[203] “Bright.”
[204] See [page 299].
[205] The story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, Zulaykhá (which was her name, according to Muslim legends), is a favourite subject of several Persian poems. She is said to have visited the young Hebrew slave in prison, but he would not gain his liberty at the cost of his chastity. Potiphar is represented to have been a eunuch. In the end Zulaykhá is united to her beloved Joseph.
[206] ’itr-i gul—essence of roses. Our term “otto” is a corruption of ’itr or ’attár, this latter word also signifies a perfumer, or druggist.—Most women, I suppose, are fond of perfumes, but Eastern ladies are passionately so, and the description of Chitrawat as being so highly “scented” that the finest odours were diffused around her, is fully borne out by travellers and Europeans who have resided in Egypt, Turkey, Persia, etc. The sole nourishment of parís, or fairies, it is said, consists of perfumes—a pretty idea, if nothing more.
[207] Because these were signs that he was newly married.
[208] A manly, straightforward, even touching statement in defence of his conduct in peculiar circumstances, and such as is rarely met with in an Eastern tale. Our author is here at his best, and this is saying not a little.
[209] “The falling out of faithful friends renewing is of love!”
[210] The doctrine of metempsychosis has no place in the creed of Islám and it is quite phenomenal to find such an incident as this in a Muhammedan work. Many Persian and Arabian fictions, like the present romance, are of Indian extraction, but the Hindú characters of the originals are always—with only this exception, as well as I can recollect—changed to good Muslims.
[211] In India early marriages of girls are the almost invariable rule; indeed they are often married, or betrothed, in infancy. A Bráhman girl who grows up without being married loses her caste. The duty of choosing a husband belongs in the first place to her father, and if he be dead, then to her paternal grandfather if he be alive, then to her brother, cousin, and lastly to her mother. If she have reached the age of eight years without having been provided with a husband, she may choose for herself.
[212] Oriental hyperbole, of which we have a very striking example in the last verse of the apostle John’s gospel.