The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 15 - Sir Richard Francis Burton (world best books to read txt) 📗

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SUPPLEMENTAL

NIGHTS

To The Book Of The Thousand And One Nights With Notes Anthropological And Explanatory

 

By

Richard F. Burton

VOLUME FIVE

Privately Printed By The Burton Club To The Curators of the Bodleian Library, Oxford Especially Revd. B. Price and Professor Max Muller.

 

Gentlemen,

 

I take the liberty of placing your names at the Head of this Volume which owes its rarest and raciest passages to your kindly refusing the temporary transfer of the Wortley Montague MS. from your pleasant library to the care of Dr. Rost, Chief Librarian, India Office. As a sop to “bigotry and virtue,” as a concession to the “Scribes and Pharisees,” I had undertaken, in case the loan were granted, not to translate tales and passages which might expose you, the Curators, to unfriendly comment. But, possibly anticipating what injury would thereby accrue to the Volume and what sorrow to my subscribers, you were good enough not to sanction the transfer—indeed you refused it to me twice—

and for this step my clientele will be (or ought to be) truly thankful to you.

 

I am, Gentlemen,

Yours obediently, Richard F. Burton.

 

Bodleian Library, August 5th, 1888

 

Contents of the Fifteenth Volume.

 

1. The History of the King’s Son of Sind and the Lady Fatimah 2. History of the Lovers of Syria

3. History of Al-Hajjaj Bin Yusuf and the Young Sayyid 4. Night Adventure of Harun Al-Rashid and the Youth Manjab a. Story of the Darwaysh and the Barber’s Boy and the Greedy Sultan

b. Tale of the Simpleton Husband

Note Concerning the “Tirrea Bede,” Night 655

5. The Loves of Al-Hayfa and Yusuf

6. The Three Princes of China

7. The Righteous Wazir Wrongfully Gaoled 8. The Cairene Youth, the Barber and the Captain 9. The Goodwife of Cairo and Her Four Gallants a. The Tailor and the Lady and the Captain b. The Syrian and the Three Women of Cairo c. The Lady With Two Coyntes

d. The Whorish Wife Who Vaunted Her Virtue 10. Coelebs the Droll and His Wife and Her Four Lovers 11. The Gatekeeper of Cairo and the Cunning She-Thief 12. Tale of Mohsin and Musa

13. Mohammed the Shalabi and His Mistress and His Wife 14. The Fellah and His Wicked Wife

15. The Woman Who Humoured Her Lover At Her Husband’s Expense 16. The Kazi Schooled By His Wife

17. The Merchant’s Daughter and the Prince of Al-Irak 18. Story of the Youth Who Would Flutter His Father’s Wives 19. Story of the Two Lack-Tacts of Cairo and Damascus 20. Tale of Himself Told By the King

Appendix A: - Catalogue of Wortley Montague Manuscript Contents

Appendix B: - Notes on the Stories Contained in Volumes XIV.

and XV by W. F. Kirby

 

THE TRANSLATOR’S FOREWORD.

 

This volume contains the last of my versions from the Wortley Montague Codex, and this is the place to offer a short account of that much bewritten MS.

 

In the “Annals of the Bodleian Library,” etc., by the Reverend William Dunn Macray, M.A. (London, Oxford and Cambridge, 1868: 8vo. p. 206), we find the following official notice:—

 

“A.D. 1803.”

 

“An Arabic MS. in seven volumes, written in 1764-5, and containing what is rarely met with, a complete collection of the Thousand and one Tales (N.B. an error for “Nights”) of the Arabian Nights Entertainments, was bought from Captain Jonathan Scott for �50. Mr. Scott published, in 1811, an edition of the Tales in six volumes (N.B. He reprinted the wretched English version of Prof. Galland’s admirable French, and his “revisions”

and “occasional corrections” are purely imaginative), in which this MS. is described (N.B. after the mos majorum). He obtained it from Dr. (Joseph) White, the Professor of Hebrew and Arabic at Oxford, who had bought it at the sale of the library of Edward Wortley Montague, by whom it had been brought from the East.

(N.B. Dr. White at one time intended to translate it literally, and thereby eclipse the Anglo French version.) It is noticed in Ouseley’s Oriental Collections (Cadell and Davies), vol. ii. p.

25.”

 

The Jonathan Scott above alluded to appears under various titles as Mr. Scott, Captain Scott and Doctor Scott. He was an officer in the Bengal Army about the end of the last century, and was made Persian Secretary by “Warren Hastings, Esq.,” to whom he dedicated his “Tales, Anecdotes and Letters, translated from the Arabic and Persian” (Cadell and Davies, London, 1800), and he englished the “Bah�r-i-D�nish” (A.D. 1799) and “Firishtah’s History of the Dakkhan (Deccan) and of the reigns of the later Emperors of Hindostan.” He became Dr. Scott because made an LL.D.

at Oxford as meet for a “Professor (of Oriental languages) at the Royal Military and East India Colloges”; and finally he settled at Netley, in Shropshire, where he died.

 

It is not the fault of English Orientalists if the MS. in question is not thoroughly well known to the world of letters. In 1797 Sir Gore Ouseley’s “Oriental Collections” (vol. ii. pp.

25-33) describes it, evidently with the aid of Scott, who is the authority for stating that the tales generally appear like pearls strung at random on the same thread; adding, “if they are truly Oriental It is a matter of little importance to us Europeans whether they are strung on this night or that night.”[FN#1] This first and somewhat imperfect catalogue of the contents was followed in 1811 by a second, which concludes the six volume edition of “The

 

ARABIAN NIGHTS

ENTERTAINMENTS,

Carefully revised and occasionally corrected from the Arabic.

to which is added

A SELECTION OF NEW TALES, Now first translated from the Arabic Originals.

also,

AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES, Illustrative of the RELIGION, MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE: MAHOMMEDANS.”

 

The sixth volume, whose second title is “Tales | selected from the Manuscript copy | of the | 1001 Nights | brought to Europe by Edward Wortley Montague, Esq.,” ends with a general Appendix, of which ten pages are devoted to a description of the Codex and a Catalogue of its contents. Scott’s sixth volume, like the rest of his version, is now becoming rare, and it is regretable that when Messieurs Nimmo and Bain reprinted, in 1882, the bulk of the work (4 vols. 8vo) they stopped short at volume five.

 

Lastly we find a third list dating from 1837 in the “Catalogi |

Codicum Manuscriptorum Orientalium | Bibliothec� Bodleian� | Pars Secunda | Arabicos | complectens. | Confecit | Alexander Nicoll, J.C.D. | Nuper Lingu� Heb. Professor Regius, necnon �dis Christi Canonicus. | Editionem absolvit | et Catalogum urianum[FN#2]

aliquatenus emendavit | G. B. Pusey S.T.B. | Viri desideratissimi Successor. | Oxonii, | E Topographio Academico | MDCCCXXXV.” This is introduced under the head, “Codicil Arabici Mahommedani Narrationes Fict� sive Histori�s Romanenses | in Quarto (pp .

145-150).

 

I am not aware that any attempt has been made to trace the history of the Wortley Montague MS.; but its internal evidence supplies a modicum of information.

 

By way of colophon to the seventh and last volume we have, “On this wise end to us the Stories of the Kings and histories of various folk as foregoing in the Thousand Nights and a Night, perfected and completed, on the eighteenth day of Safar the auspicious, which is of the months of (the year A.H.) one thousand one hundred and seventy eight” (=A.D. 1764-65) “Copied by the humblest and neediest of the poor, Omar-al-Safat�, to whose sins may Allah be Ruthful!

 

“An thou find in us fault deign default supply, And hallow the Faultless and Glorify.”

 

The term “Suftah” is now and has been applied for the last century to the sons of Turkish fathers by Arab mothers, and many of these Mulattos live by the pen. On the fly leaf of vol. i. is written in a fine and flowing Persian (?) hand, strongly contrasting with the text of the tome, which is unusually careless and bad, “This book | The Thousand Nights and a Night of the Acts and deeds (S�rat) of the Kings | and what befel them from sundry | women that were whorish | and witty | and various |

Tales | therein.” Below it also is a Persian couplet written in vulgar Iranian characters of the half-Shikastah type: Chih goyam, o chih poyam? * Na m�-d�nam h�ch o p�ch.

(What shall I say or whither fly? * This stuff and this nonsense know not I.) Moreover, at the beginning of vol. i. is a list of fifteen tales written in Europeo-Arabic characters, after schoolboy fashion, and probably by Scott. In vol. ii. there is no initial list,