The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 14 by Sir Richard Francis Burton (the best books to read TXT) 📕

-St.]

[FN#381] Arab. “Al-Kuhn�,” plur. Of “K�hin ‘t” = diviner, priest (non-Levitical): see “Cohen,” ii. 221. [The form is rather curious. The Dictionaries quote “Kuhn�” as a Syriac singular, but here it seems to be taken as a plural of the measure “fu’al�”

(Kuhan�), like Umar� of Am�r or Shu’ar� of Sh�‘ir. The usual plurals of K�hin are Kahanah and Kuhh�n.—St.]

[FN#382] This is a celebrated incident in “Alaeddin,” “New lamps for old:” See Suppl. vol. iii. 119.

[FN#383] In text “Jazd�n” = a pencase (Pers.) more pop. called “Kalamd�n” = reed-box, vol. iv. 167: Scott (p. 212) has a “writing-stand.” It appears a queer place wherein to keep a ring, but Easterns often store in these highly ornamented boxes signets and other small matters.

[FN#384] Arab. “Bahr al-Muh�t” = Circumambient Ocean; see vol. i.

133.

[FN#385] Arab. “F�r” (plur. “Fir�n”) = mouse rather than rat.

[FN#386] Sleep at this time is considered very unwholesome by Easterns. See under “Kayl�lah” = siesta, vols. i. 51; ii. 178, and viii. 191.

[FN#387] Modern science which, out of the depths of its self-consciousness, has settled so many disputed questions, speaking by the organs of Messieurs Woodman and Tidy (“Medical Jurisprudence”) has decided that none of the lower animals can bear issue to man. But the voice of the world is against them and as Voltaire says one cannot be cleverer than everybody. To begin with there is the will: the she-quadruman shows a distinct lust for man by fondling him and displaying her parts as if to entice him. That carnal connection has actually taken place cannot be doubted: my late friend Mirza Ali Akbar, of Bombay, the famous Munshi to Sir Charles Napier during the conquest of Sind, a man perfectly veracious and trustworthy, assured me that in the Gujar�t province he had witnessed a case with his own eyes. He had gone out “to the jungle,” as the phrase is, with another Moslem who, after keeping him waiting for an unconscionable time, was found carnally united to a she-monkey. My friend, indignant as a good Moslem should be, reproved him for his bestiality and then asked him how it had come to pass: the man answered that the she-monkey came regularly to look at him on certain occasions, that he was in the habit of throwing her something to eat and that her gratitude displayed such sexuality that he was tempted and “fell.” That the male monkey shows an equal desire for the woman is known to every frequenter of the “Zoo.” I once led a party of English girls to see a collection of mandrill and other anthropoid apes in the M�nagerie of a well-known Russian millionaire, near Florence, when the Priapism displayed was such that the girls turned back and fled in fright. In the motherlands of these anthropoids (the Gaboon, Malacca etc.) the belief is universal and women have the liveliest fear of them. In 1853 when the Crimean war was brewing a dog-faced baboon in Cairo broke away from his “Kuraydati” (ape-leader), threw a girl in the street and was about to ravish her when a sentinel drew his bayonet and killer the beast. The event was looked upon as an evil omen by the older men, who shook their heads and declared that these were bad times when apes attempted to ravish the daughters of Moslems. But some will say that the grand test, the existence of the mule between man and monkey, though generally believed in, is characteristically absent, absent as the “missing link” which goes so far as to invalidate Darwinism in one and perhaps the most important part of its contention. Of course the offspring of such union would be destroyed, yet t he fact of our never having found a trace of it except in legend and idle story seems to militate against its existence. When, however, man shall become “Homo Sapiens” he will cast off the prejudices of the cradle and the nursery and will ascertain by actual experiment if human being and monkey can breed together. The lowest order of bimana, and the highest order of quadrumana may, under most favourable circumstances, bear issue and the “Mule,” who would own half a soul, might prove most serviceable as a hewer of wood and a drawer of water, in fact as an agricultural labourer. All we can say is that such “miscegenation” stands in the category of things not proven and we must object to science declaring them non-existing. A correspondent favours me with the following note upon the subject:—Castanheda (Annals of Portugal) relates that a woman was transporter to an island inhabited by monkeys and took up her abode in a cavern where she was visited by a huge baboon.

He brought her apples and fruit and at last had connection with her, the result being two children in two to three years; but when she was being carrier off by a ship the parent monkey kissed his progeny. The woman was taken to Lisbon and imprisoned for life by the King. Langius, Virgilius Polydorus and others quote many instances of monstruous births in Rome resulting from the connection of women with dogs and bears, and cows with horses, &c. The following relative conditions are deduced on the authority of MM. Jean Polfya and Mauriceau:—1. If the sexual organism of man or woman be more powerful than that of the monkey, dog, etc. the result will be a monster in the semblance of man. 2. If vice-versa the appearance will be that of a beast.

3. If both are equal the result will be a distinct sub-species as of the horse with the ass.

[FN#388] Arab. “Tan�m” (plur. of Tam�mit) = spells, charms, amulets, as those hung to a horse’s neck, the African Greegree and the Heb. Thummim. As was the case with most of these earliest superstitions, the Serpent, the Ark, the Cherubim, the Golden Calf (Apis) and the Levitical Institution, the Children of Israel derived the now mysterious term “Ur�m” (lights) and “Thummim”

(amulets) from Egypt and the Semitic word (Tam�mah) still remains to explain the Hebrew. “Thummim,” I may add, is by “general consensus” derived from “T�m” = completeness and is englished “Perfection,” but we can find a better origin near at hand in spoken Arabic.

[FN#389] These verses have already occurred, see my vol. i. p.

275. I have therefore quoted Payne, i. p. 246.

[FN#390] Arab. “Wak�l” who, in the case of a grown-up girl, declares her consent to the marriage in the presence of two witnesses and after part payment of the dowry.

[FN#391] Such is the meaning of the Arab. “Thayyib.”

[FN#392] This appears to be the popular belief in Egypt. See vol.

iv. 297, which assures us that “no thing poketh and stroketh more strenuously than the Gird” (or hideous Ahyssinian cynocephalus).

But it must be based upon popular ignorance: the private parts of the monkey although they erect stiffly, like the priapus of Osiris when swearing upon his Phallus, are not of the girth sufficient to produce that friction which is essential to a woman’s pleasure. I may here allude to the general disappointment in England and America caused by the exhibition of my friend Paul de Chaillu’s Gorillas: he had modestly removed penis and testicles, the latter being somewhat like a bull’s, and his squeamishness caused not a little grumbling and sense of grievance—especially amongst the curious sex.

[FN#393] [In the MS. “fahakat,” lit. she flowed over like a brimful vessel.—ST.]

[FN#394] In 1821, Scott (p. 214) following Gilchrist’s method of transliterating eastern tongues wrote “Abou Neeut” and “Neeuteen”

(the latter a bad blunder making a masc. plural of a fem. dual).

In 1822 Edouard Gauttier (vi. 320) gallicised the names to “Abou-Nyout” and “Abou-Nyoutyn” with the same mistake and one superadded; there is no such Arabic word as “Niy�t.” Mr. Kirby in 1822, “The New Arabian Nights” (p. 366) reduced the words to “Abu Neut” and “Abu Neuteen,” which is still less intelligible than Scott’s; and, lastly, the well-known Turkish scholar Dr.

Redhouse converted the tortured names to “Ab� Niyyet” and “Ab�

Niyyeteyn,” thus rightly giving a “tashd�d” (reduplication sign) to the Y� (see Appendix p. 430 to Suppl. Vol. No iii. and Turk.

Dict. sub voce “Niyyat”). The Arab. is “Niyyah” = will, purpose, intent; “Ab� Niyyah” (Grammat. “Ab� Niyyatin”) Father of one Intent = single-minded and “Ab� Niyyatayn” = Father of two Intents or double-minded; and Richardson is deficient when he writes only “Niyat” for “Niyyat.” I had some hesitation about translating this tale which begins with the “Envier and the Envied” (vol. i. 123) and ends with the “Sisters who envied their Cadette” (Supple. vol. iii. 313). But the extant versions of it are so imperfect in English and French that I made up my mind to include it in this collection.—[Richardson’s “Niyat” is rather another, although rarer form of the same word.—St.]

[FN#395] [I read: “wa tukarribu ‘I-‘abda ilayya,” referring the verb to “al-Sadakh” (the alms) and translating: “and it bringeth the servant near to me,” the speaker, in Coranic fashion supposed to be Allah.—St.]

[FN#396] The text prefers the Egyptian form “Sher�fi” pl.

“Sher�f�yah,” which was adopted by the Portuguese.

[FN#397] The grace after meat, “Bismillah” being that which precedes it. Abu Niyyah was more grateful than a youth of my acquaintance who absolutely declined asking the Lord to “make him truly thankful” after a dinner of cold mutton.

[FN#398] [The root “Kart” is given in the dictionaries merely to introduce the word “kar�t” = complete, speaking of a year, &c., and “Takr�t,” the name of a town in Mesopotamia, celebrated for its velvets and as the birth-place of Saladin. According to the first mentioned word I would take the signification of “Kart” to “complement” which here may fitly be rendered by “remainder,” for that which with regard to the full contents of the dinner tray is their complement would of course be their remainder with regard to the viands that have been eaten.—St.]

[FN#399] For the “Zak�t” = legal alms, which must not be less than two-and-a-half per cent, see vol. i. 339.

[FN#400] In text “Kazd�r,” for which see vols. iv. 274 and vi.

39. Here is may allude to the canisters which make great show in the general store of a petty shopkeeper.

[FN#401] [The MS. reads “murafraf” (passive) from, “Rafraf” = a shelf, arch, anything overhanging something else, there here applying either to the eyebrows as overhanging the eyes, or to the sockets, as forming a vault or cave for them. Perhaps it should be “murafrif” (active part), used of a bird, who spreads his wings and circles round his prey, ready to pounce upon it; hence with prying, hungry, greedy eyes.—St.]

[FN#402] Arab. “Niyyah” with the normal pun upon the name.

[FN#403] Arab. “‘Amil Rasad,” lit. acting as an observatory: but the style is broken as usual, and to judge from the third line below the sentence may signify “And I am acting as Talisman (to the Hoard)”.

[FN#404] In the text “Ish�ri,” which may have many meanings: I take a “shot” at the most likely. In “The Tale of the Envier and the Envied” the counter-spell in a fumigation by means of some white hair plucked from a white spot, the size of a dirham, at the tail-end of a black tom-cat (vol. i. 124). According to the Welsh legend, “the Devil hates cocks”—I suppose since that fowl warned Peter of his fall.

[FN#405] In text “Yaum al-Ahad,” which begins the Moslem week: see vols. iii. 249, and vi. 190.

[FN#406] [In Ar. “Harj wa Laght.” The former is generally joined with “Marj” (Harj wa Marj) to express utter confusion, chaos, anarchy. “Laght” (also