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

Osiris Unnefer (“Hare God”). 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 “�sop the fable-writer ( ) was one of her (Rhodopis) fellow slaves”.

Aristophanes (Vesp�, 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 Vesp� 1401, and Aves 651.

 

[FN#234] There are three distinct Lokmans who are carefully confounded in Sale (Koran chapt. xxxi.) and in Smith’s Dict. of Biography etc. art. �sopus. The first or eldest Lokman, entitled Al-Hakim (the Sage) and the hero of the Koranic chapter which bears his name, was son of B�’�r� 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 ‘�d 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 K��s 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 godly and edifying life, left a volume of “Ams�l,” proverbs and exempla (not fables or apologues); and Easterns still say, “One should not pretend to teach Lokm�n”—in Persian, “Hikmat ba Lokman �mokhtan.” 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 T�rikh Muntakhab) at Ramlah in Jud�a, 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 Bar�kish 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, “Bar�kish 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 Anushirwan (A.D.

531-72) became the Hum�yun-n�meh (“August Book”) turned into Persian for Bahram Shah the Ghaznavite: the Hitopadesa (“Friendship-boon”) of Prakrit, avowedly compiled from the “Panchatantra,” became the Hindu Panchopakhyan, the Hindostani Akhl�k-i-Hindi (“Moralities of Ind”) and in Persia and Turkey the Anvar-i-Suhayli (“Lights of Canopus”). Arabic, Hebrew and Syriac writers entitle their version Kalilah wa Damnah, or Kalilaj wa Damnaj, from the name of the two jackal-heroes, and Europe knows the recueil as the Fables of Pilpay or Bidpay (Bidy�-pati, Lord of learning?) a learned Brahman reported to have been Premier at the Court of the Indian King Dabishl�m.

 

[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 fashion 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 “Rub�h” can never be mistaken for “Shagh�l.” “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 substitute for the Grecian and classical fox, the Giddar or Kol� (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 Nobel” 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), ass’s milk and melted camel-hump, is used aphrodisiacally as an unguent by both sexes.

See. p. 239, etc., of Le Jardin parfum� 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 Encyclop�edia 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 Gods” 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 formic� Indic�, 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 assumed 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

 

“The good (fellow?) Haroun Alrasch’id,”

 

a mispronunciation which suggests only a rasher of bacon. Why will not poets mind their quantities, in lieu of stultifying their lines by childish ignorance? What can be more painful than Byron’s

 

“They laid his dust in Ar’qua (for Arqua) where he died?”

 

[FN#255] See De Sacy’s Chrestomathie Arabe (Paris, 1826), vol. i.

 

[FN#256] See Le Jardin Parfum� du Cheikh Nefzaoui Manuel d’Erotologie Arabe Traduction revue et corrig�e Edition priv�e, imprim� � deux cent.-vingt exemplaires, par Isidore Liseux et ses Amis, Paris, 1866. The editor has forgotten to note that the celebrated Sidi Mohammed copied some of the tales from The Nights and borrowed others (I am assured by a friend) from Tunisian MSS.

of the same work. The book has not been fairly edited: the notes abound in mistakes, the volume lacks an index, &c., &c. Since this was written the Jardin Parfum� has been twice translated into English as “The Perfumed Garden of the Cheikh Nefzaoui, a Manual of Arabian Erotology (sixteenth century). Revised and corrected translation, Cosmopoli: mdccclxxxvi.: for the Kama Shastra Society of London and Benares and for private circulation only.” A rival version will be brought out by a bookseller whose Committee, as he calls it, appears to be the model of literary pirates, robbing the author as boldly and as openly as if they picked his pocket before his face.

 

[FN#257] Translated by a wellknown Turkish scholar, Mr. E. J. W.

Gibb (Glasgow, Wilson and McCormick, 1884).

 

[FN#258] D’Herbelot (s. v. “Asmai”): I am reproached by a dabbler in Orientalism for using this admirable writer who shows more knowledge in one page than my critic does in a whole volume.

 

[FN#259] For specimens see Al-Siyuti, pp. 301 and 304, and the Shaykh al Nafzawi, pp. 134-35

 

[FN#260] The word “nakh” (to make a camel kneel) is explained in vol. ii. 139.

 

[FN#261] The present of the famous horologium-clepsydra-cuckoo clock, the dog Becerillo and the elephant Abu Lubabah sent by Harun to Charlemagne is not mentioned by Eastern authorities and consequently no reference to it will be found in my late friend Professor Palmer’s little volume “Haroun Alraschid,” London, Marcus Ward, 1881. We have allusions to many presents, the clock and elephant, tent and linen hangings, silken dresses, perfumes, and candelabra of auricalch brought by the Legati (Abdalla Georgius Abba et Felix) of Aaron Amiralmumminim Regis Persarum who entered the Port of Pisa (A. D. 801) in (vol. v. 178) Recueil des Histor. des Gaules et de la France, etc., par Dom Martin Bouquet, Paris, mdccxliv. The author also quotes the lines:—

 

Persarum Princeps illi devinctus amore Pr�cipuo fuerat, nomen habens Aaron.

Gratia cui Caroli pr� cunctis Regibus atque Illis Principibus tempora cara funit.

 

[FN#262] Many have remarked that the actual date of the decease is unknown.

 

[FN#263] See Al-Siyuti (p. 305) and Dr. Jonathan Scott’s “Tales, Anecdotes, and Letters,” (p. 296).

 

[FN#264] I have given (vol. i. 188) the vulgar derivation of the name; and D’Herbelot (s. v. Barmakian) quotes some