Chhuchhúndar-ke sir-par Chambelí-ka tel.
The Jasmine-oil on the musk-rat’s head.
In Galland the Sultánah is brought to bed of un morceau de bois; and his Indian translator is more consequent. Hahn, as has been seen, also has the mouse but Hahn could hardly have reached Hindostan.
[104]. This title of Sháhinshah was first assumed by Ardashír, the great Persian conqueror, after slaying the King of Ispahán, Ardawán. (Tabari ii. 73.)
[105]. This imprisonment of the good Queen reminds home readers of the “Cage of Clapham” wherein a woman with child was imprisoned in A.D. 1700, and which was noted by Sir George Grove as still in existence about 1830.
[106]. Arab. Ayyám al-Nifás = the period of forty days after labour during which, according to Moslem law, a woman may not cohabit with her husband.
[107]. A clarum et venerabile nomen in Persia; meaning one of the Spirits that presides over beasts of burden; also a king in general, the P.N. of an ancient sovereign, etc.
[108]. This is the older pronunciation of the mod. (Khusrau) “Parvíz”; and I owe an apology to Mr. C. J. Lyall (Ancient Arabian Poetry) for terming his “Khusrau Parvêz” an “ugly Indianism” (The Academy, No. 100). As he says (Ibid. vol. x. 85), “the Indians did not invent for Persian words the sounds ê and ô, called majhúl (i.e. ‘not known in Arabic’) by the Arabs, but received them at a time when these sounds were universally used in Persia. The substitution by Persians of î and û for ê and ô is quite modern.”
[109]. i.e. Fairy-born, the Παρυσάτις (Parysatis) of the Greeks which some miswrite Παρύσατις.
[110]. In Arab. usually shortened to “Hazár” (bird of a thousand tales = the Thousand), generally called “’Andalíb:” Galland has Bulbulhezer and some of his translators debase it to Bulbulkezer. See vol. v. 148, and the Hazár-dastán of Kazwíní (De Sacy, Chrest. iii. 413). These rarities represent the Rukh’s egg in “Alaeddin.”