The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 13 by Sir Richard Francis Burton (summer reading list txt) 📕

term for a mental or cerebral operation, it takes the rank of a substance; it becomes a mighty motive power, like table-turning and other such phenomena which, now looked upon as child’s play, will perform a prime part in the Kinetics of the century to come. If a few pair of hands imposed upon a heavy dinner-table can raise it in the air, as I have often seen, what must we expect to result when the new motive force shall find its Franklin and be shown to the world as real “Vril”? The experiment of silently willing a subject to act in a manner not suggested by speech or sign has been repeatedly tried and succeeded in London drawing-rooms; and it has lately been suggested that atrocious crimes have resulted from overpowering volition. In cases of paralysis the Faculty is agreed upon the fact that local symptoms disappear when the will-power returns to the brain. And here I will boldly and baldly state my theory that, in sundry cases, spectral appearances (ghosts) and abnormal smells and sounds are simply the effect of a Will which has, so to speak, created them.

 

[FN#321] The text has “But-Khanah” = idol-house (or room) syn.

with “But-Kadah” = image-cuddy, which has been proposed as the derivation of the disputed “Pagoda.” The word “Kh�nah” also appears in our balcony, origin. “balcony,” through the South-European tongues, the Persian being “B�l�-kh�nah” = high room. From “Kadah” also we derive “cuddy,” now confined to nautical language.

 

[FN#322] Europe contains sundry pictures which have, or are supposed to have, this property; witness the famous Sundarium bearing the head of Jesus. The trick, for it is not Art, is highly admired by the credulous.

 

[FN#323] i.e. the Hindu Scripture or Holy Writ, e.g.

“K�ma-Shastra” = the Cupid-gospel.

 

[FN#324] This shifting theatre is evidently borrowed by Galland from Pliny (N. H. xxxvi., 24) who tells that in B. C. 50, C.

Curio built two large wooden theatres which could be wheeled round and formed into an amphitheatre. The simple device seems to stir the bile of the unmechanical old Roman, so unlike the Greek in powers of invention.

 

[FN#325] This trick is now common in the circuses and hippodromes of Europe, horses and bulls being easily taught to perform it: but India has as yet not produced anything equal to the “Cyclist elephant” of Paris.

 

[FN#326] This Arab.-Pers. compound, which we have corrupted to “Bezestein” or “Bezettein” and “Bezesten,” properly means a marketplace for Baz or Bazz = cloth, fine linen; but is used by many writers as = Bazar, see “Kaysariah,” vol. i. 266.

 

[FN#327] The origin of the lens and its applied use to the telescope and the microscope are “lost” (as the Castle-guides of Edinburgh say) “in the glooms of antiquity.” Well ground glasses have been discovered amongst the finds of Egypt and Assyria: indeed much of the finer work of the primeval artists could not have been done without such aid. In Europe the “spy-glass”

appears first in the Opus Majus of the learned Roger Bacon (circa A. D. 1270); and his “optic tube” (whence his saying “all things are known by perspective”), chiefly contributed to make his wide-spread fame as a wizard. The telescope was popularised by Galileo who (as mostly happens) carried off and still keeps, amongst the vulgar, all the honours of invention. Some “Illustrators” of The Nights confound this “Nazz�rah,” the Pers.

“D�r-b�n,” or far-seer, with the “Magic Mirror,” a speculum which according to Gower was set up in Rome by Virgilius the Magician hence the Mirror of Glass in the Squire’s tale; Merlin’s glassie Mirror of Spenser (F. Q. ii. 24); the mirror in the head of the monstrous fowl which forecast the Spanish invasion to the Mexicans; the glass which in the hands of Cornelius Agrippa (A.

D. 1520) showed to the Earl of Surrey fair Geraldine “sick in her bed;” to the globe of glass in The Lusiads; Dr. Dee’s show-stone, a bit of cannel-coal; and lastly the zinc and copper disk of the absurdly called “electro-biologist.” I have noticed this matter at some length in various places.

 

[FN#328] D’Herbelot renders Soghd Samarkand = plain of Samarkand.

Hence the old “Sogdiana,” the famed and classical capital of M�war�nnahr, our modern Transoxiana, now known as Samarkand. The Hindi translator has turned “Soghd” into “Sad�” and gravely notes that “the village appertained to Arabia.” He possibly had a dim remembrance of the popular legend which derives “Samarkand” from Shamir or Samar bin Afrik�s, the Tobba King of Al-Yaman, who lay waste Soghd-city (“Shamir kand” = Shamir destroyed); and when rebuilt the place was called by the Arab. corruption Samarkand.

See Ibn Khallikan ii. 480. Ibn Haukal (Kit�b al Mam�lik wa al-Mas�lik = Book of Realms and Routes), whose Oriental Geography (xth century) was translated by Sir W. Ouseley (London, Oriental Press, 1800), followed by Ab� ‘l-Fid�, mentions the Himyaritic inscription upon an iron plate over the Kash portal of Samarkand (Appendix No. iii.).

 

[FN#329] The wish might have been highly indiscreet and have exposed the wisher to the resentment of the two other brothers.

In parts of Europe it is still the belief of the vulgar that men who use telescopes can see even with the naked eye objects which are better kept hidden; and I have heard of troubles in the South of France because the villagers would not suffer the secret charms of their women to become as it were the public property of the lighthouse employ�s.

 

[FN#330] “J�m-i-Jamsh�d” is a well worn commonplace in Moslem folk-lore; but commentators cannnot agree whether “J�m” be = a mirror or a cup. In the latter sense it would represent the Cyathomantic cup of the Patriarch Joseph and the symbolic bowl of Nestor. Jamsh�d may be translated either Jam the Bright or the Cup of the Sun: this ancient King is Solomon of the grand old Guebres.

 

[FN#331] This passage may have suggested to Walter Scott one of his descriptions in “The Monastery.”

 

[FN#332] In the text “L�jaward�,” for which see vols. iii. 33, and ix. 190.

 

[FN#333] In Galland and the H. V. “Prince Husayn’s.”

 

[FN#334] This is the “Gandharba-lagana” (fairy wedding) of the Hindus; a marriage which lacked only the normal ceremonies. For the Gandharbas = heavenly choristers see Moor’s “Hind� Pantheon,”

p. 237, etc.

 

[FN#335] “Perfumed with amber” (-gris?) says Galland.

 

[FN#336] The Hind term for the royal lev�e, as “Sel�m” is the Persian.

 

[FN#337] Arab. “‘Ilm al-Ghayb” = the Science of Hidden Things which, says the Hadis, belongeth only to the Lord. Yet amongst Moslems, as with other faiths, the instinctive longing to pry into the Future has produced a host of pseudo-sciences, Geomancy, Astrology, Prophecy and others which serve only to prove that such knowledge, in the present condition of human nature, is absolutely unattainable.

 

[FN#338] In folk-lore and fairy tales the youngest son of mostly three brothers is generally Fortune’s favourite: at times also he is the fool or the unlucky one of the family, Cinderella being his counterpart (Mr. Clouston, i. 321).

 

[FN#339] The parasang (Gr. {Greek}), which Ibn Khall. (iii. 315) reduces to three miles, has been derived wildly enough from Fars or Pars (Persia proper) sang = (mile) stone. Chardin supports the etymology, “because leagues are marked out with great tall stones in the East as well as the West, e.g., ad primam (vel secundam) lapidem.”

 

[FN#340] A huge marquee or pavilion-tent in India.

 

[FN#341] The Jinn feminine; see vol. i. 10. The word hardly corresponds with the Pers. “Peri” and Engl. “Fairy,” a creation, like the “D�v,” of the so-called “Aryan,” not “Semitic,” race.

 

[FN#342] Galland makes the Fairy most unjustifiably fear that her husband is meditating the murder of his father; and the Hind� in this point has much the advantage of the Frenchman.

 

[FN#343] Pers. = “Light of the World”; familiar to Europe as the name of the Grand Moghul Jeh�ng�r’s principal wife.

 

[FN#344] The Arab stirrup, like that of the Argentine Gaucho, was originally made of wood, liable to break, and forming a frail support for lancer and sworder. A famous chief and warrior, Ab�

Sa’�d al-Muhallab (ob. A. H. 83 = 702) first gave orders to forge foot-rests of iron.

 

[FN#345] For this Egyptian and Syrian weapon see vol. i. 234.

 

[FN#346] See vol. vii. 93, where an error of punctuation confounds it with Kerbela,—a desert with a place of pilgrimage.

“Sam�wah” in Ibn Khall. (vol. i. 108) is also the name of a town on the Euphrates.

 

[FN#347] Nazar�nah prop. = the gift (or gifts) offered at visits by a Moslem noble or feoffee in India to his feudal superior; and the Kalichah of Hind�, Malabar, Goa and the Blue Mountains (p.

197). Hence the periodical tributes and especially the presents which represent our “legacy-duty” and the “succession-duty” for Rajahs and Nabobs, the latter so highly lauded by “The Times,” as the logical converse of the Corn-laws which ruined our corn. The Nazar�nah can always be made a permanent and a considerable source of revenue, far more important than such unpopular and un-Oriental device as an income-tax. But our financiers have yet to learn the A. B. C. of political economy in matters of assessment, which is to work upon familiar lines; and they especially who, like Mr. Wilson “mad as a hatter,” hold and hold forth that “what is good for England is good for the world.”

These myopics decide on theoretical and sentimental grounds that a poll-tax is bad in principle, which it may be, still public opinion sanctions it and it can be increased without exciting discontent. The same with the “Nazar�nah;” it has been the custom of ages immemorial, and a little more or a little less does not affect its popularity.

 

[FN#348] Pers. = City-queen.

 

[FN#349] Compare with this tale its modern and popular version Histoire du Rossignol Chanteur (Spitta-Bey, No. x, p. 123): it contains the rosary (and the ring) that shrinks, the ball that rolls and the water that heals; etc. etc. Mr. Clouston somewhere asserts that the History of the Envious Sisters, like that of Prince Ahmad and the Per�-Banu, are taken from a MS. still preserved in the “King’s Library,” Paris; but he cannot quote his authority, De Sacy or Langl�s. Mr. H. C. Coote (loc. Cit. P. 189) declares it to be, and to have been, “an enormous favourite in Italy and Sicily: no folk-tale exists in those countries at all comparable to it in the number of its versions and in the extent of its distribution.” He begins two centuries before Galland, sith Straparola (Notti Piacevoli), proceeds to Imbriani (Novajella Fiorentina), Nerucci (Novelle Montalesi), Comparetti (Nivelline Italiane) and Pitre (Fiabe Novelle e Racconti popolari Italiani, vol. I.); and informs us that “the adventures of the young girl, independently of the joint history of herself and her brother, are also told in a separate “Fiaba” in Italy. A tale called La Favenilla Coraggiosa is given by Visentini in his Fiabe Mantovane and it is as far as it is a counterpart of the second portion of Galland’s tale.” Mr. Coote also finds this story in Hahn’s “Griechische M�rchen” entitled “Sun, Moon and Morning Star”—the names of the royal children. The King overhears the talk of three girls and marries the youngest despite his stepmother, who substitutes for her issue a puppy, a kitten and a mouse. The castaways are adopted by a herdsman whilst the mother is confined in a henhouse; and the King sees his offspring and exclaims, “These children are like those my wife promised me.”

His stepmother, hearing this, threatens the nurse, who goes next morning disguised as a beggar-woman to the girl and induces her to long for the Bough that makes music, the Magic Mirror, and the bird Dickierette.