Kázís are often represented in Persian stories as being very shrewd and ingenious in convicting the most expert rogues, but this device for discovering the goldsmith’s criminality is certainly one of the cleverest examples.
On the 36th Night of MS. (26th of Kádiri) the loquacious bird relates the story of
The King who died of Love for a Merchant’s beautiful Daughter.
A merchant had a daughter, the fame of whose beauty drew many suitors for her hand, but he rejected them all; and when she was of proper age he wrote a letter to the king, describing her charms and accomplishments, and respectfully offering her to him in marriage. The king, already in love with the damsel from this account of her beauty, sends his four vazírs to the merchant’s house to ascertain whether she was really as charming as her father had represented her to be. They find that she far surpassed the power of words to describe; but, considering amongst themselves that should the king take this bewitching girl to wife, he would become so entangled in the meshes of love as totally to neglect the affairs of the state, they underrate her beauty to the king, who then gives up all thought of her. But it chanced one day that the king himself beheld the damsel on the terrace of her house, and, perceiving that his vazírs had deceived him, he sternly reprimanded them, at the same time expressing his fixed resolution of marrying the girl. The vazírs frankly confessed that their reason for misrepresenting the merchant’s daughter to him was their fear lest, possessing such a charming bride, he should forget his duty to the state; upon which the king, struck with their anxiety for his true interests, resolved to deny himself the happiness of marrying the girl. But he could not suppress his affection for her: he fell sick, and soon after died, the victim of love.
This story forms the 17th of the Twenty-five Tales of a Demon (Vetála Panchavinsati), according to the Sanskrit version found in the Kathá Sarit Ságara; but its great antiquity is proved by the circumstance that it is found in a Buddhistic work dating probably 200 years before our era—namely, Buddhaghosha’s Parables. “Dying for love,” says Richardson, “is considered amongst us as a mere poetical figure, and we can certainly support the reality by few examples; but in Eastern countries it seems to be something more, many words in the Arabic and Persian languages which express love implying also melancholy; madness, and death.” Shakspeare affirms that “men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.” There is, however, one notable instance of this on record, in the story (as related by Warton, in his History of English Poetry) of the gallant troubadour Geoffrey Rudel, who died for love—and love, too, from hearsay description of the beauty of the Countess of Tripoli.
On the 14th Night the Parrot entertains the Lady with a very curious account of
The Discovery of Music.
Some attribute, says the learned and eloquent feathered sage (according to Gerrans), the discovery to the sounds made by a large stone against the frame of an oil-press; and others to the noise of meat when roasting; but the sages of Hind [India] are of opinion that it originated from the following accident: As a learned Bráhman was travelling to the court of an illustrious rájá he rested about the middle of the day under the shade of a mulberry tree, on the top of which he beheld a mischievous monkey climbing from bough to bough, till, by a sudden slip, he fell upon a sharp-pointed shoot, which instantly ripped up his belly and left his entrails suspended in the tree, while the unlucky animal fell, breathless, on the dust of death. Some time after this, as the Bráhman was returning, he accidentally sat down in the same place, and, recollecting the circumstance, looked up, and saw that the entrails were dried, and yielded a harmonious sound every time the wind gently impelled them against the branches. Charmed at the singularity of the adventure, he took them down, and after binding them to the two ends of his walking-stick, touched them with a small twig, by which he discovered that the sound was much improved. When he got home he fastened the staff to another piece of wood, which was hollow, and by the addition of a bow, strung with part of his own beard, converted it to a complete instrument. In succeeding ages the science received considerable improvements. After the addition of a bridge, purer notes were extracted; and the different students, pursuing the bent of their inclinations, constructed instruments of various forms, according to their individual fancies; and to this whimsical accident we are indebted for the tuneful ney and the heart-exhilarating rabáb, and, in short, all the other instruments of wind and strings.
Having thus discoursed upon the discovery of music, the Parrot proceeds to detail