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“Non ho veduto mai, nè letto altrove, Fuor che in Turpin, d’un si fatto animale.” |
[ Page 229.] ... palampores, etc.
These elegant productions, which abound in all parts of the East, were of very remote antiquity. Not only are σινδονας ΕΥΑΝΘΕΙΣ, finely flowered linens, noticed by Strabo; but Herodotus relates, that the nations of Caucasus adorned their garments with figures of various creatures, by means of the sap of certain vegetables; which, when macerated and diluted with water, communicate colours that cannot be washed out, and are no less permanent than the texture itself.—Strabo, l. xv, p. 709. Herodotus, l. i, p. 96. The Arabian Tales repeatedly describe these “fine linens of India, painted in the most lively colours, and representing beasts, trees, flowers, etc.”—Arabian Nights, vol. iv, p. 217, etc.
[ Page 229.] ... afrits
These were a kind of Medusæ, or Lamiæ, supposed to be the most terrible and cruel of all the orders of the dives.—D’Herbelot, p. 66.
[ Page 229.] ... tablets fraught with preternatural qualities
Mr. Richardson observes, “that in the East men of rank in general carried with them pocket astronomical tables, which they consulted on every affair of moment.” These tablets, however, were of the magical kind, and such as often occur in works of romance. Thus, in Boiardo, Orlando receives, from the father of the youth he had rescued, “a book that would solve all doubts”; and, in Ariosto, Logistilla bestows upon Astolpho a similar directory. The books which Carathis turned over with Morakanabad were imagined to have possessed the like virtues.
[ Page 230.] ... dwarfs
Such unfortunate beings as are thus “curtailed of fair proportion,” have been, for ages, an appendage of Eastern grandeur. One part of their office consists in the instruction of the pages; but their principal duty is the amusement of their master. If a dwarf happen to be a mute, he is much esteemed; but if he be also an eunuch, he is regarded as a prodigy, and no pains or expense are spared to obtain him.—Habesci’s State of the Ottoman Empire, p. 164, etc.