The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 10 by Sir Richard Francis Burton (essential reading TXT) 📖

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 Hik�y�t al-Jal�lah 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.[FN#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.[FN#222] Thus it appeared before the “Tunis Manuscript”[FN#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 l�ches 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-Purgstallt 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,[FN#224] while the French version was unaccountably lost en route to London. Finally the “Contes in�dits,” etc., appeared in a French translation by G. S. Tr�butien (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.[FN#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.)[FN#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.[FN#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;[FN#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 contrabande.” As early as 1823 Von Hammer numbered seven in France (Tr�butien, Pr�face 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 (Section � I) into Fable, Fairy Tale and historical Anecdote[FN#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 �sopic, evidently �sop 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 influence, China, would for ever fix their literature—poetry, history and criticism,[FN#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 �gyptologique ivme. ann�e 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 tote canem venerantur nemo Dianam;[FN#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 Phoenicia, Jud�a,[FN#232] Phrygia and Asia Minor, whence a ferry led over to Greece. Here the Apologue found its populariser in {Greek}, �sop, whose name, involved in myth, possibly connects with :— “�sopus et Aithiops idem sonant” says the sage. This would show that the Hellenes preserved a legend of the land whence the Beast-fable arose, and we may accept the fabulist’s �ra as contemporary with Croesus and Solon (B.C. 570,) about a century after Psammeticus (Psamethik 1st) threw Egypt open to the restless Greek.[FN#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 Seleucid� 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 (Shraman�ch�rya) of Bargosa, the modern Baroch in Guzerat, bore an epistle upon vellum written in Greek (Strabo xv. I section 78). “Videtis gentes populosque mutasse sedes” says Seneca (De Cons. ad Helv. c. vi.). Quid sibi volunt in mediis barbarorum regionibus Gr�c� 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 Phoenicia, 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 �sop would be represented by the sundry sages who share the name Lokman.[FN#234] One of these was of servile condition, tailor, carpenter or shepherd; and a “Habashi” (�thiopian) meaning a negro slave with blubber lips and splay feet, so far showing a superficial likeness to the �sop of history.

 

The �sopic 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 V�i tribe of Mandengan negroes in Liberia[FN#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 �sopic 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 carnivor 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.

 

This blending of blood, this racial baptism would produce a fine robust progeny; and, after our