And do we not speak of a buxom dame as “fat, fair, and forty”?
[262] Still in man’s attire, of course.
[263] The painter not being permitted to behold her face. This often occurs in Persian stories; but I have seen many native pictures of Persian women of all classes, which were evidently portraits and could not all have been drawn in the manner above described. Judging from those pictures, the in-door clothing of Persian ladies is extremely scanty; but it should be recollected that they are not seen in the haram apartments by any but women and children and very near male relatives. The “full” dress of European ladies is much more reprehensible than the in-door dress of their Persian sisters (if indeed that of the latter maybe considered at all “improper”), since it exposes the greater part of the bosom and the shoulders and the spine to public view!
[264] “Cast thy bread upon the waters,” saith the Preacher, “and thou shalt find it after many days” (Eccl. xi, 1); but here the reformed robber finds it—or rather, more than its equivalent—every day. This notion of the loaves he threw daily into the river reappearing to him in the form of two celestial youths is certainly of Buddhist origin, and was, with many other essentially Buddhist ideas, adopted by the Bráhmans after they got the upper hand of their rivals and drove them out of India. In the Hitopadesa (Friendly Counsel), a Sanskrit collection of apologues and tales, Book iii, fab. 10, a pious soldier is directed in a vision by Kuvera, the god of wealth, to stand in the morning behind his door, club in hand, and the beggar who should come into the court knock down with his club, when he will instantly become a pot full of gold. A similar story is found in the Persian Tútí Náma (Parrot Book) of Nakhshabí, where a merchant is thus rewarded who had given away all his wealth to the poor.
[265] In another part of the romance we read of a wondrous stone, called the Shah-muhra, which, when fastened on the arm, enabled the wearer to see all the treasures of gold and gems that are hid in the bowels of the earth.
[266] An abridged and “improved” version of the romance of Hatim Taï was printed at Calcutta about the year 1825, of which a translation—by James Atkinson, I understand—reprinted from the Calcutta Government Gazette, appeared in the Asiatic Journal, March-June 1829. Whoever may have been the learned Múnshí that made this version, he has certainly taken most unwarrantable liberties with his original. Thus: Husn Bánú’s father dies, leaving her “an orphan, poor, and unprotected.” She has the misfortune to “attract the admiration of a darvesh,” whom she “indignantly spurned from her presence.” The darvesh goes to the king and complains that “a certain woman has solicited me to marry her, and not being able to accomplish her object, enraged at my refusal, she has bitterly reproached and even beaten me”! The king orders her to be thrust out of the city, and so on. The “man” who appears to her in a vision is Khoja Khizar, which however is appropriate, that mystical personage being the tutelary friend of good Muslims in distress. He tells her where she may find the “treasure of the Seven Kings, buried in seven different places; seven splendid peacock thrones, adorned with gems beyond all price, and one precious pearl of unequalled beauty. All these are thine.” The king on hearing of her “find” attempts to seize the contents of six of the pits of treasure by force, but the gold and gems become serpents and dragons. In this version it does not appear that the queries, or rather tasks, were suggested by the nurse. Altogether it is much inferior to the story as translated by Forbes.
[267] Published at New-York, 1850.
[268] I am greatly indebted to the courtesy of Prof. E. Fagnan, of the École des Lettres, Algiers, for many interesting and important particulars regarding this Turkish work, of which several MS. copies are preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris—particulars of which I have already made some use in Originals and Analogues of some of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, printed for the Chaucer Society, and I hope soon to make still farther use of them in another publication.
[269] Dr. Rieu, of the British Museum, kindly furnished me with the above outline of the story, so far as it exists in the MS.