Supplemental Nights to The Book of the Thousand and One Nights by Sir Richard Francis Burton (life changing books TXT) 📕

Ser Giovanni’s story, Roscoe observes, is “curious as having through the medium of translation suggested the idea of those amusing scenes in which the renowned Falstaff acquaints Master Ford, disguised under the name of Brooke, with his progress in the good graces of Mrs. Ford. The contrivances likewise by which he eludes the vengeance of the jealous husband are similar to those recounted in the novel, with the addition of throwing the unweildy knight into the river. Dunlop says that the same story has been translated is a collection entitled �The Fortunate, Deceived, and Unfortunate Lovers,’ and that Shakspeare may probably also have seen it in �Tarlton’s Newes out of Purgatorie,’ where the incidents related in the Lovers of Pisa are given according to Straparola’s story. Moliere made a happy use of it in his �Ecole des Femmes,’ where the humour of the piece turns upon a young gentleman confiding his progress in the affections of a lady to the ear of her guardian, who believed he was on the point of espousing her himself.” Two other French plays were based upon the story, one of which was written by La Fontaine under the title of “La Maitre en Droit.” Readers of “Gil Blas” will also recollect how Don Raphael confides to Balthazar the progress of his amour with his wife, and expresses his vexation at the husband’s unexpected return.

It is much to be regretted that nothing is known as to the date and place of the composition of the Breslau edition of The Nights, which alone contains this and several other tales found in the collections of the early Italian novelists.

THE KING WHO KENNED THE QUINTESSENCE OF THINGS.—Vol. XI. p. 142.

Although we may find, as already stated, the direct source of this tale in the forty-sixth chapter of Al-Mas’�di’s “Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems,” which was written about A.D. 943, yet there exists a much older version—if not the original form—in a Sanskrit collection entitled, “Vet�lapanchavinsat�,” or Twenty-five Tales of a Vampyre. This ancient work is incorporated with the “Kath� Sarit S�gara,” or Ocean of the Streams of Story, composed in Sanskrit verse by Somadeva in the 11th century, after a similar work, now apparently lost, entitled “Vrihat Kath�,” or Great Story, written by Gunadhya, in the 6th century.[FN#498] In the opinion of Benfey all the Vampyre Tales are of Buddhist extraction (some are unquestionably so), and they probably date from before our era. As a separate work they exist, more or less modified, in many of the Indian vernaculars; in Hind�, under the title of “Baital Pach�s�”; in Tamil, “Vedala Kadai”; and there are also versions in Telegu, Mahratta, and Canarese. The following is from Professor C. H. Tawney’s complete translation of the “Kath� Sarit S�gara” (it is the 8th recital of the Vetala):

INDIAN VERSION

There is a great tract of land assigned to Br�hmans in the country of Anga, called Vrikshaghata. In it there lived a rich sacrificing Br�hman named Vishnusv�min. And he had a wife equal to himself in birth. And by her he had three sons born to him, who were distinguished for preternatural acuteness. In course of time they grew up to be young men. One day, when he had begun a sacrifice, he sent those three brothers to the sea to fetch a turtle. So off they went, and when they had found a turtle, the eldest said to his two brothers, “Let one of you take the turtle for our father’s sacrifice; I cannot take it, as it is all slippery with slime.” When the eldest said this, the two younger ones answered him, “If you hesitate about taking it, why should not we?” When the eldest heard that, he said, “You two must take the turtle; if you do not, you will have obstructed your father’s sacrifice, and then you will certainly sink down to hell.” When he told the younger brother’s this, they laughed and said to him, “If you see our duty so clearly, why do you not see that your own is the same?” Then the eldest said, “What, do you not know how fastidious I am? I am very fastidious about eating, and I cannot be expected to touch what is repulsive.” The middle brother, when he heard this speech of his, said to his brother, “Then I am a more fastidious person than you, for I am a most fastidious connoisseur of the fair sex.” When the middle one said this, the eldest went on to say, “Then let the younger of you two take the turtle.” Then the youngest brother frowned, and in his turn said to the two elder, “You fools, I am very fastidious about beds; so I am the most fastidious of the lot.”

So the three brothers fell to quarrelling with one another, and being completely under the dominion of conceit, they left that turtle and went off immediately to the court of the king of that country, whose name was Prasenajit, and who lived in a city named Vitankapura, in order to have the dispute decided. There they had themselves announced by the warder, and went in, and gave the king a circumstantial account of their case. The king said, “Wait here, and I will put you all in turn to the proof;’ so they agreed and remained there. And at the time that the king took his meal, he had them conducted to a seat of honour, and given delicious food fit for a king, possessing all the six flavours.

And while all were feasting around him, the Br�hman who was fastidious about eating along of the company did not eat, but sat there with his face puckered up with disgust. The king himself asked the Br�hman why he did not eat his food, though it was sweet and fragrant, and he slowly answered him, “I perceive in this food an evil smell of the reek from corpses, so I cannot bring myself to eat it, however delicious it may be.” When he said this before the assembled multitude, they all smelled it by the king’s orders, and said, “This food is prepared from white rice and is good and fragrant.” But the Br�hman who was so fastidious about eating would not touch it, but stopped his nose.

Then the king reflected, and proceeded to inquire into the matter, and found out from his officers that the food had been made from rice which had been grown in a field near the burning gh�t of a certain village. Then the king was much astonished, and, being pleased, he said to him, “In truth you are very particular as to what you eat; so eat of some other dish.”

And after they had finished their dinner, the king dismissed the Br�hmans to their apartments and sent for the loveliest lady of his court. And in the evening he sent that fair one, all whose limbs were of faultless beauty, splendidly adorned, to the second Br�hman, who was so squeamish about the fair sex. And that matchless kindler of Cupid’s flame, with a face like the full moon of midnight, went, escorted by the king’s servants, to the chamber of the Br�hman. But when she entered, lighting up the chamber with her brightness, that gentleman who was so fastidious about the fair sex felt quite faint, and stopping his nose with his left hand, said to the king’s servants, “Take her away; if you do not, I am a dead man: a smell comes from her like that of a goat.” When the king’s servants heard this, they took the bewildered fair one to their sovereign, and told him what had taken place. And the eking immediately had the squeamish gentleman sent for, and said to him, “How can this lovely woman, who has perfumed herself with sandal-wood, camphor, black aloes, and other splendid scents, so that she diffuses exquisite fragrance through the world, smell like a goat?” But though the king used this argument to the squeamish gentleman he stuck to his point; and then the king began to have his doubts on the subject, and at last, by artfully framed questions, he elicited from the lady herself that, having been separated in her childhood from her mother and nurse, she had been brought up on goat’s milk.

Then the king was much astonished, and praised highly the discernment of the man who was fastidious about the fair sex, and immediately had given to the third Br�hman, who was fastidious about beds, in accordance with his taste, a bed composed of seven mattresses placed upon a bedstead. White smooth sheets and coverlets were laid upon the bed, and the fastidious man slept upon it in a splendid room. But, before half a watch of the night had passed, he rose up from that bed, with his hand pressed to his side, screaming in an agony of pain. And the king’s officers, who were there, saw a red crooked mark on his side, as if a hair had been pressed deep into it. And they went and told the king, and the king said to them, “Look and see if there is not something under the mattress.” So they went and examined the bottom of the mattresses one by one, and they found a hair in the middle of the bedstead underneath them all. And they took it and showed it to the king, and they also brought the man who was fastidious about beds, and when the king saw the state of his body, he was astonished. And he spent the whole night in wondering how a hair could make so deep an impression on his skin through seven mattresses.[FN#499]

And the next morning the king gave three hundred thousand gold pieces to those fastidious men, because they were persons of wonderful discernment and refinement. And they remained in great comfort in the king’s court, forgetting all about the turtle, and little did they reck of the fact that they had incurred sin by obstructing their father’s sacrifice.[FN#500]

The story of the brothers who were so very “knowing” is common to most countries, with occasional local modifications. It is not often we find the knowledge of the “quintessence of things”

concentrated in a single individual, as in the case of the ex-king of our tale, but we have his exact counterpart—and the circumstance is significant—in No. 2 of the “Cento Novelle Antiche,” the first Italian collection of short stories, made in the 13th century, where a prisoner informs the king of Greece that a certain horse has been suckled by a she-ass, that a jewel contains a flaw, and that the king himself is a baker. Mr.

Tawney, in a note on the Vet�la story, as above, refers also to the decisions of Hamlet in Saxo Grammaticus, 1839, p. 138, in Simrock’s “Quellen des Shakespeare,” I, 81-85; 5, 170; he lays down that some bread tastes of blood (the corn was grown on a battlefield); that some liquor tastes of iron (the malt was mixed with water taken from a well in which some rusty swords had lain); that some bacon tastes of corpses (the pig had eaten a corpse); lastly, that the king is a servant and his wife a serving-maid. But in most versions of the story three brothers are the gifted heroes.

In “M�lusine”[FN#501] for 5 Nov. 1885, M. Ren� Basset cites an interesting variant (in which, as is often the case, the “Lost Camel” plays a part, but are not concerned about it at present) from Radloff’s “Proben der Volksliteratur der turkischen Stamme des Sud-Siberiens,” as follows:

SIBERIAN VERSION

Meat and bread were set before the three brothers, and the prince went out. The