Now, on my soul, my little Venus,
I swear 'twould not be right between us,
To let your mother tell a lie.
But the Arab is more moral than Mr. Little, as he proposes to repent.
[348]. Arab. "Khunsa" flexible or flaccid, from Khans = bending inwards, i.e. the mouth of a water-skin before drinking. Like Mukhannas, it is also used for an effeminate man, a passive sodomite and even for a eunuch. Easterns still believe in what Westerns know to be an impossibility, human beings with the parts and proportions of both sexes equally developed and capable of reproduction; and Al-Islam even provides special rules for them (Pilgrimage iii. 237). We hold them to be Buffon's fourth class of (duplicate) monsters, belonging essentially to one or the other sex, and related to its opposite only by some few characteristics. The old Greeks dreamed, after their fashion, a beautiful poetic dream of a human animal uniting the contradictory beauties of man and woman. The duality of the generative organs seems an old Egyptian tradition; at least we find it in Genesis (i. 27), where the image of the Deity is created male and female, before man was formed out of the dust of the ground (ii. 7). The old tradition found its way to India (if the Hindus did not borrow the idea from the Greeks); and one of the forms of Mahadeva, the third person of their triad, is entitled "Ardhanárí" = the Half-woman, which has suggested to them some charming pictures. Europeans, seeing the left breast conspicuously feminine, have indulged in silly surmises about the "Amazons."
[349]. This is a mere phrase for our "dying of laughter": the queen was on her back. And as Easterns sit on carpets, their falling back is very different from the same movement off a chair.
[350]. Arab. "Ismid," the eye-powder before noticed.
[351]. When the Caliph (e.g. Al-Tá'i li'llah) bound a banner to a spear and handed it to an officer, he thereby appointed him Sultan or Viceregent.
[352]. Arab. "Sháib al-ingház" = lit. a gray beard who shakes head in disapproval.
[353]. Arab. "Ayát" = the Hebr. "Ototh," signs, wonders or Koranic verses.