E. SIDNEY HARTLAND, Esq.,

FELLOW OF THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES; MEMBER OF THE COUNCIL OF THE FOLK-LORE SOCIETY, ETC.

My dear Hartland,

Though you are burdened with the duties of a profession far outside of which lie those studies that have largely occupied my attention for many years past, yet your own able contributions to the same, or cognate, subjects of investigation evince the truth of the seemingly paradoxical saying, that “the busiest man finds the greatest amount of leisure.” And in dedicating this little book to you—would that it were more worthy!—as a token of gratitude for the valuable help you have often rendered me in the course of my studies, I am glad of the opportunity it affords me for placing on record (so to say) the fact that I enjoy the friendship of a man possessed of so many excellent qualities of heart as well as of intellect.

The following collection of essays, or papers, is designed to suit the tastes of a more numerous class of readers than were some of my former books, which are not likely to be of special interest to many besides students of comparative folk-lore—amongst whom your own degree is high. The book, in fact, is intended mainly for those who are rather vaguely termed “general readers”; albeit I venture to think that even the folk-lore student may find in it somewhat to “make a note of,” as the great Captain Cuttle was wont to say—in season and out of season.

Leaving the contents to speak for themselves, I shall only say farther that my object has been to bring together, in a handy volume, a series of essays which might prove acceptable to many readers, whether of grave or lively temperament. What are called “instructive” books—meaning thereby “morally” instructive—are generally as dull reading as is proverbially a book containing nothing but jests—good, bad, and indifferent. We can’t (and we shouldn’t) be always in the “serious” mood, nor can we be for ever on the grin; and it seems to me that a mental dietary, by turns, of what is wise and of what is witty should be most wholesome. But, of the two, I confess I prefer to take the former, even as one ought to take solid food, in great moderation; and, after all, it is surely better to laugh than to mope or weep, in spite of what has been said of “the loud laugh that speaks the vacant mind.” Most of us, in this work-a-day world, find no small benefit from allowing our minds to lie fallow at certain times, as farmers do with their fields. In the following pages, however, I believe wisdom and wit, the didactic and the diverting, will be found in tolerably fair proportions.

But I had forgot—I am not writing a Preface, and this is already too long for a Dedication; so believe me, with all good wishes,

Yours ever faithfully,

W. A. CLOUSTON.

Glasgow, February, 1890.

CONTENTS.

[FLOWERS FROM A PERSIAN GARDEN.]

[I]

Sketch of the Life of the Persian Poet Saádí—Character of his Writings—the Gulistán, or Rose-Garden—Prefaces to Books—Preface to the Gulistán—Eastern Poets in praise of Springtide

[II]

Boy’s Archery Feat—Advantages of Abstinence—Núshirván on Oppression—Boy in terror at Sea—Pride of Ancestry—Misfortunes of Friends—Fortitude and Liberality—Prodigality—Stupid Youth—Advantages of Education—The Fair Cup-bearer—‘January and May’—Why an Old Man did not Marry—The Dervish who became King—Muezzin and Preacher who had bad voices—Witty Slave—Witty Kází—Astrologer and his Faithless Wife—Objectionable Neighbour

[III]

On Taciturnity: Parallels from Caxton’s Dictes and preface to Kalíla wa Dimna—Difference between Devotee and Learned Man—To get rid of Troublesome Visitors—Fable of the Nightingale and the Ant—Aphorisms of Saádí—Conclusion

[ORIENTAL WIT AND HUMOUR.]

[I]

Man a Laughing Animal—Antiquity of Popular Jests—‘Night and Day’—The Plain-featured Bride—The House of Condolence—The Blind Man’s Wife—Two Witty Persian Ladies—Woman’s Counsel—The Turkish Jester: in the Pulpit; the Cauldron; the Beggar; the Drunken Governor; the Robber; the Hot Broth—Muslim Preachers and Misers

[II]

The Two Deaf Men and the Traveller—The Deaf Persian and the Horseman—Lazy Servants—Chinese Humour: The Rich Man and the Smiths; How to keep Plants alive; Criticising a Portrait—The Persian Courtier and his old Friend—The Scribe—The Schoolmaster and the Wit—The Persian and his Cat—A List of Blockheads—The Arab and his Camel—A Witty Baghdádí—The Unlucky Slippers

[III]

The Young Merchant of Baghdád; or, the Wiles of Woman

[IV]

Ashaab the Covetous—The Stingy Merchant and the Hungry Bedouin—The Sect of Samradians—The Story-teller and the King—Royal Gifts to Poets—The Persian Poet and the Impostor—‘Stealing Poetry’—The Rich Man and the Poor Poet

[V]

Unlucky Omens—The Old Man’s Prayer—The Old Woman in the Mosque—The Weeping Turkmans—The Ten Foolish Peasants—The Wakeful Servant—The Three Dervishes—The Oilman’s Parrot—The Moghul and his Parrot—The Persian Shopkeeper and the Prime Minister—Hebrew Facetiæ

[TALES OF A PARROT.]

[I]

General Plan of Eastern Story-books—The Tútí Náma, or Parrot-Book—The Frame-story—The Stolen Images—The Woman carved out of Wood—The Man whose Mare was kicked by a Merchant’s Horse

[II]

The Emperor’s Dream—The Golden Apparition—The Four Treasure-seekers

[III]

The Singing Ass: the Foolish Thieves: the Faggot-maker and the Magic Bowl

[IV]

The Goldsmith who lost his Life through Covetousness—The King who died of Love for a Merchant’s Daughter—The Discovery of Music—The Seven Requisites of a Perfect Woman

[V]

The Princess of Rome and her Son—The Seven Vazírs

[VI]

The Tree of Life—Legend of Rájá Rasálú—Conclusion

[RABBINICAL LEGENDS, TALES, FABLES, AND APHORISMS.]

[I]

Introductory: Authors, Traducers, and Moral Teachings of Talmud

[II]

Legends of some Biblical Characters: Adam and Eve—Cain and Abel—The Planting of the Vine—Luminous Jewels—Abraham’s Arrival in Egypt—The Infamous Citizens of Sodom—Abraham and Ishmael’s Wives—Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife—Joseph and his Brethren—Jacob’s Sorrow—Moses and Pharaoh

[III]

Legends of David and Solomon, etc.

[IV]

Moral and Entertaining Tales: Rabbi Jochonan and the Poor Woman—A Safe Investment—The Jewels—The Capon-carver

[V]

Moral Tales, Tables, and Parables: The Dutiful Son—An Ingenious Will—Origin of Beast-Fables—The Fox and the Bear—The Fox in the Garden—The Desolate Island—The Man and his Three Friends—The Garments—Solomon’s Choice—Bride and Bridegroom—Abraham and the Idols—The Vanity of Ambition—The Seven Stages of Human Life

[VI]

Wise Sayings of the Rabbis

[AN ARABIAN TALE OF LOVE.]

[APOCRYPHAL LIFE OF ESOP.]

[IGNORANCE OF THE CLERGY IN THE MIDDLE AGES.]

[THE BEARDS OF OUR FATHERS.]

[INDEX.]

FLOWERS FROM A PERSIAN GARDEN.

I

SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF THE PERSIAN POET SAADI—CHARACTER OF HIS WRITINGS—THE “GULISTÁN”—PREFACES TO BOOKS—PREFACE TO THE “GULISTÁN”—EASTERN POETS IN PRAISE OF SPRINGTIDE.

It is remarkable how very little the average general reader knows regarding the great Persian poet Saádí and his writings. His name is perhaps more or less familiar to casual readers from its being appended to one or two of his aphorisms which are sometimes reproduced in odd corners of popular periodicals; but who he was, when he lived, and what he wrote, are questions which would probably puzzle not a few, even of those who consider themselves as “well read,” to answer without first recurring to some encyclopædia. Yet Saádí was assuredly one of the most gifted men of genius the world has ever known: a man of large and comprehensive intellect; an original and profound thinker; an acute observer of men and manners; and his works remain the imperishable monument of his genius, learning, and industry.

Maslahu ’d-Dín Shaykh Saádí was born, towards the close of the twelfth century, at Shíráz, the famous capital of Fars, concerning which city the Persians have the saying that “if Muhammed had tasted the pleasures of Shíráz, he would have begged Allah to make him immortal there.” In accordance with the usual practice in Persia, he assumed as his takhallus, or poetical name,[1] Saádí, from his patron Atabag Saád bin Zingí, sovereign of Fars, who encouraged men of learning in his principality. Saádí is said to have lived upwards of a hundred years, thirty of which were passed in the acquisition of knowledge, thirty more in travelling through different countries, and the rest of his life he spent in retirement and acts of devotion. He died, in his native city, about the year 1291.

At one period of his life Saádí took part in the wars of the Saracens against the Crusaders in Palestine, and also in the wars for the faith in India. In the course of his wanderings he had the misfortune to be taken prisoner by the Franks, in Syria, and was ransomed by a friend, but only to fall into worse thraldom by marrying a shrewish wife. He has thus related the circumstances:

“Weary of the society of my friends at Damascus, I fled to the barren wastes of Jerusalem, and associated with brutes, until I was made captive by the Franks, and forced to dig clay along with Jews in the fortress of Tripoli. One of the nobles of Aleppo, mine ancient friend, happened to pass that way and recollected me. He said: ‘What a state is this to be in! How farest thou?’ I answered: ‘Seeing that I could place confidence in God alone, I retired to the mountains and wilds, to avoid the society of man; but judge what must be my situation, to be confined in a stall, in company with wretches who deserve not the name of men. “To be confined by the feet with friends is better than to walk in a garden with strangers.”’ He took compassion on my forlorn condition, ransomed me from the Franks for ten dínars,[2] and took me with him to Aleppo.

“My friend had a daughter, to whom he married me, and he presented me with a hundred dínars as her dower. After some time my wife unveiled her disposition, which was ill-tempered, quarrelsome, obstinate, and abusive; so that the happiness of my life vanished. It has been well said: ‘A bad woman in the house of a virtuous man is hell even in this world.’ Take care how you connect yourself with a bad woman. Save us, O Lord, from the fiery trial! Once she reproached me, saying: ‘Art thou not the creature whom my father ransomed from captivity amongst the Franks for ten dínars?’ ‘Yes,’ I answered; ‘he redeemed me for ten dínars, and enslaved me to thee for a hundred.’

“I heard that a man once rescued a sheep from the mouth of a wolf, but at night drew his knife across its throat. The expiring sheep thus complained: ‘You delivered me from the jaws of a wolf, but in the end I perceive you have yourself become a wolf to me.’”

Sir Gore Ouseley, in his Biographical Notices of Persian Poets, states that Saádí in the latter part of his life retired to a cell near Shíráz, where he remained buried in contemplation of the Deity, except when visited, as was often the case, by princes, nobles, and learned men. It was the custom of his illustrious visitors to take with them all kinds of meats, of which, when Saádí and his company had partaken, the shaykh always put what remained in a basket suspended from his window, that the poor wood-cutters of Shíráz, who daily passed by his cell, might occasionally satisfy their hunger.

The writings of Saádí, in prose as well as verse, are numerous; his best known works being the Gulistán, or Rose-Garden, and the Bustán, or Garden of Odours. Among his other compositions are: an essay on Reason and Love; Advice to Kings; Arabian and Persian idylls, and a book of elegies, besides a large collection of odes and sonnets. Saádí was an accomplished linguist, and composed several poems in the languages of many of the countries through which he travelled. “I have wandered to various regions of the world,” he tells us, “and everywhere have I mixed freely with the inhabitants. I have gathered something in each corner; I have gleaned an ear from every harvest.” A deep insight into the secret springs of human actions; an extensive knowledge of mankind; fervent piety, without a taint of bigotry; a poet’s keen appreciation of the beauties of nature; together with a ready wit and a lively sense of humour, are among the characteristics of Saádí’s masterly compositions. No writer, ancient or modern, European or Asiatic, has excelled, and few have equalled, Saádí in that rare faculty for condensing profound moral truths into short, pithy sentences. For example:

“The remedy against want is to moderate your desires.”

“There is a difference between him who claspeth his mistress in his arms, and him whose eyes are fixed on the door expecting her.”

“Whoever recounts to you the faults of your neighbour will doubtless expose your defects to others.”

His humorous comparisons flash upon the reader’s mind with curious effect, occurring, as they often do, in the midst of a grave discourse. Thus he says of a poor minstrel: “You would say that the sound of his bow would burst the arteries, and that his voice was more discordant than the lamentations of a man for the death of his father;” and of another bad singer: “No one with a mattock can so effectually scrape clay from the face of a hard stone as his discordant voice harrows up the soul.”

Talking of music reminds me of a remark of the learned Gentius, in one of his notes on the Gulistán of Saádí, that music was formerly in such consideration in Persia that it was a maxim of their sages that when a king was about to die, if he left for his successor a very young son, his aptitude for reigning should be proved by some agreeable songs; and if the child was pleasurably affected, then it was a sign of his capacity and genius, but if the contrary, he should be declared unfit.—It would appear that the old Persian musicians, like Timotheus, knew the secret art of swaying the passions. The celebrated philosopher Al-Farabí (who died about the middle of the tenth century), among his accomplishments, excelled in music, in proof of which a curious anecdote is told. Returning from the pilgrimage to Mecca, he introduced himself, though a stranger, at the court of Sayfú ’d-Dawla, sultan of Syria, when a party of musicians chanced to be performing, and he joined them. The prince admired his skill, and, desiring to hear something of his own, Al-Farabí unfolded a composition, and distributed the parts amongst the band. The first movement threw the prince and his courtiers into violent laughter, the next melted all into tears, and the last lulled even the performers to sleep. At the retaking of Baghdád by the Turks in 1638, when the springing of a mine, whereby eight hundred jannisaries perished, was the signal for a general massacre, and thirty thousand Persians were put to the sword, a Persian musician named Sháh-Kúlí, who was brought before the sultan Murád, played and sang so sweetly, first a song of triumph, and then a dirge, that the sultan, moved to pity by the music, gave order to stop the slaughter.

To resume, after this anecdotical digression. Saádí gives this whimsical piece of advice to a pugnacious fellow: “Be sure, either that thou art stronger than thine enemy, or that thou hast a swifter pair of heels.” And he relates a droll story in illustration of the use and abuse of the phrase, “For the sake of God,” which is so frequently in the mouths of Muslims: A harsh-voiced man was reading the Kurán in a loud tone. A pious man passed by him and said: “What is thy monthly salary?” The other replied: “Nothing.” “Why, then, dost thou give thyself this trouble?” “I read for the sake of God,” he rejoined. “Then,” said the pious man, “for God’s sake don’t read.”

The most esteemed of Saádí’s numerous and diversified works is the Gulistán, or Rose-Garden. The first English translation of this work was made by Francis Gladwin, and published in 1808, and it is a very scarce book. Other translations have since been issued, but they are rather costly and the editions limited. It is strange that in these days of cheap reprints of rare and excellent works of genius no enterprising publisher should have thought it worth reproduction in a popular form. It is not one of those ponderous tomes of useless learning which not even an Act of Parliament could cause to be generally read, and which no publisher would be so blind to his own interests as to reprint. As regards its size, the Gulistán is but a small book, but intrinsically it is indeed a very great book, such as could only be produced by a great mind, and it comprises more wisdom and wit than a score of old English folios could together yield to the most devoted reader. Some querulous persons there are who affect to consider the present as a shallow age, because, forsooth, huge volumes of learning—each the labour of a lifetime—are not now produced. But the flood-gates of knowledge are now wide open, and, no longer confined within the old, narrow, if deep, channels, learning has spread abroad, like the Nile during the season of its over-flow. Shallow, it may be, but more widely beneficial, since its life-giving waters are within the reach of all.

Unlike most of our learned old English authors, Saádí did not cast upon the world all that came from the rich mine of his genius, dross as well as fine gold, clay as well as gems. It is because they have done so that many ponderous tomes of learning and industry stand neglected on the shelves of great libraries. Time is too precious now-a-days, whatever may have been the case of our forefathers, for it to be dissipated by diving into the muddy waters of voluminous authors in hopes of finding an occasional pearl of wisdom. And unless some intelligent and painstaking compiler set himself to the task of separating the gold from the rubbish in which it is imbedded in those graves of learning, and present the results of his labour in an attractive form, such works are virtually lost to the world. For in these high-pressure days, most of us, “like the dogs in Egypt for fear of the crocodiles, must drink of the waters of knowledge as we run, in dread of the old enemy Time.”

Saádí, however, in his Gulistán sets forth only his well-pondered thoughts in the most felicitous and expressive language. There is no need to form an abstract or epitome of a work in which nothing is superfluous, nothing valueless. But, as in a cabinet of gems some are more beautiful than others, or as in a garden some flowers are more attractive from their brilliant hues and fragrant odours, so a selection may be made of the more striking tales and aphorisms of the illustrious Persian philosopher.

The preface to the Gulistán is one of the most pleasing portions of the whole book. Now prefaces are among those parts of books which are too frequently “skipped” by readers—they are “taken as read.” Why this should be so, I confess I cannot understand. For my part, I make a point of reading a preface at least twice: first, because I would know what reasons my author had for writing his book, and again, having read his book, because the preface, if well written, may serve also as a sort of appendix. Authors are said to bestow particular pains on their prefaces. Cervantes, for instance, tells us that the preface to the first part of Don Quixote cost him more thought than the writing of the entire work. “It argues a deficiency of taste,” says Isaac D’Israeli, “to turn over an elaborate preface unread; for it is the essence of the author’s roses—every drop distilled at an immense cost.” And, no doubt, it is a great slight to an author to skip his preface, though it cannot be denied that some prefaces are very tedious, because the writer “spins out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument,” and none but the most hardy readers can persevere to the distant end. The Italians call a preface salsa del libro, the salt of the book. A preface may also be likened to the porch of a mansion, where it is not courteous to keep a visitor waiting long before you open the door and make him free of your house. But the reader who passes over the preface to the Gulistán unread loses not a little of the spice of that fascinating and instructive book. He who reads it, however, is rewarded by the charming account which the author gives of how he came to form his literary Rose-Garden:

“It was the season of spring; the air was temperate and the rose in full bloom. The vestments of the trees resembled the festive garments of the fortunate. It was mid-spring, when the nightingales were chanting from their pulpits in the branches. The rose, decked with pearly dew, like blushes on the cheek of a chiding mistress. It happened once that I was benighted in a garden, in company with a friend. The spot was delightful: the trees intertwined; you would have said that the earth was bedecked with glass spangles, and that the knot of the Pleiades was suspended from the branch of the vine. A garden with a running stream, and trees whence birds were warbling melodious strains: that filled with tulips of various hues; these loaded with fruits of several kinds. Under the shade of its trees the zephyr had spread the variegated carpet.

“In the morning, when the desire to return home overcame our inclination to remain, I saw in my friend’s lap a collection of roses, odoriferous herbs, and hyacinths, which he intended to carry to town. I said: ‘You are not ignorant that the flower of the garden soon fadeth, and that the enjoyment of the rose-bush is of short continuance; and the sages have declared that the heart ought not to be set upon anything that is transitory.’ He asked: ‘What course is then to be pursued?’ I replied: ‘I am able to form a book of roses, which will delight the beholders and gratify those who are present; whose leaves the tyrannic arm of autumnal blasts can never affect, or injure the blossoms of its spring. What benefit will you derive from a basket of flowers? Carry a leaf from my garden: a rose may continue in bloom five or six days, but this Rose-Garden will flourish for ever.’ As soon as I had uttered these words, he flung the flowers from his lap, and, laying hold of the skirt of my garment, exclaimed: ‘When the beneficent promise, they faithfully discharge their engagements.’ In the course of a few days two chapters were written in my note-book, in a style that may be useful to orators and improve the skill of letter-writers. In short, while the rose was still in bloom, the book called the Rose-Garden was finished.”

Dr. Johnson has remarked that “there is scarcely any poet of eminence who has not left some testimony of his fondness for the flowers, the zephyrs, and the warblers of the spring.” This is pre-eminently the case of Oriental poets, from Solomon downwards: “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away,” exclaims the Hebrew poet in his Book of Canticles: “for lo! the winter is past, the rain is over and gone: the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds has come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. The fig-tree putteth forth her green fruits, and the vines with the tender grapes give forth a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”

In a Persian poem written in the 14th century the delights of the vernal season are thus described: “On every bush roses were blowing; on every branch the nightingale was plaintively warbling. The tall cypress was dancing in the garden; and the poplar never ceased clapping its hands with joy. With a loud voice from the top of every bough the turtle-dove was proclaiming the glad advent of spring. The diadem of the narcissus shone with such splendour that you would have said it was the crown of the Emperor of China. On this side the north wind, on that, the west wind, were, in token of affection, scattering dirhams at the feet of the rose.[3] The earth was musk-scented, the air musk-laden.”

But it would be difficult to adduce from the writings of any poet, European or Asiatic, anything to excel the charming ode on spring, by the Turkish poet Mesíhí, who flourished in the 15th century, which has been rendered into graceful English verse, and in the measure of the original, by my friend Mr. E. J. W. Gibb, in his dainty volume of Ottoman Poems, published in London a few years ago. These are some of the verses from that fine ode:

Hark! the bulbul’s[4] lay so joyous: “Now have come the days of spring!”

Merry shows and crowds on every mead they spread, a maze of spring;

There the almond-tree its silvery blossoms scatters, sprays of spring:

Gaily live! for soon will vanish, biding not, the days of spring![5]

Once again, with flow’rets decked themselves have mead and plain;

Tents for pleasure have the blossoms raised in every rosy lane;

Who can tell, when spring hath ended, who and what may whole remain?

Gaily live! for soon will vanish, biding not, the days of spring!

Sparkling dew-drops stud the lily’s leaf like sabre broad and keen;

Bent on merry gipsy party, crowd they all the flow’ry green!

List to me, if thou desirest, these beholding, joy to glean:

Gaily live! for soon will vanish, biding not, the days of spring!

Rose and tulip, like to maidens’ cheeks, all beauteous show,

Whilst the dew-drops, like the jewels in their ears, resplendent glow;

Do not think, thyself beguiling, things will aye continue so:

Gaily live! for soon will vanish, biding not, the days of spring!

Whilst each dawn the clouds are shedding jewels o’er the rosy land,

And the breath of morning zephyr, fraught with Tátár musk, is bland;

Whilst the world’s fair time is present, do not thou unheeding stand:

Gaily live! for soon will vanish, biding not, the days of spring!

With the fragrance of the garden, so imbued the musky air,

Every dew-drop, ere it reaches earth, is turned to attar rare;

O’er the parterre spread the incense-clouds a canopy right fair:

Gaily live! for soon will vanish, Biding not, the days of spring!

This Turkish poet’s maxim, it will be observed, was “enjoy the present day”—the carpe diem of Horace, the genial old pagan. On the same suggestive theme of Springtide a celebrated Turkish poetess, Fitnet Khánim (for the Ottoman Turks have poetesses of considerable genius as well as poets), has composed a pleasing ode, addressed to her lord, of which the following stanzas are also from Mr. Gibb’s collection:

The fresh spring-clouds across all earth their glistening pearls profuse now sow;

The flowers, too, all appearing, forth the radiance of their beauty show;

Of mirth and joy ’tis now the time, the hour, to wander to and fro;

The palm-tree o’er the fair ones’ pic-nic gay its grateful shade doth throw.

O Liege, come forth! From end to end with verdure doth the whole earth glow;

’Tis springtide once again, once more the tulips and the roses blow!

Behold the roses, how they shine, e’en like the cheeks of maids most fair;

The fresh-sprung hyacinth shows like to beauties’ dark, sweet, musky hair;

The loved one’s form behold, like cypress which the streamlet’s bank doth bear;

In sooth, each side for soul and heart doth some delightful joy prepare.

O Liege, come forth! From end to end with verdure doth the whole earth glow;

’Tis springtide once again, once more the tulips and the roses blow!

The parterre’s flowers have all bloomed forth, the roses, sweetly smiling, shine;

On every side lorn nightingales, in plaintive notes discerning, pine.

How fair carnation and wallflower the borders of the garden line!

The long-haired hyacinth and jasmine both around the cypress twine.

O Liege, come forth! From end to end with verdure doth the whole earth glow;

’Tis springtide once again, once more the tulips and the roses blow!

I cannot resist the temptation to cite, in concluding this introductory paper, another fine eulogy of the delights of spring, by Amír Khusrú, of Delhi (14th century), from his Mihra-i-Iskandar, which has been thus rendered into rhythmical prose:

“A day in spring, when all the world a pleasing picture seemed; the sun at early dawn with happy auspices arose. The earth was bathed in balmy dew; the beauties of the garden their charms displayed, the face of each with brilliancy adorned. The flowers in freshness bloomed; the lamp of the rose acquired lustre from the breeze; the tulip brought a cup from paradise; the rose-bower shed the sweets of Eden; beneath its folds the musky buds remained, like a musky amulet on the neck of Beauty. The violet bent its head; the fold of the bud was closer pressed; the opened rose in splendour glowed, and attracted every eye; the lovely flowers oppressed with dew in tremulous motion waved. The air o’er all the garden a silvery radiance threw, and o’er the flowers the breezes played; on every branch the birds attuned their notes, and every bower with warblings sweet was filled, so sweet, they stole the senses. The early nightingale poured forth its song, that gives a zest to those who quaff the morning goblet. From the turtle’s soft cooings love seized each bird that skimmed the air.”

II

STORIES FROM THE “GULISTÁN.”

The Gulistán consists of short tales and anecdotes, to which are appended comments in prose and verse, and is divided into eight chapters, or sections: (1) the Morals of Kings; (2) the Morals of Dervishes; (3) the Excellence of Contentment; (4) the Advantages of Taciturnity; (5) Love and Youth; (6) Imbecility and Old Age; (7) the Effects of Education; (8) Rules for the Conduct of Life. In culling some of the choicest flowers of this perennial Garden, the particular order observed by Saádí need not be regarded here; it is preferable to pick here a flower and there a flower, as fancy may direct.

It may happen, says our author, that the prudent counsel of an enlightened sage does not succeed; and it may chance that an unskilful boy inadvertently hits the mark with his arrow: A Persian king, while on a pleasure excursion with a number of his courtiers at Nassála Shíráz, appointed an archery competition for the amusement of himself and his friends. He caused a gold ring, set with a valuable gem, to be fixed on the dome of Asád, and it was announced that whosoever should send an arrow through the ring should obtain it as a reward of his skill. The four hundred skilled archers forming the royal body-guard each shot at the ring without success. It chanced that a boy on a neighbouring house-top was at the same time diverting himself with a little bow, when one of his arrows, shot at random, went through the ring. The boy, having obtained the prize, immediately burned his bow, shrewdly observing that he did so in order that the reputation of this feat should never be impaired.

The advantage of abstinence, or rather, great moderation in eating and drinking, is thus curiously illustrated: Two dervishes travelled together; one was a robust man, who regularly ate three meals every day, the other was infirm of body, and accustomed to fast frequently for two days in succession. On their reaching the gate of a certain town, they were arrested on suspicion of being spies, and both lodged, without food, in the same prison, the door of which was then securely locked. Several days after, the unlucky dervishes were found to be quite innocent of the crime imputed to them, and on opening the door of the prison the strong man was discovered to be dead, and the infirm man still alive. At this circumstance the officers of justice marvelled; but a philosopher observed, that had the contrary happened it would have been more wonderful, since the one who died had been a great eater, and consequently was unable to endure the want of food, while the other, being accustomed to abstinence, had survived.

Of Núshírván the Just (whom the Greeks called Chosroe), of the Sassanian dynasty of Persian kings—sixth century—Saádí relates that on one occasion, while at his hunting-seat, he was having some game dressed, and ordered a servant to procure some salt from a neighbouring village, at the same time charging him strictly to pay the full price for it, otherwise the exaction might become a custom. His courtiers were surprised at this order, and asked the king what possible harm could ensue from such a trifle. The good king replied: “Oppression was brought into the world from small beginnings, which every new comer increased, until it has reached the present degree of enormity.” Upon this Saádí remarks: “If the monarch were to eat a single apple from the garden of a peasant, the servant would pull up the tree by the roots; and if the king order five eggs to be taken by force, his soldiers will spit a thousand fowls. The iniquitous tyrant remaineth not, but the curses of mankind rest on him for ever.”

Only those who have experienced danger can rightly appreciate the advantages of safety, and according as a man has become acquainted with adversity does he recognise the value of prosperity—a sentiment which Saádí illustrates by the story of a boy who was in a vessel at sea for the first time, in which were also the king and his officers of state. The lad was in great fear of being drowned, and made a loud outcry, in spite of every effort of those around him to soothe him into tranquility. As his lamentations annoyed the king, a sage who was of the company offered to quiet the terrified youth, with his majesty’s permission, which being granted, he caused the boy to be plunged several times in the sea and then drawn up into the ship, after which the youth retired to a corner and remained perfectly quiet. The king inquired why the lad had been subjected to such roughness, to which the sage replied: “At first he had never experienced the danger of being drowned, neither had he known the safety of a ship.”

One of our English moralists has remarked that the man who chiefly prides himself on his ancestry is like a potato-plant, whose best qualities are under ground. Saádí tells us of an old Arab who said to his son: “O my child, in the day of resurrection they will ask you what you have done in the world, and not from whom you are descended.”—In the Akhlák-i-Jalaly, a work comprising the practical philosophy of the Muhammedans, written, in the 15th century, in the Persian language, by Fakír Jání Muhammed Asaád, and translated into English by W. F. Thompson, Alí, the Prophet’s cousin, is reported to have said:

My soul is my father, my title my worth;

A Persian or Arab, there’s little between:

Give me him for a comrade, whatever his birth,

Who shows what he is—not what others have been.

An Arabian poet says:

Be the son of whom thou wilt, try to acquire literature,

The acquisition of which may make pedigree unnecessary to thee;

Since a man of worth is he who can say, “I am so and so,”

Not he who can only say, “My father was so and so.”

And again:

Ask not a man who his father was, but make trial

Of his qualities, and then conciliate or reject him accordingly

For it is no disgrace to new wine, if it only be sweet,

As to its taste, that it was the juice [or daughter] of sour grapes.

The often-quoted maxim of La Rochefoucauld, that there is something in the misfortunes of our friends which affords us a degree of secret pleasure, is well known to the Persians. Saádí tells us of a merchant who, having lost a thousand dínars, cautioned his son not to mention the matter to anyone, “in order,” said he, “that we may not suffer two misfortunes—the loss of our money and the secret satisfaction of our neighbours.”

A generous disposition is thus eloquently recommended: They asked a wise man, which was preferable, fortitude or liberality, to which he replied: “He who possesses liberality has no need of fortitude. It is inscribed on the tomb of Bahram-i-Gúr that a liberal hand is preferable to a strong arm.” “Hátim Taï,” remarks Saádí, “no longer exists, but his exalted name will remain famous for virtue to eternity.[6] Distribute the tithe of your wealth in alms, for when the husbandman lops off the exuberant branches from the vine, it produces an increase of grapes.”

Prodigality, however, is as much to be condemned as judicious liberality is to be lauded. Saádí gives the following account of a Persian prodigal son, who was not so fortunate in the end as his biblical prototype: The son of a religious man, who succeeded to an immense fortune by the will of his uncle, became a dissipated and debauched profligate, in so much that he left no heinous crime unpractised, nor was there any intoxicating drug which he had not tasted. Once I admonished him, saying: “O my son, wealth is a running stream, and pleasure revolves like a millstone; or, in other words, profuse expense suits him only who has a certain income. When you have no certain income, be frugal in your expenses, because the sailors have a song, that if the rain does not fall in the mountains, the Tigris will become a dry bed of sand in the course of a year. Practise wisdom and virtue, and relinquish sensuality, for when your money is spent you will suffer distress and expose yourself to shame.”[7] The young man, seduced by music and wine, would not take my advice, but, in opposition to my arguments, said: “It is contrary to the wisdom of the sages to disturb our present enjoyments by the dread of futurity. Why should they who possess fortune suffer distress by anticipating sorrow? Go and be merry, O my enchanting friend! We ought not to be uneasy to-day for what may happen to-morrow. How would it become me, who am placed in the uppermost seat of liberality, so that the fame of my bounty is wide spread? When a man has acquired reputation by liberality and munificence, it does not become him to tie up his money-bags. When your good name has been spread through the street, you cannot shut your door against it.” I perceived (continues Saádí) that he did not approve of my admonition, and that my warm breath did not affect his cold iron. I ceased advising, and, quitting his society, returned into the corner of safety, in conformity with the saying of the philosophers: “Admonish and exhort as your charity requires; if they mind not, it does not concern you. Although thou knowest that they will not listen, nevertheless speak whatever you know is advisable. It will soon come to pass that you will see the silly fellow with his feet in the stocks, smiting his hands and exclaiming, ‘Alas, that I did not listen to the wise man’s advice!’” After some time, that which I had predicted from his dissolute conduct I saw verified. He was clothed in rags, and begging a morsel of food. I was distressed at his wretched condition, and did not think it consistent with humanity to scratch his wound with reproach. But I said in my heart: Profligate men, when intoxicated with pleasure, reflect not on the day of poverty. The tree which in the summer has a profusion of fruit is consequently without leaves in winter.

The incapacity of some youths to receive instruction is always a source of vexation to the pedagogue. Saádí tells us of a vazír who sent his stupid son to a learned man, requesting him to impart some of his knowledge to the lad, hoping that his mind would be improved. After attempting to instruct him for some time without effect, he sent this message to his father: “Your son has no capacity, and has almost distracted me. When nature has given capacity instruction will make impressions; but if iron is not of the proper temper, no polishing will make it good. Wash not a dog in the seven seas, for when he is wetted he will only be the dirtier. If the ass that carried Jesus Christ were to be taken to Mecca, at his return he would still be an ass.”

One of the greatest sages of antiquity is reported to have said that all the knowledge he had acquired merely taught him how little he did know; and indeed it is only smatterers who are vain of their supposed knowledge. A sensible young man, says Saádí, who had made considerable progress in learning and virtue, was at the same time so discreet that he would sit in the company of learned men without uttering a word. Once his father said to him: “My son, why do you not also say something you know?” He replied: “I fear lest they should question me about something of which I am ignorant, whereby I should suffer shame.”

The advantages of education are thus set forth by a philosopher who was exhorting his children: “Acquire knowledge, for in worldly riches and possessions no reliance can be placed.[8] Rank will be of no use out of your own country; and on a journey money is in danger of being lost, for either the thief may carry it off all at once, or the possessor may consume it by degrees. But knowledge is a perennial spring of wealth, and if a man of education cease to be opulent, yet he need not be sorrowful, for knowledge of itself is riches.[9] A man of learning, wheresoever he goes, is treated with respect, and sits in the uppermost seat, whilst the ignorant man gets only scanty fare and encounters distress.” There once happened (adds Saádí) an insurrection in Damascus, where every one deserted his habitation. The wise sons of a peasant became the king’s ministers, and the stupid sons of the vazír were reduced to ask charity in the villages. If you want a paternal inheritance, acquire from your father knowledge, for wealth may be spent in ten days.

In the following charming little tale Saádí recounts an interesting incident in his own life: I remember that in my youth, as I was passing through a street, I cast my eyes on a beautiful girl. It was in the autumn, when the heat dried up all moisture from the mouth, and the sultry wind made the marrow boil in the bones, so that, being unable to support the sun’s powerful rays, I was obliged to take shelter under the shade of a wall, in hopes that some one would relieve me from the distressing heat, and quench my thirst with a draught of water. Suddenly from the portico of a house I beheld a female form whose beauty it is impossible for the tongue of eloquence to describe, insomuch that it seemed as if the dawn was rising in the obscurity of night, or as if the Water of Immortality was issuing from the Land of Darkness. She held in her hand a cup of snow-water, into which she had sprinkled sugar and mixed with it the juice of the grape. I know not whether what I perceived was the fragrance of rose-water, or that she had infused into it a few drops from the blossom of her cheek. In short, I received the cup from her beauteous hand, and, drinking the contents, found myself restored to new life. The thirst of my soul is not such that it can be allayed with a drop of pure water—the streams of whole rivers would not satisfy it. How happy is that fortunate one whose eyes every morning may behold such a countenance! He who is intoxicated with wine will be sober again in the course of the night; but he who is intoxicated by the cup-bearer will never recover his senses till the day of judgment.

Alas, poor Saádí! The lovely cup-bearer, who made such a lasting impression on the heart of the young poet, was not destined for his bride. His was indeed a sad matrimonial fate; and who can doubt but that the beauteous form of the stranger maiden would often rise before his mental view after he was married to the Xantippe who rendered some portion of his life unhappy!

Among the tales under the heading of “Imbecility and Old Age” we have one of “oldé January that wedded was to freshé May,” which points its moral now as it did six hundred years ago: When I married a young virgin, said an old man, I bedecked a chamber with flowers, sat with her alone, and had fixed my eyes and heart solely upon her. Many long nights I passed without sleep, repeating jests and pleasantries, to remove shyness, and make her familiar. On one of these nights I said: “Fortune has been propitious to you, in that you have fallen into the society of an old man, of mature judgment, who has seen the world, and experienced various situations of good and bad fortune, who knows the rights of society, and has performed the duties of friendship;—one who is affectionate, affable, cheerful, and conversable. I will exert my utmost endeavours to gain your affection, and if you should treat me unkindly I will not be offended; or if, like the parrot, your food should be sugar, I will devote my sweet life to your support. You have not met with a youth of a rude disposition, with a weak understanding, headstrong, a gadder, who would be constantly changing his situations and inclinations, sleeping every night in a new place, and every day forming some new intimacy. Young men may be lively and handsome, but they are inconstant in their attachments. Look not thou for fidelity from those who, with the eyes of the nightingale, are every instant singing upon a different rose-bush. But old men pass their time in wisdom and good manners, not in the ignorance and frivolity of youth. Seek one better than yourself, and having found him, consider yourself fortunate. With one like yourself you would pass your life without improvement.” I spoke a great deal after this manner (continued the old man), and thought that I had made a conquest of her heart, when suddenly she heaved a cold sigh from the bottom of her heart, and replied: “All the fine speeches that you have been uttering have not so much weight in the scale of my reason as one single sentence I have heard from my nurse, that if you plant an arrow in the side of a young woman it is not so painful as the society of an old man.” In short (continued he), it was impossible to agree, and our differences ended in a separation. After the time prescribed by law, she married a young man of an impetuous temper, ill-natured, and in indigent circumstances, so that she suffered the injuries of violence, with the evils of penury. Nevertheless she returned thanks for her lot, and said: “God be praised that I escaped from infernal torment, and have obtained this permanent blessing. Amidst all your violence and impetuosity of temper, I will put up with your airs, because you are handsome. It is better to burn with you in hell than to be in paradise with the other. The scent of onions from a beautiful mouth is more fragrant than the odour of the rose from the hand of one who is ugly.”

It must be allowed that this old man put his own case to his young wife with very considerable address: yet, such is woman-nature, she chose to be “a young man’s slave rather than an old man’s darling.” And, apropos, Saádí has another story which may be added to the foregoing: An old man was asked why he did not marry. He answered: “I should not like an old woman.” “Then marry a young one, since you have property.” Quoth he: “Since I, who am an old man, should not be pleased with an old woman, how can I expect that a young one would be attached to me?”

“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” says our great dramatist, in proof of which take this story: A certain king, when arrived at the end of his days, having no heir, directed in his will that the morning after his death the first person who entered the gate of the city they should place on his head the crown of royalty, and commit to his charge the government of the kingdom. It happened that the first to enter the city was a dervish, who all his life had collected victuals from the charitable and sewed patch on patch. The ministers of state and the nobles of the court carried out the king’s will, bestowing on him the kingdom and the treasure. For some time the dervish governed the kingdom, until part of the nobility swerved their necks from obedience to him, and all the neighbouring monarchs, engaging in hostile confederacies, attacked him with their armies. In short, the troops and peasantry were thrown into confusion, and he lost the possession of some territories. The dervish was distressed at these events, when an old friend, who had been his companion in the days of poverty, returned from a journey, and, finding him in such an exalted state, said: “Praised be the God of excellence and glory, that your high fortune has aided you and prosperity been your guide, so that a rose has issued from the brier, and the thorn has been extracted from your foot, and you have arrived at this dignity. Of a truth, joy succeeds sorrow; the bud does sometimes blossom and sometimes wither; the tree is sometimes naked and sometimes clothed.” He replied: “O brother, condole with me, for this is not a time for congratulation. When you saw me last, I was only anxious how to obtain bread; but now I have all the cares of the world to encounter. If the times are adverse, I am in pain; and if they are prosperous, I am captivated with worldly enjoyments. There is no calamity greater than worldly affairs, because they distress the heart in prosperity as well as in adversity. If you want riches, seek only for contentment, which is inestimable wealth. If the rich man would throw money into your lap, consider not yourself obliged to him, for I have often heard that the patience of the poor is preferable to the liberality of the rich.”

Muezzins, who call the faithful to prayer at the prescribed hours from the minarets of the mosques, are generally blind men, as a man with his eyesight might spy into the domestic privacy of the citizens, who sleep on the flat roofs of their houses in the hot season, and are selected for their sweetness of voice. Saádí, however, tells us of a man who performed gratuitously the office of muezzin, and had such a voice as disgusted all who heard it. The intendant of the mosque, a good, humane man, being unwilling to offend him, said one day: “My friend, this mosque has muezzins of long standing, each of whom has a monthly stipend of ten dínars. Now I will give you ten dínars to go to another place.” The man agreed to this and went away. Some time after he came to the intendant and said: “O, my lord, you injured me in sending me away from this station for ten dínars; for where I went they will give me twenty dínars to remove to another place, to which I have not consented.” The intendant laughed, and said: “Take care—don’t accept of the offer, for they may be willing to give you fifty.”

To those who have “music in their souls,” and are “moved by concord of sweet sounds,” the tones of a harsh voice are excruciating; and if among our statesmen and other public speakers “silver tongues” are rare, they are much more so among our preachers. The Church of Rome does not admit into the priesthood men who have any bodily shortcoming or defect; it would also be well if all candidates for holy orders in the English and Scottish Churches whose voices are not at least tolerable were rejected, as unfit to preach! Saádí seems to have had a great horror of braying orators, and relates a number of anecdotes about them, such as this: A preacher who had a detestable voice, but thought he had a very sweet one, bawled out to no purpose. You would say the croaking of the crow in the desert was the burden of his song, and that this verse of the Kurán was intended for him, “Verily the most detestable of sounds is the braying of an ass.” When this ass of a preacher brayed, it made Persepolis tremble. The people of the town, on account of the respectability of his office, submitted to the calamity, and did not think it advisable to molest him, until one of the neighbouring preachers, who was secretly ill-disposed towards him, came once to see him, and said: “I have had a dream—may it prove good!” “What did you dream?” “I thought you had a sweet voice, and that the people were enjoying tranquility from your discourse.” The preacher, after reflecting a little, replied: “What a happy dream is this that you have had, which has discovered to me my defect, in that I have an unpleasant voice, and that the people are distressed at my preaching. I am resolved that in future I will read only in a low tone. The company of friends was disadvantageous to me, because they look on my bad manners as excellent: my defects appear to them skill and perfection, and my thorn as the rose and the jasmin.”

Our author, as we have seen, enlivens his moral discourses occasionally with humorous stories, and one or two more of these may fittingly close the present section: One of the slaves of Amrúlais having run away, a person was sent in pursuit of him and brought him back. The vazír, being inimical to him, commanded him to be put to death in order to deter other slaves from committing the like offence. The slave prostrated himself before Amrúlais and said: “Whatever may happen to me with your approbation is lawful—what plea can the slave offer against the sentence of his lord? But, seeing that I have been brought up under the bounties of your house, I do not wish that at the resurrection you shall be charged with my blood. If you are resolved to kill your slave, do so comformably to the interpretation of the law, in order that at the resurrection you may not suffer reproach.” The king asked: “After what manner shall I expound it?” The slave replied: “Give me leave to kill the vazír, and then, in retaliation for him, order me to be put to death, that you may kill me justly.” The king laughed, and asked the vazír what was his advice in this matter. Quoth the vazír: “O my lord, as an offering to the tomb of your father, liberate this rogue, in order that I may not also fall into this calamity. The crime is on my side, for not having observed the words of the sages, who say, ‘When you combat with one who flings clods of earth, you break your own head by your folly: when you shoot at the face of your enemy, be careful that you sit out of his aim.’”—And not a little wit, too, did the kází exhibit when detected by the king in an intrigue with a farrier’s daughter, and his Majesty gave order that he should be flung from the top of the castle, “as an example for others”; to which the kází replied: “O monarch of the universe, I have been fostered in your family, and am not singular in the commission of such crimes; therefore, I ask you to precipitate some one else, in order that I may benefit by the example.” The king laughed at his wit, and spared his life.—Nor is this tale without a spice of humour: An astrologer entered his house and finding a stranger in company with his wife abused him, and called him such opprobrious names that a quarrel and strife ensued. A shrewd man, being informed of this, said to the astrologer: “What do you know of the heavenly bodies, when you cannot tell what goes on in your own house?”[10]—Last, and perhaps best of all, is this one: I was hesitating about concluding a bargain for a house, when a Jew said: “I am an old householder in that quarter; inquire of me the description of the house, and buy it, for it has no fault.” I replied: “Excepting that you are one of the neighbours!”

III

ANECDOTES AND APHORISMS FROM THE “GULISTÁN,” WITH ANALOGUES—CONCLUSION.

Besides the maxims comprised in the concluding chapter of the Gulistán, under the heading of “Rules for the Conduct of Life,” many others, of great pith and moment, are interspersed with the tales and anecdotes which Saádí recounts in the preceding chapters, a selection of which can hardly fail to prove both instructive and interesting.

It is related that at the court of Núshírván, king of Persia, a number of wise men were discussing a difficult question; and Buzurjmihr (his famous prime minister), being silent, was asked why he did not take part in the debate. He answered: “Ministers are like physicians, and the physician gives medicine to the sick only. Therefore, when I see your opinions are judicious, it would not be consistent with wisdom for me to obtrude my sentiments. When a matter can be managed without my interference it is not proper for me to speak on the subject. But if I see a blind man in the way of a well, should I keep silence it were a crime.” On another occasion, when some Indian sages were discoursing on his virtue, they could discover in him only this fault, that he hesitated in his speech, so that his hearers were kept a long time in suspense before he delivered his sentiments. Buzurjmihr overheard their conversation and observed: “It is better to deliberate before I speak than to repent of what I have said.”[11]

A parallel to this last saying of the Persian vazír is found in a “notable sentence” of a wise Greek, in this passage from the Dictes, or Sayings of Philosophers, printed by Caxton (I have modernised the spelling):

“There came before a certain king three wise men, a Greek, a Jew, and a Saracen, of whom the said king desired that each of them would utter some good and notable sentence. Then the Greek said: ‘I may well correct and amend my thoughts, but not my words.’ The Jew said: ‘I marvel of them that say things prejudicial, when silence were more profitable.’ The Saracen said: ‘I am master of my words ere they are pronounced; but when they are spoken I am servant thereto.’ And it was asked one of them: ‘Who might be called a king?’ And he answered: ‘He that is not subject to his own will.’”

The Dictes, or Sayings of Philosophers, of which, I believe, but one perfect copy is extant, was translated from the French by Earl Rivers, and printed by Caxton, at Westminister, in the year 1477, as we learn from the colophon. I am not aware that any one has taken the trouble to trace to their sources all the sayings comprised in this collection, but I think the original of the above is to be found in the following, from the preface to the Arabian version (from the Pahlaví, the ancient language of Persia) of the celebrated Fables of Bidpaï, entitled Kalíla wa Dimna, made in the year 754:

“The four kings of China, India, Persia, and Greece, being together, agreed each of them to deliver a saying which might be recorded to their honour in after ages. The king of China said: ‘I have more power over that which I have not spoken than I have to recall what has once passed my lips.’ The king of India: ‘I have been often struck with the risk of speaking; for if a man be heard in his own praise it is unprofitable boasting, and what he says to his own discredit is injurious in its consequences.’ The king of Persia: ‘I am the slave of what I have spoken, but the master of what I conceal.’ The king of Greece: ‘I have never regretted the silence which I had imposed upon myself; though I have often repented of the words I have uttered;[12] for silence is attended with advantage, whereas loquacity is often followed by incurable evils.’”

The Persian poet Jámí—the last of the brilliant galaxy of genius who enriched the literature of their country, and who flourished two centuries after Saádí had passed to his rest—reproduces these sayings of the four kings in his work entitled Baháristán, or Abode of Spring, which is similar in design to the Gulistán.

Among the sayings of other wise men (whose names, however, Saádí does not mention) are the following: A devotee, who had quitted his monastery and become a member of a college, being asked what difference there is between a learned man and a religious man to induce him thus to change his associates, answered: “The devotee saves his own blanket out of the waves, and the learned man endeavours to save others from drowning.”—A young man complained to his spiritual guide of his studies being frequently interrupted by idle and impudent visitors, and desired to know by what means he might rid himself of the annoyance. The sage replied: “To such as are poor lend money, and of such as are rich ask money, and, depend upon it, you will never see one of them again.”

Saádí’s own aphorisms are not less striking and instructive. They are indeed calculated to stimulate the faltering to manly exertion, and to counsel the inexperienced. It is to youthful minds, however, that the “words of the wise” are more especially addressed; for it is during the spring-time of life that the seeds of good and evil take root; and so we find the sage Hebrew king frequently addressing his maxims to the young: “My son,” is his formula, “my son, attend to my words, and bow thine ear to my understanding; that thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge.” And the “good and notable sentences” of Saádí are well worthy of being treasured by the young man on the threshold of life. For example:

“Life is snow, and the summer advanceth; only a small portion remaineth: art thou still slothful?”

This warning has been reiterated by moralists in all ages and countries;—the Great Teacher says: “Work while it is day, for the night cometh when no man can work.” And Saádí, in one of his sermons (which is found in another of his books), recounts this beautiful fable, in illustration of the fortunes of the slothful and the industrious:

It is related that in a certain garden a Nightingale had built his nest on the bough of a rose-bush. It so happened that a poor little Ant had fixed her dwelling at the root of this same bush, and managed as best she could to store her wretched hut of care with winter provision. Day and night was the Nightingale fluttering round the rose-bower, and tuning the barbut[13] of his soul-deluding melody; indeed, whilst the Ant was night and day industriously occupied, the thousand-songed bird seemed fascinated with his own sweet voice, echoing amidst the trees. The Nightingale was whispering his secret to the Rose,[14] and that, full-blown by the zephyr of the dawn, would ogle him in return. The poor Ant could not help admiring the coquettish airs of the Rose, and the gay blandishments of the Nightingale, and incontinently remarking: “Time alone can disclose what may be the end of this frivolity and talk!” After the flowery season of summer was gone, and the black time of winter was come, thorns took the station of the Rose, and the raven the perch of the Nightingale. The storms of autumn raged in fury, and the foliage of the grove was shed upon the ground. The cheek of the leaf was turned yellow, and the breath of the wind was chill and blasting. The gathering cloud poured down hailstones, like pearls, and flakes of snow floated like camphor on the bosom of the air. Suddenly the Nightingale returned into the garden, but he met neither the bloom of the Rose nor fragrance of the spikenard; notwithstanding his thousand-songed tongue, he stood stupified and mute, for he could discover no flower whose form he might admire, nor any verdure whose freshness he might enjoy. The Thorn turned round to him and said: “How long, silly bird, wouldst thou be courting the society of the Rose? Now is the season that in the absence of thy charmer thou must put up with the heart-rending bramble of separation.” The Nightingale cast his eye upon the scene around him, but saw nothing fit to eat. Destitute of food, his strength and fortitude failed him, and in his abject helplessness he was unable to earn himself a little livelihood. He called to his mind and said: “Surely the Ant had in former days his dwelling underneath this tree, and was busy in hoarding a store of provision: now I will lay my wants before her, and, in the name of good neighbourship, and with an appeal to her generosity, beg some small relief. Peradventure she may pity my distress and bestow her charity upon me.” Like a poor suppliant, the half-famished Nightingale presented himself at the Ant’s door, and said: “Generosity is the harbinger of prosperity, and the capital stock of good luck. I was wasting my precious life in idleness whilst thou wast toiling hard and laying up a hoard. How considerate and good it were of thee wouldst thou spare me a portion of it.” The Ant replied:

“Thou wast day and night occupied in idle talk, and I in attending to the needful: one moment thou wast taken up with the fresh blandishment of the Rose, and the next busy in admiring the blossoming spring. Wast thou not aware that every summer has its fall and every road an end?”[15]

These are a few more of Saádí’s aphorisms:

Riches are for the comfort of life, and not life for the accumulation of riches.[16]

The eye of the avaricious man cannot be satisfied with wealth, any more than a well can be filled with dew.

A wicked rich man is a clod of earth gilded.

The liberal man who eats and bestows is better than the religious man who fasts and hoards.

Publish not men’s secret faults, for by disgracing them you make yourself of no repute.

He who gives advice to a self-conceited man stands himself in need of counsel from another.

The vicious cannot endure the sight of the virtuous, in the same manner as the curs of the market howl at a hunting-dog, but dare not approach him.

When a mean wretch cannot vie with any man in virtue, out of his wickedness he begins to slander him. The abject, envious wretch will slander the virtuous man when absent, but when brought face to face his loquacious tongue becomes dumb.

O thou, who hast satisfied thy hunger, to thee a barley loaf is beneath notice;—that seems loveliness to me which in thy sight appears deformity.

The ringlets of fair maids are chains for the feet of reason, and snares for the bird of wisdom.

When you have anything to communicate that will distress the heart of the person whom it concerns, be silent, in order that he may hear it from some one else. O nightingale, bring thou the glad tidings of the spring, and leave bad news to the owl!

It often happens that the imprudent is honoured and the wise despised. The alchemist died of poverty and distress, while the blockhead found a treasure under a ruin.

Covetousness sews up the eyes of cunning, and brings both bird and fish into the net.

Although, in the estimation of the wise, silence is commendable, yet at a proper season speech is preferable.[17]

Two things indicate an obscure understanding: to be silent when we should converse, and to speak when we should be silent.

Put not yourself so much in the power of your friend that, if he should become your enemy, he may be able to injure you.

Our English poet Young has this observation in his Night Thoughts:

Thought, in the mine, may come forth gold or dross;

When coined in word, we know its real worth.

He had been thus anticipated by Saádí: “To what shall be likened the tongue in a man’s mouth? It is the key of the treasury of wisdom. When the door is shut, who can discover whether he deals in jewels or small-wares?”

The poet Thomson, in his Seasons, has these lines, which have long been hackneyed:

Loveliness

Needs not the aid of foreign ornament,

But is when unadorned adorned the most.

Saádí had anticipated him also: “The face of the beloved,” he says, “requireth not the art of the tire-woman. The finger of a beautiful woman and the tip of her ear are handsome without an ear-jewel or a turquoise ring.” But Saádí, in his turn, was forestalled by the Arabian poet-hero Antar, in his famous Mu’allaka, or prize-poem, which is at least thirteen hundred years old, where he says: “Many a consort of a fair one, whose beauty required no ornaments, have I laid prostrate on the field.”

Yet one Persian poet, at least, namely, Nakhshabí, held a different opinion: “Beauty,” he says, “adorned with ornaments, portends disastrous events to our hearts. An amiable form, ornamented with diamonds and gold, is like a melodious voice accompanied by the rabáb.” Again, he says: “Ornaments are the universal ravishers of hearts, and an upper garment for the shoulder is like a cluster of gems. If dress, however,” he concedes, “may have been at any time the assistant of beauty, beauty is always the animator of dress.” It is remarkable that homely-featured women dress more gaudily than their handsome sisters generally, thus unconsciously bringing their lack of beauty (not to put too fine a point on it) into greater prominence.

In common with other moralists, Saádí reiterates the maxim that learning and virtue, precept and practice, should ever go hand in hand. “Two persons,” says he, “took trouble in vain: he who acquired wealth without using it, and he who taught wisdom without practising it.” Again: “He who has acquired knowledge and does not practise it, is like unto him that ploughed but did not sow.” And again: “How much soever you may study science, when you do not act wisely, you are ignorant. The beast that they load with books is not profoundly wise and learned: what knoweth his empty skull whether he carrieth fire-wood or books?” And yet again: “A learned man without temperance is like a blind man carrying a lamp: he showeth the way to others, but does not guide himself.”

Ingratitude is denounced by all moralists as the lowest of vices. Thus Saádí says: “Man is beyond dispute the most excellent of created beings, and the vilest animal is the dog; but the sages agree that a grateful dog is better than an ungrateful man. A dog never forgets a morsel, though you pelt him a hundred times with stones. But if you cherish a mean wretch for an age, he will fight with you for a mere trifle.” In language still more forcible does a Hindú poet denounce this basest of vices: “To cut off the teats of a cow;[18] to occasion a pregnant woman to miscarry; to injure a Bráhman—are sins of the most aggravated nature; but more atrocious than these is ingratitude.”

The sentiment so tersely expressed in the Chinese proverb, “He who never reveals a secret keeps it best,” is thus finely amplified by Saádí: “The matter which you wish to preserve as a secret impart not to every one, although he may be worthy of confidence; for no one will be so true to your secret as yourself. It is safer to be silent than to reveal a secret to any one, and tell him not to mention it. O wise man! stop the water at the spring-head, for when it is in full stream you cannot arrest it.”[19]

The imperative duty of active benevolence is thus inculcated: “Bestow thy gold and thy wealth while they are thine; for when thou art gone they will be no longer in thy power. Distribute thy treasure readily to-day, for to-morrow the key may be no longer in thy hand. Exert thyself to cast a covering over the poor, that God’s own veil may be a covering to thee.”

In the following passage the man of learning and virtue is contrasted with the stupid and ignorant blockhead:

“If a wise man, falling into company with mean people, does not get credit for his discourse, be not surprised, for the sound of the harp cannot overpower the noise of the drum, and the fragrance of ambergris is overcome by fetid garlic. The ignorant fellow was proud of his loud voice, because he had impudently confounded the man of understanding. If a jewel falls in the mud it is still the same precious stone,[20] and if dust flies up to the sky it retains its original baseness. A capacity without education is deplorable, and education without capacity is thrown away. Sugar obtains not its value from the cane, but from its innate quality. Musk has fragrance of itself, and not from being called a perfume by the druggist. The wise man is like the druggist’s chest, silent, but full of virtues; while the blockhead resembles the warrior’s drum, noisy, but an empty prattler. A wise man in the company of those who are ignorant has been compared by the sages to a beautiful girl in the company of blind men, and to the Kurán in the house of an infidel.”—The old proverb that “an evil bird has an evil egg” finds expression by Saádí thus: “No one whose origin is bad ever catches the reflection of the good.” Again, he says: “How can we make a good sword out of bad iron? A worthless person cannot by education become a person of any worth.” And yet again: “Evil habits which have taken root in one’s nature will only be got rid of at the hour of death.”

Firdausí, the Homer of Persia (eleventh century), has the following remarks in his scathing satire on the sultan Mahmúd, of Ghazní (Atkinson’s rendering):

Alas! from vice can goodness ever spring?

Is mercy hoped for in a tyrant king?

Can water wash the Ethiopian white?

Can we remove the darkness from the night?

The tree to which a bitter fruit is given

Would still be bitter in the bowers of heaven;

And a bad heart keeps on its vicious course,

Or, if it changes, changes for the worse;

Whilst streams of milk where Eden’s flow’rets blow

Acquire more honied sweetness as they flow.

The striking words of the Great Teacher, “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!” find an interesting analogue in this passage by Saádí: “There is a saying of the Prophet, ‘To the poor death is a state of rest.’ The ass that carries the lightest burden travels easiest. In like manner, the good man who bears the burden of poverty will enter the gate of death lightly loaded, while he who lives in affluence, with ease and comfort, will, doubtless, on that very account find death very terrible. And in any view, the captive who is released from confinement is happier than the noble who is taken prisoner.”

A singular anecdote is told of another celebrated Persian poet, which may serve as a kind of commentary on this last-cited passage: Faridú ’d-Dín ’Attár, who died in the year 1229, when over a hundred years old, was considered the most perfect Súfí[21] philosopher of the time in which he lived. His father was an eminent druggist in Nishapúr, and for a time Faridú ’d-Dín followed the same profession, and his shop was the delight of all who passed by it, from the neatness of its arrangements and the fragrant odours of drugs and essences. ’Attár, which means druggist, or perfumer, Faridú ’d-Dín adopted for his poetical title. One day, while sitting at his door with a friend, an aged dervish drew near, and, after looking anxiously and closely into the well-furnished shop, he sighed heavily and shed tears, as he reflected on the transitory nature of all earthly things. ’Attár, mistaking the sentiment uppermost in the mind of the venerable devotee, ordered him to be gone, to which he meekly rejoined: “Yes, I have nothing to prevent me from leaving thy door, or, indeed, from quitting this world at once, as my sole possession is this threadbare garment. But O ’Attár, I grieve for thee: for how canst thou ever bring thyself to think of death—to leave all these goods behind thee?” ’Attár replied that he hoped and believed that he should die as contentedly as any dervish; upon which the aged devotee, saying, “We shall see,” placed his wooden bowl upon the ground, laid his head upon it, and, calling on the name of God, immediately resigned his soul. Deeply impressed with this incident, ’Attár at once gave up his shop, and devoted himself to the study of Súfí philosophy.[22]

The death of Cardinal Mazarin furnishes another remarkable illustration of Saádí’s sentiment. A day or two before he died, the cardinal caused his servant to carry him into his magnificent art gallery, where, gazing upon his collection of pictures and sculpture, he cried in anguish, “And must I leave all these?” Dr. Johnson may have had Mazarin’s words in mind when he said to Garrick, while being shown over the famous actor’s splendid mansion: “Ah, Davie, Davie, these are the things that make a death-bed terrible!”

Few passages of Shakspeare are more admired than these lines:

And this our life, exempt from public haunts,

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything.[23]

Saádí had thus expressed the same sentiment before him: “The foliage of a newly-clothed tree, to the eye of a discerning man, displays a whole volume of the wondrous works of the Creator.” Another Persian poet, Jámí, in his beautiful mystical poem of Yúsuf wa Zulaykhá, says: “Every leaf is a tongue uttering praises, like one who keepeth crying, ‘In the name of God.’”[24] And the Afghan poet Abdu ’r-Rahman says: “Every tree, every shrub, stands ready to bend before him; every herb and blade of grass is a tongue to mutter his praises.” And Horace Smith, that most pleasing but unpretentious writer, both of verse and prose, has thus finely amplified the idea of “tongues in trees”:

Your voiceless lips, O Flowers, are living preachers,

Each cup a pulpit, every leaf a book,

Supplying to my fancy numerous teachers,

From loneliest nook.

’Neath cloistered boughs, each floral bell that swingeth,

And tolls its perfume on the passing air,

Makes Sabbath in the fields, and ever ringeth

A call to prayer;—

Not to the domes where crumbling arch and column

Attest the feebleness of mortal hand,

But to that fane, most catholic and solemn,

Which God hath planned:

To that cathedral, boundless as our wonder,

Whose quenchless lamps the sun and moon supply;

Its choir, the winds and waves, its organ, thunder,

Its dome, the sky.

There, amid solitude and shade, I wander

Through the green aisles, and, stretched upon the sod,

Awed by the silence, reverently ponder

The ways of God.

When Saádí composed his Gulistán, in 1278, he was between eighty and ninety years of age, with his great mind still vigorous as ever; and he lived many years after, beloved and revered by the poor, whose necessities he relieved, and honoured and esteemed by the noble and the learned, who frequently visited the venerable solitary, to gather and treasure up the pearls of wisdom which dropped from his eloquent tongue. Like other poets of lofty genius, he possessed a firm assurance of the immortality of his fame. “A rose,” says he, “may continue to bloom for five or six days, but this Rose-Garden will flourish for ever”; and again: “These verses and recitals of mine will endure after every particle of my dust has been dispersed.” Six centuries have passed away since the gifted sage penned his Gulistán, and his fame has not only continued in his own land and throughout the East generally, but has spread into all European countries, and across the Atlantic, where long after the days of Saádí “still stood the forests primeval.”

ORIENTAL WIT AND HUMOUR.

Sport that wrinkled Care derides,

And Laughter shaking both his sides.—L’ Allegro.

I

MAN A LAUGHING ANIMAL—ANTIQUITY OF POPULAR JESTS—“NIGHT AND DAY”—THE PLAIN-FEATURED BRIDE—THE HOUSE OF CONDOLENCE—THE BLIND MAN’S WIFE—TWO WITTY PERSIAN LADIES—WOMAN’S COUNSEL—THE TURKISH JESTER: IN THE PULPIT; THE CAULDRON; THE BEGGAR; THE DRUNKEN GOVERNOR; THE ROBBER; THE HOT BROTH—MUSLIM PREACHERS AND MUSLIM MISERS.

Certain philosophers have described man as a cooking animal, others as a tool-making animal, others, again, as a laughing animal. No creature save man, say the advocates of the last definition, seems to have any “sense of humour.” However this may be, there can be little doubt that man in all ages of which we have any knowledge has possessed that faculty which perceives ridiculous incongruities in the relative positions of certain objects, and in the actions and sayings of individuals, which we term the “sense of the ludicrous.” It is not to be supposed that a dog or a cat—albeit intelligent creatures, in their own ways—would see anything funny or laughable in a man whose sole attire consisted in a general’s hat and sash and a pair of spurs! Yet that should be enough to “make even a cat laugh”! Certainly laughter is peculiar to our species; and gravity is as certainly not always a token of profound wisdom; for

The gravest beast’s an ass;

The gravest bird’s an owl;

The gravest fish’s an oyster;

And the gravest man’s a fool.

Many of the great sages of antiquity were also great humorists, and laughed long and heartily at a good jest. And, indeed, as the Sage of Chelsea affirms, “no man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether, irreclaimably bad. How much lies in laughter!—the cipher key wherewith we decipher the whole man!… The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils, but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem.” Let us, then, laugh at what is laughable while we are yet clothed in “this muddy vesture of decay,” for, as delightful Elia asks, “Can a ghost laugh? Can he shake his gaunt sides if we be merry with him?”

It is a remarkable fact that a considerable proportion of the familiar jests of almost any country, which are by its natives fondly believed to be “racy of the soil,” are in reality common to other peoples widely differing in language and customs. Not a few of these jests had their origin ages upon ages since—in Greece, in Persia, in India. Yet they must have set out upon their travels westward at a comparatively early period, for they have been long domiciled in almost every country of Europe. Nevertheless, as we ourselves possess a goodly number of droll witticisms, repartees, and jests, which are most undoubtedly and beyond cavil our own—such as many of those which are ascribed to Sam Foote, Harry Erskine, Douglas Jerrold, and Sydney Smith; though they have been credited with some that are as old as the jests of Hierokles—so there exist in what may be termed the lower strata of Oriental fiction, humorous and witty stories, characteristic of the different peoples amongst whom they originated, which, for the most part, have not yet been appropriated by the European compilers of books of facetiæ, and a selection of such jests—choice specimens of Oriental Wit and Humour—gleaned from a great variety of sources, will, I trust, amuse readers in general, and lovers of funny anecdotes in particular.

To begin, then—place aux dames! In most Asiatic countries the ladies are at a sad discount in the estimation of their lords and masters, however much the latter may expatiate on their personal charms, and in Eastern jests this is abundantly shown. For instance, a Persian poet, through the importunity of his friends, had married an old and very ugly woman, who turned out also of a very bad temper, and they had constant quarrels. Once, in a dispute, the poet made some comparisons between his aged wife and himself and between Night and Day. “Cease your nonsense,” said she; “night and day were created long before us.” “Hold a little,” said the husband. “I know they were created long before me, but whether before you, admits of great doubt!” Again, a Persian married, and, as is customary with Muslims, on the marriage night saw his bride’s face for the first time, when she proved to be very ugly—perhaps “plain-looking” were the more respectful expression. A few days after the nuptials, she said to him: “My life! as you have many relatives, I wish you would inform me before which of them I may unveil.” (Women of rank in Muslim countries appear unveiled only before very near relations.) “My soul!” responded the husband, “if thou wilt but conceal thy face from me, I care not to whom thou showest it.” And there is a grim sort of humour in the story of the poor Arab whose wife was going on a visit of condolence, when he said to her: “My dear, if you go, who is to take care of the children, and what have you left for them to eat?” She replied: “As I have neither flour, nor milk, nor butter, nor oil, nor anything else, what can I leave?” “You had better stay at home, then,” said the poor man; “for assuredly this is the true house of condolence.” And also in the following: A citizen of Tawris, in comfortable circumstances, had a daughter so very ugly that nothing could induce any one to marry her. At length he resolved to bestow her on a blind man, hoping that, not seeing her personal defects, he would be kind to her. His plan succeeded, and the blind man lived very happily with his wife. By-and-by, there arrived in the city a doctor who was celebrated for restoring sight to many people, and the girl’s father was urged by his friends to engage this skilled man to operate upon his son-in-law, but he replied: “I will take care to do nothing of the kind; for if this doctor should restore my son-in-law’s eyesight, he would very soon restore my daughter to me!”

But occasionally ladies are represented as giving witty retorts, as in the story of the Persian lady who, walking in the street, observed a man following her, and turning round enquired of him: “Why do you follow me, sir?” He answered: “Because I am in love with you.” “Why are you in love with me?” said the lady. “My sister is much handsomer than I; she is coming after me—go and make love to her.” The fellow went back and saw a woman with an exceedingly ugly face, upon which he at once went after the lady, and said to her: “Why did you tell me what was not true?” “Neither did you speak the truth,” answered she; “for if you were really in love with me, you would not have turned to see another woman.” And the Persian poet Jámí, in his Baháristán, relates that a man with a very long nose asked a woman in marriage, saying: “I am no way given to sloth, or long sleeping, and I am very patient in bearing vexations.” To which she replied: “Yes, truly: hadst thou not been patient in bearing vexations thou hadst not carried that nose of thine these forty years.”

The low estimation in which women are so unjustly held among Muhammedans is perhaps to be ascribed partly to the teachings of the Kurán in one or two passages, and to the traditional sayings of the Apostle Muhammad, who has been credited (or rather discredited) with many things which he probably never said. But this is not peculiar to the followers of the Prophet of Mecca: a very considerable proportion of the Indian fictions represent women in an unfavourable light—fictions, too, which were composed long before the Hindús came in contact with the Muhammedans. Even in Europe, during mediæval times, maugre the “lady fair” of chivalric romance, it was quite as much the custom to decry women, and to relate stories of their profligacy, levity, and perversity, as ever it has been in the East. But we have changed all that in modern times: it is only to be hoped that we have not gone to the other extreme!—According to an Arabian writer, cited by Lane, “it is desirable, before a man enters upon any important undertaking, to consult ten intelligent persons among his particular friends; or if he have not more than five such friends let him consult each twice; or if he have not more than one friend he should consult him ten times, at ten different visits [he would be ‘a friend indeed,’ to submit to so many consultations on the same subject]; if he have not one to consult let him return to his wife and consult her, and whatever she advises him to do let him do the contrary, so shall he proceed rightly in his affair and attain his object.”[25] We may suppose this Turkish story, from the History of the Forty Vezírs, to be illustrative of the wisdom of such teaching: A man went on the roof of his house to repair it, and when he was about to come down he called to his wife, “How should I come down?” The woman answered, “The roof is free; what would happen? You are a young man—jump down.” The man jumped down, and his ankle was dislocated, and for a whole year he was bedridden, and his ankle came not back to its place. Next year the man again went on the roof of his house and repaired it. Then he called to his wife, “Ho! wife, how shall I come down?” The woman said, “Jump not; thine ankle has not yet come to its place—come down gently.” The man replied, “The other time, for that I followed thy words, and not those of the Apostle [i.e., Muhammed], was my ankle dislocated, and it is not yet come to its place; now shall I follow the words of the Apostle, and do the contrary of what thou sayest [Kurán, iii, 29.]” And he jumped down, and straightway his ankle came to its place.

In the Turkish collection of jests ascribed to Khoja Nasrú ’d-Dín Efendi[26] is the following, which has been reproduced amongst ourselves within comparatively recent years, and credited to an Irish priest:

One day the Khoja went into the pulpit of a mosque to preach to the people. “O men!” said he, “do you know what I should say unto you?” They answered: “We know not, Efendi.” “When you do know,” said the Khoja, “I shall take the trouble of addressing you.” The next day he again ascended into the pulpit, and said, as before: “O men! do you know what I should say unto you?” “We do know,” exclaimed they all with one voice. “Then,” said he, “what is the use of my addressing you, since you already know?” The third day he once more went into the pulpit, and asked the same question. The people, having consulted together as to the answer they should make, said: “O Khoja, some of us know, and some of us do not know.” “If that be the case, let those who know tell those who do not know,” said the Khoja, coming down. A poor Arab preacher was once, however, not quite so successful. Having “given out,” as we say, for his text, these words, from the Kurán, “I have called Noah,” and being unable to collect his thoughts, he repeated, over and over again, “I have called Noah,” and finally came to a dead stop; when one of those present shouted, “If Noah will not come, call some one else.” Akin to this is our English jest of the deacon of a dissenting chapel in Yorkshire, who undertook, in the vanity of his heart, to preach on the Sunday, in place of the pastor, who was ill, or from home. He conducted the devotional exercises fairly well, but when he came to deliver his sermon, on the text, “I am the Light of the world,” he had forgot what he intended to say, and continued to repeat these words, until an old man called out, “If thou be the light o’ the world, I think thou needs snuffin’ badly.”

To return to the Turkish jest-book. One day the Khoja borrowed a cauldron from a brazier, and returned it with a little saucepan inside. The owner, seeing the saucepan, asked: “What is this?” Quoth the Khoja: “Why, the cauldron has had a young one”; whereupon the brazier, well pleased, took possession of the saucepan. Some time after this the Khoja again borrowed the cauldron and took it home. At the end of a week the brazier called at the Khoja’s house and asked for his cauldron. “O set your mind at rest,” said the Khoja; “the cauldron is dead.” “O Khoja,” quoth the brazier, “can a cauldron die?” Responded the Khoja: “Since you believed it could have a young one, why should you not also believe that it could die?”

The Khoja had a pleasant way of treating beggars. One day a man knocked at his door. “What do you want?” cried the Khoja from above. “Come down,” said the man. The Khoja accordingly came down, and again said: “What do you want?” “I want charity,” said the man. “Come up stairs,” said the Khoja. When the beggar had come up, the Khoja said: “God help you”—the customary reply to a beggar when one will not or cannot give him anything. “O master,” cried the man, “why did you not say so below?” Quoth the Khoja: “When I was above stairs, why did you bring me down?”

Drunkenness is punished (or punishable) by the infliction of eighty strokes of the bastinado in Muslim countries, but it is only flagrant cases that are thus treated, and there is said to be not a little private drinking of spirits as well as of wine among the higher classes, especially Turks and Persians. It happened that the governor of Súricastle lay in a state of profound intoxication in a garden one day, and was thus discovered by the Khoja, who was taking a walk in the same garden with his friend Ahmed. The Khoja instantly stripped him of his ferage, or upper garment, and, putting it on his own back, walked away. When the governor awoke and saw that his ferage had been stolen, he told his officers to bring before him whomsoever they found wearing it. The officers, seeing the ferage on the Khoja, seized and brought him before the governor, who said to him: “Ho! Khoja, where did you obtain that ferage?” The Khoja responded “As I was taking a walk with my friend Ahmed we saw a fellow lying drunk, whereupon I took off his ferage and went away with it. If it be yours, pray take it.” “O no,” said the governor, “it does not belong to me.”

Even being robbed could not disturb the Khoja’s good humour. When he was lying in bed one night a loud noise was heard in the street before his house. Said he to his wife: “Get up and light a candle, and I will go and see what is the matter.” “You had much better stay where you are,” advised his wife. But the Khoja, without heeding her words, put the counterpane on his shoulders and went out. A fellow, on perceiving him, immediately snatched the counterpane from off the Khoja’s shoulders and ran away. Shivering with cold, the Khoja returned into the house, and when his wife asked him the cause of the noise, he said: “It was on account of our counterpane; when they got that, the noise ceased at once.”

But in the following story we have a very old acquaintance in a new dress: One day the Khoja’s wife, in order to plague him, served up some exceedingly hot broth, and, forgetting what she had done, put a spoonful of it in her mouth, which so scalded her that the tears came into her eyes. “O wife,” said the Khoja, “what is the matter with you—is the broth hot?” “Dear Efendi,” said she, “my mother, who is now dead, loved broth very much; I thought of that, and wept on her account.” The Khoja, thinking that what she said was truth, took a spoonful of the broth, and, it burning his mouth, he began to bellow. “What is the matter with you?” said his wife. “Why do you cry?” Quoth the Khoja: “You cry because your mother is gone, but I cry because her daughter is here.”[27]

Many of the Muslim jests, like some our of own, are at the expense of poor preachers. Thus: there was in Baghdád a preacher whom no one attended after hearing him but once. One Friday when he came down from the pulpit he discovered that the only one who remained in the mosque was the muezzin—all his hearers had left him to finish his discourse as, and when, he pleased—and, still worse, his slippers had also disappeared. Accusing the muezzin of having stolen them, “I am rightly served by your suspicion,” retorted he, “for being the only one that remained to hear you.”—In Gladwin’s Persian Moonshee we read that whenever a certain learned man preached in the mosque, one of the congregation wept constantly, and the preacher, observing this, concluded that his words made a great impression on the man’s heart. One day some of the people said to the man: “That learned man makes no impression on our minds;—what kind of a heart have you, to be thus always in tears?” He answered: “I do not weep at his discourse, O Muslims. But I had a goat of which I was very fond, and when he grew old he died. Now, whenever the learned man speaks and wags his beard I am reminded of my goat, for he had just such a voice and beard.”[28] But they are not always represented as mere dullards; for example: A miserly old fellow once sent a Muslim preacher a gold ring without a stone, requesting him to put up a prayer for him from the pulpit. The holy man prayed that he should have in Paradise a golden palace without a roof. When he descended from the pulpit, the man went to him, and, taking him by the hand, said: “O preacher, what manner of prayer is that thou hast made for me?” “If thy ring had had a stone,” replied the preacher, “thy palace should also have had a roof.”

Apropos of misers, our English facetiæ books furnish many examples of their ingenuity in excusing themselves from granting favours asked of them by their acquaintances; and, human nature being much the same everywhere, the misers in the East are represented as being equally adroit, as well as witty, in parrying such objectionable requests. A Persian who had a very miserly friend went to him one day, and said: “I am going on a journey; give me your ring, which I will constantly wear, and whenever I look on it, I shall remember you.” The other answered: “If you wish to remember me, whenever you see your finger without my ring upon it, always think of me, that I did not give you my ring.” And quite as good is the story of the dervish who said to the miser that he wanted something of him; to which he replied: “If you will consent to a request of mine, I will consent to whatever else you may require”; and when the dervish desired to know what it was, he said: “Never ask me for anything and whatever else you say I will perform.”

II

THE TWO DEAF MEN AND THE TRAVELLER—THE DEAF PERSIAN AND THE HORSEMAN—LAZY SERVANTS—CHINESE HUMOUR: THE RICH MAN AND THE SMITHS; HOW TO KEEP PLANTS ALIVE; CRITICISING A PORTRAIT—THE PERSIAN COURTIER AND HIS OLD FRIEND—THE SCRIBE—THE SCHOOLMASTER AND THE WIT—THE PERSIAN AND HIS CAT—A LIST OF BLOCKHEADS—THE ARAB AND HIS CAMEL—A WITTY BAGHDÁDÍ—THE UNLUCKY SLIPPERS.

It is well known that deaf men generally dislike having their infirmity alluded to, and even endeavour to conceal it as much as possible. Charles Lamb, or some other noted wit, seeing a deaf acquaintance on the other side of the street one day while walking with a friend, stopped and motioned to him; then opened his mouth as if speaking in a loud tone, but saying not a word. “What are you bawling for?” demanded the deaf one. “D’ye think I can’t hear?”—Two Eastern stories I have met with are most diverting examples of this peculiarity of deaf folks. One is related by my friend Pandit Natésa Sastrí in his Folk-Lore of Southern India, of which a few copies were recently issued at Bombay.[29] A deaf man was sitting one day where three roads crossed, when a neatherd happened to pass that way. He had lately lost a good cow and a calf, and had been seeking them some days. When he saw the deaf man sitting by the way he took him for a soothsayer, and asked him to find out by his knowledge of magic where the cow would likely be found. The herdsman was also very deaf, and the other, without hearing what he had said, abused him, and said he wished to be left undisturbed, at the same time stretching out his hand and pointing at his face. This pointing the herd supposed to indicate the direction where the lost cow and calf should be sought; thus thinking (for he, too, had not heard a word of what the other man had said to him), the herd went off in search, resolving to present the soothsayer with the calf if he found it with the cow. To his joy, and by mere chance, of course, he found them both, and, returning with them to the deaf man (still sitting by the wayside), he pointed to the calf and asked him to accept of it. Now, it so happened that the calf’s tail was broken and crooked, and the deaf man supposed that the herdsman was blaming him for having broken it, and by a wave of his hand he denied the charge. This the poor deaf neatherd mistook for a refusal of the calf and a demand for the cow, so he said: “How very greedy you are, to be sure! I promised you the calf, and not the cow.” “Never!” exclaimed the deaf man in a rage. “I know nothing of you or your cow and calf. I never broke the calf’s tail.” While they were thus quarrelling, without understanding each other, a third man happened to pass, and seeing his opportunity to profit by their deafness, he said to the neatherd in a loud voice, yet so as not to be heard by the other deaf man: “Friend, you had better go away with your cow. Those soothsayers are always greedy. Leave the calf with me, and I shall make him accept it.” The poor neatherd, highly pleased to have secured his cow, went off, leaving the calf with the traveller. Then said the traveller to the deaf man: “It is, indeed, very unlawful, friend, for that neatherd to charge you with an offence which you did not commit; but never mind, since you have a friend in me. I shall contrive to make clear to him your innocence; leave this matter to me.” So saying, he walked away with the calf, and the deaf man went home, well pleased that he had escaped from such a serious accusation.

The other story is of a deaf Persian who was taking home a quantity of wheat, and, coming to a river which he must cross, he saw a horseman approach; so he said to himself: “When that horseman comes up, he will first salute me, ‘Peace be with thee’; next he will ask, ‘What is the depth of this river?’ and after that he will ask, how many máns of wheat I have with me.” (A mán is a Persian weight, which seems to vary in different places.) But the deaf man’s surmises were all in vain; for when the horseman came up to him, he cried: “Ho! my man, what is the depth of this river?” The deaf one replied: “Peace be with thee, and the mercy of Allah and his blessing.” At this the horseman laughed, and said: “May they cut off thy beard!” The deaf one rejoined: “To my neck and bosom.” The horseman said: “Dust be on thy mouth!” The deaf man answered: “Eighty máns of it.”

The laziness of domestics is a common complaint in this country at the present day, but surely never was there a more lazy servant than the fellow whose exploits are thus recorded: A Persian husbandman one night desired his servant to shut the door, and the man said it was already shut. In the morning his master bade him open the door, and he coolly replied that, foreseeing this request, he had left it open the preceding night. Another night his master bade him rise and see whether it rained. But he called for the dog that lay at the door, and finding his paws dry, answered that the night was fair; then being desired to see whether the fire was extinguished, he called the cat, and finding her paws cold, replied in the affirmative.—This story had gained currency in Europe in the 13th century, and it forms one of the mediæval Latin Stories edited, for the Percy Society, by Thos. Wright, where it is entitled, “De Maimundo Armigero.” There is another Persian story of a lazy fellow whose master, being sick, said to him: “Go and get me some medicine.” “But,” rejoined he, “it may happen that the doctor is not at home.” “You will find him at home.” “But if I do find him at home he may not give me the medicine,” quoth the servant. “Then take this note to him and he will give it to you.” “Well,” persisted the fellow, “he may give me the medicine, but suppose it does you no good?” “Villain!” exclaimed his master, out of all patience, “will you do as I bid you, instead of sitting there so coolly, raising difficulties?” “Good sir,” reasoned this lazy philosopher, “admitting that the medicine should produce some effect, what will be the ultimate result? We must all die some time, and what does it matter whether it be to-day or to-morrow?”

The Chinese seem not a whit behind other peoples in appreciating a good jest, as has been shown by the tales and bon mots rendered into French by Stanislas Julien and other eminent savans. Here are three specimens of Chinese humour:

A wealthy man lived between the houses of two blacksmiths, and was constantly annoyed by the noise of their hammers, so that he could not get rest, night or day. First he asked them to strike more gently; then he made them great promises if they would remove at once. The two blacksmiths consented, and he, overjoyed to get rid of them, prepared a grand banquet for their entertainment. When the banquet was over, he asked them where they were going to take up their new abodes, and they replied—to the intense dismay of their worthy host, no doubt: “He who lives on the left of your house is going to that on the right; and he who lives on your right is going to the house on your left.”

There is a keen satirical hit at the venality of Chinese judges in our next story. A husbandman, who wished to rear a particular kind of vegetable, found that the plants always died. He consulted an experienced gardener as to the best means of preventing the death of plants. The old man replied: “The affair is very simple; with every plant put down a piece of money.” His friend asked what effect money could possibly have in a matter of this kind. “It is the case now-a-days,” said the old man, “that where there is money life is safe, but where there is none death is the consequence.”

The tale of Apelles and the shoemaker is familiar to every schoolboy, but the following story of the Chinese painter and his critics will be new to most readers: A gentleman having got his portrait painted, the artist suggested that he should consult the passers-by as to whether it was a good likeness. Accordingly he asked the first that was going past: “Is this portrait like me?” The man said: “The cap is very like.” When the next was asked, he said: “The dress is very like.” He was about to ask a third, when the painter stopped him, saying: “The cap and the dress do not matter much; ask the person what he thinks of the face.” The third man hesitated a long time, and then said: “The beard is very like.”

And now we shall revert once more to Persian jests, many of which are, however, also current in India, through the medium of the Persian language. When a man becomes suddenly rich it not unfrequently follows that he becomes as suddenly oblivious of his old friends. Thus, a Persian having obtained a lucrative appointment at court, a friend of his came shortly afterwards to congratulate him thereon. The new courtier asked him: “Who are you? And why do you come here?” The other coolly replied: “Do you not know me, then? I am your old friend, and am come to condole with you, having heard that you had lately lost your sight.”—This recalls the clever epigram:

When Jack was poor, the lad was frank and free;

Of late he’s grown brimful of pride and pelf;

You wonder that he don’t remember me?

Why, don’t you see, Jack has forgot himself!

The humour of the following is—to me, at least—simply exquisite: A man went to a professional scribe and asked him to write a letter for him. The scribe said that he had a pain in his foot. “A pain in your foot!” echoed the man. “I don’t want to send you to any place that you should make such an excuse.” “Very true,” said the scribe; “but, whenever I write a letter for any one, I am always sent for to read it, because no one else can make it out.”—And this is a very fair specimen of ready wit: During a season of great drought in Persia, a schoolmaster at the head of his pupils marched out of Shíráz to pray (at the tomb of some saint in the suburbs) for rain, when they were met by a waggish fellow, who inquired where they were going. The preceptor informed him, and added that, no doubt, Allah would listen to the prayers of innocent children. “Friend,” quoth the wit, “if that were the case, I fear there would not be a schoolmaster left alive.”

The “harmless, necessary cat” has often to bear the blame of depredations in which she had no share—especially the “lodging-house cat”; and, that such is the fact in Persia as well as nearer our own doors, let a story related by the celebrated poet Jámí serve as evidence: A husband gave a mán of meat to his wife, bidding her cook it for his dinner. The woman roasted it and ate it all herself, and when her husband asked for the meat she said the cat had stolen it. The husband weighed the cat forthwith, and found that she had not increased in weight by eating so much meat; so, with a hundred perplexing thoughts, he struck his hand on his knee, and, upbraiding his wife, said: “O lady, doubtless the cat, like the meat, weighed one mán; the meat would add another mán thereto. This point is not clear to me—that two máns should become one mán. If this is the cat, where is the meat? And if this is the meat, why has it the form of the cat?”

Readers of our early English jest-books will perhaps remember the story of a court-jester being facetiously ordered by the king to make out a list of all the fools in his dominions, who replied that it would be a much easier task to write down a list of all the wise men. I fancy there is some trace of this incident in the following Persian story, though the details are wholly different: Once upon a time a party of merchants exhibited to a king some fine horses, which pleased him so well that he bought them, and gave the merchants besides a large sum of money to pay for more horses which they were to bring from their own country. Some time after this the king, being merry with wine, said to his chief vazír: “Make me out a list of all the blockheads in my kingdom.” The vazír replied that he had already made out such a list, and had put his Majesty’s name at the top. “Why so?” demanded the king. “Because,” said the vazír, “you gave a great sum of money for horses to be brought by merchants for whom no person is surety, nor does any one know to what country they belong; and this is surely a sign of stupidity.” “But what if they should bring the horses?” The vazír readily replied: “If they should bring the horses, I should then erase your Majesty’s name and put the names of the merchants in its place.”[30]

Everybody knows the story of the silly old woman who went to market with a cow and a hen for sale, and asked only five shillings for the cow, but ten pounds for the hen. But no such fool was the Arab who lost his camel, and, after a long and fruitless search, anathematised the errant quadruped and her father and her mother, and swore by the Prophet that, should he find her, he would sell her for a dirham (sixpence). At length his search was successful, and he at once regretted his oath; but such an oath must not be violated, so he tied a cat round the camel’s neck, and went about proclaiming: “I will sell this camel for a dirham, and this cat for a hundred dínars (fifty pounds); but I will not sell one without the other.” A man who passed by and heard this exclaimed: “What a very desirable bargain that camel would be if she had not such a collar round her neck!”[31]

For readiness of wit the Arabs would seem to compare very favourably with any race, European or Asiatic, and many examples of their felicitous repartees are furnished by native historians and grammarians. One of the best is: When a khalíf was addressing the people in a mosque on his accession to the khalífate, and told them, among other things in his own praise, that the plague which had so long raged in Baghdád had ceased immediately he became khalíf; an old fellow present shouted: “Of a truth, Allah was too merciful to give us both thee and the plague at the same time.”

The story of the Unlucky Slippers in Cardonne’s Mélanges de Littérature Orientale is a very good specimen of Arabian humour:[32]

In former times there lived in the famous city of Baghdád a miserly old merchant named Abú Kasim. Although very rich, his clothes were mere rags; his turban was of coarse cloth, and exceedingly dirty; but his slippers were perfect curiosities—the soles were studded with great nails, while the upper leathers consisted of as many different pieces as the celebrated ship Argos. He had worn them during ten years, and the art of the ablest cobblers in Baghdád had been exhausted in preventing a total separation of the parts; in short, by frequent accessions of nails and patches they had become so heavy that they passed into a proverb, and anything ponderous was compared to Abú Kasim’s slippers. Walking one day in the great bazaar, the purchase of a large quantity of crystal was offered to this merchant, and, thinking it a bargain, he bought it. Not long after this, hearing that a bankrupt perfumer had nothing left to sell but some rose-water, he took advantage of the poor man’s misfortune, and purchased it for half the value. These lucky speculations had put him into good humour, but instead of giving an entertainment, according to the custom of merchants when they have made a profitable bargain, Abú Kasim deemed it more expedient to go to the bath, which he had not frequented for some time. As he was undressing, one of his acquaintances told him that his slippers made him the laughing-stock of the whole city, and that he ought to provide himself with a new pair. “I have been thinking about it,” he answered; “however, they are not so very much worn but they will serve some time longer.” While he was washing himself, the kází of Baghdád came also to bathe. Abú Kasim, coming out before the judge, took up his clothes but could not find his slippers—a new pair being placed in their room. Our miser, persuaded, because he wished it, that the friend who had spoken to him about his old slippers had made him a present, without hesitation put on these fine ones, and left the bath highly delighted. But when the kází had finished bathing, his servants searched in vain for his slippers; none could be found but a wretched pair, which were at once identified as those of Abú Kasim. The officers hastened after the supposed thief, and, bringing him back with the theft on his feet, the kází, after exchanging slippers, committed him to prison. There was no escaping from the claws of justice without money, and, as Abú Kasim was known to be very rich, he was fined in a considerable sum.

On returning home, our merchant, in a fit of indignation, flung his slippers into the Tigris, that ran beneath his window. Some days after they were dragged out in a fisherman’s net that came up more heavy than usual. The nails with which the soles were thickly studded had torn the meshes of the net, and the fisherman, exasperated against the miserly Abú Kasim and his slippers—for they were known to everyone—determined to throw them into his house through the window he had left open. The slippers, thrown with great force, reached the jars of rose-water, and smashed them in pieces, to the intense consternation of the owner. “Cursed slippers!” cried he, tearing his beard, “you shall cause me no farther mischief!” So saying, he took a spade and began to dig a hole in his garden to bury them. One of his neighbours, who had long borne him ill-will, perceiving him busied in digging the ground, ran at once to inform the governor that Abú Kasim had discovered some hidden treasure in his garden. Nothing more was needful to rouse the cupidity of the commandant. In vain did our miser protest that he had found no treasure; and that he only meant to bury his old slippers. The governor had counted on the money, so the afflicted man could only preserve his liberty at the expense of a large sum of money. Again heartily cursing the slippers, in order to effectually rid himself of them, he threw them into an aqueduct at some distance from the city, persuaded that he should now hear no more of them. But his evil genius had not yet sufficiently plagued him: the slippers got into the mouth of the pipe and stopped the flow of the water. The keepers of the aqueduct made haste to repair the damage, and, finding the obstruction was caused by Abú Kasim’s slippers, complained of this to the governor, and once more was Abú Kasim heavily fined, but the governor considerately returned him the slippers. He now resolved to burn them, but, finding them thoroughly soaked with water, he exposed them to the sun upon the terrace of his house. A neighbour’s dog, perceiving the slippers, leaped from the terrace of his master’s house upon that of Abú Kasim, and, seizing one of them in his mouth, he let it drop into the street: the fatal slipper fell directly on the head of a woman who was passing at the time, and the fright as well as the violence of the blow caused her to miscarry. Her husband brought his complaint before the kází, and Abú Kasim was again sentenced to pay a fine proportioned to the calamity he was supposed to have occasioned. He then took the slippers in his hand, and, with a vehemence that made the judge laugh, said: “Behold, my lord, the fatal instruments of my misfortune! These cursed slippers have at length reduced me to poverty. Vouchsafe, therefore, to publish an order that no one may any more impute to me the disasters they may yet occasion.” The kází could not refuse his request, and thus Abú Kasim learned, to his bitter cost, the danger of wearing his slippers too long.

III

THE YOUNG MERCHANT OF BAGHDÁD; OR, THE WILES OF WOMAN.

Too many Eastern stories turn upon the artful devices of women to screen their own profligacy, but there is one, told by Arab Sháh, the celebrated historian, who died A.D. 1450, in a collection entitled Fakihat al-Khalífa, or Pastimes of the Khalífs, in which a lady exhibits great ingenuity, without any very objectionable motive. It is to the following effect:

A young merchant in Baghdád had placed over the front of his shop, instead of a sentence from the Kurán, as is customary, these arrogant words: “Verily there is no cunning like unto that of man, seeing it surpasses the cunning of women.” It happened one day that a very beautiful young lady, who had been sent by her aunt to purchase some rich stuffs for dresses, noticed this inscription, and at once resolved to compel the despiser of her sex to alter it. Entering the shop, she said to him, after the usual salutations: “You see my person; can anyone presume to say that I am humpbacked?” He had hardly recovered from the astonishment caused by such a question, when the lady drew her veil a little to one side and continued: “Surely my neck is not as that of a raven, or as the ebony idols of Ethiopia?” The young merchant, between surprise and delight, signified his assent. “Nor is my chin double,” said she, still farther unveiling her face; “nor my lips thick, like those of a Tartar?” Here the young merchant smiled. “Nor are they to be believed who say that my nose is flat and my cheeks are sunken?” The merchant was about to express his horror at the bare idea of such blasphemy, when the lady wholly removed her veil and allowed her beauty to flash upon the bewildered youth, who instantly became madly in love with her. “Fairest of creatures!” he cried, “to what accident do I owe the view of those charms, which are hidden from the eyes of the less fortunate of my sex?” She replied: “You see in me an unfortunate damsel, and I shall explain the cause of my present conduct. My mother, who was sister to a rich amír of Mecca, died some years ago, leaving my father in possession of an immense fortune and myself as sole heiress. I am now seventeen, my personal endowments are such as you behold, and a very small portion of my mother’s fortune would quite suffice to obtain for me a good establishment in marriage. Yet such is the unfeeling avarice of my father, that he absolutely refuses me the least trifle to settle me in life. The only counsellor to whom I could apply for help in this extremity was my kind nurse, and it is by her advice, as well as from the high opinion I have ever heard expressed of your merits, that I have been induced to throw myself upon your goodness in this extraordinary manner.” The emotions of the young merchant on hearing this story, may be readily imagined. “Cruel parent!” he exclaimed. “He must be a rock of the desert, not a man, who can condemn so charming a person to perpetual solitude, when the slightest possible sacrifice on his part might prevent it. May I inquire his name?” “He is the chief kází,” replied the lady, and disappeared like a vision.

The young merchant lost no time in waiting on the kází at his court of justice, whom he thus addressed: “My lord, I am come to ask your daughter in marriage, of whom I am deeply enamoured.” Quoth the judge: “Sir, my daughter is unworthy of the honour you design for her. But be pleased to accompany me to my dwelling, where we can talk over this matter more at leisure.” They proceeded thither accordingly, and after partaking of refreshments, the young man repeated his request, giving a true account of his position and prospects, and offering to settle fifteen purses on the young lady. The kází expressed his gratification, but doubted whether the offer was made in all seriousness, but when assured that such was the case, he said: “I no longer doubt your earnestness and sincerity in this affair; it is, however, just possible that your feelings may change after the marriage, and it is but natural that I should now take proper precautions for my daughter’s welfare. You will not blame me, therefore, if, in addition to the fifteen purses you have offered, I require that five more be paid down previous to the marriage, to be forfeited in case of a divorce.” “Say ten,” cried the merchant, and the kází looked more and more astonished, and even ventured to remonstrate with him on his precipitancy, but without effect. To be brief, the kází consented, the ten purses were paid down, the legal witnesses summoned, and the nuptial contract signed that very evening; the consummation of the marriage being, much against the will of our lover, deferred till the following day.

When the wedding guests had dispersed, the young merchant was admitted to the chamber of his bride, whom he discovered to be humpbacked and hideous beyond conception! As soon as it was day, he arose from his sleepless couch and repaired to the public baths, where, after his ablutions, he gave himself up to melancholy reflections. Mingled with grief for his disappointment was mortification at having been the dupe of what now appeared to him a very shallow artifice, which nothing but his own passionate and unthinking precipitation could have rendered plausible. Nor was he without some twinges of conscience for the sarcasms which he had often uttered against women, and for which his present sufferings were no more than a just retribution. Then came meditations of revenge upon the beautiful author of all this mischief; and then his thoughts reverted to the possible means of escape from his difficulties: the forfeiture of the ten purses, to say nothing of the implacable resentment of the kází and his relatives; and he bethought himself how he should become the talk of his neighbourhood—how Malik bin Omar, the jeweller, would sneer at him, and Salih, the barber, talk sententiously of his folly. At length, finding reflection of no avail, he arose and with slow and pensive steps proceeded to his shop.

His marriage with the kází’s deformed daughter had already become known to his neighbours, who presently came to rally him upon his choice of such a bride, and scarcely had they left when the young lady who had so artfully tricked him entered with a playful smile on her lips, and a glancing in her dark eye, which speedily put to flight the young merchant’s thoughts of revenge. He arose and greeted her courteously. “May this day be propitious to thee!” said she. “May Allah protect and bless thee!” Replied he: “Fairest of earthly creatures, how have I offended thee that thou shouldst make me the subject of thy sport?” “From thee,” she said, “I have received no personal injury.” “What, then, can have been thy motive for practising so cruel a deception on one who has never harmed thee?” The young lady simply pointed to the inscription over the shop front. The merchant was abashed, but felt somewhat relieved on seeing good humour beaming from her beautiful eyes, and he immediately took down the inscription, and substituted another, which declared that “TRULY THERE IS NO CUNNING LIKE UNTO THE CUNNING OF WOMEN, SEEING IT SURPASSES AND CONFOUNDS EVEN THE CUNNING OF MEN.” Then the young lady communicated to him a plan by which he might get rid of his objectionable bride without incurring her father’s resentment, which he forthwith put into practice.

Next morning, as the kází and his son-in-law were taking their coffee together, in the house of the former, they heard a strange noise in the street, and, descending to ascertain the cause of the disturbance, found that it proceeded from a crowd of low fellows—mountebanks, and such like gentry, who had assembled with all sorts of musical instruments, with which they kept up a deafening din, at the same time dancing and capering about, and loudly felicitating themselves on the marriage of their pretended kinsman with the kází’s daughter. The young merchant acknowledged their compliments by throwing handfuls of money among the crowd, which caused a renewal of the dreadful clamour. When the noise had somewhat subsided, the kází, hitherto dumb from astonishment, turned to his son-in-law, and demanded to know the meaning of such a scene before his mansion. The merchant replied that the leaders of the crowd were his kinsfolk, although his father had abandoned the fraternity and adopted commercial pursuits. He could not, however, disown his kindred, even for the sake of the kází’s daughter. On hearing this the judge was beside himself with rage and mortification, exclaiming: “Dog, and son of a dog! what dirt is this you have made me eat?” The merchant reminded him that he was now his son-in-law; that his daughter was his lawful wife; declaring that he would not part with her for untold wealth. But the kází insisted upon a divorce and returned the merchant his ten purses. In the sequel, the young merchant, having ascertained the parentage of the clever damsel, obtained her in marriage, and lived with her for many years in happiness and prosperity.[33]

IV

ASHAAB THE COVETOUS—THE STINGY MERCHANT AND THE HUNGRY BEDOUIN—THE SECT OF SAMRADIANS—THE STORY-TELLER AND THE KING—ROYAL GIFTS TO POETS—THE PERSIAN POET AND THE IMPOSTOR—“STEALING POETRY”—THE RICH MAN AND THE POOR POET.

Avaricious and covetous men are always the just objects of derision as well as contempt, and surely covetousness was quite concentrated in the person of Ashaab, a servant of Othman (seventh century), and a native of Medina, whose character has been very amusingly drawn by the scholiast: He never saw a man put his hand into his pocket without hoping and expecting that he would give him something. He never saw a funeral go by, but he was pleased, hoping that the deceased had left him something. He never saw a bride about to be conducted through the streets to the house of the bridegroom but he prepared his own house for her reception, hoping that her friends would bring her to his house by mistake. If he saw a workman making a box, he took care to tell him that he was putting in one or two boards too many, hoping that he would give him what was over, or, at least, something for the suggestion. He is said to have followed a man who was chewing mastic (a sort of gum, chewed, like betel, by Orientals as a pastime) for a whole mile, thinking he was perhaps eating food, intending, if so, to ask him for some. When the youths of the town jeered and taunted him, he told them there was a wedding at such a house, in order to get rid of them (because they would go to get a share of the bonbons distributed there); but, as soon as they were gone, it struck him that possibly what he had told them was true, and that they would not have quitted him had they not been aware of its truth; and he actually followed them himself to see what he could do, though exposing himself thereby to fresh taunts from them. When asked whether he knew anyone more covetous than himself, he said: “Yes; a sheep I once had, that climbed to an upper stage of my house, and, seeing a rainbow, mistook it for a rope of hay, and jumping at it, broke her neck”—whence “Ashaab’s sheep” became proverbial among the Arabs for covetousness as well as Ashaab himself.

Hospitality has ever been the characteristic virtue of the Arabs, and a mean, stingy disposition is rarely to be found among them. A droll story of an Arab of the latter description has been rendered into verse by the Persian poet Liwá’í, the substance of which is as follows: An Arab merchant who had been trading between Mecca and Damascus, at length turned his face homeward, and had reached within one stage of his house when he sat down to rest and to refresh himself with the contents of his wallet. While he was eating, a Bedouin, weary and hungry, came up, and, hoping to be invited to share his repast, saluted him, “Peace be with thee!” which the merchant returned, and asked the nomad who he was and whence he came. “I have come from thy house,” was the answer. “Then,” said the merchant, “how fares my son Ahmed, absence from whom has grieved me sore?” “Thy son grows apace in health and innocence.” “Good! and how is his mother?” “She, too, is free from the shadow of sorrow.” “And how is my beauteous camel, so strong to bear his load?” “Thy camel is sleek and fat.” “My house-dog, too, that guards my gate, pray how is he?” “He is on the mat before thy door, by day, by night, on constant guard.” The merchant, having thus his doubts and fears removed, resumed his meal with freshened appetite, but gave nought to the poor nomad, and, having finished, closed his wallet. The Bedouin, seeing his stinginess, writhed with the pangs of hunger. Presently a gazelle passed rapidly by them, at which he sighed heavily, and the merchant inquiring the cause of his sorrow, he said: “The cause is this—had not thy dog died he would not have allowed that gazelle to escape!” “My dog!” exclaimed the merchant. “Is my doggie, then, dead?” “He died from gorging himself with thy camel’s blood.” “Who hath cast this dust on me?” cried the merchant. “What of my camel?” “Thy camel was slaughtered to furnish the funeral feast of thy wife.” “Is my wife, too, dead?” “Her grief for Ahmed’s death was such that she dashed her head against a rock.” “But, Ahmed,” asked the father—“how came he to die?” “The house fell in and crushed him.” The merchant heard this tale with full belief, rent his robe, cast sand upon his head, then started swiftly homeward to bewail his wife and son, leaving behind his well-filled wallet, a prey to the starving desert-wanderer.[34]

The Samradian sect of fire-worshippers, who believe only in the “ideal,” anticipated Bishop Berkeley’s theory, thus referred to by Lord Byron (Don Juan, xi, 1):

When Bishop Berkeley said, “there was no matter,”

And proved it—’twas no matter what he said;

They say, his system ’tis in vain to batter,

Too subtle for the airiest human head.

Some amusing anecdotes regarding this singular sect are given in the Dabistán, a work written in Persian, which furnishes a very impartial account of the principal religions of the world: A Samradian said to his servant: “The world and its inhabitants have no actual existence—they have merely an ideal being.” The servant, on hearing this, took the first opportunity to steal his master’s horse, and when he was about to ride, brought him an ass with the horse’s saddle. When the Samradian asked: “Where is the horse?” he replied: “Thou hast been thinking of an idea; there was no horse in being.” The master said: “It is true,” and then mounted the ass. Having proceeded some distance, followed by his servant on foot, he suddenly dismounted, and taking the saddle off the back of the ass placed it on the servant’s back, drawing the girths tightly, and, having forced the bridle into his mouth, he mounted him, and flogged him along vigorously. The servant having exclaimed in piteous accents: “What is the meaning of this, O master?” the Samradian replied: “There is no such thing as a whip; it is merely ideal. Thou art thinking only of a delusion.” It is needless to add that the servant immediately repented and restored the horse.—Another of this sect having obtained in marriage the daughter of a wealthy lawyer, she, on finding out her husband’s peculiar creed, purposed to have some amusement at his expense. One day the Samradian brought home a bottle of excellent wine, which during his absence she emptied of its contents and filled again with water. When the time came for taking wine, she poured out the water into a gold cup, which Was her own property. The Samradian remarked: “Thou hast given me water instead of wine.” “It is only ideal,” she answered; “there was no wine in existence.” The husband then said: “Thou hast spoken well; give me the cup that I may go to a neighbour’s house and bring it back full of wine.” He thereupon took the gold cup and went out and sold it, concealing the money, and, instead of the gold vase, he brought back an earthen vessel filled with wine. The wife, on seeing this, said: “What hast thou done with the golden cup?” He quietly replied: “Thou art surely thinking of an ideal gold cup,” on which the lady sorely repented her witticism.[35]

I do not know whether there are any English parallels to these stories, but I have read of a Greek sage who instructed his slave that all that occurred in this world was the decree of Fate. The slave shortly after deliberately committed some offence, upon which his master commenced to soften his ribs with a stout cudgel, and when the slave pleaded that it was no fault of his, it was the decree of Fate, his master grimly replied that it was also decreed that he should have a sound beating.

In Don Quixote, it will be remembered by all readers of that delightful work, Sancho begins to tell the knight a long story about a man who had to ferry across a river a large flock of sheep, but he could only take one at a time, as the boat could hold no more. This story Cervantes, in all likelihood, borrowed from the Disciplina Clericalis of Petrus Alfonsus, a converted Spanish Jew, who flourished in the 12th century, and who avowedly derived the materials of his work from the Arabian fabulists—probably part of them also from the Talmud.[36] His eleventh tale is of a king who desired his minstrel to tell him a long story that should lull him to sleep. The story-teller accordingly begins to relate how a man had to cross a ferry with 600 sheep, two at a time, and falls asleep in the midst of his narration. The king awakes him, but the story-teller begs that the man be allowed to ferry over the sheep before he resumes the story.[37]—Possibly the original form of the story is that found in the Kathá Manjarí, an ancient Indian story-book: There was a king who used to inquire of all the learned men who came to his court whether they knew any stories, and when they had related all they knew, in order to avoid rewarding them, he abused them for knowing so few, and sent them away. A shrewd and clever man, hearing of this, presented himself before the king, who asked his name. He replied that his name was Ocean of Stories. The king then inquired how many stories he knew, to which he answered that the name of Ocean had been conferred on him because he knew an endless number. On being desired to relate one, he thus began: “O King, there was a tank 36,000 miles in breadth, and 54,000 in length. This was densely filled with lotus plants, and millions upon millions of birds with golden wings [called Hamsa] perched on those flowers. One day a hurricane arose, accompanied with rain, which the birds were not able to endure, and they entered a cave under a rock, which was in the vicinity of the tank.” The king asked what happened next, and he replied that one of the birds flew away. The king again inquired what else occurred, and he answered: “Another flew away”; and to every question of the king he continued to give the same answer. At this the king felt ashamed, and, seeing it was impossible to outwit the man, he dismissed him with a handsome present.

A story bearing some resemblance to this is related of a khalíf who was wont to cheat poets of their expected reward when they recited their compositions to him, until he was at length outwitted by the famous Arabian poet Al-Asma’í: It is said that a khalíf, who was very penurious, contrived by a trick to send from his presence without any reward those poets who came and recited their compositions to him. He had himself the faculty of retaining in his memory a poem after hearing it only once; he had a mamlúk (white slave) who could repeat one that he had heard twice; and a slave-girl who could repeat one that she had heard thrice. Whenever a poet came to compliment him with a panegyrical poem, the king used to promise him that if he found his verses to be of his own composition he would give him a sum of money equal in weight to what they were written on. The poet, consenting, would recite his ode, and the king would say: “It is not new, for I have known it some years”; and he would repeat it as he had heard it; after which he would add: “And this mamlúk also retains it in his memory,” and order the mamlúk to repeat it, which, having heard it twice, from the poet and the king, he would do. Then the king would say to the poet: “I have also a slave-girl who can repeat it,” and, ordering her to do so, stationed behind the curtains, she would repeat what she had thus thrice heard; so the poet would go away empty-handed. The celebrated poet Al-Asma’í, having heard of this device, determined upon outwitting the king, and accordingly composed an ode made up of very difficult words. But this was not the poet’s only preparative measure—another will be presently explained; and a third was to assume the dress of a Bedouin, that he might not be known, covering his face, the eyes only excepted, with a litham (piece of drapery), as is usual with the Arabs of the desert. Thus disguised, he went to the palace, and having obtained permission, entered and saluted the king, who said to him: “Who art thou, O brother of the Arabs? and what dost thou desire?” The poet answered: “May Allah increase the power of the king! I am a poet of such a tribe, and have composed an ode in praise of our lord the khalíf.” “O brother of the Arabs,” said the king, “hast thou heard of our condition?” “No,” answered the poet; “and what is it, O khalíf of the age?” “It is,” replied the king, “that if the ode be not thine, we give thee no reward; and if it be thine, we give thee the weight in money equal to what it is written upon.” “How,” said the poet, “should I assume to myself that which belongeth to another, and knowing, too, that lying before kings is one of the basest of actions? But I agree to the condition, O our lord the khalíf.” So he repeated his ode. The king, perplexed, and unable to remember any of it, made a sign to the mamlúk, but he had retained nothing; then called to the female slave, but she was unable to repeat a word. “O brother of the Arabs,” said the king, “thou hast spoken truth; and the ode is thine without doubt. I have never heard it before. Produce, therefore, what it is written upon, and I will give thee its weight in money, as I have promised.” “Wilt thou,” said the poet, “send one of the attendants to carry it?” “To carry what?” demanded the king. “Is it not upon a paper in thy possession?” “No, O our lord the khalíf. At the time I composed it I could not procure a piece of paper on which to write it, and could find nothing but a fragment of a marble column left me by my father; so I engraved it upon that, and it lies in the courtyard of the palace.” He had brought it, wrapped up, on the back of a camel. The king, to fulfil his promise, was obliged to exhaust his treasury; and, to prevent a repetition of this trick, in future rewarded poets according to the custom of kings.

Apropos of royal gifts to poets, it is related that, when the Afghans had possession of Persia, a rude chief of that nation was governor of Shíráz. A poet composed a panegyric on his wisdom, his valour, and his virtues. As he was taking it to the palace he was met by a friend at the outer gate, who inquired where he was going, and he informed him of his purpose. His friend asked him if he was insane, to offer an ode to a barbarian who hardly understood a word of the Persian language. “All that you say may be very true,” said the poor poet, “but I am starving, and have no means of livelihood but by making verses. I must, therefore, proceed.” He went and stood before the governor with his ode in his hand. “Who is that fellow?” said the Afghan lord. “And what is that paper which he holds?” “I am a poet,” answered the man, “and this paper contains some poetry.” “What is the use of poetry?” demanded the governor. “To render great men like you immortal,” he replied, making at the same time a profound bow. “Let us hear some of it.” The poet, on this mandate, began reading his composition aloud, but he had not finished the second stanza when he was interrupted. “Enough!” exclaimed the governor; “I understand it all. Give the poor man some money—that is what he wants.” As the poet retired he met his friend, who again commented on the folly of carrying odes to a man who did not understand one of them. “Not understand!” he replied. “You are quite mistaken. He has beyond all men the quickest apprehension of a poet’s meaning!”

The khalífs were frequently lavish of their gifts to poets, but they were fond of having their little jokes with them when in merry mood. One day the Arabian poet Thálebí read before the khalíf Al-Mansúr a poem which he had just composed, and it found acceptance. The khalíf said: “O Thálebí, which wouldst thou rather have—that I give thee 300 gold dínars [about £150], or three wise sayings, each worth 100 dínars?” The poet replied: “Learning, O Commander of the Faithful, is better than transitory treasure.” “Well, then,” said the khalíf, “the first saying is: When thy garment grows old, sew not a new patch on it, for it hath an ill look.” “O woe!” cried the poet, “one hundred dínars are lost!” Mansúr smiled, and proceeded: “The second saying is: When thou anointest thy beard, anoint not the lower part, for that would soil the collar of thy vest.” “Alas!” exclaimed Thálebí, “a thousand times, alas! two hundred dínars are lost!” Again the khalíf smiled, and continued: “The third saying”—but before he had spoken it, the poet said: “O khalíf of our prosperity, keep the third maxim in thy treasury, and give me the remaining hundred dínars, for they will be worth a thousand times more to me than the hearing of maxims.” At this the khalíf laughed heartily, and commanded his treasurer to give Thálebí five hundred dínars of gold.

A droll story is told of the Persian poet Anwarí: Passing the market-place of Balkh one day, he saw a crowd of people standing in a ring, and going up, he put his head within the circle and found a fellow reciting the poems of Anwarí himself as his own. Anwarí went up to the man, and said: “Sir, whose poems are these you are reciting?” He replied: “They are Anwarí’s.” “Do you know him, then?” said Anwarí. The man, with cool effrontery, answered: “What do you say? I am Anwarí.” On hearing this Anwarí laughed, and remarked: “I have heard of one who stole poetry, but never of one who stole the poet himself!”—Talking of “stealing poetry,” Jámí tells us that a man once brought a composition to a critic, every line of which he had plagiarised from different collections of poems, and each rhetorical figure from various authors. Quoth the critic: “For a wonder, thou hast brought a line of camels; but if the string were untied, every one of the herd would run away in different directions.”

There is no little humour in the story of the Persian poet who wrote a eulogium on a rich man, but got nothing for his trouble; he then abused the rich man, but he said nothing; he next seated himself at the rich man’s gate, who said to him: “You praised me, and I said nothing; you abused me, and I said nothing; and now, why are you sitting here?” The poet answered: “I only wish that when you die I may perform the funeral service.”

V

UNLUCKY OMENS—THE OLD MAN’S PRAYER—THE OLD WOMAN IN THE MOSQUE—THE WEEPING TURKMANS—THE TEN FOOLISH PEASANTS—THE WAKEFUL SERVANT—THE THREE DERVISHES—THE OIL-MAN’S PARROT—THE MOGHUL AND HIS PARROT—THE PERSIAN SHOPKEEPER AND THE PRIME MINISTER—HEBREW FACETIÆ.

Muslims and other Asiatic peoples, like Europeans not so many centuries since, are always on the watch for lucky or unlucky omens. On first going out of a morning, the looks and countenances of those who cross their path are scrutinised, and a smile or a frown is deemed favourable or the reverse. To encounter a person blind of the left eye, or even with one eye, forebodes sorrow and calamity. While Sir John Malcolm was in Persia, as British Ambassador, he was told the following story: When Abbas the Great was hunting, he met one morning as day dawned an uncommonly ugly man, at the sight of whom his horse started. Being nearly dismounted, and deeming it a bad omen, the king called out in a rage to have his head cut off. The poor peasant, whom the attendants had seized and were on the point of executing, prayed that he might be informed of his crime. “Your crime,” said the king, “is your unlucky countenance, which is the first object I saw this morning, and which has nearly caused me to fall from my horse.” “Alas!” said the man, “by this reckoning what term must I apply to your Majesty’s countenance, which was the first object my eyes met this morning, and which is to cause my death?” The king smiled at the wit of the reply, ordered the man to be released, and gave him a present instead of cutting off his head.—Another Persian story is to the same purpose: A man said to his servant: “If you see two crows together early in the morning, apprise me of it, that I may also behold them, as it will be a good omen, whereby I shall pass the day pleasantly.” The servant did happen to see two crows sitting in one place, and informed his master, who, however, when he came saw but one, the other having in the meantime flown away. He was very angry, and began to beat the servant, when a friend sent him a present of game. Upon this the servant exclaimed: “O my lord! you saw only one crow, and have received a fine present; had you seen two, you would have met with my fare.”[38]

It would seem, from the following story, that an old man’s prayers are sometimes reversed in response, as dreams are said to “go by contraries”: An old Arab left his house one morning, intending to go to a village at some distance, and coming to the foot of a hill which he had to cross he exclaimed: “O Allah! send some one to help me over this hill.” Scarcely had he uttered these words when up came a fierce soldier, leading a mare with a very young colt by her side, who compelled the old man, with oaths and threats, to carry the colt. As they trudged along, they met a poor woman with a sick child in her arms. The old man, as he laboured under the weight of the colt, kept groaning, “O Allah! O Allah!” and, supposing him to be a dervish, the woman asked him to pray for the recovery of her child. In compliance, the old man said: “O Allah! I beseech thee to shorten the days of this poor child.” “Alas!” cried the mother, “why hast thou made such a cruel prayer?” “Fear nothing,” said the old man; “thy child will assuredly enjoy long life. It is my fate to have the reverse of whatever I pray for. I implored Allah for assistance to carry me over this hill, and, by way of help, I suppose, I have had this colt imposed on my shoulders.”

Jámí tells this humorous story in the Sixth “Garden” of his Baháristán, or Abode of Spring: A man said the prescribed prayers in a mosque and then began his personal supplications. An old woman, who happened to be near him, exclaimed: “O Allah! cause me to share in whatsoever he supplicates for.” The man, overhearing her, then prayed: “O Allah! hang me on a gibbet, and cause me to die of scourging.” The old trot continued: “O Allah! pardon me, and preserve me from what he has asked for.” Upon this the man turned to her and said: “What a very unreasonable partner this is! She desires to share in all that gives rest and pleasure, but she refuses to be my partner in distress and misery.”

We have already seen that even the grave and otiose Turk is not devoid of a sense of the ludicrous, and here is another example, from Mr. E. J. W. Gibb’s translation of the History of the Forty Vezírs: A party of Turkmans left their encampment one day and went into a neighbouring city. Returning home, as they drew near their tents, they felt hungry, and sat down and ate some bread and onions at a spring-head. The juice of the onions went into their eyes and caused them to water. Now the children of those Turkmans had gone out to meet them, and, seeing the tears flow from their eyes, they concluded that one of their number had died in the city, so, without making any inquiry, they ran back, and said to their mothers: “One of ours is dead in the city, and our fathers are coming weeping.” Upon this all the women and children of the encampment went forth to meet them, weeping together. The Turkmans who were coming from the city thought that one of theirs had died in the encampment; and thus they were without knowledge one of the other, and they raised a weeping and wailing together such that it cannot be described. At length the elders of the camp stood up in their midst and said: “May ye all remain whole; there is none other help than patience”; and they questioned them. The Turkmans coming from the city asked: “Who is dead in the camp?” The others replied: “No one is dead in the camp; who has died in the city?” Those who were coming from the city, said: “No one has died in the city.” The others said: “For whom then are ye wailing and lamenting?” At length they perceived that all this tumult arose from their trusting the words of children.

This last belongs rather to the class of simpleton-stories; and in the following, from the Rev. J. Hinton Knowles’ Folk Tales of Kashmír (Trübner: 1888), we have a variant of the well-known tale of the twelve men of Gotham who went one day to fish, and, before returning home, miscounted their number, of which several analogues are given in my Book of Noodles, pp. 28 ff. (Elliot Stock: 1888): Ten peasants were standing on the side of the road weeping. They thought that one of their number had been lost on the way, as each man had counted the company, and found them nine only. “Ho! you—what’s the matter?” shouted a townsman passing by. “O sir,” said the peasants, “we were ten men when we left the village, but now we are only nine.” The townsman saw at a glance what fools they were: each of them had omitted to count himself in the number. He therefore told them to take off their topís (skull-caps) and place them on the ground. This they did, and counted ten of them, whereupon they concluded they were all there, and were comforted. But they could not tell how it was.

That wakefulness is not necessarily watchfulness may seem paradoxical, yet here is a Persian story which goes far to show that they are not always synonymous terms: Once upon a time (to commence in the good old way) there came into a city a merchant on horseback, attended by his servant on foot. Hearing that the city was infested by many bold and expert thieves, in consequence of which property was very insecure, he said to his servant at night: “I will keep watch, and do you sleep; for I cannot trust you to keep awake, and I much fear that my horse may be stolen.” But to this arrangement his faithful servant would not consent, and he insisted upon watching all night. So the master went to sleep, and three hours after awoke, when he called to his servant: “What are you doing?” He answered: “I am meditating how Allah has spread the earth upon the water.” The master said: “I am afraid lest thieves come, and you know nothing of it.” “O my lord, be satisfied; I am on the watch.” The merchant again went to sleep, and awaking about midnight cried: “Ho! what are you doing?” The servant replied: “I am considering how Allah has supported the sky without pillars.” Quoth the master: “But I am afraid that while you are busy meditating thieves will carry off my horse.” “Be not afraid, master, I am fully awake; how, then, can thieves come?” The master replied: “If you wish to sleep, I will keep watch.” But the servant would not hear of this; he was not at all sleepy; so his master addressed himself once more to slumber; and when one hour of the night yet remained he awoke, and as usual asked him what he was doing, to which he coolly answered: “I am considering, since the thieves have stolen the horse, whether I shall carry the saddle on my head, or you, sir.”

Somewhat akin to the familiar “story” of the man whose eyesight was so extraordinary that he could, standing in the street, perceive a fly on the dome of St. Paul’s is the tale of the Three Dervishes who, travelling in company, came to the sea-shore of Syria, and desired the captain of a vessel about to sail for Cyprus to give them a passage. The captain was willing to take them “for a consideration”; but they told him they were dervishes, and therefore without money, but they possessed certain wonderful gifts, which might be of use to him on the voyage. The first dervish said that he could descry any object at the distance of a year’s journey; the second could hear at as great a distance as his brother could see. “Well!” exclaimed the captain, “these are truly miraculous gifts; and pray, sir,” said he, turning to the third dervish, “what may your particular gift be?” “I, sir,” replied he, “am an unbeliever.” When the captain heard this, he said he could not take such a person on board of his ship; but on the others declaring they must all three go together or remain behind, he at length consented to allow the third dervish a passage with the two highly-gifted ones. In the course of the voyage, it happened one fine day that the captain and the three dervishes were on deck conversing, when suddenly the first dervish exclaimed: “Look, look!—see, there—the daughter of the sultan of India sitting at the window of her palace, working embroidery.” “A mischief on your eyes!” cried the second dervish, “for her needle has this moment dropped from her hand, and I hear it sound upon the pavement below her window.” “Sir,” said the third dervish, addressing the captain, “shall I, or shall I not, be an unbeliever?” Quoth the captain: “Come, friend, come with me into my cabin, and let us cultivate unbelief together!”

A very droll parrot story occurs—where, indeed, we should least expect to meet with such a thing—in the Masnaví of Jelálu-‘d-Dín er-Rúmí (13th century), a grand mystical poem, or rather series of poems, in six books, written in Persian rhymed couplets, as the title indicates. In the second poem of the First Book we read that an oilman possessed a fine parrot, who amused him with her prattle and watched his shop during his absence. It chanced one day, when the oilman had gone out, that a cat ran into the shop in chase of a mouse, which so frightened the parrot that she flew about from shelf to shelf, upsetting several jars and spilling their contents. When her master returned and saw the havoc made among his goods he fetched the parrot a blow that knocked out all her head feathers, and from that day she sulked on her perch. The oilman, missing the prattle of his favourite, began to shower his alms on every passing beggar, in hopes that some one would induce the parrot to speak again. At length a bald-headed mendicant came to the shop one day, upon seeing whom, the parrot, breaking her long silence, cried out: “Poor fellow! poor fellow! hast thou, too, upset some oil-jar?”[39]

Somewhat more credible is the tale of the man who taught a parrot to say, “What doubt is there of this?” (dur ín cheh shuk) and took it to market for sale, fixing the price at a hundred rupís. A Moghul asked the bird: “Are you really worth a hundred rupís?” to which the bird answered very readily: “What doubt is there of this?” Delighted with the apt reply, he bought the parrot and took it home; but he soon found that, whatever he might say, the bird always made the same answer, so he repented his purchase and exclaimed: “I was certainly a great fool to buy this bird!” The parrot said: “What doubt is there of this?” The Moghul smiled, and gave the bird her liberty.

Sir John Malcolm cites a good example of the ready wit of the citizens of Isfahán, in his entertaining Sketches of Persia, as follows: When the celebrated Haji Ibrahím was prime minister of Persia [some sixty years since], his brother was governor of Isfahán, while other members of his family held several of the first offices of the kingdom. A shop-keeper one day went to the governor to represent that he was unable to pay certain taxes. “You must pay them,” replied the governor, “or leave the city.” “Where can I go to?” asked the Isfahání. “To Shíráz or Kashan.” “Your nephew rules in one city and your brother in the other.” “Go to the Sháh, and complain if you like.” “Your brother the Haji is prime minister.” “Then go to Satan,” said the enraged governor. “Haji Merhúm, your father, the pious pilgrim, is dead,” rejoined the undaunted Isfahání. “My friend,” said the governor, bursting into laughter, “I will pay your taxes, even myself, since you declare that my family keep you from all redress, both in this world and the next.”

The Hebrew Rabbis who compiled the Talmud were, some of them, witty as well as wise—indeed I have always held that wisdom and wit are cousins german, if not full brothers—and our specimens of Oriental Wit and Humour may be fittingly concluded with a few Jewish jests from a scarce little book, entitled, Hebrew Tales, by Hyman Hurwitz: An Athenian, walking about in the streets of Jerusalem one day, called to a little Hebrew boy, and, giving him a pruta (a small coin of less value than a farthing), said: “Here is a pruta, my lad, bring me something for it, of which I may eat enough, leave some for my host, and carry some home to my family.” The boy went, and presently returned with a quantity of salt, which he handed to the jester. “Salt!” he exclaimed, “I did not ask thee to buy me salt.” “True,” said the urchin; “but didst thou not tell me to bring thee something of which thou mightest eat, leave, and take home? Of this salt there is surely enough for all three purposes.”[40]

Another Athenian desired a boy to buy him some cheese and eggs. Having done so, “Now, my lad,” said the stranger, “tell me which of these cheese were made of the milk of white goats and which of black goats?” The little Hebrew answered: “Since thou art older than I, and more experienced, first do thou tell me which of these eggs came from white and which from black hens.”

Once more did a Hebrew urchin prove his superiority in wit over an Athenian: “Here, boy,” said he, “here is some money; bring us some figs and grapes.” The lad went and bought the fruit, kept half of it for himself, and gave the other half to the Athenian. “How!” cried the man, “is it the custom of this city for a messenger to take half of what he is sent to purchase?” “No,” replied the boy; “but it is our custom to speak what we mean, and to do what we are desired.” “Well, then, I did not desire thee to take half of the fruit.” “Why, what else could you mean,” rejoined the little casuist, “by saying, ‘Bring us?’ Does not that word include the hearer as well as the speaker?” The stranger, not knowing how to answer such reasoning, smiled and went his way, leaving the shrewd lad to eat his share of the fruit in peace.

“There is no rule without some exception,” as the following tale demonstrates: Rabbi Eliezar, who was as much distinguished by his greatness of mind as by the extraordinary size of his body, once paid a friendly visit to Rabbi Simon. The learned Simon received him most cordially, and filling a cup with wine handed it to him. Eliezar took it and drank it off at a draught. Another was poured out—it shared the same fate. “Brother Eliezar,” said Simon, jestingly, “rememberest thou not what the wise men have said on this subject?” “I well remember,” replied his corpulent friend, “the saying of our instructors, that people ought not to take a cup at one draught. But the wise men have not so defined their rule as to admit of no exception; and in this instance there are not less than three—the cup is small, the receiver is large, and your WINE, brother Simon, is DELICIOUS!”

TALES OF A PARROT.

I

GENERAL PLAN OF EASTERN ROMANCES—THE “TÚTÍ NÁMA,” OR PARROT-BOOK—THE FRAME-STORY—TALES: THE STOLEN IMAGES—THE WOMAN CARVED OUT OF WOOD—THE MAN WHOSE MARE WAS KICKED BY A MERCHANT’S HORSE.

Oriental romances are usually constructed on the plan of a number of tales connected by a general or leading story running throughout, like the slender thread that holds a necklace of pearls together—a familiar example of which is the Book of the Thousand and One Nights, commonly known amongst us under the title of Arabian Nights Entertainments. In some the subordinate tales are represented as being told by one or more individuals to serve a particular object, by the moral, or warning, which they are supposed to convey; as in the case of the Book of Sindibád, in which a prince is falsely accused by one of his father’s ladies, and defended by the king’s seven vazírs, or counsellors, who each in turn relate to the king two stories, the purport of which being to warn him to put no faith in the accusations of women, to which the lady replies by stories representing the wickedness and perfidy of men; and that of the Bakhtyár Náma, in which a youth, falsely accused of having violated the royal harem, obtains for himself a respite from death during ten days by relating to the king each day a story designed to caution him against precipitation in matters of importance. In others supernatural beings are the narrators of the subordinate tales, as in the Indian romances, Vetála Panchavinsati, or Twenty-five Tales of a Demon, and the Sinhásana Dwatrinsati, or Tales of the Thirty-two Speaking Statues—literally, Thirty-two (Tales) of a Throne. In others, again, the relators are birds, as in the Indian work entitled Hamsa Vinsati, or Twenty Tales of a Goose.

Of this last class is the popular Persian work, Tútí Náma, (Tales of a Parrot, or Parrot-Book), of which I purpose furnishing some account, as it has not yet been completely translated into English. This work was composed, according to Pertsch, in A.D. 1329, by a Persian named Nakhshabí, after an older Persian version, now lost, which was made from a Sanskrit work, also no longer extant, but of which the modern representative is the Suka Saptati, or Seventy Tales of a Parrot.[41] The frame, or leading story, of the Persian Parrot-Book is to the following effect:

A merchant who had a very beautiful wife informs her one day that he has resolved to travel into foreign countries in order to increase his wealth by trade. His wife endeavours to persuade him to remain at home in peace and security instead of imperiling his life among strangers. But he expatiates on the evils of poverty and the advantages of wealth: “A man without riches is fatherless, and a home without money is deserted. He that is in want of cash is a nonentity, and wanders in the land unknown. It is, therefore, everybody’s duty to procure as much money as possible; for gold is the delight of our lives—it is the bright live-coal of our hearts—the yellow links which fasten the coat of mail—the gentle stimulative of the world—the complete coining die of the globe—the traveller who speaks all languages, and is welcome in every city—the splendid bride unveiled—the defender, register, and mirror of jehandars. The man who has dirhams [Scottice, ‘siller’—Fr. ‘l’argent’] is handsome; the sun never shines on the inauspicious man without money.”[42] Before leaving home the merchant purchased at great cost in the bazaar a wonderful parrot, that could discourse eloquently and intelligently, and also a sharak, a species of nightingale, which, according to Gerrans, “imitates the human voice in so surprising a manner that, if you do not see the bird, you cannot help being deceived”; and, having put them into the same cage, he charged his spouse that whenever she had any matter of importance to transact she should first obtain the sanction of both birds.

The merchant having protracted his absence many months (Vatsyayana, in his Káma Sutra, says that the man who is given to much travelling does not deserve to be married), and, his wife chancing to be on the roof of her house one day when a young foreign prince of handsome appearance passed by with his attendants, she immediately fell in love with him—“the battle-axe of prudence dropped from her hand; the vessel of continence became a sport to the waves of confusion; while the avenues leading to the fortress of reason remained unguarded, the sugar-cane of incontinence triumphantly raised its head above the rose-tree of patience.” The prince had also observed the lady, as she stood on the terrace of her house, and was instantly enamoured of her. He sends an old woman (always the obliging—“for a consideration”—go-between of Eastern lovers) to solicit an interview with the lady at his own palace in the evening, and, after much persuasion, she consents. Arraying her beauteous person in the finest apparel, she proceeds to the cage, and first consults the sharak as to the propriety of her purpose. The sharak forbids her to go, and is at once rewarded by having her head wrung off. She then represents her case to the parrot, who, having witnessed the fate of his companion, prudently resolves to temporise with the amorous dame; so he “quenched the fire of her indignation with the water of flattery, and began a tale conformable to her temperament, which he took care to protract till the morning.” In this manner does the prudent parrot prevent the lady’s intended intrigue by relating, night after night, till the merchant returns home from his travels, one or more fascinating tales, which he does not bring to an end till it is too late for the assignation.[43]

The order of the parrot’s tales is not the same in all texts; in Kádirí’s abridgment there are few of the Nights which correspond with those of the India Office MS. No. 2573, which may, perhaps, be partly accounted for by the circumstance that Kádirí has given only 35 of the 52 tales that are in the original text. For the general reader, however, the sequence of the tales is a minor consideration; and I shall content myself with giving abstracts of some of the best stories, irrespective of their order in any text, and complete translations of two or three others. It so happens that the Third Night is the same in Kádirí and the India Office MS. No. 2573, which comprises the complete text; and the story the eloquent bird relates on that night may be entitled

The Stolen Images.

A goldsmith and a carpenter, travelling in company, steal from a Hindú temple some golden images, which, when they arrive in the neighbourhood of their own city, they bury beneath a tree. The goldsmith goes secretly one night and carries away the images, and next morning, when both go together to share the spoil, the goldsmith accuses the carpenter of having played him false. But the carpenter was a shrewd fellow, and so he makes a figure resembling the goldsmith, dresses it in clothes similar to what he usually wore, and procures a couple of bear’s cubs, which he teaches to take their food from the skirts and sleeves of the effigy. Thus the cubs conceived a great affection for the figure of the goldsmith. He then contrives to steal the goldsmith’s two sons, and, when the father comes to seek them at his house, he pretends they have been changed into young bears. The goldsmith brings his case before the kází; the cubs are brought into court, and no sooner do they discover the goldsmith than they run up and fondle him. Upon this the judge decides in favour of the carpenter, to whom the goldsmith confesses his guilt, and offers to give up all the gold if he restore his children, which he does accordingly.[44]

The Sixth Tale of the Parrot, according to the India Office MS., relates to

The Woman Carved out of Wood.

Four men—a goldsmith, a carpenter, a tailor, and a dervish—travelling together, one night halted in a desert place, and it was agreed they should watch turn about until daybreak. The carpenter takes the first watch, and to amuse himself he carves the figure of a woman out of a log of wood. When it came to the goldsmith’s turn to watch, finding the beautiful female figure, he resolved also to exhibit his art, and accordingly made a set of ornaments of gold and silver, which he placed on the neck, arms, and ankles. During the third watch the tailor made a suit of clothes becoming a bride, and put them on the figure. Lastly, the dervish, when it came to his turn to watch, beholding the captivating female form, prayed that it might be endowed with life, and immediately the effigy became animated. In the morning all four fell in love with the charming damsel, each claiming her for himself; the carpenter, because he had carved her with his own hands; the goldsmith, because he had adorned her with gems; the tailor, because he had suitably clothed her; and the dervish, because he had, by his intercession, endowed her with life. While they were thus disputing, a man came to the spot, to whom they referred the case. On seeing the woman, he exclaimed: “This is my own wife, whom you have stolen from me,” and compelled them to come before the kutwal, who, on viewing her beauty, in his turn claimed her as the wife of his brother, who had been waylaid and murdered in the desert. The kutwal took them all, with the woman, before the kází, who declared that she was his slave, who had absconded from his house with a large sum of money. An old man who was present suggested that they should all seven appeal to the Tree of Decision, and thither they went accordingly; but no sooner had they stated their several claims than the trunk of the tree split open, the woman ran into the cleft, and on its reuniting she was no more to be seen. A voice proceeded from the tree, saying: “Everything returns to its first principles”; and the seven suitors of the woman were overwhelmed with shame.[45]

I am strongly of opinion that the foregoing story is of Buddhistic extraction; but however this may be, it is not a bad specimen of Eastern humour, nor is the following, which the eloquent bird tells the lady another night:

Of the Man whose Mare was kicked by a Merchant’s Horse.

A merchant had a vicious horse that kicked a mare, which he had warned the owner not to tie near his animal. The man carried the merchant before the kází, and stated his complaint. The kází inquired of the merchant what he had to say in his own defence; but he pretended to be dumb, answering not a word to the judge’s interrogatives. Upon this the kází remarked to the plaintiff that since the merchant was dumb he could not be to blame for the accident. “How do you know he is dumb?” said the owner of the mare. “At the time I wished to fasten my mare near his horse he said, ‘Don’t!’ yet now he feigns himself dumb.” The kází observed that if he was duly warned against the accident he had himself to blame, and so dismissed the case.

II

THE EMPEROR’S DREAM—THE GOLDEN APPARITION—THE FOUR TREASURE-SEEKERS.

We are not without instances in European popular fictions of two young persons dreaming of each other and falling in love, although they had never met or known of each other's existence. A notable example is the story of the Two Dreams in the famous History of the Seven Wise Masters. Incidents of this kind are very common in Oriental stories: the romance of Kámarupa (of Indian origin, but now chiefly known through the Persian version) is based upon a dream which the hero has of a certain beautiful princess, with whom he falls in love, and he sets forth with his companions to find her, should it be at the uttermost ends of the earth. It so happens that the damsel also dreams of him, and, when they do meet, they need no introduction to each other. The Indian romance of Vasayadatta has a similar plot. But the royal dreamer and lover in the following story, told by the Parrot on the 39th Night, according to the India Office MS. No. 2573, adopted a plan for the discovery of the beauteous object of his vision more conformable to his own ease:

The Emperor’s Dream.

An emperor of China dreamt of a very beautiful damsel whom he had never seen or heard of, and, being sorely pierced with the darts of love for the creature of his dreaming fancy, he could find no peace of mind. One of his vazírs, who was an excellent portrait painter, receiving from the emperor a minute description of the lady’s features, drew the face, and the imperial lover acknowledged the likeness to be very exact. The vazír then went abroad with the portrait, to see whether any one could identify it with the fair original. After many disappointments he met with an old hermit, who at once recognised it as the portrait of the princess of Rúm,[46] who, he informed the vazír, had an unconquerable aversion against men ever since she beheld, in her garden, a peacock basely desert his mate and their young ones, when the tree on which their nest was built had been struck by lightning. She believed that all men were quite as selfish as that peacock, and was resolved never to marry. Returning to his imperial master with these most interesting particulars regarding the object of his affection, he next undertakes to conquer the strange and unnatural aversion of the princess. Taking with him the emperor’s portrait and other pictures, he procures access to the princess of Rúm; shows her, first, the portrait of the emperor of China, and then pictures of animals in the royal menagerie, among others that of a deer, concerning which he relates a story to the effect that the emperor, sitting one day in his summer-house, saw a deer, his doe, and their fawn on the bank of the river, when suddenly the waters overflowed the banks, and the doe, in terror for her life, fled away, while the deer bravely remained with the fawn and was drowned. This story, so closely resembling her own, struck the fair princess with wonder and admiration, and she at once gave her consent to be united to the emperor of China; and we may suppose that “they continued together in joy and happiness until they were overtaken by the terminater of delights and the separator of companions.”

There can be little or no doubt, I think, that in this tale we find the original of the frame, or leading story, of the Persian Tales, ascribed to a dervish named Mukhlis, of Isfahán, and written after the Arabian Nights, as it is believed, in which the nurse of the Princess has to relate almost as many stories to overcome her aversion against men (the result of an incident similar to that witnessed by the Lady of Rúm) as the renowned Sheherazade had to tell her lord, who entertained—for a very different reason—a bitter dislike of women.

I now present a story unabridged, translated by Gerrans in the latter part of the last century. It is assuredly of Buddhistic origin:

The Golden Apparition.

In the extreme boundaries of Khurasán there once lived, according to general report, a merchant named Abdal-Malik, whose warehouses were crowded with rich merchandise, and whose coffers overflowed with money. The scions of genius ripened into maturity under the sunshine of his liberality; the sons of indigence fattened on the bread of his hospitality; and the parched traveller amply slaked his thirst in the river of his generosity. One day, as he meditated on the favours which his Creator had so luxuriantly showered upon him, he testified his gratitude by the following resolution: “Long have I traded in the theatre of the world, much have I received, and little have I bestowed. This wealth was entrusted to my care, with no other design or intention but to enable me to assist the unfortunate and indigent. Before, therefore, the Angel of Death shall come to demand the spoil of my mortality, it is my last wish and sole intention to expiate my sins and follies by voluntary oblations of this she-camel [alluding to the Muslim Feast of the Camel] in the last month of her pregnancy, and to proclaim to all men, by this late breakfasting [alluding to the Feast of Ramadan, when food is only permitted after sunset], my past mortification.”

In the tranquil hour of midnight an apparition stood before him, in the habit of a fakír. The merchant cried: “What art thou?” It answered: “I am the apparition of thy good fortune and the genius of thy future happiness. When thou, with such unbounded generosity, didst bequeath all thy wealth to the poor, I determined not to pass by thy door unnoticed, but to endow thee with an inexhaustible treasure, conformable to the greatness of thy capacious soul. To accomplish which I will, every morning, in this shape, appear to thee; thou shalt strike me a few blows on the head, when I shall instantly fall low at thy feet, transformed into an image of gold. From this freely take as much as thou shalt have occasion for; and every member or joint that shall be separated from the image shall be instantly replaced by another of the same precious metal.”[47]

At daybreak the demon of avarice had conducted Hajm, the covetous, to the durbar of Abdal-Malik, the generous. Soon after his arrival the apparition presented itself. Abdal-Malik immediately arose, and after striking it several blows on the head it fell down before him, and was changed into an image of gold. As much as sufficed for the necessities of the day he took for himself, and gave a much larger portion to his visitor. Hajm was overjoyed at the present, and concluded from what he had seen that he or any other person who should treat a fakír in the same manner could convert him into gold, and consequently that by beating a number he might multiply his golden images. Heated with this fond imagination, he quickly returned to his house and gave the necessary orders for a most sumptuous entertainment, to which he invited all the fakírs in the province.

When the keen appetite was assuaged, and the exhilarating sherbet began to enliven the convivial meeting, Hajm seized a ponderous club, and with it regaled his guests till he broke their heads, and the crimson torrent stained the carpet of hospitality. The fakírs elevating the shriek of sore distress, the kutwal’s guard came to their assistance, and soon a multitude of people assembled, who, after binding the offender with the strong cord of captivity, carried him, together with the fakírs, before the governor of the city. He demanded to know the reason why he had so inhospitably and cruelly behaved to these harmless people. The confounded Hajm replied: “As I was yesterday in the house of Abdal-Malik, a fakír suddenly appeared. The merchant struck him some blows on the head, and he fell prostrate before him, transformed into a golden image. Imagining that any other person could, by a similar behaviour, force any fakír to undergo the like metamorphosis, I invited these men to a banquet, and regaled them with some blows of my cudgel to compel them to a similar transformation; but the demon of avarice has deceived me, and the fascinating temptation of gold has involved me in a labyrinth of ills.”

The governor at once sent for Abdal-Malik, and, demanding a solution of Hajm’s mysterious tale, was thus answered by the charitable merchant: “The unfortunate Hajm is my neighbour. Some days ago he began to exhibit symptoms of a disordered imagination and distracted brain, and during these violent paroxysms of insanity he related some ridiculous fable of me and the rest of my neighbours. No better specimen can be adduced than the extravagant action of which he now stands accused, and the absurd tale by which he attempts to apologise for the commission of it. That madness may no longer usurp the palace of reason, to revel upon the ruins of his mind, deliver him to the sons of ingenuity, the preservers and restorers of health; let them purify his blood by sparing diet, abridge him of his daily potations, and by the force of medicinal beverage recall him from the precipice of ruin.” This advice was warmly applauded by the governor, who, after Hajm had been compelled to ask pardon of the fakírs for the ill-treatment they had received, was soundly bastinadoed before the tribunal, and carried to the hospital for madness.

That each man has his “genius” of good or evil fortune is an essentially Buddhistic idea. The same story occurs, in a different form, in the Hitopadesa, or Friendly Counsel, an ancient Sanskrit collection of apologues, and an abridgment of the Panchatantra, or Five Chapters, where it forms Fable 10 of Book III: In the city of Ayodhya (Oude) there was a soldier named Churamani, who, being anxious for money, for a long time with pain of body worshipped the deity, the jewel of whose diadem is the lunar crescent. Being at length purified from his sins, in his sleep he had a vision in which, through the favour of the deity, he was directed by the lord of the Yakshas [Kuvera, the god of wealth] to do as follows: “Early in the morning, having been shaved, thou must stand, club in hand, concealed behind the door of the house; and the beggar whom thou seest come into the court thou wilt put to death without mercy by blows of thy staff. Instantly the beggar will become a pot full of gold, by which thou wilt be comfortable for the rest of thy life.” These instructions being followed, it came to pass accordingly; but the barber who had been brought to shave him, having witnessed it all, said to himself, “O is this the mode of gaining a treasure? Why, then, may not I also do the same?” From that day forward the barber in like manner, with club in hand, day after day awaited the coming of the beggar. One day a beggar being so caught was attacked by him and killed with the stick, for which offence the barber himself was beaten by the king’s officers, and died.—In the Panchatantra, in place of a soldier, a banker who had lost all his wealth determines to put an end to his life, when he dreams that the personification of Kuvera, the god of riches, appears before him in the form of a Jaina mendicant—a conclusive proof of the Buddhistic origin of the story.—A trunkless head performs the same part in the Russian folk-tale of the Stepmother’s Daughter, on which Mr. Ralston remarks that, “according to Buddhist belief the treasure which has belonged to anyone in a former existence may come to him in the form of a man, who, when killed, is turned to gold.”[48]

There is an analogous story to this of the Golden Apparition in an entertaining little book entitled, The Orientalist; or, Letters of a Rabbi, by James Noble, published at Edinburgh in 1831, of which the following is the outline:

An old Dervish falls ill in the house of a poor widow, who tends him with great care, and when he recovers his health he offers to take charge of her only son, Abdallah. The good woman gladly consents, and the Dervish sets out accompanied by his young ward, having intimated to his mother that they must perform a journey which would last about two years. One day they arrived at a solitary place, and the Dervish said to Abdallah: “My son, we are now at the end of our journey. I shall employ my prayers to obtain from Allah that the earth shall open and make an entrance wide enough to permit thee to descend into a place where thou shalt find one of the greatest treasures that the earth contains. Hast thou courage to descend into the vault?” Abdallah assured him that he might depend on his fidelity; and then the Dervish lighted a small fire, into which he cast a perfume: he read and prayed for some minutes, after which the earth opened, and he said to the young man: “Thou mayest now enter. Remember that it is in thy power to do me a great service; and that this is perhaps the only opportunity thou shalt ever have of testifying to me that thou art not ungrateful. Do not let thyself be dazzled by the riches that thou shalt find there: think only of seizing upon an iron candlestick with twelve branches, which thou shalt find close to the door. That is absolutely necessary to me: come up with it at once.” Abdallah descended, and, neglecting the advice of the Dervish, filled his vest and sleeves with the gold and jewels which he found heaped up in the vault, whereupon the opening by which he had entered closed of itself. He had, however, sufficient presence of mind to seize the iron candlestick, and endeavoured to find some other means of escape from the vault. At length he discovers a narrow passage, which he follows until he reaches the surface of the earth, and looking for the Dervish saw him not, but to his surprise found that he was close to his mother’s house. On showing his wealth to his mother, it all suddenly vanished. But the candlestick remained. He lighted one of the branches, upon which a dervish appeared, and after turning round an hour he threw down an asper (about three farthings in value) and vanished. Next night he put a lighted candle in each of the branches, when twelve dervishes appeared, and having continued their gyrations for an hour each threw down an asper and vanished. In this way did Abdallah and his mother contrive to live for a time, till at length he resolved to carry the candlestick to the good Dervish, hoping to obtain from him the treasure which he had seen in the vault. He remembered his name and city, and on reaching his dwelling found the Dervish living in a magnificent palace, with fifty porters at the gate. The Dervish thus addressed Abdallah: “Thou art an ungrateful wretch! Hadst thou known the value of the candlestick thou wouldst never have brought it to me. I will show thee its true use.” Then the Dervish placed a light in each branch, whereupon twelve dervishes appeared and began to whirl, but on his giving each a blow with a stick, in an instant they were changed into twelve heaps of sequins, diamonds, and other precious stones. Ungrateful as Abdallah had shown himself, yet the Dervish gave him two camels laden with gold, and a slave, telling him that he must depart the next morning. During the night Abdallah stole the candlestick and placed it at the bottom of his sacks. At daybreak he took leave of the generous Dervish and set off. When about half a day’s journey from his own city he sold the slave, that there should be no witness to his former poverty, and bought another in his stead. Arriving home, he carefully placed his loads of treasure in a private chamber, and then put a light in each branch of the candlestick; and when the twelve dervishes appeared, he dealt each of them a blow with a stick. But he had not observed that the good Dervish employed his left hand, and he had naturally used his right, in consequence of which the twelve dervishes drew each from under their robes a heavy club and beat him till he was nearly dead, and then vanished, as did also the treasure, the camels, the slave, and the wonder-working candlestick![49]

A warning against avarice is intended to be conveyed in the tale, or rather apologue, or perhaps we should consider it as a sort of allegory, related by the sagacious bird on the 47th Night, according to the India Office MS., but the 16th Night of Kádirí’s abridgment. It is to the following effect, and may be entitled

The Four Treasure-Seekers.

Once on a time four intimate friends, who made a common fund of all their possessions, and had long enjoyed the wealth of their industrious ancestors, at length lost all their goods and money, and, barely saving their lives, quitted together the place of their nativity. In the course of their travels they meet a wise Bráhman, to whom they relate the history of their misfortunes. He gives each of them a pearl, which he places on their heads, telling them, whenever the pearl drops from the head of any of them, to examine the spot, and share equally what they find there. After walking some distance the pearl drops from the head of one of the companions, and on examining the place he discovers a copper mine, the produce of which he offers to share with the others, but they refuse, and, leaving him, continue their journey. By-and-by the pearl drops from the head of another of the friends, and a silver mine is found; but the two others, believing that better things were in store farther on, left him to his treasure, and proceeded on their way till the pearl of the third companion dropped, and they found in the place a rich gold mine. In vain does he endeavour to persuade his companion to be content with the wealth here obtainable: he disdainfully refuses, saying that, since copper, silver, and gold had been found, fortune had evidently reserved something infinitely better for him; and so he quitted his friend and went on, till he reached a narrow valley destitute of water; the air like that of Jehennan;[50] the surface of the earth like infernal fire; no animal or bird was to be seen; and chilling blasts alternated with sulphurous exhalations. Here the fourth pearl dropped and the owner discovered a mine of diamonds and other gems, but the ground was covered with snakes, cockatrices, and the most venomous serpents. On seeing this he determines to return and share the produce of the third companion’s gold mine; but when he comes to the spot he can find no trace of the mine or of the owner. Proceeding next to the silver mine, he finds it is exhausted, and his friend who owned it has gone; so he will now content himself with copper; but, alas! his first friend had died the day before his arrival, and strangers were now in possession of the mine, who laughed at his pretensions, and even beat him for his impertinence. Sad at heart, he journeys on to where he and his companions had met the Bráhman, but he had long since departed to a far distant country; and thus, through his obstinacy and avarice, he was overwhelmed with poverty and disgrace—without money and without friends.

This story of the Four Treasure-seekers forms the third of Book V of the Panchatantra, where the fourth companion, instead of finding a diamond mine guarded by serpents, etc., discovers a man with a wheel upon his head, and on his asking this man where he could procure water, who he was, and why he stood with the wheel on his head, straightway the wheel is transferred to his own head, as had been the case of the former victim who had asked the same questions of his predecessor. The third man, who had found the gold mine, wondering that his companion tarried so long, sets off in search of him, and, finding him with the wheel on his head, asks why he stood thus. The fourth acquaints him of the property of the wheel, and then relates a number of stories to show that those who want common sense will surely come to grief.

It is more than probable that several of the tales and apologues in the Panchatantra were derived from Buddhist sources; and the incident of a man with a wheel on his head is found in the Chinese-Sanskrit work entitled Fu-pen-hing-tsi-king, which Wassiljew translates ‘Biography of Sákyamuni and his Companions,’ and of which Dr. Beal has published an abridged English translation under the title of the Romantic History of Buddha. In this work (p. 342 ff.) a merchant, who had struck his mother because she would not sanction his going on a trading voyage, in the course of his wanderings discovers a man “on whose head there was placed an iron wheel, this wheel was red with heat, and glowing as from a furnace, terrible to behold. Seeing this terrible sight, Máitri exclaimed: ‘Who are you? Why do you carry that terrible wheel on your head?’ On this the wretched man replied: ‘Dear sir, is it possible you know me not? I am a merchant chief called Gorinda.’ Then Máitri asked him and said: ‘Pray, then, tell me, what dreadful crime have you committed in former days that you are constrained to wear that fiery wheel on your head.’ Then Gorinda answered: ‘In former days I was angry with and struck my mother as she lay on the ground, and for this reason I am condemned to wear this fiery iron wheel around my head.’ At this time Máitri, self-accused, began to cry out and lament; he was filled with remorse on recollection of his own conduct, and exclaimed in agony: ‘Now am I caught like a deer in the snare.’ Then a certain Yaksha, who kept guard over that city, whose name was Viruka, suddenly came to the spot, and removing the fiery wheel from off the head of Gorinda, he placed it on the head of Máitri. Then the wretched man cried out in his agony and said: ‘O what have I done to merit this torment?’ to which the Yaksha replied: ‘You, wretched man, dared to strike your mother on the head as she lay on the ground; now, therefore, on your head you shall wear this fiery wheel; through 60,000 years your punishment shall last: be assured of this, through all these years you shall wear this wheel.’”

III

THE SINGING ASS: THE FOOLISH THIEVES: THE FAGGOT-MAKER AND THE MAGIC BOWL.

Some of the Parrot’s recitals have other tales sphered within them, so to say—a plan which must be familiar to all readers of the Arabian Nights. In the following amusing tale, which is perhaps the best of the whole series (it is the 41st of the India Office MS. No. 2573, and the 31st in Kadiri’s version), there are two subordinate stories:

The Singing Ass.

At a certain period of time, as ancient historians inform us, an ass and an elk were so fond of each other’s company that they were never seen separate. If the plains were deficient in pasture, they repaired to the meadows; or, if famine pervaded the valleys, they overleaped the garden-fence, and, like friends, divided the spoil.

One night, during the season of verdure, about the gay termination of spring, after they had rioted in the cup of plenty, and lay rolling on a green carpet of spinach, the cup of the silly ass began to overflow with the froth of conceit, and he thus expressed his unseasonable intentions:

“O comrade of the branching antlers, what a mirth-inspiring night is this! How joyous are the heart-attracting moments of spring! Fragrance distils from every tree; the garden breathes otto of roses, and the whole atmosphere is pregnant with musk. In the umbrageous gloom of the waving cypress the turtles are exchanging their vows, and the bird of a thousand songs [i.e., the nightingale] sips nectar from the lips of the rose: nothing is wanting to complete the joys of spring but one of my melodious songs. When the warm blood of youth shall cease to give animation to these elegant limbs of mine, what relish shall I have for pleasure? And when the lamp of my life is extinguished, the spring will return in vain.”

Nakhshabí, music at every season is delightful, and a song sweetly murmured captivates the senses.

The musician who charms our ears will most assuredly find the road of success to our hearts.[51]

The elk answered: “Sagacious, long-eared associate, what an unseasonable proposal is this? Rather let us converse together about pack-saddles and sacks; tell me a story about straw, beans, or hay-lofts, unmerciful drivers, and heavy burdens.”

What business has the Ass to meddle with music?

What occasion has Long-ears to attempt to sing?

“You ought also to recollect,” continued the elk, “that we are thieves, and that we came into this garden to plunder. Consider what an enormous quantity of beets, lettuces, parsley, and radishes we have eaten, and what a fine bed of spinach we are spoiling! ‘Nothing can be more disgusting than a bird that sings out of season’ is a proverb which is as current among the sons of wisdom as a bill of exchange among merchants, and as valuable as an unpierced pearl. If you are so infatuated as to permit the enchanting melody of your voice to draw you into this inextricable labyrinth, the gardener will instantly awake, rouse his whole caravan of workmen, hasten to this garden and convert our music into mourning; so that our history will be like that of the house-breakers.”

The Prince of Folly, expressing a wish to know how that was, received the following information:

The Foolish Thieves.

In one of the cities of Hindústán some thieves broke into a house, and after collecting the most valuable movables sat down in a corner to bind them up. In this corner was a large two-eared earthen vessel, brimful of the wine of seduction, which sublime to their mouths they advanced and long-breathed potations exhausted, crying: “Everything is good in its turn; the hours of business are past—come on with the gift which fortune bestows; let us mitigate the toils of the night and smooth the forehead of care.” As they approached the bottom of the flagon, the vanguard of intoxication began to storm the castle of reason; wild uproar, tumult, and their auxiliaries commanded by a sirdar of nonsense, soon after scaled the walls, and the songs of folly vociferously proclaimed that the sultan of discretion was driven from his post, and confusion had taken possession of the garrison. The noise awakened the master of the mansion, who was first overwhelmed with surprise, but soon recollecting himself, he seized his trusty scimitar, and expeditiously roused his servants, who forthwith attacked the sons of disorder, and with very little pains or risk extended them on the pavement of death.

Nakhshabí, everything is good in its season.

Let each perform his part in the world, that the world may go round.

He who drinks at an unseasonable hour ought not to complain of the vintner.

Here Long-ears superciliously answered: “Pusillanimous companion, I am the blossom of the city and the luminary of the people; my presence gives life to the plains, and my harmony cultivates the desert. If, when in vulgar prose I express the unpremeditated idea, every ear is filled with delight, and the fleeting soul, through ecstacy, flutters on the trembling lips—what must be the effect of my songs?”

The elk rejoined: “The ear must be deprived of sensation, the heart void of blood, and formed of the coarsest clay must be he who can attend your lays with indifference. But condescend, for once, to listen to advice, and postpone this music, in which you are so great a proficient, and suppress not only the song, but the sweet murmuring in your throat, prelusive to your singing, and shrink not up your graceful nostrils, nor extent the extremities of your jaws, lest you should have as much reason to repent of your singing as the faggot-maker had of his dancing.” The ass demanding how that came to pass, the elk made answer as follows:

The Faggot-maker and the Magic Bowl.

As a faggot-maker was one day at work in a wood, he saw four perís [or fairies] sitting near him, with a magnificent bowl before them, which supplied them with all they wanted. If they had occasion for food of the choicest taste, wines of the most delicious flavour, garments the most valuable and convenient, or perfumes of the most odoriferous exhalation—in short, whatever necessity could require, luxury demand, or avarice wish for—they had nothing more to do but put their hands into the bowl and pull out whatever they desired. The day following, the poor faggot-maker being at work in the same place, the perís again appeared, and invited him to be one of their party. The proposal was cheerfully accepted, and impressing his wife and children with the seal of forgetfulness, he remained some days in their company. Recollecting himself, however, at last, he thus addressed his white-robed entertainers:

“I am a poor faggot-maker, father of a numerous family; to drive famine from my cot, I every evening return with my faggots; but my cares for my wife and fireside have been for some time past obliterated by the cup of your generosity. If my petition gain admission to the durbar of your enlightened auditory, I will return to give them the salaam of health, and inquire into the situation of their affairs.”

The perís graciously nodded acquiescence, adding: “The favours you have received from us are trifling, and we cannot dismiss you empty-handed. Make choice, therefore, of whatever you please, and the fervour of your most unbounded desire shall be slaked in the stream of our munificence.”

The wood-cutter replied: “I have but one wish to gratify, and that is so unjust and so unreasonable that I dread the very thought of naming it, since nothing but the bowl before us will satisfy my ambitious heart.”

The perís, bursting into laughter, answered: “We shall suffer not the least inconvenience by the loss of it, for, by virtue of a talisman which we possess, we could make a thousand in a twinkling. But, in order to make it as great a treasure to you as it has been to us, guard it with the utmost care, for it will break by the most trifling blow, and be sure never to make use of it but when you really want it.”

The faggot-maker, overcome with joy, said: “I will pay the most profound attention to this inexhaustible treasure; and to preserve it from breaking I will exert every faculty of my soul.” Upon saying this he received the bowl, with which he returned on the wings of rapture, and for some days enjoyed his good fortune better than might be expected. The necessaries and comforts of life were provided for his family, his creditors were paid, alms distributed to the poor, the brittle bowl of plenty was guarded with discretion, and everything around him was arranged for the reception of his friends, who assembled in such crowds that his cottage overflowed. The faggot-maker, who was one of those choice elevated spirits whose money never rusts in their possession, finding his habitation inadequate for the entertainment of his guests, built another, more spacious and magnificent, to which he invited the whole city, and placed the magic bowl in the middle of the grand saloon, and every time he made a dip pulled out whatever was wished for. Though the views of his visitors were various, contentment was visibly inscribed on every forehead: the hungry were filled with the bread of plenty; the aqueducts overflowed with the wine of Shíráz; the effeminate were satiated with musky odours, and the thirst of avarice was quenched by the bowl of abundance. The wondering spectators exclaimed: “This is no bowl, but a boundless ocean of mystery! It is not what it appears to be, a piece of furniture, but an inexhaustible magazine of treasure!”

After the faggot-maker had thus paraded his good fortune and circulated the wine-cup with very great rapidity, he stood up and began to dance, and, to show his dexterity in the art, placed the brittle bowl on his left shoulder, which every time he turned round he struck with his hand, crying: “O soul-exhilarating goblet, thou art the origin of my ease and affluence—the spring of my pomp and equipage—the engineer who has lifted me from the dust of indigence to the towering battlements of glory! Thou art the nimble berid [running foot-man] of my winged wishes, and the regulator of all my actions! To thee am I indebted for all the splendour that surrounds me! Thou art the source of my currency, and art the author of our present festival!”

With these and similar foolish tales he entertained his company, as the genius of nonsense dictated, making the most ridiculous grimaces, rolling his eyes like a fakír in a fit of devotion, and capering like one distracted, till the bowl, by a sudden slip of his foot, fell from his shoulder on the pavement of ruin, and was broken into a hundred pieces. At the same instant, all that he had in the house, and whatever he had circulated in the city, suddenly vanished;—the banquet of exultation was quickly converted into mourning, and he who a little before danced for joy now beat his breast for sorrow, blamed to no purpose the rigour of his inauspicious fortune, and execrated the hour of his birth. Thus a jewel fell into the hands of an unworthy person, who was unacquainted with its value; and an inestimable gem was entrusted to an indigent wretch, who, by his ignorance and ostentation, converted it to his own destruction.

“Melodious bulbul of the long-eared race,” continued the elk, “as the wood-cutter’s dancing was an unpardonable folly which met with the chastisement it deserved, so I fearfully anticipate that your unseasonable singing will become your exemplary punishment.”

His ass-ship listened thus far with reluctance to the admonition of his friend, without intending to profit by it; but arose from the carpet of spinach, eyed his companion with a mortifying glance of contempt, pricked up his long snaky ears, and began to put himself into a musical posture. The nimble, small-hoofed elk, perceiving this, said to himself: “Since he has stretched out his neck and prepared his pitch-pipe, he will not remain long without singing.” So he left the vegetable banquet, leaped over the garden wall, and fled to a place of security. The ass was no sooner alone than he commenced a most loud and horrible braying, which instantly awoke the gardeners, who, with the noose of an insidious halter, to the trunk of a tree fast bound the affrighted musician, where they belaboured him with their cudgels till they broke every bone in his body, and converted his skin to a book, in which, in letters of gold, a múnshí [learned man] of luminous pen, with the choicest flowers of the garden of rhetoric, and for the benefit of the numerous fraternity of asses, inscribed this instructive history.

Magical articles such as the wonderful wishing-bowl of our unlucky friend the Faggot-maker figure very frequently in the folk-tales of almost every country, assuming many different forms: a table-cloth, a pair of saddle-bags, a purse, a flask, etc.; but since a comprehensive account of those highly-gifted objects—alas, that they should no longer exist!—is furnished in the early chapters of my Popular Tales and Fictions, I presume I need not go over the same wide field again.—In the Kathá Sarit Ságara (Ocean of the Streams of Story), a very large collection of tales and apologues, composed, in Sanskrit, by Somadeva, in the 12th century, after a much older work, the Vrihat Kathá (or Great Story), the tale of the Faggot-maker occurs as a separate recital. It is there an inexhaustible pitcher which he receives from four yakshas—supernatural beings, who correspond to some extent with the perís of Muslim mythology—and he is duly warned that should it be broken it departs at once. For a time he concealed the secret from his relations until one day, when he was intoxicated, they asked him how it came about that he had given up carrying burdens, and had abundance of all kinds of dainties, eatable and drinkable. “He was too much puffed up with pride to tell them plainly, but, taking the wish-granting pitcher on his shoulder, he began to dance; and, as he was dancing, the inexhaustible pitcher slipped from his shoulder, as his feet tripped with over-abundance of intoxication, and, falling on the ground, was broken in pieces. And immediately it was mended again, and reverted to its original possessor; but Subadatta was reduced to his former condition, and filled with despondency.” In a note to this story, Mr. Tawney remarks that in Bartsch’s Meklenburg Tales a man possesses himself of an inexhaustible beer-can, but as soon as he tells how he got it the beer disappears.—The story of the Foolish Thieves noisily carousing in the house they had just plundered occurs also in Saádí’s Gulistán and several other Eastern story-books.

In Kádíri’s abridgment of the Parrot-Book, the Elk is taken prisoner as well as his companion the Ass, and the two subordinate stories, of the Foolish Thieves and of the Faggot-maker, are omitted. They are also omitted in the version of the Singing Ass found in the Panchatantra (B. v, F. 7), where a jackal, not an elk, is the companion of the ass, and when he perceives the latter about to “sing” he says: “Let me get to the door of the garden, where I may see the gardener as he approaches, and then sing away as long as you please.” The gardener beats the ass till he is weary, and then fastens a clog to the animal’s leg and ties him to a post. After great exertion, the ass contrives to get free from the post and hobbles away with the clog still on his leg. The jackal meets his old comrade and exclaims: “Bravo, uncle! You would sing your song, though I did all I could to dissuade you, and now see what a fine ornament you have received as recompense for your performance.” This form of the story reappears in the Tantrákhyána, a collection of tales, in Sanskrit, discovered by Prof. Cecil Bendall in 1884, of which he has given an interesting account in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xx, pp. 465-501, including the original text of a number of the stories.—In Ralston’s Tibetan Tales, translated from Schiefner’s German rendering of stories from the Kah-gyur (No. xxxii), the story is also found, with a bull in place of a jackal. An ass meets the bull one evening and proposes they should go together and feast themselves to their hearts’ content in the king’s bean-field, to which the bull replies: “O nephew, as you are wont to let your voice resound, we should run great risk.” Said the ass: “O uncle, let us go; I will not raise my voice.” Having entered the bean-field together, the ass uttered no sound until he had eaten his fill. Then quoth he: “Uncle, shall I not sing a little?” The bull responded: “Wait an instant until I have gone away, and then do just as you please.” So the bull runs away, and the ass lifts up his melodious voice, upon which the king’s servants came and seized him, cut off his long ears, fastened a pestle on his neck, and drove him out of the field.—There can be no question, I think, as to the superiority, in point of humour, of Nakhshabí’s version in Tútí Náma, as given above.

IV

THE COVETOUS GOLDSMITH—THE KING WHO DIED OF LOVE—THE DISCOVERY OF MUSIC—THE SEVEN REQUISITES OF A PERFECT WOMAN.

To quit, for the present at least, the regions of fable and magic, and return to tales of common life: the 30th recital in Kádíri’s abridged text is of

The Goldsmith who lost his Life through his Covetousness.

A soldier finds a purse of gold on the highway, and entrusts it to the keeping of a goldsmith (how frequently do goldsmiths figure in these stories—and never to the credit of the craft!), but when he comes to demand it back the other denies all knowledge of it. The soldier cites him before the kází, but he still persists in denying that he had ever received any money from the complainant. The kází was, however, convinced of the truth of the soldier’s story, so he goes to the house of the goldsmith, and privately causes two of his own attendants to be locked up in a large chest that was in one of the rooms. He then confines the goldsmith and his wife in the same room. During the night the concealed men hear the goldsmith inform his wife where he had hidden the soldier’s money; and next morning, when the kází comes again and is told by his men what they had heard the goldsmith say to his wife about the money, he causes search to be made, and, finding it, hangs the goldsmith on the spot.

Kázís are often represented in Persian stories as being very shrewd and ingenious in convicting the most expert rogues, but this device for discovering the goldsmith’s criminality is certainly one of the cleverest examples.

On the 36th Night of MS. (26th of Kádiri) the loquacious bird relates the story of

The King who died of Love for a Merchant’s beautiful Daughter.

A merchant had a daughter, the fame of whose beauty drew many suitors for her hand, but he rejected them all; and when she was of proper age he wrote a letter to the king, describing her charms and accomplishments, and respectfully offering her to him in marriage. The king, already in love with the damsel from this account of her beauty, sends his four vazírs to the merchant’s house to ascertain whether she was really as charming as her father had represented her to be. They find that she far surpassed the power of words to describe; but, considering amongst themselves that should the king take this bewitching girl to wife, he would become so entangled in the meshes of love as totally to neglect the affairs of the state, they underrate her beauty to the king, who then gives up all thought of her. But it chanced one day that the king himself beheld the damsel on the terrace of her house, and, perceiving that his vazírs had deceived him, he sternly reprimanded them, at the same time expressing his fixed resolution of marrying the girl. The vazírs frankly confessed that their reason for misrepresenting the merchant’s daughter to him was their fear lest, possessing such a charming bride, he should forget his duty to the state; upon which the king, struck with their anxiety for his true interests, resolved to deny himself the happiness of marrying the girl. But he could not suppress his affection for her: he fell sick, and soon after died, the victim of love.

This story forms the 17th of the Twenty-five Tales of a Demon (Vetála Panchavinsati), according to the Sanskrit version found in the Kathá Sarit Ságara; but its great antiquity is proved by the circumstance that it is found in a Buddhistic work dating probably 200 years before our era—namely, Buddhaghosha’s Parables. “Dying for love,” says Richardson, “is considered amongst us as a mere poetical figure, and we can certainly support the reality by few examples; but in Eastern countries it seems to be something more, many words in the Arabic and Persian languages which express love implying also melancholy; madness, and death.” Shakspeare affirms that “men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.” There is, however, one notable instance of this on record, in the story (as related by Warton, in his History of English Poetry) of the gallant troubadour Geoffrey Rudel, who died for love—and love, too, from hearsay description of the beauty of the Countess of Tripoli.

On the 14th Night the Parrot entertains the Lady with a very curious account of

The Discovery of Music.

Some attribute, says the learned and eloquent feathered sage (according to Gerrans), the discovery to the sounds made by a large stone against the frame of an oil-press; and others to the noise of meat when roasting; but the sages of Hind [India] are of opinion that it originated from the following accident: As a learned Bráhman was travelling to the court of an illustrious rájá he rested about the middle of the day under the shade of a mulberry tree, on the top of which he beheld a mischievous monkey climbing from bough to bough, till, by a sudden slip, he fell upon a sharp-pointed shoot, which instantly ripped up his belly and left his entrails suspended in the tree, while the unlucky animal fell, breathless, on the dust of death. Some time after this, as the Bráhman was returning, he accidentally sat down in the same place, and, recollecting the circumstance, looked up, and saw that the entrails were dried, and yielded a harmonious sound every time the wind gently impelled them against the branches. Charmed at the singularity of the adventure, he took them down, and after binding them to the two ends of his walking-stick, touched them with a small twig, by which he discovered that the sound was much improved. When he got home he fastened the staff to another piece of wood, which was hollow, and by the addition of a bow, strung with part of his own beard, converted it to a complete instrument. In succeeding ages the science received considerable improvements. After the addition of a bridge, purer notes were extracted; and the different students, pursuing the bent of their inclinations, constructed instruments of various forms, according to their individual fancies; and to this whimsical accident we are indebted for the tuneful ney and the heart-exhilarating rabáb, and, in short, all the other instruments of wind and strings.

Having thus discoursed upon the discovery of music, the Parrot proceeds to detail

The Seven Requisites of a Perfect Woman.

  1. She ought not to be always merry.
  2. She ought not to be always sad.
  3. She ought not to be always talking.
  4. She ought not to be always thinking.
  5. She ought not to be constantly dressing.
  6. She ought not to be always unadorned.
  7. She is a perfect woman who, at all times, possesses herself; can be cheerful without levity, grave without austerity; knows when to elevate the tongue of persuasion, and when to impress her lips with the signet of silence; never converts trifling ceremonies into intolerable burdens; always dresses becoming to her rank and age; is modest without prudery, religious without an alloy of superstition; can hear the one sex praised without envy, and converse with the other without permitting the torch of inconstancy to kindle the unhallowed fire in her breast; considers her husband as the most accomplished of mortals, and thinks all the sons of Adam besides unworthy of a transient glance from the corner of her half-shut eyes.

Such are the requisites of a perfect woman, and how thankful we should be that we have so many in this highly-favoured land who possess them all! These maxims are assuredly of Indian origin—no Persian could ever have conceived such virtues as being attainable by women.

V

THE PRINCESS OF ROME AND HER SON—THE KING AND HIS SEVEN VAZIRS.

The story told by the Parrot on the 50th Night is very singular, and presents, no doubt, a faithful picture of Oriental manners and customs. In the original text it is entitled

Story of the Daughter of the Kaysar of Rome, and her trouble by reason of her Son.

In former times there was a great king, whose army was numerous and whose treasury was full to overflowing; but, having no enemy to contend with, he neglected to pay his soldiers, in consequence of which they were in a state of destitution and discontent. At length one day the soldiers went to the prime vazír and made their condition known to him. The vazír promised that he would speedily devise a plan by which they should have employment and money. Next morning he presented himself before the king, and said that it was widely reported that the kaysar of Rome had a daughter unsurpassed for beauty—one who was fit only for such a great monarch as his Majesty—and suggested that it would be advantageous if an alliance were formed between two such potentates. The notion pleased the king well, and he forthwith despatched to Rome an ambassador with rich gifts, and requested the kaysar to grant him his daughter in marriage. But the kaysar waxed wroth at this, and refused to give his daughter to the king. When the ambassador returned thus unsuccessful, the king, enraged at being made of no account, resolved to make war upon the kaysar, and, opening the doors of his treasury, he distributed much money among his troops, and then, “with a woe-bringing lust, and a blood-drinking army, he trampled Rome and the Romans in the dust.” And when the kaysar was become powerless, he sent his daughter to the king, who married her according to the law of Islám.

Now that princess had a son by a former husband, and the kaysar had said to her before she departed: “Beware that thou mention not thy son, for my love for his society is great, and I cannot part with him.” But the princess was sick at heart for the absence of her son, and she was ever pondering how she should speak to the king about him, and in what manner she might contrive to bring him to her. It happened one day the king gave her a string of pearls and a casket of jewels. She said: “With my father is a slave well skilled in the science of jewels.” The king replied: “If I should ask that slave of thy father, would he give him to me?” “Nay,” said she; “for he holds him in the place of a son. But, if the king desire him, I will send a merchant to Rome, and I myself will give him a token, and with pleasant wiles and fair speeches will bring him hither.” Then the king sent for a clever merchant who knew Arabic eloquently and the language of Rome, and gave him goods for trading, and sent him to Rome with the object of procuring that slave. But the daughter of the kaysar said privately to the merchant: “That slave is my son; I have, for a good reason, said to the king that he is a slave; so thou must bring him as a slave, and let it be thy duty to take care of him.” In due course the merchant brought the youth to the king’s service; and when the king saw his fair face, and discovered in him many pleasing and varied accomplishments, he treated him with distinction and favour, and conferred on the merchant a robe of honour and gifts. His mother saw him from afar, and was pleased with receiving a salutation from him.

One day (the text proceeds) the king had gone to the chase, and the palace remained void of rivals; so the mother called in her son, kissed his fair face, and told him the tale of her great sorrow. A chamberlain became aware of the secret, and another suspicion fell upon him, and he said to himself: “The harem of the king is the sanctuary of security and the palace of protection. If I speak not of this, I shall be guilty of treachery, and shall have wrought unfaithfulness.” When the king returned from the chase, the chamberlain related to him what he had seen, and the king was angry and said: “This woman has deceived me with words and deeds, and has brought hither her desire by craft and cunning. This conjecture must be true, else why did she play such a trick, and why did she hatch such a plot, and why did she send the merchant?” The king, enraged, went into the harem. The queen saw from his countenance that the occurrence of the night before had become known to him, and she said: “Be it not that I see the king angry.” He said: “How should I not be angry? Thou, by craft, and trickery, and intrigue, and plotting, hast brought thy desire from Rome—what wantonness is this that thou hast done?” Then he thought to slay her, but he forbore, because of his great love for her. But he ordered the chamberlain to carry the youth to some obscure place, and straightway sever his head from his body. When the poor mother saw this she well-nigh fell on her face, and her soul was near leaving her body. But she knew that sorrow would not avail, and she restrained herself.

And when the chamberlain took the youth into his own house, he said to him: “O youth, know you not that the harem of the king is the sanctuary of security? What great treachery is this that thou hast perpetrated?” The youth replied: “That queen is my mother, and I am her true son. Because of her natural delicacy, she said not to the king that she had a son by another husband. And when yearning came over her, she contrived to bring me here from Rome; and while the king was engaged in the chase maternal love stirred, and she called me to her and embraced me.” On hearing this, the chamberlain said to himself: “What is passing in his mother’s breast? What I have not done I can yet do, and it were better that I preserve this youth some days, for such a rose may not be wounded through idle words, and such a bough may not be broken by a single breath. For some day the truth of this matter will be disclosed, and it will become known to the king, when repentance may be of no avail.” Another day he went before the king, and said: “That which was commanded have I fulfilled.” On hearing this the king’s wrath was to some extent removed, but his trust in the kaysar’s daughter was departed; while she, poor creature, was grieved and dazed at the loss of her son.

Now in the palace harem there was an old woman, who said to the queen: “How is it that I find thee sorrowful?” And the queen told the whole story, concealing nothing. The old woman was a heroine in the field of craft, and she answered: “Keep thy mind at ease: I will devise a stratagem by which the heart of the king will be pleased with thee, and every grief he has will vanish from his heart.” The queen said, that if she did so she should be amply rewarded. One day the old woman, seeing the king alone, said to him: “Why is thy former aspect altered, and why are traces of care and anxiety visible on thy countenance?” The king then told her all. The old woman said: “I have an amulet of the charms of Solomon, in the Syriac language, in the the writing of the jinn [genii]. When the queen is asleep do thou place it on her breast, and, whatever it may be, she will tell all the truth of it. But take care, fall thou not asleep, but listen well to what she says.” The king wondered at this, and said: “Give me that amulet, that the truth of this matter may be learned.” So the old woman gave him the amulet, and then went to the queen and explained what she had done, and said: “Do thou feign to be asleep, and relate the whole of the story faithfully.”

When a watch of the night was past, the king laid the amulet upon his wife’s breast, and she thus began: “By a former husband I had a son, and when my father gave me to this king, I was ashamed to say I had a tall son. When my yearning passed all bounds, I brought him here by an artifice. One day that the king was gone to the chase, I called him into the house, when, after the way of mothers, I took him in my arms and kissed him. This reached the king’s ears, and he unwittingly gave it another construction, and cut off the head of that innocent boy, and withdrew from me his own heart. Alike is my son lost to me and the king angry.” When the king heard these words he kissed her and exclaimed: “O my life, what an error is this thou hast committed? Thou hast brought calumny upon thyself, and hast given such a son to the winds, and hast made me ashamed!” Straightway he called the chamberlain and said: “That boy whom thou hast killed is the son of my beloved and the darling of my beauty! Where is his grave, that we may make there a guest-house?” The chamberlain said: “That youth is yet alive. When the king commanded his death I was about to kill him, but he said: ‘That queen is my mother; through modesty before the king she revealed not the secret that she had a tall son. Kill me not; it may be that some day the truth will become known, and repentance profits not, and regret is useless.’” The king commanded them to bring the youth, so they brought him straightway. And when the mother saw the face of her son, she thanked God and praised the Most High, and became one of the Muslims, and from the sect of unbelievers came into the faith of Islám. And the king favoured the chamberlain in the highest degree, and they passed the rest of their lives in comfort and ease.

This tale is also found in the Persian Bakhtyár Náma (or the Ten Vazírs), the precise date of which has not been ascertained, but a MS. Túrkí (Uygúr) version of it, preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, bears to have been written in 1434; the Persian text must therefore have been composed before that date. In the text translated by Sir William Ouseley, in place of the daughter of the kaysar of Rome it is the daughter of the king of Irák whom the king of Abyssinia marries, after subduing the power of her father; and, so far from a present of jewels to her being the occasion of her mentioning her son, in the condition of a slave, it is said that one day the king behaved harshly to her, and spoke disrespectfully of her father, upon which she boasted that her father had in his service a youth of great beauty and possessed of every accomplishment, which excited the king’s desire to have him brought to his court; and the merchant smuggled the youth out of the country of Irák concealed in a chest, placed on the back of a camel. In Lescallier’s French translation it is said that the youth was the fruit of a liaison of the princess, unknown to her father; that his education was secretly entrusted to certain servants; and that the princess afterwards contrived to introduce the boy to her father, who was so charmed with his beauty, grace of manner, and accomplishments, that he at once took him into his service. Thus widely do manuscripts of the same Eastern work vary!

The King and his Seven Vazírs.

On the Eighth Night the Parrot relates, in a very abridged form, the story of the prince who was falsely accused by one of his father’s women of having made love to her, and who was saved by the tales which the royal counsellors related to the king in turn during seven consecutive days. The original of this romance is the Book of Sindibád, so named after the prince’s tutor, Sindibád the sage: the Arabic version is known under the title of the Seven Vazírs; the Hebrew, Mishlé Sandabar; the Greek, Syntipas; and the Syriac, Sindbán; and its European modifications, the Seven Wise Masters. In the Parrot-Book the first to the sixth vazírs each relate one story only, and the damsel has no stories (all other Eastern versions give two to each of the seven, and six to the queen); the seventh vazír simply appears on the seventh day and makes clear the innocence of the prince. This version, however, though imperfect, is yet of some value in making a comparative study of the several texts.

VI

THE TREE OF LIFE—LEGEND OF RÁJÁ RASÁLÚ—CONCLUSION.

Many others of the Parrot’s stories might be cited, but we shall merely glance at one more, as it calls up a very ancient and wide-spread legend:

The Tree of Life.

A prince, who is very ill, sends a parrot of great sagacity to procure him some of the fruit of the Tree of Life. When at length the parrot returns with the life-giving fruit, the prince scruples to eat it, upon which the wise bird relates the legend of Solomon and the Water of Immortality: how that monarch declined to purchase immunity from death on consideration that he should survive all his friends and female favourites. The prince, however, having suspicions regarding the genuineness of the fruit, sends some trusty messengers to “bring the first apple that fell from the Tree of Existence.” But it happened that a black serpent had poisoned it by seizing it in his mouth and then letting it drop again. When the messengers return with the fruit, the prince tries its effect on an old pír (holy man), who at once falls down dead. Upon seeing this the prince doomed the parrot to death, but the sagacious bird suggested that, before the prince should execute him for treason, he should himself go to the Tree of Life, and make another experiment with its fruit. He does so, and on returning home gives part of the fruit to an old woman, “who, from age and infirmity had not stirred abroad for many years,” and she had no sooner tasted it than she was changed into a blooming beauty of eighteen!—Happy, happy old woman!

A different version of the legend occurs in a Canarese collection, entitled Kathá Manjarí, which is worthy of reproduction, since it may possibly be an earlier form than that in the Persian Parrot-Book: A certain king had a magpie that flew one day to heaven with another magpie. When it was there it took away some mango-seed, and, having returned, gave it into the hands of the king, saying: “If you cause this to be planted and grow, whoever eats of its fruit old age will forsake him and youth return.” The king was much pleased, and caused it to be sown in his favourite garden, and carefully watched it. After some time, buds having shown themselves in it became flowers, then young fruit, then it was grown; and when it was full of ripe fruit, the king ordered it to be cut and brought, and that he might test it gave it to an old man. But on that fruit there had fallen poison from a serpent, as it was carried through the air by a kite, therefore he immediately withered and died. The king, having seen this, was much afraid, and exclaimed: “Is not this bird attempting to kill me?” Having said this, with anger he seized the magpie, and swung it round and killed it. Afterwards in that village the tree had the name of the Poisonous Mango. While things were thus, a washerman, taking the part of his wife in a quarrel with his aged mother, struck the latter, who was so angry at her son that she resolved to die [in order that the blame of her death should fall on him]; and having gone to the poisonous mango-tree in the garden, she cut off a fruit and ate it; and immediately she was more blooming than a girl of sixteen. This wonder she published everywhere. The king became acquainted with it, and having called her and seen her, caused the fruit to be given to other old people. Having seen what was thus done by the wonderful virtue of the mango, the king exclaimed: “Alas! is the affectionate magpie killed which gave me this divine tree? How guilty am I!” and he pierced himself with his sword and died. Therefore (moralises the story-teller) those who do anything without thought are easily ruined.[52]

The incident of fruit or food being poisoned by a serpent is of frequent occurrence in Eastern stories; thus, in the Book of Sindibád a man sends his slave-girl to fetch milk, with which to feast some guests. As she was returning with it in an open vessel a stork flew over her, carrying a snake in its beak; the snake dropped some of its poison into the milk, and all the guests who partook of it immediately fell down and died.—The Water of Life and the Tree of Life are the subjects of many European as well as Asiatic folk-tales. Muslims have a tradition that Alexander the Great despatched the prophet Al-Khizar (who is often confounded with Moses and Elias in legends) to procure him some of the Water of Life. The prophet, after a long and perilous journey, at length reached this Spring of Everlasting Youth, and, having taken a hearty draught of its waters, the stream suddenly disappeared—and has, we may suppose, never been rediscovered. Al-Khizar, they say, still lives, and occasionally appears to persons whom he desires especially to favour, and always clothed in a green robe, the emblem of perennial youth. In Arabic, Khizar signifies green.

The faithful and sagacious Parrot having entertained the lady during fifty-two successive nights, and thereby prevented her from prosecuting her intended intrigue, on the following day the merchant returned, and, missing the sharak from the cage, inquired its fate of the Parrot, who straight-way acquainted him of all that had taken place in his absence, and, according to Kádiri’s abridged text, he put his wife to death, which was certainly very unjust, since the lady’s offence was only in design, not in fact.[53]

It will be observed that the frame of the Tútí Náma somewhat resembles the story, in the Arabian Nights, of the Merchant, his Wife, and the Parrot, which properly belongs to, and occurs in, all the versions of the Book of Sindibád, and also in the Seven Wise Masters; in the latter a magpie takes the place of the parrot. In my Popular Tales and Fictions I have pointed out the close analogy which the frame of the Parrot-Book bears to a Panjábí legend of the renowned hero Rájá Rasálú. In the Tútí Náma the merchant leaves a parrot and a sharak to watch over his wife’s conduct in his absence, charging her to obtain their consent before she enters upon any undertaking of moment; and on her consulting the sharak as to the propriety of her assignation with the young prince, the bird refuses consent, whereupon the enraged dame kills it on the spot; but the parrot, by pursuing a middle course, saves his life and his master’s honour. In the Panjábí legend Rájá Rasálú, who was very frequently from home on hunting excursions, left behind him a parrot and a maina (hill starling), to act as spies upon his young wife, the Rání Kokla. One day while Rasálú was from home she was visited by the handsome Rájá Hodí, who climbed to her balcony by a rope (this incident is the subject of many paintings in fresco on the panels of palaces and temples in India), when the maina exclaimed, “What wickedness is this?” upon which the rájá went to the cage, took out the maina, and dashed it to the ground, so that it died. But the parrot, taking warning, said, “The steed of Rasálú is swift, what if he should surprise you? Let me out of my cage, and I will fly over the palace, and will inform you the instant he appears in sight”; and so she released the parrot. In the sequel, the parrot betrays the rání, and Rasálú kills Rájá Hodí and causes his heart to be served to the rání for supper.[54]

The parrot is a very favourite character in Indian fictions, a circumstance originating, very possibly, in the Hindú belief in metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls after death into other animal forms, and also from the remarkable facility with which that bird imitates the human voice. In the Kathá Sarit Ságara stories of wise parrots are of frequent occurrence; sometimes they figure as mere birds, but at other times as men who had been re-born in that form. In the third of the Twenty-Five Tales of a Demon (Sanskrit version), a king has a parrot, “possessed of god-like intellect, knowing all the shastras, having been born in that condition owing to a curse”; and his queen has a hen-maina “remarkable for knowledge.” They are placed in the same cage; and “one day the parrot became enamoured of the maina, and said to her: ‘Marry me, fair one, as we sleep, perch, and feed in the same cage.’ But the maina answered him: ‘I do not desire intimate union with a male, for all males are wicked and ungrateful.’ The parrot answered: ‘It is not true that males are wicked, but females are wicked and cruel-hearted.’ And so a dispute arose between them. The two birds then made a bargain that, if the parrot won, he should have the maina for wife, and if the maina won, the parrot should be her slave, and they came before the prince to get a true judgment.” Each relates a story—the one to show that men are all wicked and ungrateful, the other, that women are wicked and cruel-hearted.

It must be confessed that the frame of the Tútí Náma is of a very flimsy description: nothing could be more absurd, surely, than to represent the lady as decorating herself fifty-two nights in succession in order to have an interview with a young prince, and being detained each night by the Parrot’s tales, which, moreover, have none of them the least bearing upon the condition and purpose of the lady; unlike the Telúgú story-book, having a somewhat similar frame (see ante, p. [127], [note 43]), in which the tales related by the bird are about chaste wives. But the frames of all Eastern story-books are more or less slight and of small account. The value of the Tútí Náma consists in the aid which the subordinate tales furnish in tracing the genealogy of popular fictions, and in this respect the importance of the work can hardly be over-rated.