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

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 Jud�us (On the Allegory of the Sacred Laws, cap. 1viii.), 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 L�vis, 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 Kh�lid bin Wal�d, the Sword of Allah, and his ferocious friend, Dar�r 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 Ab� 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 “L� il�ha (accus.) ill’ Allah”?

 

[FN#337] p. 996 “Muhammad” in vol. iii. Dictionary of Christian Biography. See also the Illustration of the Mohammedan Creed, etc., from Al-Ghaz�li introduced (pp. 72-77) into Bell and Sons’

“History of the Saracens” by Simon Ockley, B.D. (London, 1878). I regret some Orientalist did not correct the proofs: everybody will not detect “Al-Lauh al-Mahf�z” (the Guarded Tablet) in “Allauh ho’hnehphoud” (p. 171); and this but a pinch out of a camel-load.

 

[FN#338] The word should have been Arianism. This “heresy” of the early Christians was much aided by the “Discipline of the Secret,” supposed to be of apostolic origin, which concealed from neophytes, catechumens and penitents all the higher mysteries, like the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Metastoicheiosis (transubstantiation), the Real Presence, the Eucharist and the Seven Sacraments; when Arnobius could ask, Quid Deo cum vino est?

and when Justin, fearing the charge of Polytheism, could expressly declare the inferior nature of the Son to the Father.

Hence the creed was appropriately called Symbol i.e., Sign of the Secret. This “mental reservation” lasted till the Edict of Toleration, issued by Constantine in the fourth century, held Christianity secure when divulging her “mysteries”; and it allowed Arianism to become the popular creed.

 

[FN#339] The Gnostics played rather a fantastic r�le in Christianity with their Demiurge, their �onogony, their �ons by syzygies or couples, their Maio and Sabscho and their beatified bride of Jesus, Sophia Achamoth, and some of them descended to absolute absurdities, e.g., the Tascodrugit� and the Pattalorhinchit� who during prayers placed their fingers upon their noses or in their mouths, &c., reading Psalm cxli. 3.

 

[FN#340] “Kit�b al-‘Unw�n f� Mak�id al-Nisw�n” = The Book of the Beginnings on the Wiles of Womankind (Lane i. 38).

 

[FN#341] This person was one of the Ams�l or Exampla of the Arabs. For her first thirty years she whored; during the next three decades she pimped for friend and foe, and, during the last third of her life, when bed-ridden by age and infirmities, she had a buckgoat and a nanny tied up in her room and solaced herself by contemplating their amorous conflicts.

 

[FN#342] And modern Moslem feeling upon the subject has apparently undergone a change. Ashraf Khan, the Afghan poet, sings,

 

Since I, the parted one, have come the secrets of the world to ken,

Women in hosts therein I find, but few (and very few) of men.

 

And the Osmanli proverb is, “Of ten men nine are women!”

 

[FN#343] His Persian paper “On the Vindication of the Liberties of the Asiatic Women” was translated and printed in the Asiatic Annual Register for 1801 (pp. 100-107); it is quoted by Dr. Jon.

Scott (Introd. vol. i. p. xxxiv. et seq.) and by a host of writers. He also wrote a book of Travels translated by Prof.

Charles Stewart in 1810 and reissued (3 vols. 8vo.) in 1814.

 

[FN#344] The beginning of which I date from the Hijrah, lit.= the separation, popularly “The Flight.” Stating the case broadly, it has become the practice of modern writers to look upon Mohammed as an honest enthusiast at Meccah and an unscrupulous despot at Al-Medinah, a view which appears to me eminently unsound and unfair. In a private station the Meccan Prophet was famed as a good citizen, teste his title Al-Am�n =The Trusty. But when driven from his home by the pagan faction, he became de facto as de jure a king: nay, a royal pontiff; and the preacher was merged in the Conqueror of his foes and the Commander of the Faithful.

His rule, like that of all Eastern rulers, was stained with blood; but, assuming as true all the crimes and cruelties with which Christians charge him and which Moslems confess, they were mere blots upon a glorious and enthusiastic life, ending in a most exemplary death, compared with the tissue of horrors and havock which the Law and the Prophets attribute to Moses, to Joshua, to Samuel and to the patriarchs and prophets by express command of Jehovah.

 

[FN#345] It was not, however, incestuous: the scandal came from its ignoring the Arab “pundonor.”

 

[FN#346] The “opportunism” of Mohammed has been made a matter of obloquy by many who have not reflected and discovered that timeserving is the very essence of “Revelation.” Says the Rev.

W. Smith (“Pentateuch,” chaps. xiii.), “As the journey (Exodus) proceeds, so laws originate from the accidents of the way,” and he applies this to successive decrees (Numbers xxvi. 32-36; xxvii. 8-11 and xxxvi. 1-9), holding it indirect internal evidence of Mosaic authorship (?). Another tone, however, is used in the case of Al-Islam. “And now, that he might not stand in awe of his wives any longer, down comes a revelation,” says Ockley in his bluff and homely style, which admits such phrases as, “the imposter has the impudence to say.” But why, in common honesty, refuse to the Koran the concessions freely made to the Torah? It is a mere petitio principii to argue that the latter is “inspired” while the former is not, moreover, although we may be called upon to believe things beyond Reason, it is hardly fair to require our belief in things contrary to Reason.

 

[FN#347] This is noticed in my wife’s volume on The Inner Life of Syria, chaps. xii. vol. i. 155.

 

[FN#348] Mirza preceding the name means Mister and following it Prince. Addison’s “Vision of Mirza” (Spectator, No. 159) is therefore “The Vision of Mister.”

 

[FN#349] And women. The course of instruction lasts from a few days to a year and the period of puberty is f�ted by magical rites and often by some form of mutilation. It is described by Waitz, R�clus and Schoolcraft, P�chue-Loecksa, Collins, Dawson, Thomas, Brough Smyth, Reverends Bulmer and Taplin, Carlo Wilhelmi, Wood, A. W. Howitt, C. Z. Muhas (Mem. de la Soc.

Anthrop. Allemande, 1882, p. 265) and by Professor Mantegazza (chaps. i.) for whom see infra.

 

[FN#350] Similarly certain Australian tribes act scenes of rape and pederasty saying to the young, If you do this you will be killed.

 

[FN#351] “B�h,” is the popular term for the amatory appetite: hence such works are called Kutub al-B�h, lit. = Books of Lust.

 

[FN#352] I can make nothing of this title nor can those whom I have consulted: my only explanation is that they may be fanciful names proper.

 

[FN#353] Amongst the Greeks we find erotic specialists (1) Aristides of the Libri Milesii; (2) Astyanassa, the follower of Helen who wrote on androgvnisation; (3) Cyrene, the artist of amatory Tabell� or ex-votos offered to Priapus; (4) Elephantis, the poetess who wrote on Varia concubitus genera; (5) Evemerus, whose Sacra Historia, preserved in a fragment of Q. Eunius, was collected by Hieronymus Columnar (6) Hemitheon of the Sybaritic books, (7) Mus�us, the Iyrist; (8) Niko, the Samian girl; (9) Phil�nis, the poetess of Amatory Pleasures, in Athen. viii. 13, attributed to Polycrates the Sophist; (10) Protagorides, Amatory Conversations; (11) Sotades, the Mantin�an who, says Suidas, wrote the poem “Cin�dica”; (12) Sphodrias the Cynic, his Art of Love; and (13) Trepsicles, Amatory Pleasures. Amongst the Romans we have Aedituus, Annianus (in Ausonius), Anser, Bassus Eubius, Helvius Cinna, L�vius (of Io and the Erotop�gnion), Memmius, Cicero (to Cerellia), Pliny the Younger, Sabellus (de modo coeundi); Sisenna, the pathic Poet and translator of Milesian Fables and Sulpitia, the modest erotist. For these see the Dictionnaire �rotique of Blondeau pp. ix. and x. (Paris, Liseux, 1885).

 

[FN#354] It has been translated from the Sanskrit and annotated by A.F.F. and B.F.R. Reprint Cosmopoli: mdccclxxxv.: for the Kama Shastra Society, London and Benares, and for private circulation only. The first print has been exhausted and a reprint will presently appear.

 

[FN#355] The local press has often proposed to abate this nuisance of erotic publication which is most debasing to public morals already perverted enough. But the “Empire of Opinion”

cares very little for such matters and, in the matter of the “native press,” generally seems to seek only a quiet life. In England if erotic literature were not forbidden by law, few would care to sell or to buy it, and only the legal pains and penalties keep up the phenomenally high prices.

 

[FN#356] The Spectator (No. 119) complains of an “infamous piece of good breeding,” because