and contemporary French opinion seems to be that Victor Hugo’s
influence on French prose, was on the whole, not beneficial.
[FN#284] Mr. W. S. Clouston, the “Storiologist,” who is preparing
a work to be entitled “Popular Tales and Fictions; their
Migrations and Transformations,” informs me the first to adapt
this witty anecdote was Jacques de Vitry, the crusading bishop of
Accon (Acre) who died at Rome in 1240, after setting the example
of “Exempla” or instances in his sermons. He had probably heard
it in Syria, and he changed the day-dreamers into a Milkmaid and
her Milk-pail to suit his “flock.” It then appears as an
“Exemplum” in the Liber de Donis or de Septem Donis (or De Dono
Timoris from Fear the first gift) of Stephanus de Borbone, the
Dominican, ob. Lyons, 1261: it treated of the gifts of the Holy
Spirit (Isaiah xi. 2 and 3), Timor, Pietas, Scientia, Fortitudo,
Consilium, Intellectus et Sapientia; and was plentifully
garnished with narratives for the use of preachers.
[FN#285] The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register (new series,
vol. xxx. Sept.-Dec. 1830, London, Allens, 1839); p. 69 Review of
the Arabian Nights, the Mac. Edit. vol. i., and H. Torrens.
[FN#286] As a household edition of the “Arabian Nights” is now
being prepared, the curious reader will have an opportunity of
verifying this statement.
[FN#287] It has been pointed out to me that in vol. ii. p. 285,
line 18 “Zahr Shah” is a mistake for Sulayman Shah.
[FN#288] I have lately found these lovers at Schloss Sternstein
near Cilli in Styria, the property of my excellent colleague, Mr.
Consul Faber, dating from A. D. 1300 when Jobst of Reichenegg and
Agnes of Sternstein were aided and abetted by a Capuchin of
Seikkloster.
[FN#289] In page 226 Dr. Steingass sensibly proposes altering the
last hemistich (lines 11–12) to
At one time showing the Moon and Sun.
[FN#290] Omitted by Lane for some reason unaccountable as usual.
A correspondent sends me his version of the lines which occur in
The Nights (vol. v. 106 and 107):—
Behold the Pyramids and hear them teach
What they can tell of Future and of Past:
They would declare, had they the gift of speech,
The deeds that Time hath wrought from first to last
* * * *
My friends, and is there aught beneath the sky
Can with th’ Egyptian Pyramids compare?
In fear of them strong Time hath passed by
And everything dreads Time in earth and air.
[FN#291] A rhyming Romance by Henry of Waldeck (flor. A. D. 1160)
with a Latin poem on the same subject by Odo and a prose version
still popular in Germany. (Lane’s Nights iii. 81; and Weber’s
“Northern Romances.”)
[FN#292] e.g. ’Ajáib al-Hind (= Marvels of Ind) ninth century,
translated by J. Marcel Devic, Paris, 1878; and about the same
date the Two Mohammedan Travellers, translated by Renaudot. In
the eleventh century we have the famous Sayyid al-ldrisi, in the
thirteenth the ’Ajáib al-Makhlúkat of Al-Kazwini and in the
fourteenth the Kharídat al-Ajáib of Ibn Al-Wardi. Lane (in loco)
traces most of Sindbad to the two latter sources.
[FN#293] So Hector France proposed to name his admirably
realistic volume “Sous le Burnous” (Paris, Charpentier, 1886).
[FN#294] I mean in European literature, not in Arabic where it is
a lieu commun. See three several forms of it in one page (505) of
Ibn Kallikan, vol. iii.
[FN#295] My attention has been called to the resemblance between
the half-lie and Job (i. 13– 19).
[FN#296] Boccaccio (ob. Dec. 2, 1375), may easily have heard of
The Thousand Nights and a Night or of its archetype the Hazár
Afsánah. He was followed by the Piacevoli Notti of Giovan
Francisco Straparola (A. D. 1550), translated into almost all
European languages but English: the original Italian is now rare.
Then came the Heptameron ou Histoire des amans fortunez of
Marguerite d’Angoulême, Reyne de Navarre and only sister of
Francis I. She died in 1549 before the days were finished: in
1558 Pierre Boaistuan published the Histoire des amans fortunez
and in 1559 Claude Guiget the “Heptameron.” Next is the Hexameron
of A. de Torquemada, Rouen, 1610; and, lastly, the Pentamerone or
El Cunto de li Cunte of Giambattista Basile (Naples 1637), known
by the meagre abstract of J. E. Taylor and the caricatures of
George Cruikshank (London 1847–50). I propose to translate this
Pentamerone direct from the Neapolitan and have already finished
half the work.
[FN#297] Translated and well annotated by Prof. Tawney, who,
however, affects asterisks and has considerably bowdlerised
sundry of the tales, e.g. the Monkey who picked out the Wedge
(vol. ii. 28). This tale, by the by, is found in the Khirad Afroz
(i. 128) and in the Anwar-i-Suhayli (chapt. i.) and gave rise to
the Persian proverb, “What has a monkey to do with carpentering?”
It is curious to compare the Hindu with the Arabic work whose
resemblances are as remarkable as their differences, while even
more notable is their correspondence in impressioning the reader.
The Thaumaturgy of both is the same: the Indian is profuse in
demonology and witchcraft; in transformation and restoration; in
monsters as wind-men, fire-men and water-men, in air-going
elephants and flying horses (i. 541–43); in the wishing cow,
divine goats and laughing fishes (i. 24); and in the speciosa
miracula of magic weapons. He delights in fearful battles (i.
400) fought with the same weapons as the Moslem and rewards his
heroes with a “turband of honour” (i. 266) in lieu of a robe.
There is a quaint family likeness arising from similar stages and
states of society: the city is adorned for gladness, men carry
money in a robe-corner and exclaim “Ha! good!” (for “Good, by
Allah!”), lovers die with exemplary facility, the “soft-sided”
ladies drink spirits (i. 61) and princesses get drunk (i. 476);
whilst the Eunuch, the Hetaira and the bawd (Kuttini) play the
same preponderating parts as in The Nights. Our Brahman is strong
in love-making; he complains of the pains of separation in this
phenomenal universe; he revels in youth, “twin-brother to mirth,”
and beauty which has illuminating powers; he foully reviles old
age and he alternately praises and abuses the sex, concerning
which more presently. He delights in truisms, the fashion of
contemporary Europe (see Palmerin of England chapt. vii), such as
“It is the fashion of the heart to receive pleasure from those
things which ought to give it,” etc. etc. What is there the wise
cannot understand? and so forth. He is liberal in trite
reflections and frigid conceits (i. 19, 55, 97, 103, 107, in fact
everywhere); and his puns run through whole lines; this in fine
Sanskrit style is inevitable. Yet some of his expressions are
admirably terse and telling, e.g. Ascending the swing of Doubt:
Bound together (lovers) by the leash of gazing: Two babes looking
like Misery and Poverty: Old Age seized me by the chin: (A lake)
first assay of the Creator’s skill: (A vow) difficult as standing
on a sword-edge: My vital spirits boiled with the fire of woe:
Transparent as a good man’s heart: There was a certain convent
full of fools: Dazed with scripture-reading: The stones could not
help laughing at him: The Moon kissed the laughing forehead of
the East: She was like a wave of the Sea of Love’s insolence (ii.
127), a wave of the Sea of Beauty tossed up by the breeze of
Youth: The King played dice, he loved slave-girls, he told lies,
he sat up o’ nights, he waxed wroth without reason, he took
wealth wrongously, he despised the good and honoured the bad (i.
562); with many choice bits of the same kind. Like the Arab the
Indian is profuse in personification; but the doctrine of
pre-existence, of incarnation and emanation and an excessive
spiritualism ever aiming at the infinite, makes his imagery run
mad. Thus we have Immoral Conduct embodied; the God of Death;
Science; the Svarga-heaven; Evening; Untimeliness, and the
Earth-bride, while the Ace and Deuce of dice are turned into a
brace of Demons. There is also that grotesqueness which the
French detect even in Shakespeare, e.g. She drank in his
ambrosial form with thirsty eyes like partridges (i. 476) and it
often results from the comparison of incompatibles, e.g. a row
of birds likened to a garden of nymphs; and from forced
allegories, the favourite figure of contemporary Europe. Again,
the rhetorical Hindu style differs greatly from the sobriety,
directness and simplicity of the Arab, whose motto is Brevity
combined with precision, except where the latter falls into “fine
writing.” And, finally, there is a something in the atmosphere of
these Tales which is unfamiliar to the West and which makes them,
as more than one has remarked to me, very hard reading.
[FN#298] The Introduction (i. 1–5) leads to the Curse of
Pushpadanta and Mályaván who live on Earth as Vararúchi and
Gunádhya and this runs through lib. i. Lib. ii. begins with the
Story of Udáyana to whom we must be truly grateful as our only
guide: he and his son Naraváhanadatta fill up the rest and end
with lib. xviii. Thus the want of the clew or plot compels a
division into books, which begin for instance with “We worship
the elephantine proboscis of Ganesha” (lib. x. i.) a reverend and
awful object to a Hindu but to Englishmen mainly suggesting the
“Zoo.” The “Bismillah” of The Nights is much more satisfactory.
[FN#299] See pp. 5–6 Avertissement des Éditeurs, Le Cabinet des
Fées, vol. xxxviii: Geneva 1788. Galland’s Edit. of mdccxxvi ends
with Night ccxxxiv and the English translations with ccxxxvi and
cxcvii. See retro p. 82.
[FN#300] There is a shade of difference in the words; the former
is also used for Reciters of Traditions—a serious subject. But
in the case of Hammád surnamed Al-Ráwiyah (the Rhapsode) attached
to the Court of Al-Walid, it means simply a conteur. So the
Greeks had Homeristæ = reciters of Homer, as opposed to the
Homeridæ or School of Homer.
[FN#302] Vol. i, Preface p. v. He notes that Mr. Dallaway
describes the same scene at Constantinople where the Story-teller
was used, like the modern “Organs of Government” in newspaper
shape, for “reconciling the people to any recent measure of the
Sultan and Vizier.” There are women Ráwiyahs for the Harems and
some have become famous like the Mother of Hasan al-Basri (Ibn
Khall. i, 370).
[FN#302] Hence the Persian proverb, “Báki-e-dastán fardá = the
rest of the tale to-morrow,” said to askers of silly questions.
[FN#303] The scene is excellently described in, “Morocco: Its
People and Places,” by Edmondo de Amicis (London: Cassell, 1882),
a most refreshing volume after the enforced platitudes and
commonplaces of English travellers.
[FN#304] It began, however, in Persia, where the celebrated
Darwaysh Mukhlis, Chief Sofi of Isfahan in the xviith century,
translated into Persian tales certain Hindu plays of which a MS.
entitled Alfaraga Badal-Schidda (Al-faraj ba’d al-shiddah = Joy
after annoy) exists in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. But to
give an original air to his work, he entitled it “Hazár o yek
Ruz” = Thousand and One Days, and in 1675 he allowed his friend
Petis de la Croix, who happened to be at Isfahan, to copy it. Le
Sage (of Gil Blas) is said to have converted many of the tales of
Mukhlis into comic operas, which were performed at the Théâtre
Italien. I still hope to see The Nights at the Lyceum.
[FN#305] This author, however, when hazarding a change of style
which is, I think, regretable, has shown abundant art by filling
up the frequent deficiencies of the text after the fashion of
Baron McGuckin de Slane in Ibn Khallikan. As regards the tout
ensemble of his work, a noble piece of English, my opinion will
ever be that expressed in my Foreword. A carping critic has
remarked that the translator, “as may be seen in every page, is
no Arabic scholar.” If I be a judge, the reverse is the case: the
brilliant and beautiful version thus traduced is almost entirely
free from the blemishes and carelessness which disfigure Lane’s,
and thus it is far more faithful to the original. But it is no
secret that on the staff of that journal the translator of Villon
has sundry enemies, vrais diables enjupponés, who take every
opportunity of girding at him because he does not belong to the
clique and because he does good work when theirs is mostly sham.
The sole fault I find with Mr. Payne is that his severe grace of
style treats an unclassical work as a classic, when the romantic
and irregular would have been a more appropriate garb. But this
is a mere matter of private judgment.
[FN#306] Here I offer a few, but very few, instances from the
Breslau text, which is the greatest sinner in this respect. Mas.
for fem., vol. i. p. 9, and three times in seven pages, Ahná and
nahná for nahnú (iv. 370, 372); Aná ba-ashtarí = I will buy (iii.
109): and Aná ’Ámíl = I will do (v. 367). Alaykí for Alayki (i.
18), Antí for Anti (iii. 66) and generally long í for short .
’Ammál (from ’amala = he did) tahlam = certainly thou dreamest,
and ’Ammálín yaakulú = they were about to eat (ix. 315): Aywá for
Ay wa’lláhí = yes, by Allah (passim). Bitá’ = belonging to, e.g.
Sára bitá’k = it is become thine (ix. 352) and Matá’ with the
same sense (iii. 80). Dá ’l-khurj = this saddle-bag (ix. 336) and
Dí (for hazah) = this woman (iii. 79) or this time (ii. 162).
Fayn as ráha fayn = whither is he gone? (iv. 323). Kamá badri =
he rose early (ix. 318): Kamán = also, a word known to every
European (ii. 43): Katt = never (ii. 172): Kawám (pronounced
’awám) = fast, at once (iv. 385) and Rih ásif kawí (pron. ’awí) =
a wind, strong very. Laysh, e.g. bi tasalní laysh (ix. 324) = why
do you ask me? a favourite form for li ayya shayyin: so Máfish =
má fihi shayyun (there is no thing) in which Herr Landberg (p.
425) makes “Sha, le présent de pouvoir.” Min ajali = for my sake;
and Li ajal al-taudí’a = for the sake of taking leave (Mac. Edit.
i. 384). Rijál nautiyah = men sailors when the latter word would
suffice: Shuwayh (dim. of shayy) = a small thing, a little (iv.
309) like Moyyah (dim. of Má) a little water: Waddúní = they
carried me (ii. 172) and lastly the abominable Wáhid gharíb = one
(for a) stranger. These few must suffice: the tale of Judar and
his brethren, which in style is mostly Egyptian, will supply a
number of others. It must not, however, be supposed, as many have
done, that vulgar and colloquial Arabic is of modern date: we
find it in the first century of Al-Islam, as is proved by the
tale of Al-Hajjáj and Al-Shabi (Ibn Khallikan, ii. 6). The former
asked “Kam ataa-k?” (= how much is thy pay?) to which the latter
answered, “Alfayn!” (= two thousand!). “Tut,” cried the Governor,
“Kam atau-ka?” to which the poet replied as correctly and
classically, “Alfáni.”
[FN#307] In Russian folk-songs a young girl is often compared
with this tree e.g.—
Ivooshka, ivooshka zelonaia moia!
(O Willow, O green Willow mine!)
[FN#308] So in Hector France (“La vache enragée”) “Le sourcil en
accent circonflexe et l’oeil en point d’interrogation.”
[FN#309] In Persian “Áb-i-rú” in India pronounced Ábrú.
[FN#310] For further praises of his poetry and eloquence see the
extracts from Fakhr al-Din of Rayy (an annalist of the xivth
century A.D.) in De Sacy’s Chrestomathie Arabe, vol. i.
[FN#311] After this had been written I received “Babylonian, das
reichste Land in der Vorzeit und das lohnendste Kolonisationsfeld
für die Gegenwart,” by my learned friend Dr. Aloys Sprenger,
Heidelberg, 1886.
[FN#312] The first school for Arabic literature was opened by Ibn
Abbas, who lectured to multitudes in a valley near Meccah; this
rude beginning was followed by public teaching in the great
Mosque of Damascus. For the rise of the “Madrasah,” Academy or
College’ see Introduct. to Ibn Khallikan pp. xxvii-xxxii.
[FN#313] When Ibn Abbád the Sáhib (Wazir) was invited to visit
one of the Samanides, he refused, one reason being that he would
require 400 camels to carry only his books.
[FN#314] This “Salmagondis” by Francois Beroalde de Verville was
afterwards worked by Tabarin, the pseudo-Bruscambille d’Aubigné
and Sorel.
[FN#315] I prefer this derivation to Strutt’s adopted by the
popular, “mumm is said to be derived from the Danish word mumme,
or momme in Dutch (Germ. = larva), and signifies disguise in a
mask, hence a mummer.” In the Promptorium Parvulorum we have
“Mummynge, mussacio, vel mussatus”: it was a pantomime in dumb
show, e.g. “I mumme in a mummynge;” “Let us go mumme (mummer) to
nyghte in women’s apparayle.” “Mask” and “Mascarade,” for
persona, larva or vizard, also derive, I have noticed, from an
Arabic word—Maskharah.
[FN#316] The Pre-Adamite doctrine has been preached with but
scant success in Christendom. Peyrere, a French Calvinist,
published (A.D. 1655) his “Praadamitæ, sive exercitatio supra
versibus 12, 13, 14, cap. v. Epist. Paul. ad Romanos,” contending
that Adam was called the first man because with him the law
began. It brewed a storm of wrath and the author was fortunate to
escape with only imprisonment.
[FN#317] According to Socrates the verdict was followed by a free
fight of the Bishop-voters over the word “consubstantiality.”
[FN#318] Servetus burnt (in A.D. 1553 for publishing his Arian
tractate) by Calvin, whom half-educated Roman Catholics in
England firmly believe to have been a pederast. This arose I
suppose, from his meddling with Rabelais who, in return for the
good joke Rabie læsus, presented a better anagram, “Jan (a pimp
or cuckold) Cul” (Calvinus).
[FN#319] There is no more immoral work than the “Old Testament.”
Its deity is an ancient Hebrew of the worst type, who condones,
permits or commands every sin in the Decalogue to a Jewish
patriarch, quâ patriarch. He orders Abraham to murder his son and
allows Jacob to swindle his brother; Moses to slaughter an
Egyptian and the Jews to plunder and spoil a whole people, after
inflicting upon them a series of plagues which would be the
height of atrocity if the tale were true. The nations of Canaan
are then extirpated. Ehud, for treacherously disembowelling King
Eglon, is made judge over Israel. Jael is blessed above women
(Joshua v. 24) for vilely murdering a sleeping guest; the horrid
deeds of Judith and Esther are made examples to mankind; and
David, after an adultery and a homicide which deserved
ignominious death, is suffered to massacre a host of his enemies,
cutting some in two with saws and axes and putting others into
brick-kilns. For obscenity and impurity we have the tales of Onan
and Tamar, Lot and his daughters, Amnon and his fair sister (2
Sam. xiii.), Absalom and his father’s concubines, the “wife of
whoredoms” of Hosea and, capping all, the Song of Solomon. For
the horrors forbidden to the Jews who, therefore, must have
practiced them, see Levit. viii. 24, xi. 5, xvii. 7, xviii. 7, 9,
10, 12, 15, 17, 21, 23, and xx. 3. For mere filth what can be
fouler than 1st Kings xviii. 27; Tobias ii. 11; Esther xiv. 2,
Eccl. xxii. 2; Isaiah xxxvi. 12, Jeremiah iv. 5, and (Ezekiel iv.
12–15), where the Lord changes human ordure into “Cow-chips!” Ce
qui excuse Dieu, said Henri Beyle, c’est qu’il n’existe pas,—I
add, as man has made him.
[FN#320] It was the same in England before the “Reformation,” and
in France where, during our days, a returned priesthood collected
in a few years “Peter-pence” to the tune of five hundred millions
of francs. And these men wonder at being turned out!
[FN#321] Deutsch on the Talmud: Quarterly Review, 1867.
[FN#322] Evidently. Its cosmogony is a myth read literally: its
history is, for the most part, a highly immoral distortion, and
its ethics are those of the Talmudic Hebrews. It has done good
work in its time; but now it shows only decay and decrepitude in
the place of vigour and progress. It is dying hard, but it is
dying of the slow poison of science.
[FN#323] These Hebrew Stoics would justly charge the Founder of
Christianity with preaching a more popular and practical
doctrine, but a degradation from their own far higher and more
ideal standard.
[FN#324] Dr. Theodore Christlieb (“Modern Doubt and Christian
Belief,” Edinburgh: Clark 1874) can even now write:—“So then the
’full age’ to which humanity is at present supposed to have
attained, consists in man’s doing good purely for goodness sake!
Who sees not the hollowness of this bombastic talk. That man has
yet to be born whose practice will be regulated by this insipid
theory (dieser grauen theorie). What is the idea of goodness per
se? * * * The abstract idea of goodness is not an effectual
motive for well-doing” (p. 104). My only comment is c’est
ignolile! His Reverence acts the part of Satan in Holy Writ,
“Does Job serve God for naught?” Compare this selfish,
irreligious, and immoral view with Philo Judæus (On the Allegory
of the Sacred Laws, cap. lviii.), to measure the extent of the
fall from Pharisaism to Christianity. And the latter is still
infected with the “bribe-and-threat doctrine:” I once immensely
scandalised a Consular Chaplain by quoting the noble belief of
the ancients, and it was some days before he could recover mental
equanimity. The degradation is now inbred.
[FN#325] Of the doctrine of the Fall the heretic Marcion wrote:
“The Deity must either be deficient in goodness if he willed, in
prescience if he did not foresee, or in power if he did not
prevent it.”
[FN#326] In his charming book, “India Revisited.”
[FN#327] This is the answer to those who contend with much truth
that the moderns are by no means superior to the ancients of
Europe: they look at the results of only 3000 years instead of
30,000 or 300,000.
[FN#328] As a maxim the saying is attributed to the Duc de Lévis,
but it is much older.
[FN#329] There are a few, but only a few, frightful exceptions to
this rule, especially in the case of Khálid bin Walíd, the Sword
of Allah, and his ferocious friend, Darár ibn al-Azwar. But their
cruel excesses were loudly blamed by the Moslems, and Caliph Omar
only obeyed the popular voice in superseding the fierce and
furious Khalid by the mild and merciful Abú Obaydah.
[FN#330] This too when St. Paul sends the Christian slave
Onesimus back to his unbelieving (?) master, Philemon; which in
Al-Islam would have created a scandal.
[FN#331] This too when the Founder of Christianity talks of
“Eating and drinking at his table!” (Luke xxn. 29.) My notes have
often touched upon this inveterate prejudice the result, like the
soul-less woman of Al-Islam, of ad captandum, pious fraud. “No
soul knoweth what joy of the eyes is reserved for the good in
recompense for their works” (Koran xxxn. 17) is surely as
“spiritual” as St. Paul (I Cor. ii., 9). Some lies, however are
very long-lived, especially those begotten by self interest.
[FN#332] I have elsewhere noted its strict conservatism which,
however, it shares with all Eastern faiths in the East. But
progress, not quietism, is the principle which governs humanity
and it is favoured by events of most different nature. In Egypt
the rule of Mohammed Ali the Great and in Syria the Massacre of
Damascus (1860) have greatly modified the constitution of Al-Islam
throughout the nearer East.
[FN#333] Chapt. viii. “Narrative of a Year’s Journey through
Central and Eastern Arabia;” London, Macmillan, 1865.
[FN#334] The Soc. Jesu has, I believe, a traditional conviction
that converts of Israelitic blood bring only misfortune to the
Order.
[FN#335] I especially allude to an able but most superficial
book, the “Ten Great Religions” by James F. Clarke (Boston,
Osgood, 1876), which caricatures and exaggerates the false
portraiture of Mr. Palgrave. The writer’s admission that,
“Something is always gained by learning what the believers in a
system have to say in its behalf,” clearly shows us the man we
have to deal with and the “depths of his self-consciousness.”
[FN#336] But how could the Arabist write such hideous grammar as
“La Il h illa All h” for “Lá iláha (accus.) ill’ Allah”?