[FN#529] These wild fables are caricatures of Rabbinical legends which began with "Lilith," the Spirit-wife of Adam: Nature and her counterpart, Physis and Antiphysis, supply a solid basis for folk-lore. Amongst the Hindus we have Brahma (the Creator) and Viswakarmα, the anti-Creator: the former makes a horse and a bull and the latter caricatures them with an ass and a buffalo, and so forth.
[FN#530] This is the "Lauh al-Mahfϊz," the Preserved Tablet, upon which are written all Allah's decrees and the actions of mankind good (white) and evil (black). This is the "perspicuous Book" of the Koran, chaps. vi. 59. The idea again is Guebre.
[FN#531] i.e. the night before Friday which in Moslem parlance would be Friday night.
[FN#532] Again Persian "Gαw-i-Zamνn" = the Bull of the Earth.
"The cosmogony of the world," etc., as we read in the Vicar of
Wakefield.
[FN#533] The Calc. Edit. ii. 614. here reads by a clerical error "bull."
[FN#534] i.e. Lakes and rivers.
[FN#535] Here some abridgement is necessary, for we have another recital of what has been told more than once.
[FN#536] This name, "King of Life," is Persian: "Tegh" or "Tigh" means a scimitar and "Bahrwαn," is, I conceive, a mistake for "Bihrϊn," the Persian name of Alexander the Great.
[FN#537] Arab. "Mulαkαt" or meeting the guest which, I have said, is an essential part of Eastern ceremony, the distance from the divan, room, house or town being proportioned to his rank or consideration.
[FN#538] Arab. "Sifr": whistling is held by the Badawi to be the speech of devils; and the excellent explorer Burckhardt got a bad name by the ugly habit.