[2] But are even the best novels of these days of grace marked by very much “originality”? Do not prolific novelists repeat themselves? Have they not, for the most part, a limited set of characters, which reappear in each succeeding novel? In short, may it not be truly said of them, as Burton (not he of The Nights, but he of The Melancholy) says of authors in general: “They weave the same web, twist and untwist the same rope, and make new books as apothecaries make new mixtures, by pouring out of one vessel into another”?
[3] The following particulars regarding the author and his work are derived from Dr. Charles Rieu’s Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts in the British Museum, vol. ii, pp. 767-8, Add. 7619, and Or. 1370; and from Mr. F. F. Arbuthnot’s useful and interesting little work, Persian Portraits: a Sketch of Persian History, Literature, and Politics (London: Quaritch), p. 119. The title of Shamsah ú Kahkahah, under which Mr. Arbuthnot describes this collection, is taken from the names of a Witch and a Vazír who figure in the second báb.
[4] There is another, but wholly different, Tamil tale, with the same title, which is described in Taylor’s Catalogue Raisonné of Oriental Manuscripts in the Government Library, Madras, vol. iii, page 460: “A king’s daughter forms an attachment at first sight to the stupid son of another king, who cannot read the writing which she conveys to him, but shows it to a diseased wretch, who tells him it warns him to flee for his life. The king’s daughter is imposed upon by the leper, kills herself, and becomes a disembodied evil spirit, haunting a choultry (or serai for travellers), whom during the night, if they do not answer aright to her cries, she strangles, and vampyre-like sucks their blood.” To be brief, the famous Tamil poetess Avaiyar gets leave of the people to sleep in the choultry in order to put an end to this calamity, and having three times composed a recondite stanza from the strange cries, the evil spirit owns herself conquered and departs. She is re-born as an exceedingly clever princess, and tests the learning and poetical skill of her suitors, till at last she is won by a poor student.—It will be readily supposed that the chief merit of this story consists in the poetical contests.
[5] The stories related to the king by Prince Bakhtyár, though calculated to caution him against rash judgments, have nothing in common with those contained in the Book of Sindibád; while the tales told by Er-Rahwan (which have been translated by Sir Richard F. Burton, and included in the first volume of his Supplemental Nights) are of a miscellaneous character—grave and gay, wise and witty—his sole object being to prolong his life by thus amusing the king. The Vazír’s recitals are of considerable importance to “storiologists”: we find among them analogues of Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale, Pardoner’s Tale, and Merchant’s Tale, and of the well-known legend of St. Eustache (or Placidus), which occurs in the Gesta Romanorum, and from which the mediæval metrical romances of Sir Isumbras, Octavian, Sir Eglamour, and Sir Torrent of Portugal were derived.
[6] The Tamil text of The King and his Four Ministers has been printed. Through the kindness of the Pandit, I possess two copies, of different dates, one of which, printed in 1887, has, by way of frontispiece, four figures, in profile, like those in Egyptian paintings, all looking in the same direction, with their hands raised and the palms joined, in respect to the prayer to Ganesa, which is on the opposite page. The first is the minister; the second is the king, with a crown not unlike the Pope’s tiara, and a sword on his shoulder; the third and fourth are devotees, whose clothing is rather scanty.
[7] “Abrégé du roman hindoustani intitulé la Rose de Bakâwalî, par M. le professeur Garcin de Tassy”: in Nouveau Journal Asiatique, tome xvi, p. 193ff. and p. 338ff. This has been reprinted along with other translations by the learned Professor.
[8] A Khoja is a master of a household, also a teacher; in the former acceptation it is somewhat equivalent to the old English “goodman.”—Gibb’s History of the Forty Vezírs, p. 33.
[9] The humái is a fabulous bird, supposed to bestow prosperity on any person who is overshadowed by its wings.
[10] Oriental writers frequently descant on the advantages of travel; not only because it enlarges the mind (for “home-keeping youths have ever homely wits”), but as a means of acquiring wealth. For some examples, see my Book of Sindibád.
[11] The name generally given by the Arabs and Persians to the districts of Northern Africa west of Egypt.