A plain and literal translation of the Arabian nights entertainments, now entituled The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night. Volume 6 (of 17). Народное творчество

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СКАЧАТЬ pepper is produced in the Goanese but we must go south to find the “Bilád al-Filfil” (home of pepper) i.e. Malabar. The exorbitant prices demanded by Venice for this spice led directly to the discovery of The Cape route by the Portuguese; as the “Grains of Paradise” (Amomum Granum Paradisi) induced the English to explore the West African Coast.

45

  Arab. “Kazdír.” Sansk. “Kastír.” Gr. “Kassiteron.” Lat. “Cassiteros,” evidently derived from one root. The Heb. is “Badih,” a substitute, an alloy. “Tanakah” is the vulg. Arab. word, a congener of the Assyrian “Anaku,” and “Kala i” is the corrupt Arab. term used in India.

46

  Our Arabian Ulysses had probably left a Penelope or two at home and finds a Calypso in this Ogygia. His modesty at the mention of womankind is notable.

47

  These are the commonplaces of Moslem consolation on such occasions: the artistic part is their contrast with the unfortunate widower’s prospect.

48

  Lit. “a margin of stone, like the curb-stone of a well.”

49

  I am not aware that this vivisepulture of the widower is the custom of any race but the fable would be readily suggested by the Sati (Suttee)-rite of the Hindus. Simple vivisepulture was and is practised by many people.

50

  Because she was weaker than a man. The Bresl. Edit. however, has “a gugglet of water and five scones.”

51

  The confession is made with true Eastern sang-froid and probably none of the hearers “disapproved” of the murders which saved the speaker’s life.

52

  This tale is evidently taken from the escape of Aristomenes the Messenian from the pit into which he had been thrown, a fox being his guide. The Arabs in an early day were eager students of Greek literature. Hole (p. 140) noted the coincidence.

53

  Bresl. Edit. “Khwájah,” our “Howajee,” meaning a schoolmaster, a man of letters, a gentleman.

54

  And he does repeat at full length what the hearers must have known right well. I abridge.

55

  Island of the Bell (Arab. “Nákús” = a wooden gong used by Christians but forbidden to Moslems). “Kala” is written “Kela,” “Kullah” and a variety of ways. Baron Walckenaer places it at Keydah in the Malay peninsula opposite Sumatra. Renaudot identifies it with Calabar, “somewhere about the point of Malabar.”

56

  Islands, because Arab cosmographers love to place their speciosa miracula in such places.

57

  Like the companions of Ulysses who ate the sacred oxen (Od. xii.).

58

  So the enormous kingfisher of Lucian’s True History (lib. ii.).

59

  This tale is borrowed from Ibn Al-Wardi, who adds that the greybeards awoke in the morning after eating the young Rukh with black hair which never turned white. The same legend is recounted by Al-Dimiri (ob. A.H. 808 = 1405–6) who was translated into Latin by Bochart (Hierozoicon ii. p. 854) and quoted by Hole and Lane (iii. 103). An excellent study of Marco Polo’s Rukh was made by my learned friend the late Prof. G. G. Bianconi of Bologna, “Dell’Uccello Ruc,” Bologna, Gamberini, 1868. Prof. Bianconi predicted that other giant birds would be found in Madagascar on the East African Coast opposite; but he died before hearing of Hildebrand’s discovery.

60

  Arab. “Izár,” the earliest garb of Eastern man; and, as such preserved in the Meccan pilgrimage. The “waist-cloth” is either tucked in or kept in place by a girdle.

61

  Arab. “Líf,” a succedaneum for the unclean sponge, not unknown in the “Turkish Baths” of London.

62

  The Persians have a Plinian monster called “Tasmeh-pá” = Strap-legs without bones. The “Old Man” is not an ourang-outang nor an Ifrít as in Sayf al-Mulúk, Night dcclxxi., but a jocose exaggeration of a custom prevailing in parts of Asia and especially in the African interior where the Tsetse-fly prevents the breeding of burden-beasts. Ibn Batútah tells us that in Malabar everything was borne upon men’s backs. In Central Africa the kinglet rides a slave, and on ceremonious occasions mounts his Prime Minister. I have often been reduced to this style of conveyance and found man the worst imaginable riding: there is no hold and the sharpness of the shoulder-ridge soon makes the legs ache intolerably. The classicists of course find the Shaykh of the Sea in the Tritons and Nereus, and Bochart (Hiero. ii. 858, 880) notices the homo aquaticus, Senex Judæus and Senex Marinus. Hole (p. 151) suggests the inevitable ourang-outang (man o’ wood), one of “our humiliating copyists,” and quotes “Destiny” in Scarron’s comical romance (Part ii. chapt. 1) and “Jealousy” enfolding Rinaldo (O.F. lib. 42).

63

  More literally “The Chief of the Sea (-Coast),” Shaykh being here a chief rather than an elder (eoldermann, alderman). So the “Old Man of the Mountain,” famous in crusading days, was the Chief who lived on the Nusayriyah or Ansári range, a northern prolongation of the Libanus. Our “old man” of the text may have been suggested by the Koranic commentators on chapt. vi. When an Infidel rises from the grave, a hideous figure meets him and says, Why wonderest thou at my loathsomeness? I am thine Evil Deeds: thou didst ride upon me in the world and now I will ride upon thee (suiting the action to the words).

64

  In parts of West Africa and especially in Gorilla-land there are many stories of women and children being carried off by apes, and all believe that the former bear issue to them. It is certain that the anthropoid ape is lustfully excited by the presence of women and I have related how at Cairo (1856) a huge cynocephalus would have raped a girl had it not been bayonetted. Young ladies who visited the Demidoff Gardens and menagerie at Florence were often scandalised by the vicious exposure of the baboons’ parti-coloured persons. The female monkey equally solicits the attentions of man and I heard in India from my late friend, Mirza Ali Akbar of Bombay, that to his knowledge connection had taken place. Whether there would be issue and whether such issue would be viable are still disputed points: the produce would add another difficulty to the pseudo-science called psychology, as such mule would have only half a soul and issue by a congener would have a quarter-soul. A traveller well known to me once proposed to breed pithecoid men who might be useful as hewers of wood and drawers of water: his idea was to put the highest races of apes to the lowest of humanity. I never heard what became of his “breeding stables.”

65

  Arab. “Jauz al-Hindi”: our word cocoa is from the Port. “Coco,” meaning a “bug” (bugbear) in allusion to its caricature of the human face, hair, eyes and mouth. I may here note that a cocoa-tree is easily climbed with a bit of rope or a handkerchief.

66

  Tomb-pictures in Egypt show tame monkeys gathering fruits and Grossier (Description of China, quoted by Hole and Lane) mentions a similar mode of harvesting tea by irritating the monkeys of the Middle Kingdom.

67

  Bresl. Edit. Cloves and cinnamon in those days grew in widely distant places.

68

  In pepper-plantations it is usual to set bananas (Musa Paradisiaca) for shading the young shrubs which bear bunches like ivy-fruit, not pods.

69

  The Bresl. Edit. has “Al-Ma’arat.” Langlès calls it the Island of Al-Kamárí. See Lane, iii. 86.

70

  Insula, pro peninsula. “Comorin” is a corrupt. of “Kanyá” (= Virgo, the goddess Durgá) and “Kumári” (a maid, a princess); from a temple of Shiva’s wife: hence Ptolemy’s Κῶρυ ἄκρον and near it to the N. East Κομαρία ἄκρον καὶ πολις, “Promontorium Cori quod Comorini caput insulæ vocant,” says Maffæus (Hist. Indic. i. p. 16). In the text “Al’úd” refers to the eagle-wood (Aloekylon Agallochum) so called because spotted like the bird’s СКАЧАТЬ