widely known stories in the work, Aladdin and the Forty Thieves,
conjectures have been manifold but they mostly run upon three lines. De
Sacy held that they were found by Galland in the public libraries of
Paris. Mr. Chenery, whose acquaintance with Arabic grammar was ample,
suggested that the Professor had borrowed them from the recitations of
the Rawis, rhapsodists or professional story-tellers in the bazars of
Smyrna and other ports of the Levant. The late Mr. Henry Charles Coote
(in the “Folk-Lore Record,” vol. iii. Part ii. p. 178 et seq.), “On the
source of some of M. Galland’s Tales,” quotes from popular Italian,
Sicilian and Romaic stories incidents identical with those in Prince
Ahmad, Aladdin, Ali Baba and the Envious Sisters, suggesting that the
Frenchman had heard these _paramythia_ in Levantine coffee-houses and
had inserted them into his unequalled _corpus fabularum_. Mr. Payne (ix.
268) conjectures the probability “of their having been composed at a
comparatively recent period by an inhabitant of Baghdad, in imitation of
the legends of Haroun er Rashid and other well-known tales of the
original work;” and adds, “It is possible that an exhaustive examination
of the various MS. copies of the Thousand and One Nights known to exist
in the public libraries of Europe might yet cast some light upon the
question of the origin of the interpolated Tales.” I quite agree with
him, taking “The Sleeper and the Waker” and “Zeyn Al-asnam” as cases in
point; but I should expect, for reasons before given, to find the
stories in a Persic rather than an Arabic MS. And I feel convinced that
all will be recovered: Galland was not the man to commit a literary
forgery.
As regards Aladdin, the most popular tale of the whole work, I am
convinced that it is genuine, although my unfortunate friend, the late
Professor Palmer, doubted its being an Eastern story. It is laid down
upon all the lines of Oriental fiction. The mise-en-scène is China,
“where they drink a certain warm liquor” (tea); the hero’s father is a
poor tailor; and, as in “Judar and his Brethren,” the Maghribi Magician
presently makes his appearance, introducing the Wonderful Lamp and the
Magical Ring. Even the Sorcerer’s cry, “New lamps for old lamps!”—a
prime point—is paralleled in the Tale of the Fisherman’s son,[218] where
the Jew asks in exchange only old rings and the Princess, recollecting
that her husband kept a shabby, well-worn ring in his writing-stand, and
he being asleep, took it out and sent it to the man. In either tale the
palace is transported to a distance and both end with the death of the
wicked magician and the hero and heroine living happily together ever
after.
All Arabists have remarked the sins of omission and commission, of
abridgment, amplification and substitution, and the audacious distortion
of fact and phrase in which Galland freely indulged, whilst his
knowledge of Eastern languages proves that he knew better. But literary
license was the order of his day and at that time French, always the
most bégueule of European languages, was bound by a rigorisme of the
narrowest and the straightest of lines from which the least écart
condemned a man as a barbarian and a _tudesque_. If we consider Galland
fairly we shall find that he errs mostly for a purpose, that of
popularising his work; and his success indeed justified his means. He
has been derided (by scholars) for “Hé Monsieur!” and “Ah Madame!”; but
he could not write “O mon sieur” and “O ma dame;” although we can borrow
from biblical and Shakespearean English, “O my lord!” and “O my lady!”
“Bon Dieu! ma sœur” (which our translators english by “O heavens,” Night
xx.) is good French for Wa ’lláhi—by Allah; and “cinquante cavaliers
bien faits” (“fifty handsome gentlemen on horseback”) is a more familiar
picture than fifty knights. “L’officieuse Dinarzade” (Night lxi.), and
“Cette plaisante querelle des deux frères” (Night lxxii.) become
ridiculous only in translation—“the officious Dinarzade” and “this
pleasant quarrel;” while “ce qu’il y de remarquable” (Night lxxiii.)
would relieve the Gallic mind from the mortification of “Destiny
decreed.” “Plusieurs sortes de fruits et de bouteilles de vin” (Night
ccxxxi. etc.) europeanises flasks and flaggons; and the violent
convulsions in which the girl dies (Night cliv., her head having been
cut off by her sister) is mere Gallic squeamishness: France laughs at
“le shoking” in England but she has only to look at home especially
during the reign of Galland’s contemporary—Roi Soleil. The terrible “Old
man” (Shaykh) “of the Sea” (-board) is badly described by “l’incommode
vieillard” (“the ill-natured old fellow”): “Brave Maimune” and “Agréable
Maimune” are hardly what a Jinni would say to a Jinniyah (ccxiii.); but
they are good Gallic. The same may be noted of “Plier les voiles pour
marque qu’il se rendait” (Night ccxxxv.), a European practice; and of
the false note struck in two passages. “Je m’estimais heureuse d’avoir
fait une si belle conquête” (Night lxvii.) gives a Parisian turn; and,
“Je ne puis voir sans horreur cet abominable barbier que voilà:
quoiqu’il soit né dans un pays où tout le monde est blanc, il ne laisse
pas à ressembler à un Éthiopien; mais il a l’âme encore plus noire et
horrible que le visage” (Night clvii.), is a mere affectation of
Orientalism. Lastly, “Une vieille dame de leur connaissance” (Night
clviii.) puts French polish upon the matter of fact Arab’s “an old
woman.”
The list of absolute mistakes, not including violent liberties, can
hardly be held excessive. Professor Weil and Mr. Payne (ix. 271) justly
charge Galland with making the Trader (Night i.) throw away the _shells_
(_écorces_) of the date which has only a pellicle, as Galland certainly
knew; but dates were not seen every day in France, while almonds and
walnuts were of the quatre mendiants. He preserves the écorces, which
later issues have changed to noyaux, probably in allusion to the jerking
practice called Inwá. Again in the “First Shaykh’s Story” (vol. i. 27)
the “maillet” is mentioned as the means of slaughtering cattle, because
familiar to European readers: at the end of the tale it becomes “le
couteau funeste.” In Badr al-Din a “tarte à la crême,” so well known to
the West, displaces, naturally enough, the outlandish “mess of
pomegranate-seeds.” Though the text especially tells us the hero removed
his bag-trousers (not only “son habit”) and placed them under the
pillow, a crucial fact in the history, our Professor sends him to bed
fully dressed, apparently for the purpose of informing his readers in a
footnote that Easterns “se couchent en caleçon” (Night lxxx). It was
mere ignorance to confound the arbalète or cross-bow with the stone-bow
(Night xxxviii.), but this has universally been done, even by Lane who
ought to have known better; and it was an unpardonable carelessness or
something worse to turn Nár (fire) and Dún (in lieu of) into “le faux
dieu Nardoun” (Night lxv.): as this has been untouched by De Sacy, I
cannot but conclude that he never read the text with the translation.
Nearly as bad also to make the Jewish physician remark, when the youth
gave him the left wrist (Night cl.), “voilà une grande ignorance de ne
savoir pas que l’on presente la main droite à un médecin et non pas la
gauche”—whose exclusive use all travellers in the East must know. I have
noticed the incuriousness which translates “along the Nile-shore” by “up
towards Ethiopia” (Night cli.), and the “Islands of the _Children_ of
Khaledan” (Night ccxi.) instead of the Khálidatáni or Khálidát, the
Fortunate Islands. It was by no means “des petits soufflets” (“some tips
from time to time with her fingers”) which the sprightly dame
administered to the Barber’s second brother (Night clxxi.), but sound
and heavy “cuffs” on the nape; and the sixth brother (Night clxxx.) was
not “aux lèvres fendues” (“he of the hair-lips”), for they had been cut
off by the Badawi jealous of his fair wife. Abu al-Hasan would not greet
his beloved by saluting “le tapis à ses pieds:” he would kiss her hands
and feet. Haïatalnefous (Hayat al-Nufús, Night ccxxvi.) would not “throw
cold water in the Princess’s face:” she would sprinkle it with
eau-de-rose. “Camaralzaman” I addresses his two abominable wives in
language purely European (ccxxx.), “et de la vie il ne s’approcha
d’elles,” missing one of the fine touches of the tale which shows its
hero a weak and violent man, hasty and lacking the pundonor. “La belle
Persienne,” in the Tale of Nur al-Din, was no Persian; nor would her
master address her, “Venez çà, impertinente!” (“come hither,
impertinence”). In the story of Badr, one of the Comoro Islands becomes
“L’île de la Lune.” “Dog” and “dog-son” are not “injures atroces et
indignes d’un grand roi:” the greatest Eastern kings allow themselves
far more energetic and significant language. Fitnah[219] is by no means
“Force de cœurs.” Lastly the _dénoûement_ of The Nights is widely
different in French and in Arabic; but that is probably not Galland’s
fault, as he never saw the original, and indeed he deserves high praise
for having invented so pleasant and sympathetic a close, inferior only
to the Oriental device.[220]
Galland’s fragment has a strange effect upon the Orientalist and those
who take the scholastic view, be it wide or narrow. De Sacy does not
hesitate to say that the work owes much to his fellow-countryman’s hand;
but I judge otherwise: it is necessary to dissociate the two works and
to regard Galland’s paraphrase, which contains only a quarter of The
Thousand Nights and a Night, as a wholly different book. Its attempts to
amplify beauties and to correct or conceal the defects and the
grotesqueness of the original, absolutely suppress much of the local
colour, clothing the bare body in the best of Parisian suits. It ignores
the rhymed prose and excludes the verse, rarely and very rarely
rendering a few lines in a balanced style. It generally rejects the
proverbs, epigrams and moral reflections which form the pith and marrow
of the book; and, worse still, it disdains those finer touches of
character which are often Shakespearean in their depth and delicacy, and
which, applied to a race of familiar ways and thoughts, manners and
customs, would have been the wonder and delight of Europe. It shows only
a single side of the gem that has so many facets. By deference to public
taste it was compelled to expunge the often repulsive simplicity, the
childish indecencies and the wild orgies of the original, contrasting
with the gorgeous tints, the elevated morality and the religious tone of
passages which crowd upon them. We miss the odeur du sang which taints
the parfums du harem; also the humouristic tale and the Rabelaisian
outbreak which relieve and throw out into strong relief the splendour of
Empire and the havoc of Time. Considered in this light it is a caput
mortuum, a magnificent texture seen on the wrong side; and it speaks
volumes for the genius of the man who could recommend it in such blurred
and caricatured condition to readers throughout the civilised world. But
those who look only at Galland’s picture, his effort to “transplant into
European gardens the magic flowers of Eastern fancy,” still compare his
tales with the sudden prospect of magnificent mountains seen after a
long desert-march: they arouse strange longings and indescribable
desires; their marvellous imaginativeness produces an insensible
brightening of mind and an increase of fancy-power, making one dream
that behind them lies the new and unseen, the strange and unexpected—in
fact, all the glamour of the unknown.
The Nights has been translated into every far-extending Eastern tongue,
Persian, Turkish and Hindostani. The latter entitles them Hikáyát
al-Jalílah or Noble Tales, and the translation was made by Munshi Shams
al-Din Ahmad for the use of the College of Fort George in A.H. 1252 =
1836.[221] All these versions are direct from the Arabic: my search for
a translation of Galland into any Eastern tongue has hitherto been
fruitless.
I was assured by the late Bertholdy Seemann that the “language of
Hoffmann and Heine” contained a literal and complete translation of The
Nights; but personal enquiries at Leipzig and elsewhere convinced me
that the work still remains to be done. The first attempt to improve
upon Galland and to show the world what the work really is was made by
Dr. Max Habicht and was printed at Breslau (1824–25), in fifteen small
square volumes.[222] Thus it appeared before the “Tunis Manuscript”[223]
of which it purports to be a translation. The German version is, if
possible, more condemnable than the Arabic original. It lacks every
charm of style; it conscientiously shirks every difficulty; it abounds
in the most extraordinary blunders and it is utterly useless as a
picture of manners or a book of reference. We can explain its lâches
only by the theory that the eminent Professor left the labour to his
collaborateurs and did not take the trouble to revise their careless
work.
The next German translation was by Aulic Councillor J. von
Hammer-Purgstall[224] who, during his short stay at Cairo and
Constantinople, turned into French the tales neglected by Galland. After
some difference with M. Caussin (de Perceval) in 1810, the Styrian
Orientalist entrusted his MS. to Herr Cotta the publisher of Tubingen.
Thus a German version appeared, the translation of a translation, at the
hand of Professor Zinserling,[224] while the French version was
unaccountably lost en route to London. Finally the “Contes inédits,”
etc., appeared in a French translation by G. S. Trébutien (Paris,
mdcccxxviii.). Von Hammer took liberties with the text which can compare
only with those of Lane: he abridged and retrenched till the likeness in
places entirely disappeared; he shirked some difficult passages and he
misexplained others. In fact the work did no honour to the amiable and
laborious historian of the Turks.
The only good German translation of The Nights is due to Dr. Gustav Weil
who, born on April 24, 1808, is still (1886) professing at
Heidelburg.[225] His originals (he tells us) were the Breslau Edition,
the Bulak text of Abd al-Rahman al-Safati and a MS. in the library of
Saxe Gotha. The venerable savant, who has rendered such service to
Arabism, informs me that Aug. Lewald’s “Vorhalle” (pp. i.-xv.)[226] was
written without his knowledge. Dr. Weil neglects the division of days
which enables him to introduce any number of tales: for instance,
Galland’s eleven occupy a large part of vol. iii. The Vorwort wants
development; the notes, confined to a few words, are inadequate and
verse is everywhere rendered by prose, the Saj’a or assonance being
wholly ignored. On the other hand the scholar shows himself by a correct
translation, contrasting strongly with those which preceded him, and by
a strictly literal version, save where the treatment required to be
modified in a book intended for the public. Under such circumstances it
cannot well be other than longsome and monotonous reading.
Although Spain and Italy have produced many and remarkable Orientalists,
I cannot find that they have taken the trouble to translate The Nights
for themselves: cheap and gaudy versions of Galland seem to have
satisfied the public.[227] Notes on the Romaic, Icelandic, Russian (?)
and other versions, will be found in a future page.
Professor Galland has never been forgotten in France where, amongst a
host of editions, four have claims to distinction;[228] and his success
did not fail to create a host of imitators and to attract what De Sacy
justly terms “une prodigieuse importation de marchandise de
contrebande.” As early as 1823 Von Hammer numbered seven in France
(Trébutien, Préface xviii.) and during later years they have grown
prodigiously. Mr. William F. Kirby, who has made a special study of the
subject, has favoured me with detailed bibliographical notes on
Galland’s imitators which are printed in Appendix No. II.
§ III.
THE MATTER AND THE MANNER OF THE NIGHTS.
A.—THE MATTER.
Returning to my threefold distribution of this Prose Poem (§ I) into
Fable, Fairy Tale and historical Anecdote,[229] let me proceed to
consider these sections more carefully.
The Apologue or Beast-fable, which apparently antedates all other
subjects in The Nights, has been called “One of the earliest creations
of the awakening consciousness of mankind.” I should regard it, despite
a monumental antiquity, as the offspring of a comparatively civilised
age, when a jealous despotism or a powerful oligarchy threw difficulties
and dangers in the way of speaking “plain truths.” A hint can be given
and a friend or foe can be lauded or abused as Belins the sheep or
Isengrim the wolf, when the Author is debarred the higher enjoyment of
praising them or dispraising them by name. And, as the purposes of
fables are twofold—
Duplex libelli dos est: quod risum movet,
Et quod prudenti vitam consilio monet—
The speaking of brute beasts would give a piquancy and a pleasantry to
moral design as well as to social and political satire.
The literary origin of the fable is not Buddhistic: we must especially
shun that “Indo-Germanic” school which goes to India for its origins,
when Pythagoras, Solon, Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle and possibly Homer
sat for instruction at the feet of the Hir-seshtha, the learned
grammarians of the pharaohnic court. Nor was it Æsopic, evidently Æsop
inherited the hoarded wealth of ages. As Professor Lepsius taught us,
“In the olden times within the memory of man, we know only of _one_
advanced culture; of only _one_ mode of writing, and of only _one_
literary development, viz. those of Egypt.” The invention of an
alphabet, as opposed to a syllabary, unknown to Babylonia, to Assyria
and to that extreme bourne of their civilising influences, China, would
for ever fix their literature—poetry, history and criticism,[230] the
apologue and the anecdote. To mention no others The Lion and the Mouse
appears in a Leyden papyrus dating from B.C. 1200–1166 the days of
Rameses III. (Rhampsinitus) or Hak On, not as a rude and early attempt,
but in a finished form, postulating an ancient origin and illustrious
ancestry. The dialogue also is brought to perfection in the discourse
between the Jackal Koufi and the Ethiopian Cat (Revue Égyptologique
ivme. année Part i.). Africa therefore was the home of the Beast-fable
not, as Professor Mahaffy thinks, because it was the chosen land of
animal worship, where
Oppida tota canem venerantur nemo Dianam;[231]
but simply because the Nile-land originated every form of literature
between Fabliau and Epos.
From Kemi the Black-land it was but a step to Phœnicia, Judæa,[232]
Phrygia and Asia Minor, whence a ferry led over to Greece. Here the
Apologue found its populariser in Αἴσωπος, Æsop, whose name, involved in
myth, possibly connects with Αἰθίοψ:—“Æsopus et Aithiops idem sonant”
says the sages. This would show that the Hellenes preserved a legend of
the land whence the Beast-fable arose, and we may accept the fabulist’s
æra as contemporary with Crœsus and Solon (B.C. 570), about a century
after Psammeticus (Psamethik 1st) threw Egypt open to the restless
Greek.[233] From Africa too the Fable would in early ages migrate
eastwards and make for itself a new home in the second great focus of
civilisation formed by the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. The late Mr. George
Smith found amongst the cuneiforms fragmentary Beast-fables, such as
dialogues between the Ox and the Horse, the Eagle and the Sun. In after
centuries, when the conquests of Macedonian Alexander completed what
Sesostris and Semiramis had begun, and mingled the manifold families of
mankind by joining the eastern to the western world, the Orient became
formally hellenised. Under the Seleucidæ and during the life of the
independent Bactrian kingdom (B.C. 255–125), Grecian art and science,
literature and even language overran the old Iranic reign and extended
eastwards throughout northern India. Porus sent two embassies to
Augustus in B.C. 19 and in one of them the herald Zarmanochagas
(Shramanáchárya) of Bargosa, the modern Baroch in Guzerat, bore an
epistle upon vellum written in Greek (Strabo xv. 1 § 78). “Videtis
gentes populosque mutasse sedes” says Seneca (De Cons. ad Helv. c. vi.).
“Quid sibi volunt in mediis barbarorum regionibus Græcæ artes? Quid
inter Indos Persasque Macedonicus sermo? Atheniensis in Asia turba est.”
Upper India, in the Macedonian days would have been mainly Buddhistic,
possessing a rude alphabet borrowed from Egypt through Arabia and
Phœnicia, but still in a low and barbarous condition: her buildings were
wooden and she lacked, as far as we know, stone-architecture—the main
test of social development. But the Bactrian Kingdom gave an impulse to
her civilisation and the result was classical opposed to vedic Sanskrit.
From Persia Greek letters, extending southwards to Arabia, would find
indigenous imitators and there Æsop would be represented by the sundry
sages who share the name Lokman.[234] One of these was of servile
condition, tailor, carpenter or shepherd; and a “Habashi” (Æthiopian)
meaning a negro slave with blubber lips and splay feet, so far showing a
superficial likeness to the Æsop of history.
The Æsopic fable, carried by the Hellenes to India, might have fallen in
with some rude and fantastic barbarian of Buddhistic “persuasion” and
indigenous origin: so Reynard the Fox has its analogue amongst the
Kafirs and the Vái tribe of Mandengan negroes in Liberia[235] amongst
whom one Doalu invented or rather borrowed a syllabarium. The modern
Gypsies are said also to have beast-fables which have never been traced
to a foreign source (Leland). But I cannot accept the refinement of
difference which Professor Benfey, followed by Mr. Keith-Falconer,
discovers between the Æsopic and the Hindu apologue:—“In the former
animals are allowed to act as animals: the latter makes them act as men
in the form of animals.” The essence of the beast-fable is a
reminiscence of Homo primigenius with erected ears and hairy hide, and
its expression is to make the brother brute behave, think and talk like
him with the superadded experience of ages. To early man the “lower
animals,” which are born, live and die like himself, showing all the
same affects and disaffects, loves and hates, passions, prepossessions
and prejudices, must have seemed quite human enough and on an equal
level to become his substitutes. The savage, when he began to reflect,
would regard the carnivore and the serpent with awe, wonder and dread;
and would soon suspect the same mysterious potency in the brute as in
himself: so the Malays still look upon the Uran-utan, or Wood-man, as
the possessor of superhuman wisdom. The hunter and the herdsman, who had
few other companions, would presently explain the peculiar relations of
animals to themselves by material metamorphosis, the bodily
transformation of man to brute giving increased powers of working him
weal and woe. A more advanced stage would find the step easy to
metempsychosis, the beast containing the Ego (_alias_ soul) of the
human: such instinctive belief explains much in Hindu literature, but it
was not wanted at first by the Apologue.