as the Fables of Pilpay or Bidpay (Bidya-pati, Lord of learning?) a learned Brahman reported to have been Premier at the Court of the Indian King Dabishlim.

[FN#238] Diet. Philosoph. S. V. Apocrypha.

[FN#239] The older Arab writers, I repeat, do not ascribe fables or beast-apologues to Lokman; they record only "dictes" and proverbial sayings.

[FN#240] Professor Taylor Lewis: Preface to Pilpay.

[FN#241] In the Katha Sarit Sagara the beast-apologues are more numerous, but they can be reduced to two great nuclei; the first in chapter lx. (Lib. x.) and the second in the same book chapters lxii-lxv. Here too they are mixed up with anecdotes and acroamata after the fas.h.i.+on of The Nights, suggesting great antiquity for this style of composition.

[FN#242] Brugsch, History of Egypt, vol. i. 266 et seq. The fabliau is interesting in more ways than one. Anepu the elder (Potiphar) understands the language of cattle, an idea ever cropping up in Folk-lore; and Bata (Joseph), his "little brother," who becomes a "panther of the South (Nubia) for rage"

at the wife's impudique proposal, takes the form of a bull-- metamorphosis full blown. It is not, as some have called it, the "oldest book in the world;" that name was given by M. Chabas to a MS. of Proverbs, dating from B.C. 2200. See also the "Story of Saneha," a novel earlier than the popular date of Moses, in the Contes Populaires of Egypt.

[FN#243] The fox and the jackal are confounded by the Arabic dialects not by the Persian, whose "Rubah" can never be mistaken for "s.h.a.ghal." "Sa'lab" among the Semites is locally applied to either beast and we can distinguish the two only by the fox being solitary and rapacious, and the jackal gregarious and a carrion-eater. In all Hindu tales the jackal seems to be an awkward subst.i.tute for the Grecian and cla.s.sical fox, the Giddar or Kola (Cants aureus) being by no means sly and wily as the Lomri (Vulpes vulgaris). This is remarked by Weber (Indische Studien) and Prof. Benfey's retort about "King n.o.bel" the lion is by no means to the point. See Katha Sarit Sagara, ii. 28.

I may add that in Northern Africa jackal's gall, like jackal's grape (Solanum nigrum = black nightshade), a.s.s's milk and melted camel-hump, is used aphrodisiacally as an unguent by both s.e.xes.

See. p. 239, etc., of Le Jardin parfume du Cheikh Nefzaoui, of whom more presently.

[FN#244] Rambler, No. lxvii.

[FN#245] Some years ago I was asked by my old landlady if ever in the course of my travels I had come across Captain Gulliver.

[FN#246] In "The Adventurer" quoted by Mr. Heron, "Translator's Preface to the Arabian Tales of Chaves and Cazotte."

[FN#247] "Life in a Levantine Family" chapt. xi. Since the able author found his "family" firmly believing in The Nights, much has been changed in Alexandria; but the faith in Jinn and Ifrit, ghost and vampire is lively as ever.

[FN#248] The name dates from the second century A. H. or before A. D. 815.

[FN#249] Dabistan i. 231 etc.

[FN#250] Because Si = thirty and Murgh = bird. In McClenachan's Addendum to Mackay's Encyclopaeedia of Freemasonry we find the following definition: "Simorgh. A monstrous griffin, guardian of the Persian mysteries."

[FN#251] For a poor and inadequate description of the festivals commemorating this "Architect of the G.o.ds" see vol. iii. 177, "View of the History etc. of the Hindus" by the learned Dr. Ward, who could see in them only the "low and sordid nature of idolatry." But we can hardly expect better things from a missionary in 1822, when no one took the trouble to understand what "idolatry" means.

[FN#252] Rawlinson (ii. 491) on Herod. iii. c. 102. Nearchus saw the skins of these formicae Indicae, by some rationalists explained as "jackals," whose stature corresponds with the text, and by others as "pengolens" or ant-eaters (manis pentedactyla). The learned Sanskritist, H. H. Wilson, quotes the name Pippilika = ant-gold, given by the people of Little Thibet to the precious dust thrown up in the emmet heaps.

[FN#253] A writer in the Edinburgh Review (July, '86), of whom more presently, suggests that The Nights a.s.sumed essentially their present shape during the general revival of letters, arts and requirements which accompanied the Kurdish and Tartar irruptions into the Nile Valley, a golden age which embraced the whole of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and ended with the Ottoman Conquest in A. D. 1527.

[FN#254] Let us humbly hope not again to hear of the golden prime of