562 ([return])
[ The Bresl. Edit. (xi. 318-21) seems to assume that the tales were told in the early night before the royal pair slept. This is no improvement; we prefer to think that the time was before peep of day when Easterns usally awake and have nothing to do till the dawn-prayer.]
563 ([return])
[ See vol. ii. 161.]
564 ([return])
[ Arab. Al-Fákhir. No wonder that the First Hand who moulded the Man-mud is a lieu commun in Eastern thought. The Pot and the Potter began with the old Egyptians. "Sitting as a potter at the wheel, god Cneph (in Philæ) moulds clay, and gives the spirit of life (the Genesitic "breath") to the nostrils of Osiris." Then we meet him in the Vedas, the Being, "by whom the fictile vase is formed; the clay out of which it is fabricated." We find him next in Jeremiah (xviii. 2) "Arise and go down unto the Potter's house," etc., and in Romans (ix. 20), "Hath not the Potter power over the clay?" He appears in full force in Omar-i- Khayyám (No. xxxvii.):—
For I remember stopping by the way
To watch a Potter thumping his wet Clay:
An with its all obliterated Tongue
It murmur'd—"Gently, Brother, gently, pray!"
Lastly the Potter shows in the Kasidah of Hají Abdú al-Yezid
(p.4):—
"The first of pots the Potter made by Chrysorrhoas' blue-
green wave;
Methinks I see him smile to see what guerdon to the world he
gave.]