The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume XIV Part 23

iv. p. 83. Readers will be pleased with this description of a Jinni; and not a few will regret that they have not one at command. Yet the history of man's locomotion compels us to believe that we are progressing towards the time when humanity will become volatile. Pre-historic Adam was condemned to "Shanks his mare," or to "go on footback," as the Boers have it, and his earliest step was the chariot; for, curious to say, driving amongst most peoples preceded riding, as the row-boat forewent the sailer. But as men increased and the world became smaller and time shorter the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, after many abortive attempts, converted the chariot into a railway-car and the sailer into a steamer. Aerostatics are still in their infancy and will grow but little until human society shall find some form of flying an absolute necessity when, as is the history of all inventions, the winged woman (and her man) of Peter Wilkins will pa.s.s from fiction into fact. But long generations must come and go before "h.o.m.o sapiens" can expect to perfect a practice which in the present state of mundane society would be fatal to all welfare.

[FN#362] Scott (p. 200) "Welcome to the sovereign of the Aoon, friendly to his brethren," (siddik al Akhwan) etc. Elsewhere he speaks of "the Oone."

[FN#363] So he carried a portable "toilette," like a certain Crown Prince and Prince Bahman in Suppl. vol. iii. 329.

[FN#364] There is another form of the saw in verse:--

Good is good and he's best whoso worketh it first; * And ill is for me of provisions the worst.

The provision is=viatic.u.m, provaunt for the way.

[The MS. has "akram" and "azlam"="the more generous," "the more iniquitous," meaning that while good should be requited by good, and evil provokes further evil in retaliation, the beginner in either case deserves the greater praise or blame.--ST.]

[FN#365] I have noted (vols. iii. 75, and viii. 266) that there are two "Soudans" as we write the word, one Eastern upon the Upper Nile Valley and the other Western and drained by the Niger water-shed. The former is here meant. It is or should be a word of shame to English ears after the unG.o.dly murder and ma.s.sacre of the gallant "Soudanese" negroids who had ever been most friendly to us and whom with scant reason to boast we attacked and destroyed because they aspired to become free from Turkish task-masters and Egyptian tax-gatherers. That such horrors were perpetrated by order of one of the most humane amongst our statesmen proves and decidedly proves one thing, an intense ignorance of geography and ethnology.

[FN#366] [In the MS. "lawa 'a-hu" for which Sir Richard conjectures the reading "lawwahahu" taking the p.r.o.noun to refer to the sword. I believe, however, the word to be a clerical error for our old acquaintance "lawa'a-hu" (see supra p. 203) and, referring the p.r.o.noun in the three verbs to the Lion, would translate: "and he worried him," etc.--ST.]

[FN#367] Arab. "Al-basharah," see vol. i. 30: Scott has (vi. 204) "Good tidings to our sovereign."

[FN#368] [The MS. is here rather indistinct; still, as far as I can make out, it runs: "wa Hakki man aulani haza 'l-Mulk"=and by the right of (i.e. my duty towards) Him who made me ruler over this kingdom.--ST.]

[FN#369] [The word in the MS. is difficult to decipher. In a later pa.s.sage we find corresponding with it the expression "yumazasa-hu fii 'l-Kalam," which is evidently a clerical error for "yumarasa-hu"=he tested or tried him in his speech.

Accordingly I would read here: "yakhburu ma'ahu fi 'l-Kalam,"

lit.=he experimented with him, i.e. put him to his test. The idea seems to be, that he first cross-examined him and then tried to intimidate him. With this explanation "yusahi-hu" and later on "yulhi-hu" would tally, which both have about the same meaning: to divert the attention, to make forget one thing over another, hence to confuse and lead one to contradict himself.--ST.]

[FN#370] Here we find the old superst.i.tious idea that no census or "numbering of the people" should take place save by direct command of the Creator. Compare the pestilence which arose in the latter days of David when Joab by command of the King undertook the work (2 Sam. xxiv. 1-9, etc.).

[FN#371] The text has "Salasin"=thirty, evidently a clerical error.

[FN#372] [In Ar. "yanjaaru," vii. form of "jaara" (med. Hamzah), in which the idea of "raising," "lifting up," seems to prevail, for it is used for raising the voice in prayer to G.o.d, and for the growing high of plants.--ST.]

[FN#373] The text, which is wholly unedited, reads, "He found the beasts and their loads (? the camels) and the learned men," &c. A new form of "Bos atque sacerdos" and of place pour les anes et les savants, as the French soldiers cried in Egypt when the scientists were admitted into the squares of infantry formed against the doughty Mameluke cavalry.

[FN#374] [In the MS. "waraytani ila l-turab"=thou hast given me over to the ground for concealment, iii. form of "wara," which takes the meaning of "hiding," "keeping secret."--ST.]

[FN#375] [The MS. has "wa dazz-ha," which is an evident corruption. The translator, placing the diacritical point over the first radical instead of the second, reads "wa zarr-ha," and renders accordingly. But if in the MS. the dot is misplaced, the Tashdid over it would probably also belong to the Dal, resp. Zal, and as it is very feasible that a careless writer should have dropped one Waw before another, I am inclined to read "wa wazzar-ha" = "and he left her," "let her go," "set her free." In cla.s.sical Arabic only the imperative "Zar," and the aorist "yazaru" of the verb "wazara" occur in this sense, while the preterite is replaced by "taraka," or some other synonym. But the language of the common people would not hesitate to use a form scorned by the grammarians, and even to improve upon it by deriving from it one of their favourite intensives.--St.]

[FN#376] Both are civil forms of refusal: for the first see vols.

i. 32; vi. 216; and for the second ix. 309.

[FN#377] Everything being fair in love and war and dealing with a "Kafir," i.e. a non-Moslem.

[FN#378] In text "Labbayka" = here am I: see vol. i. 226.

[FN#379] In text "'ud Khayzaran" - wood of the rattan, which is orig. "Rota," from the Malay "Rotan." Vol. ii. 66, &c.

[FN#380] [In the MS. "al-Zaman." The translation here adopted is plausible enough. Still I think it probable that the careless scribe has omitted the words "ya al-Malik" before it, and meant to write "O king of the age!" as in so many preceding places.- -St.]

[FN#381] Arab. "Al-Kuhna," plur. Of "Kahin 't" = diviner, priest (non-Levitical): see "Cohen," ii. 221. [The form is rather curious. The Dictionaries quote "Kuhna" as a Syriac singular, but here it seems to be taken as a plural of the measure "fu'ala"

(Kuhana), like Umara of Amir or Shu'ara of Sha'ir. The usual plurals of Kahin are Kahanah and Kuhhan.--St.]

[FN#382] This is a celebrated incident in "Alaeddin," "New lamps for old:" See Suppl. vol. iii. 119.

[FN#383] In text "Jazdan" = a pencase (Pers.) more pop. called "Kalamdan" = reed-box, vol. iv. 167: Scott (p. 212) has a "writing-stand." It appears a queer place wherein to keep a ring, but Easterns often store in these highly ornamented boxes signets and other small matters.

[FN#384] Arab. "Bahr al-Muhit" = Circ.u.mambient Ocean; see vol. i.

133.

[FN#385] Arab. "Far" (plur. "Firan") = mouse rather than rat.

[FN#386] Sleep at this time is considered very unwholesome by Easterns. See under "Kaylulah" = siesta, vols. i. 51; ii. 178, and viii. 191.

[FN#387] Modern science which, out of the depths of its self-consciousness, has settled so many disputed questions, speaking by the organs of Messieurs Woodman and Tidy ("Medical Jurisprudence") has decided that none of the lower animals can bear issue to man. But the voice of the world is against them and as Voltaire says one cannot be cleverer than everybody. To begin with there is the will: the she-quadruman shows a distinct l.u.s.t for man by fondling him and displaying her parts as if to entice him. That carnal connection has actually taken place cannot be doubted: my late friend Mirza Ali Akbar, of Bombay, the famous Muns.h.i.+ to Sir Charles Napier during the conquest of Sind, a man perfectly veracious and trustworthy, a.s.sured me that in the Gujarat province he had witnessed a case with his own eyes. He had gone out "to the jungle," as the phrase is, with another Moslem who, after keeping him waiting for an unconscionable time, was found carnally united to a she-monkey. My friend, indignant as a good Moslem should be, reproved him for his b.e.s.t.i.a.lity and then asked him how it had come to pa.s.s: the man answered that the she-monkey came regularly to look at him on certain occasions, that he was in the habit of throwing her something to eat and that her grat.i.tude displayed such s.e.xuality that he was tempted and "fell." That the male monkey shows an equal desire for the woman is known to every frequenter of the "Zoo." I once led a party of English girls to see a collection of mandrill and other anthropoid apes in the Menagerie of a well-known Russian millionaire, near Florence, when the Priapism displayed was such that the girls turned back and fled in fright. In the mother-lands of these anthropoids (the Gaboon, Malacca etc.) the belief is universal and women have the liveliest fear of them. In 1853 when the Crimean war was brewing a dog-faced baboon in Cairo broke away from his "Kuraydati" (ape-leader), threw a girl in the street and was about to ravish her when a sentinel drew his bayonet and killer the beast. The event was looked upon as an evil omen by the older men, who shook their heads and declared that these were bad times when apes attempted to ravish the daughters of Moslems. But some will say that the grand test, the existence of the mule between man and monkey, though generally believed in, is characteristically absent, absent as the "missing link" which goes so far as to invalidate Darwinism in one and perhaps the most important part of its contention. Of course the offspring of such union would be destroyed, yet t he fact of our never having found a trace of it except in legend and idle story seems to militate against its existence. When, however, man shall become "h.o.m.o Sapiens" he will cast off the prejudices of the cradle and the nursery and will ascertain by actual experiment if human being and monkey can breed together. The lowest order of bimana, and the highest order of quadrumana may, under most favourable circ.u.mstances, bear issue and the "Mule," who would own half a soul, might prove most serviceable as a hewer of wood and a drawer of water, in fact as an agricultural labourer. All we can say is that such "miscegenation" stands in the category of things not proven and we must object to science declaring them non-existing. A correspondent favours me with the following note upon the subject:--Castanheda (Annals of Portugal) relates that a woman was transporter to an island inhabited by monkeys and took up her abode in a cavern where she was visited by a huge baboon.

He brought her apples and fruit and at last had connection with her, the result being two children in two to three years; but when she was being carrier off by a s.h.i.+p the parent monkey kissed his progeny. The woman was taken to Lisbon and imprisoned for life by the King. Langius, Virgilius Polydorus and others quote many instances of monstruous births in Rome resulting from the connection of women with dogs and bears, and cows with horses, &c. The following relative conditions are deduced on the authority of MM. Jean Polfya and Mauriceau:--1. If the s.e.xual organism of man or woman be more powerful than that of the monkey, dog, etc. the result will be a monster in the semblance of man. 2. If vice-versa the appearance will be that of a beast.

3. If both are equal the result will be a distinct sub-species as of the horse with the a.s.s.

[FN#388] Arab. "Tanim" (plur. of Tamimit) = spells, charms, amulets, as those hung to a horse's neck, the African Greegree and the Heb. Thummim. As was the case with most of these earliest superst.i.tions, the Serpent, the Ark, the Cherubim, the Golden Calf (Apis) and the Levitical Inst.i.tution, the Children of Israel derived the now mysterious term "Urim" (lights) and "Thummim"

(amulets) from Egypt and the Semitic word (Tamimah) still remains to explain the Hebrew. "Thummim," I may add, is by "general consensus" derived from "Tom" = completeness and is englished "Perfection," but we can find a better origin near at hand in spoken Arabic.

[FN#389] These verses have already occurred, see my vol. i. p.

275. I have therefore quoted Payne, i. p. 246.

[FN#390] Arab. "Wakil" who, in the case of a grown-up girl, declares her consent to the marriage in the presence of two witnesses and after part payment of the dowry.

[FN#391] Such is the meaning of the Arab. "Thayyib."

[FN#392] This appears to be the popular belief in Egypt. See vol.

iv. 297, which a.s.sures us that "no thing poketh and stroketh more strenuously than the Gird" (or hideous Ahyssinian cynocephalus).

But it must be based upon popular ignorance: the private parts of the monkey although they erect stiffly, like the priapus of Osiris when swearing upon his Phallus, are not of the girth sufficient to produce that friction which is essential to a woman's pleasure. I may here allude to the general disappointment in England and America caused by the exhibition of my friend Paul de Chaillu's Gorillas: he had modestly removed p.e.n.i.s and t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, the latter being somewhat like a bull's, and his squeamishness caused not a little grumbling and sense of grievance--especially amongst the curious s.e.x.

[FN#393] [In the MS. "fahakat," lit. she flowed over like a brimful vessel.--ST.]

[FN#394] In 1821, Scott (p. 214) following Gilchrist's method of transliterating eastern tongues wrote "Abou Neeut" and "Neeuteen"

(the latter a bad blunder making a masc. plural of a fem. dual).

In 1822 Edouard Gauttier (vi. 320) gallicised the names to "Abou- Nyout" and "Abou-Nyoutyn" with the same mistake and one superadded; there is no such Arabic word as "Niyut." Mr. Kirby in 1822, "The New Arabian Nights" (p. 366) reduced the words to "Abu Neut" and "Abu Neuteen," which is still less intelligible than Scott's; and, lastly, the well-known Turkish scholar Dr.

Redhouse converted the tortured names to "Abu Niyyet" and "Abu Niyyeteyn," thus rightly giving a "tashdid" (reduplication sign) to the Ya (see Appendix p. 430 to Suppl. Vol. No iii. and Turk.

Dict. sub voce "Niyyat"). The Arab. is "Niyyah" = will, purpose, intent; "Abu Niyyah" (Grammat. "Abu Niyyatin") Father of one Intent = single-minded and "Abu Niyyatayn" = Father of two Intents or double-minded; and Richardson is deficient when he writes only "Niyat" for "Niyyat." I had some hesitation about translating this tale which begins with the "Envier and the Envied" (vol. i. 123) and ends with the "Sisters who envied their Cadette" (Supple. vol. iii. 313). But the extant versions of it are so imperfect in English and French that I made up my mind to include it in this collection.--[Richardson's "Niyat" is rather another, although rarer form of the same word.--St.]

[FN#395] [I read: "wa tukarribu 'I-'abda ilayya," referring the verb to "al-Sadakh" (the alms) and translating: "and it bringeth the servant near to me," the speaker, in Coranic fas.h.i.+on supposed to be Allah.--St.]

[FN#396] The text prefers the Egyptian form "Sherifi" pl.

"Sherifiyah," which was adopted by the Portuguese.

[FN#397] The grace after meat, "Bismillah" being that which precedes it. Abu Niyyah was more grateful than a youth of my acquaintance who absolutely declined asking the Lord to "make him truly thankful" after a dinner of cold mutton.

[FN#398] [The root "Kart" is given in the dictionaries merely to introduce the word "karit" = complete, speaking of a year, &c., and "Takrit," the name of a town in Mesopotamia, celebrated for its velvets and as the birth-place of Saladin. According to the first mentioned word I would take the signification of "Kart" to "complement" which here may fitly be rendered by "remainder," for that which with regard to the full contents of the dinner tray is their complement would of course be their remainder with regard to the viands that have been eaten.--St.]