[293]. So Hector France proposed to name his admirably realistic volume “Sous le Burnous” (Paris, Charpentier, 1886).
[294]. I mean in European literature, not in Arabic where it is a lieu commun. See three several forms of it in one page (505) of Ibn Kallikan, vol. iii.
[295]. My attention has been called to the resemblance between the half-lie and Job (i. 13–19).
[296]. Boccaccio (ob. Dec. 2, 1375), may easily have heard of The Thousand Nights and a Night or of its archetype the Hazár Afsánah. He was followed by the Piacevoli Notti of Giovan Francisco Straparola (A.D. 1550), translated into almost all European languages but English: the original Italian is now rare. Then came the Heptameron ou Histoire des amans fortunez of Marguerite d’Angoulême, Reyne de Navarre and only sister of Francis I. She died in 1549 before the days were finished: in 1558 Pierre Boaistuan published the Histoire des amans fortunez and in 1559 Claude Guiget the “Heptameron.” Next is the Hexameron of A. de Torquemada, Rouen, 1610; and, lastly, the Pentamerone or El Cunto de li Cunte of Giambattista Basile (Naples, 1637), known by the meagre abstract of J. E. Taylor and the caricatures of George Cruikshank (London, 1847–50). I propose to translate this Pentamerone direct from the Neapolitan and have already finished half the work.
[297]. Translated and well annotated by Prof. Tawney, who, however, affects asterisks and has considerably bowdlerised sundry of the tales, e.g. the Monkey who picked out the Wedge (vol. ii. 28). This tale, by the by, is found in the Khirad Afroz (i. 128) and in the Anwar-i-Suhayli (chapt. i.) and gave rise to the Persian proverb, “What has a monkey to do with carpentering?” It is curious to compare the Hindu with the Arabic work whose resemblances are as remarkable as their differences, while even more notable is their correspondence in impressionising the reader. The Thaumaturgy of both is the same: the Indian is profuse in demonology and witchcraft; in transformation and restoration; in monsters as wind-men, fire-men and water-men; in air-going elephants and flying horses (i. 541–43); in the wishing cow, divine goats and laughing fishes (i. 24); and in the speciosa miracula of magic weapons. He delights in fearful battles (i. 400) fought with the same weapons as the Moslem and rewards his heroes with a “turband of honour” (i. 266) in lieu of a robe. There is a quaint family likeness arising from similar stages and states of society: the city is adorned for gladness; men carry money in a robe-corner and exclaim “Ha! good!” (for “Good, by Allah!”); lovers die with exemplary facility; the “soft-sided” ladies drink spirits (i. 61) and princesses get drunk (i. 476); whilst the Eunuch, the Hetaira and the bawd (Kuttini) play the same preponderating parts as in The Nights. Our Brahman is strong in love-making; he complains of the pains of separation in this phenomenal universe; he revels in youth, “twin-brother to mirth,” and beauty which has illuminating powers; he foully reviles old age and he alternately praises and abuses the sex, concerning which more presently. He delights in truisms, the fashion of contemporary Europe (see Palmerin of England chapt. vii), such as “It is the fashion of the heart to receive pleasure from those things which ought to give it,” etc. etc. What is there the wise cannot understand? and so forth. He is liberal in trite reflections and frigid conceits (i. 19, 55, 97, 103, 107, in fact everywhere); and his puns run through whole lines: this in fine Sanskrit style is inevitable. Yet some of his expressions are admirably terse and telling, e.g. Ascending the swing of Doubt: Bound together (lovers) by the leash of gazing: Two babes looking like Misery and Poverty: Old Age seized me by the chin: (A lake) first assay of the Creator’s skill: (A vow) difficult as standing on a sword-edge: My vital spirits boiled with the fire of woe: Transparent as a good man’s heart: There was a certain convent full of fools: Dazed with scripture-reading: The stones could not help laughing at him: The Moon kissed the laughing forehead of the East: She was like a wave of the Sea of Love’s insolence (ii. 127), a wave of the Sea of Beauty tossed up by the breeze of Youth: The King played dice, he loved slave-girls, he told lies, he sat up o’ nights, he waxed wroth without reason, he took wealth wrongously, he despised the good and honoured the bad (i. 562); with many choice bits of the same kind. Like the Arab the Indian is profuse in personification; but the doctrine of preexistence, of incarnation and emanation and an excessive spiritualism, ever aiming at the infinite, makes his imagery run mad. Thus we have Immoral Conduct embodied; the God of Death; Science; the Svarga-heaven; Evening; Untimeliness; and the Earth-bride, while the Ace and Deuce of dice are turned into a brace of Demons. There is also that grotesqueness which the French detect even in Shakespeare, e.g. She drank in his ambrosial form with thirsty eyes like partridges (i. 476) and it often results from the comparison of incompatibles, e.g. a row of birds likened to a garden of nymphs; and from forced allegories, the favourite figure of contemporary Europe. Again, the rhetorical Hindu style differs greatly from the sobriety, directness and simplicity of the Arab, whose motto is Brevity combined with precision, except where the latter falls into “fine writing.” And, finally, there is a something in the atmosphere of these Tales which is unfamiliar to the West and which makes them, as more than one has remarked to me, very hard reading.
[298]. The Introduction (i. [1]–5) leads to the Curse of Pushpadanta and Mályaván who live on Earth as Vararúchi and Gunádhya and this runs through lib. i. Lib. ii. begins with the Story of Udáyana to whom we must be truly grateful as our only guide: he and his son Naraváhanadatta fill up the rest and end with lib. xviii. Thus the want of the clew or plot compels a division into books, which begin for instance with “We worship the elephantine proboscis of Ganesha” (lib. x. 1), a reverend and awful object to a Hindu but to Englishmen mainly suggesting the “Zoo.” The “Bismillah” of The Nights is much more satisfactory.
[299]. See pp. 5–6 Avertissement des Éditeurs, Le Cabinet des Fées, vol. xxxviii: Geneva, 1788. Galland’s Edit. of mdccxxvi ends with Night ccxxxiv and the English translations with ccxxxvi and cxcvii. See retro p. [82].
[300]. There is a shade of difference in the words; the former is also used for Reciters of Traditions—a serious subject. But in the case of Hammád surnamed Al-Ráwiyah (the Rhapsode) attached to the Court of Al-Walíd, it means simply a conteur. So the Greeks had Homeristæ = reciters of Homer, as opposed to the Homeridæ or School of Homer.
[301]. Vol. i. Preface p. v. He notes that Mr. Dallaway describes the same scene at Constantinople, where the Story-teller was used, like the modern “Organs of Government” in newspaper shape, for “reconciling the people to any recent measure of the Sultan and Vizier.” There are women Ráwiyahs for the Harems and some have become famous like the Mother of Hasan al-Basri (Ibn Khall. i, 370).
[302]. Hence the Persian proverb, “Báki-e-dastán fardá” = the rest of the tale to-morrow, said to askers of silly questions.