[FN#161] "A digit of the moon" is the Hindú equivalent.
[FN#162] Better known to us as Caravanserai, the "Travellers' Bungalow" of India: in the Khan, however, shelter is to be had, but neither bed nor board.
[FN#163] Arab. "Zubb." I would again note that this and its synonyms are the equivalents of the Arabic, which is of the lowest. The tale-teller's evident object is to accentuate the contrast with the tragical stories to follow.
[FN#164] "ln the name of Allah," is here a civil form of dismissal.
[FN#165] Lane (i. 124) is scandalised and naturally enough by this scene, which is the only blot in an admirable tale admirably told. Yet even here the grossness is but little more pronounced than what we find in our old drama (e. g., Shakespeare's King Henry V.) written for the stage, whereas tales like The Nights are not read or recited before both sexes. Lastly "nothing follows all this palming work:" in Europe the orgie would end very differently. These "nuns of Theleme" are physically pure: their debauchery is of the mind, not the body. Galland makes them five, including the two doggesses.
[FN#166] So Sir Francis Walsingham's "They which do that they should not, should hear that they would not."
[FN#167] The old "Calendar," pleasantly associated with that form of almanac. The Mac. Edit. has Karandaliyah," a vile corruption, like Ibn Batutah's "Karandar" and Torrens' "Kurundul:" so in English we have the accepted vulgarism of "Kernel" for Colonel. The Bul. Edit. uses for synonym "Su'ulúk"=an asker, a beggar. Of these mendicant monks, for such they are, much like the Sarabaites of mediæval Europe, I have treated and of their institutions and its founder, Shaykh Sharif Bu Ali Kalandar (ob. A. H. 724 =1323-24), at some length in my "History of Sindh," chapt. viii. See also the Dabistan (i. 136) where the good Kalandar exclaims:—
If the thorn break in my body, how trifling the pain!
But how sorely I feel for the poor broken thorn!
D'Herbelot is right when he says that the Kalandar is not generally approved by Moslems: he labours to win free from every form and observance and he approaches the Malámati who conceals all his good deeds and boasts of his evil doings—our "Devil's hypocrite."
[FN#168] The "Kalandar" disfigures himself in this manner to show "mortification."