[121] Firdaus: Paradise. Here it is probably used as the name of an imaginary city; at all events I cannot find that there is any town of the name in Persia or India.
[122] Dilbar: “heart-stealer”; and surnamed Lakhí (as will be seen presently) because she required to be paid a lakh (100,000) of rupís by every man who sought her society. The rupí (rupee) is nominally valued at two shillings, but at present it is at considerable discount, being only worth from 1s. 6d. to 1s. 8d. of English currency.
[123] The fascination of the moth for the flame of the candle is a favourite simile with Asiatic writers for the love-struck youth and the beauty whose charms have ensnared him. Sa’dí, in his Bustán, has a fine mystical poem on this subject.
[124] See note on pp. [187-8].
[125] Persian writers are extremely fond of far-fetched conceits. In describing sunrise they almost invariably borrow metaphors from the incidents last related. We have had several examples of this peculiarity in the romance of Nassar, as (pp. 6, 7) in the case of the robbery of the royal treasury by one of the eunuchs of the haram, where the author begins his account of next day’s events thus: “When the eunuch of night had retired and the prince of morn established himself in the palace of the horizon,” and so forth. And here we have the game of backgammon between the hero and Dilbar utilised for a description of the natural phenomenon of sunset.
[126] “Sháh-záda:” lit. “king-born,” or son of the king; the usual term applied to royal princes in Persia.
[127] A crore is 100 lakhs, or ten millions, according to the Hindú system of numeration; but in Persia it is only 5 lakhs, or 500,000. The artful Dilbar must have had an enormous amount of wealth, if she lost to our hero a hundred crores of rupís, which even according to the Persian computation would be equal to five millions of pounds, English money, estimating the rupí at two shillings. After this she’d be fully justified in describing herself, as honest Dogberry does with some pride, as “one who has had losses too!”
[128] Dívs (or deevs) are similar to the Jinn (or Genii) of Arabian mythology. Some are good demons, being faithful Muslims, but those who are unbelievers are for the most part malignant and delight in working evil on mankind.
[129] A quotation from the Gulistán, or Rose Garden, of the celebrated Persian poet and philosopher Sa’dí, ch. iii.—Sa’dí was born, at Shíráz, towards the close of the 12th century, and died, in his native city, about 1291 A.D., having lived upwards of a hundred years.
[130] According to the Kurán, because Abraham would not worship idols, Nimrod cast him into a blazing furnace, which was turned into a rose-garden—evidently a distorted version of the story of Nebuchadnezzar and the three devout Hebrew youths, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego.