[FN#268] Lit. "my liver ;" which viscus, and not the heart, is held the seat of passion, a fancy dating from the oldest days. Theocritus says of Hercules, "In his liver Love had fixed a wound" (Idyl. xiii.). In the Anthologia "Cease, Love, to wound my liver and my heart" (lib. vii.). So Horace (Odes, i. 2); his Latin Jecur and the Persian "Jigar" being evident congeners. The idea was long prevalent and we find in Shakespeare:—
Alas, then Love may be called appetite,
No motion of the liver but the palate.
[FN#269] A marvellous touch of nature, love ousting affection; the same trait will appear in the lover and both illustrate the deep Italian saying, "Amor discende, non ascende." The further it goes down the stronger it becomes as of grand-parent for grand-child and vice versa.
[FN#270] This tenet of the universal East is at once fact and unfact. As a generalism asserting that women's passion is ten times greater than man's (Pilgrimage, ii. 282), it is unfact. The world shows that while women have more philoprogenitiveness, men have more amativeness; otherwise the latter would not propose and would nurse the doll and baby. Pact, however, in low-lying lands, like Persian Mazanderan versus the Plateau; Indian Malabar compared with Marátha-land; California as opposed to Utah and especially Egypt contrasted with Arabia. In these hot damp climates the venereal requirements and reproductive powers of the female greatly exceed those of the male; and hence the dissoluteness of morals would be phenomenal, were it not obviated by seclusion, the sabre and the revolver. In cold-dry or hot-dry mountainous lands the reverse is the case; hence polygamy there prevails whilst the low countries require polyandry in either form, legal or illegal (i,e. prostitution) I have discussed this curious point of "geographical morality" (for all morality is, like conscience, both geographical and chronological), a subject so interesting to the lawgiver, the student of ethics and the anthropologist, in "The City of the Saints " But strange and unpleasant truths progress slowly, especially in England.
[FN#271] This morning evacuation is considered, in the East, a sine quâ non of health; and old Anglo-Indians are unanimous in their opinion of the "bard fajar" (as they mispronounce the dawn-clearance). The natives of India, Hindús (pagans) and Hindís (Moslems), unlike Europeans, accustom themselves to evacuate twice a day, evening as well as morning. This may, perhaps, partly account for their mildness and effeminacy; for:—
C'est la constipation qui rend l'homme rigoureux.
The English, since the first invasion of cholera, in October, 1831, are a different race from their costive grandparents who could not dine without a "dinner-pill." Curious to say the clyster is almost unknown to the people of Hindostan although the barbarous West Africans use it daily to "wash 'um belly," as the Bonney-men say. And, as Sonnini notes to propose the process in Egypt under the Beys might have cost a Frankish medico his life.
[FN#272] The Egyptian author cannot refrain from this characteristic polissonnerie; and reading it out is always followed by a roar of laughter. Even serious writers like Al- Hariri do not, as I have noted, despise the indecency.
[FN#273] "'Long beard and little wits," is a saying throughout the East where the Kausaj (= man with thin, short beard) is looked upon as cunning and tricksy. There is a venerable Joe Miller about a schoolmaster who, wishing to singe his long beard short, burnt it off and his face to boot:—which reminded him of the saying. A thick beard is defined as one which wholly conceals the skin; and in ceremonial ablution it must be combed out with the fingers till the water reach the roots. The Sunnat, or practice of the Prophet, was to wear the beard not longer than one hand and two fingers' breadth. In Persian "Kúseh" (thin beard) is an insulting term opposed to "Khush-rísh," a well-bearded man. The Iranian growth is perhaps the finest in the world, often extending to the waist; but it gives infinite trouble, requiring, for instance, a bag when travelling. The Arab beard is often composed of two tufts on the chin-sides and straggling hairs upon the cheeks; and this is a severe mortification, especially to Shaykhs and elders, who not only look upon the beard as one of man's characteristics, but attach a religious importance to the appendage. Hence the enormity of Kamar al-Zaman's behaviour. The Persian festival of the vernal equinox was called Kusehnishín (Thin-beard sitting). An old man with one eye paraded the streets on an ass with a crow in one hand and a scourge and fan in the other, cooling himself, flogging the bystanders and crying heat! heat! (garmá! garmá!). For other particulars see Richardson (Dissertation, p. Iii.). This is the Italian Giorno delle Vecchie, Thursday in Mid Lent, March 12 (1885), celebrating the death of Winter and the birth of Spring.
[FN#274] I quote Torrens (p. 400) as these lines have occurred in
Night xxxviii.