[87]. In folk-lore and fairy tales the youngest son of mostly three brothers is generally Fortune’s favourite: at times also he is the fool or the unlucky one of the family, Cinderella being his counterpart (Mr. Clouston, i. 321).
[88]. The parasang (Gr. παρασάγγης), which Ibn Khall. (iii. 315) reduces to three miles, has been derived wildly enough from Fars or Pars (Persia proper) sang = (mile) stone. Chardin supports the etymology, “because leagues are marked out with great tall stones in the East as well as the West, e.g. ad primam (vel secundam) lapidem.”
[89]. A huge marquee or pavilion-tent in India.
[90]. The Jinn feminine; see vol. i. 10. The word hardly corresponds with the Pers. “Peri” and Engl. “Fairy,” a creation, like the “Dív,” of the so-called “Aryan,” not “Semitic,” race.
[91]. Galland makes the Fairy most unjustifiably fear that her husband is meditating the murder of his father; and the Hindí in this point has much the advantage of the Frenchman.
[92]. Pers. = “Light of the World;” familiar to Europe as the name of the Grand Moghul Jehángír’s principal wife.
[93]. The Arab stirrup, like that of the Argentine Gaucho, was originally made of wood, liable to break, and forming a frail support for lancer and sworder. A famous chief and warrior, Abú Sa’íd al-Muhallab (ob. A.H. 83 = 702) first gave orders to forge footrests of iron.
[94]. For this Egyptian and Syrian weapon see vol. i. 234.
[95]. See vol. vii. 93, where an error of punctuation confounds it with Kerbela,—a desert with a place of pilgrimage. “Samáwah” in Ibn Khall. (vol. i. 108) is also the name of a town on the Euphrates.
[96]. Nazaránah prop. = the gift (or gifts) offered at visits by a Moslem noble or feoffee in India to his feudal superior; and the Kalíchah of Hindú, Malabar, Goa and the Blue Mountains (p. 197). Hence the periodical tributes and especially the presents which represent our “legacy-duty” and the “succession-duty” for Rajahs and Nabobs, the latter so highly lauded by “The Times,” as the logical converse of the Corn-laws which ruined our corn. The Nazaránah can always be made a permanent and a considerable source of revenue, far more important than such unpopular and un-Oriental device as an income-tax. But our financiers have yet to learn the A. B. C. of political economy in matters of assessment, which is to work upon familiar lines; and they especially who, like Mr. Wilson “mad as a hatter,” hold and hold forth that “what is good for England is good for the world.” These myopics decide on theoretical and sentimental grounds that a poll-tax is bad in principle, which it may be, still public opinion sanctions it and it can be increased without exciting discontent. The same with the “Nazaránah;” it has been the custom of ages immemorial, and a little more or a little less does not affect its popularity.