[FN#182] i.e. his coming misfortune, the phrase being euphemistic.
[FN#183] Arab. “Ráy:” in theology it means “private judgment” and “Ráyí” (act. partic.) is a Rationalist. The Hanafí School is called “Asháb al-Ráy” because it allows more liberty of thought than the other three orthodox.
[FN#184] The angels in Al-Islam ride piebalds.
[FN#185] In the Bresl. Edit. “Zájir” (xii. 286).
[FN#186] This is the “King’s Son and the Merchant’s Wife” of the
Hitopadesa (chapt. i.) transferred to all the Prakrit versions of
India. It is the Story of the Bath-keeper who conducted his Wife
to the Son of the King of Kanuj in the Book of Sindibad.
[FN#187] The pious Caliph Al-Muktadi bi Amri llah (A.H. 467=A.D. 1075) was obliged to forbid men entering the baths of Baghdad without drawers.
[FN#188] This peculiarity is not uncommon amongst the so-called Aryan and Semitic races, while to the African it is all but unknown. Women highly prize a conformation which (as the prostitute described it) is always “either in his belly or in mine.”
[FN#189] Easterns, I have said, are perfectly aware of the fact that women corrupt women much more than men do. The tale is the “Story of the Libertine Husband” in the Book of Sindibad; blended with the “Story of the Go-between and the Bitch” in the Book of Sindibad. It is related in the “Disciplina Clericalis” of Alphonsus (A.D. 1106); the fabliau of La vieille qui seduisit la jeune fille; the Gesta Romanorum (thirteenth century) and the “Cunning Siddhikari” in the Kathá-Sarit-Ságara.
[FN#190] The Kashmir people, men and women, have a very bad name in Eastern tales, the former for treachery and the latter for unchastity. A Persian distich says:
If folk be scarce as food in dearth ne’er let three lots come
near ye:
First Sindi, second Jat, and third a rascally Kashmeeree.