76
This custom is alluded to by Lane (Mod. Egypt, ch. xv.): it is the rule of pilgrims to Meccah when too ill to walk or ride (Pilgrimage i. 180). Hence all men carry their shrouds: mine, after being dipped in the Holy Water of Zemzem, was stolen from me by the rascally Somal of Berberah.
77
Arab. “Fulk;” some Edits. read “Kalak” and “Ramaz” (= a raft).
78
These lines occur in modified form in Night xi.
79
These underground rivers (which Dr. Livingstone derided) are familiar to every geographer from Spenser’s “Mole” to the Poika of Adelberg and the Timavo near Trieste. Hence “Peter Wilkins” borrowed his cavern which led him to Grandevolet. I have some experience of Sindbad’s sorrows, having once attempted to descend the Poika on foot. The Classics had the Alpheus (Pliny v. 31; and Seneca, Nat. Quæ. vi.), and the Tigris-Euphrates supposed to flow underground: and the Mediævals knew the Abana of Damascus and the Zenderúd of Isfahan.
80
Abyssinians can hardly be called “blackamoors,” but the arrogance of the white skin shows itself in Easterns (
81
“Sarandib” and “Ceylon” (the Taprobane of Ptolemy and Diodorus Siculus) derive from the Pali “Sihalam” (not the Sansk. “Sinhala”) shortened to Silam and Ilam in old Tamul. Van der Tunk would find it in the Malay “Pulo Selam” = Isle of Gems (the Ratna-dwípa or Jewel Isle of the Hindus and the Jazirat al-Yakút or Ruby-Island of the Arabs); and the learned Colonel Yule (Marco Polo ii. 296) remarks that we have adopted many Malayan names,
82
This is the well-known Adam’s Peak, the Jabal al-Ramun of the Arabs where Adam fell when cast out of Eden in the lowest or lunar sphere. Eve fell at Jeddah (a modern myth) and the unhappy pair met at Mount Arafat (
83
He is the Alcinous of our Arabian Odyssy.
84
This word is not in the dictionaries; Hole (p. 192) and Lane understand it to mean the hog-deer; but why, one cannot imagine. The animal is neither “beautiful” nor “uncommon” and most men of my day have shot dozens in the Sind-Shikárgáhs.
85
M. Polo speaks of a ruby in Seilan (Ceylon) a palm long and three fingers thick: William of Tyre mentions a ruby weighing twelve Egyptian drams (Gibbon ii. 123), and Mandeville makes the King of Mammera wear about his neck a “rubye orient” one foot long by five fingers large.
86
The fable is from Al-Kazwini and Ibn Al-Wardi who place the serpent (an animal sacred to Æsculapius, Pliny, xxix. 4) “in the sea of Zanj” (
87
For “Emerald,” Hole (p. 177) would read emery or adamantine spar.
88
Evidently Maháráj = Great Rajah, Rajah in Chief, an Hindu title common to the three potentates before alluded to, the Narsinga, Balhara or Samiry.
89
This is probably classical. So the page said to Philip of Macedon every morning, “Remember, Philip, thou art mortal”; also the slave in the Roman Triumph,
And the dying Severus, “Urnlet, soon shalt thou enclose what hardly a whole world could contain.” But the custom may also have been Indian: the contrast of external pomp with the real vanity of human life suggests itself to all.
90
Arab. “Hút”; a term applied to Jonah’s whale and to monsters of the deep, “Samak” being the common fishes.
91
Usually a two-bow prayer.
92
This is the recognised formula of Moslem sales.
93
Arab. “Walímah”; like our wedding-breakfast but a much more ceremonious and important affair.
94
95
The serpent in Arabic is mostly feminine.
96
97
I subjoin a translation of the Seventh Voyage from the Calc. Edit. of the two hundred Nights which differs in essential points from the above. All respecting Sindbad the Seaman has an especial interest. In one point this world-famous tale is badly ordered. The most exciting adventures are the earliest and the falling off of the interest has a somewhat depressing effect. The Rukh, the Ogre and the Old Man o’ the Sea should come last.
98
Arab. Al-Suways: this successor of ancient Arsinoë was, according to local tradition, founded by a Santon from Al-Sús in Marocco who called it after his name “Little Sús” (the wormlet).
99
Arab. “Mann,” a weight varying from two to six pounds: even this common term is not found in the tables of Lane’s Mod. Egyptians, Appendix B. The “Maund” is a well-known Anglo-Indian weight.
100
This article is not mentioned elsewhere in The Nights.
101
Apparently a fancy title.
102
The island is evidently Ceylon long famed for elephants and the tree is the well known “Banyan” (Ficus Indica). According to Linschoten and Wolf, the elephants of all lands do reverence and honour to those of Ceylon.
103
“Tusks” not “teeth” which are not valued. As Hole remarks, the elephants of Pliny and Sindbad are equally conscious of the value of ivory. Pliny (viii. 3) quotes Herodotus about the buying of ivories and relates how elephants, when hunted, break their “cornua” (as Juba called them) against a tree trunk by way of ransom. Ælian, Plutarch, and Philostratus speak of the linguistic intelligence and religious worship of the “half-reason with the hand,” which the Hindus term “Háthí” = unimanus. Finally, Topsell’s Gesner (p. 152) makes elephants bury their tusks, “which commonly drop out every tenth year.” In Arabian literature the elephant is always connected with India.
104
This is a true “City of Brass.” (Nuhás asfar = yellow copper), as we learn in Night dcclxxii. It is situated in the “Maghrib” (Mauritania), the region of magic and mystery; and the idea was probably suggested by the grand Roman ruins which rise abruptly from what has become a sandy waste. Compare with this tale “The City of Brass” (Night cclxxii). In Egypt Nuhás is vulg. pronounced Nihás.
105
The Bresl. Edit. adds that the seal-ring was of stamped stone and iron, copper and lead. I have borrowed copiously from its vol. vi. pp. 343,
106
As this was a well-known pre-Islamitic bard, his appearance here is decidedly anachronistic, probably by intention.
107
The first Moslem conqueror of Spain whose lieutenant, Tárik, the gallant and unfortunate, named Gibraltar (Jabal al-Tarik).