A GROUP OF EASTERN ROMANCES AND STORIES FROM THE PERSIAN, TAMIL, AND URDU.

WITH INTRODUCTION, NOTES, AND APPENDIX By W. A. CLOUSTON, AUTHOR OF “POPULAR TALES AND FICTIONS” AND THE “BOOK OF NOODLES”; EDITOR OF THE “BOOK OF SINDIBAD,” THE “BAKHTYAR NAMA,” ETC.

“Who is he, that is now wholly overcome with idleness or otherwise involved in a labyrinth of worldly cares and troubles and discontents, that will not be much lightened in his mind by reading some enticing story, true or feigned?”—Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy.

PRIVATELY PRINTED.

MDCCCLXXXIX.

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Edition—300 Copies.

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TO FORSTER FITZGERALD ARBUTHNOT, ESQ., MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.

My Dear Arbuthnot,

Since you have always been warmly interested in my own works as well as in Oriental Literature generally, allow me to Dedicate to you the present collection of Eastern Tales. This I do with the greater pleasure, knowing that no man is more able than yourself to appreciate their value for the comparative study of popular fictions, and also to recognise their entertaining qualities.

Believe me,

Yours ever faithfully,

W. A. CLOUSTON.

Glasgow, April, 1889.

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PREFACE.

It has been justly remarked that “the literature of a nation furnishes the best guide to researches into its character, manners, and opinions, and no department of literature contains a more ample store of data in this respect than the light and popular part consisting of tales, romances, and dramatic pieces.” The lighter literature of mediæval Europe affords us an insight into customs, manners, and superstitions which have long passed away; but in “the unchanging East” the literature of the Asiatic races, produced at the same period, continues to reflect the sentiments and habits of the Hindús, Buddhists, and Muslims at the present day. For among Asiatics belief in astrology, magic, divination, good and bad omens, and evil spirits (rákshasas, dívs, jinn, etc.) who are ever eager to injure human beings is still as prevalent as when the oldest of their popular tales and romances were first written. The child-like, wonder-loving Oriental mind delights in stories of the supernatural, and the more such narratives exceed the bounds of human possibility the

greater is the pleasure derived from them;—like our[vi] own peasantry, who believed (and not so long since) in “ghosts, fairies, goblins, and witches,” as well as in the frequent apparition of Satan in various forms to delude the benighted traveller, and were fond of listening to “tales of the wild and wonderful” during the long winter evenings.

The following collection comprises fairly representative Eastern tales; some of which are of common life and have nothing in them of the supernatural, while in others may be found all the machinery of typical Asiatic fictions: gorgeous palaces constructed of priceless gems; wealth galore; enchantments; magical transformations; fairies and jinn, good and evil. Those who think that they are “sensible, practical men” (and are therefore not sensible) would not condescend to read “such a pack of lies”; but there be men, I wot, who entertain no particularly high opinion of themselves, to whom what poor Mr. Buckle called “the lying spirit of Romance” is often a great solace amidst the stern realities of work-a-day life, and, carried away in imagination to regions where all is as it ought to be, they for a brief season quite forget “life and its ills, duns and their bills.”

But few words are necessary to explain the design of the present work. I found the four romances diverting and many of their incidents peculiarly interesting from a comparative folk-lore point of view; and[vii] I felt encouraged by the friendly reception of my Book of Sindibád to reproduce them as a companion volume and as a farther contribution to the study of popular fictions. It may be considered by some readers that my notes are too copious. I know that foot-notes have been likened to runaway knocks, calling one downstairs for nothing; but as the book is not specially designed for Eastern scholars (who indeed require none of the information that I could furnish), I was desirous that nothing likely to be obscure to the ordinary reader should pass without explanation and illustration; and since these foot-notes have considerably swelled the bulk of the book and I shall certainly not profit by them, I trust they will not prove altogether useless or superfluous. The abstract of the romance of Hatim Taï—which was an afterthought—and the other matter in the Appendix

will be, I venture to think, interesting to readers “of all ranks and ages.”

It only remains to express my thanks, in the first place, to the learned Orientalist Mr. Edward Rehatsek, of Bombay, for kindly permitting me to reprint his translations from the Persian, with which I have taken a few liberties, but had he revised them himself, I feel sure he would have made very similar alterations: I much regret that want of space prevented me from reproducing more of the shorter stories. In the next place, I (and the reader also, if I am not mistaken)[viii] have to thank Pandit Natésa Sástrí, of Madras, for his translation of the Tamil romance, which I have entitled “The King and his Four Ministers.” I must also acknowledge my great indebtedness to Dr. Chas. Rieu, of the British Museum, whose courtesy, great as everybody knows it is, I fear was very frequently sorely tried by my “anxious inquiries”; and to Prof. E. Fagnan, of the École des Lettres, Algiers, and Mr. E. H. Whinfield, who has done good work in Persian literature, for their kind investigations regarding an inedited Turkish story-book. Private friends want

no public recognition, but I should consider myself ungrateful did I omit to place also on record my obligations in the course of this work to Dr. David Ross, Principal of the E.C. Training College, Glasgow, to Mr. Leonard C. Smithers, Sheffield, and finally, but certainly not least of all, to my old and trusty friend Mr. Hugh Shedden, Grangemouth. With so much help it may well be thought my work might have been of higher quality than I fear is the case; but there is an ancient saying about expecting “grapes of thorns,” which I have made my excuse in a former work.

W. A. C.

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CONTENTS.

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INTRODUCTION.

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INTRODUCTION.

Man has been variously described as a laughing, a cooking, and a clothes-wearing animal, for no other animal laughs, or cooks, or wears clothes. Perhaps another definition might be added, namely, that he is a story-telling animal. From bleak Greenland to the sunny islands that be-gem the South Pacific, there seems to be no race so low in the scale of humanity as not to possess a store of legends and tales, which take their colouring from the ways of life and the habits of the people among whom they are found domiciled. But notwithstanding the very considerable number of popular tales that have been collected from various parts of the world, their origin and general diffusion are still involved in obscurity. The germs from which some of them sprang may have originated soon after men became sentient beings. It is possible, though not very probable, that the ideas on which are based the more simple fictions which are found to be similar—mutatis mutandis—among Non-Aryan as well as Aryan races were independently conceived; but this concession does not apply to tales and stories of

more elaborate construction, where the incidents and[xx] their very sequence are almost identical—in such cases there must have been deliberate appropriation by one people from another. And assuredly not a few of the tales which became orally current in Europe during the middle ages through the preaching monks and the merry minstrels were directly imported from the East. But even when a tale has been traced through different countries till it is discovered in a book, the date of which is known to be at least 200 B.C., it does not follow, of course, that the author of the book where it occurs was the actual inventor of it. Men are much more imitative than inventive, and there is every reason to believe that the Buddhists and the Bráhmans alike simply adapted for their own purposes stories and apologues which had for ages upon ages been common to the whole world. All that is now maintained by the so-called “Benfey school” is that many of the Western popular tales current orally, as well as existing in a literary form, during the mediæval times which

are found in old Indian books reached Europe from Syria, having travelled thither from India through Persia and Arabia, and that this importation of Eastern fictions had been going on long before the first crusades.

Whatever our modern European authors may do in the production of their novels (the novel has no existence in the East), it is certain that Asiatic writers do not attempt the invention of new “situations” and incidents. They have all along been content to use[xxi] such materials as came ready to hand, both by taking stories out of other books, and dressing them up according to their own taste and fancy, and by writing down tales which they had heard publicly or privately recited.[1] Indeed they usually mention quite frankly in the prefaces to their books from whence they derived their materials. Thus, Somadeva tells us that his Kathá Sarit Ságara (Ocean of the Streams of Story), of the 11th century, is wholly derived from a very much older[xxii] Sanskrit work, of the 6th century, the Vrihat Kathá (Great Story), of Gunadhya; and Nakhshabí states that his Túti Náma (Parrot Book) is chiefly an abridgment, in more elegant language, of an older Persian work composed in a prolix style, which was translated from a book “originally written in the Indian tongue.”

So we need not expect to find much originality in later Eastern collections,[2] though they are of special interest to students of the genealogy of popular tales in so far as they contain incidents, and even entire stories and fables, out of ancient books now lost, which have their parallels and analogues in European folk-lore.

The first two romances in the present work form the third báb, or chapter, of a Persian collection of moral tales and anecdotes entitled Mahbúb ul-Kalúb, or the Delight of Hearts, written by Barkhurdár bin Mahmúd Turkman Faráhí, surnamed Mumtáz, concerning whom all that is known is given by himself in what Dr. Rieu terms “a diffuse preface, written in a stilted and ambitious[xxiii] style.” In early life[3] he quitted his native place, Faráh, for Marv Sháhiján, where he entered the service of the governor, Aslán Khán, and two years afterwards he proceeded to Ispahán and became secretary to Hasan Kulí Khán Shámlú: both amírs flourished during the reign of Sháh Sultan Husain, A.H. 1105-1135 (A.D. 1693-1722). At Ispahán he heard in an assembly a pleasing tale, which, at the request of his friends, he “adorned with the flowers of rhetoric,” under the title of Hikáyát-i Ra’ná ú Zíbá. In course of time he added other stories, until he had made a large collection, comprising no fewer than four hundred tales and anecdotes, divided into an introduction,

eight bábs, and a khátimah, or conclusion, and he entitled the work Mahfil-árá—‘Adorner of the Assembly.’ After a visit to his native place, he went to Herát, where he remained for some time, and thence he set out on a pilgrimage to the shrine at Mashad. But on his way he was attacked by a band of Kuzzaks in the desert, who robbed him of everything, including the precious manuscript of his Mahfil-árá. Returning[xxiv] to Ispahán, it may be presumed, though he does not specify “the place of security,” he re-wrote from memory his collection of tales, dividing the work into an introduction, five bábs, and a khátimah. The work is formed on the plan of the Gulistán, or Rose-Garden, of the illustrious Persian poet Sa’dí, each section being devoted to the exemplification of a special subject or theme. The introduction comprises dissertations

(1) On the necessity of Politeness;

(2) On the behaviour of a householder, so as to obtain for himself happiness in this world and the next;

(3) On the Education of Children;

(4) On the advantages of following a Trade or Profession;

(5) On Hospitality;

(6) On gratitude for the benefits received from God.

Then follow Five Chapters:

I—On Civility, Humility, and Modesty, the virtues on which amicable intercourse with all conditions of men is based.

II—On Good Manners and abstention from injuring others by word or deed.

III—On Equanimity in Prosperity and Adversity, and Resignation to the will of God in all things.

IV—On Friendship, or Association: the choice of a suitable Companion, and the rejection of an uncongenial or base one.

V—On the Advantages of Contentment and the Meanness of Envy and Covetousness.

Conclusion: Story of Ra’ná and Zíbá.

The Persian text of this large collection of Tales was printed at Bombay in 1852. There are two MS.[xxv] copies in the British Museum, one of which is described by Dr. Rieu as being embellished with two ’unváns, or ornamental head-pieces, gold-ruled margins, and 55 miniatures in the Persian style.

In 1870 Mr. Edward Rehatsek published, at Bombay, a translation of the two Tales contained in the third chapter of the Mahbúb ul-Kalúb under the title of Fortune and Misfortune, which are reproduced in the present volume as the History of Nassar (properly Násir) and the History of Farrukhrúz, the Tales being quite distinct from each other.

I—In the History of Nassar, son of the Merchant of Baghdád, the motif is that Fate, or Destiny, is paramount in all human affairs, and so long as Fortune frowns all the efforts of men to better their condition are utterly futile: an essentially Asiatic notion, and quite foreign to the sentiments of the more manly and self-relying Western races. It must be allowed, however, that there seems to be a mysterious factor in human life which we call “luck,” against which it were vain to struggle;—only it is seldom to be recognised until it has worked out its purpose! How, for example, are we to account for a soldier escaping uninjured after taking an active part in many battles, while his comrade by his side is shot dead at the first fire of the enemy? There are certainly lucky and unlucky men who have done little or nothing to bring about their own good or ill fortune.[xxvi] “Fate,” says Defoe, “makes footballs of men: kicks some upstairs and some down. Some are advanced without honour, and others are suppressed without infamy. Some are raised without merit; some

are crushed without crime. And no man knows, by the beginning of things, whether his course will end in a peerage or a pillory.” And a Persian poet chants in melancholy strain:

But the Bard of Rydal Mount—the Christian Philosopher, whose grand poetry is out of vogue in these “double-distilled” days—tells us that

And it may be safely asserted that no great things were ever done by any man whose actions were controlled by a belief in mere “luck.” The great American poet lustily sings:

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The Sinhalese have a number of proverbs about “luck” which might very suitably serve as mottoes for the Tale of Násir and the subordinate stories of Mansúr and of Shoayb; for instance, they say: “It hails whenever an unlucky man goes abroad”; and again: “Even if the unlucky man have a gold coin in his purse, he is sure to be accused of having stolen it.” In the tale of Prince Kasharkasha, when the ruined merchant comes to the young king whom he had formerly befriended, he is dismissed with a small sum of money, the king fearing lest his old friend’s ill-luck should also affect him: an idea which is constantly cropping up in Asiatic stories; though, by the way, it does not appear that the worthy merchant had himself any such fear when he so generously relieved the prince from his bitter distress.

It can hardly be said that the “moral” to be drawn from the career of Násir is a very elevating one. The three pieces of wholesome advice bestowed on him by his father’s ancient friend, and enforced with such appropriate stories, did the young traveller little good; for we find him go on blundering out of one scrape into another, until his “lucky star” is once more in the ascendant. And in the case of poor Mansúr, though he does ultimately attain wealth and ease through his own exertions, yet he was in the first instance indebted to sheer luck in discovering a treasure-crock in an old ruin. From one point of view, there is droll humour in some of the incidents in[xxviii] these tales, more especially in Násir’s unlucky exhibitions of his accomplishments before the king; and in the narrative of the misfortunes of poor Shoayb, whom another king strove so persistently to benefit, disregarding the counsel of his prime minister and setting at defiance the evident decree of Fate;—though one cannot help regretting that he should

have been expelled from the country after all he had suffered. Let us believe that ere long his “run of ill-luck” came to an end!

II—The History of Farrukhrúz may be considered as exemplifying the Sinhalese proverb which asserts that “the teeth of the dog that barks at the lucky man will fall out;” for did not all the vile schemes of the envious vazírs, to compass the death of this Favourite of Fortune, turn to his advantage and finally to their own well-merited destruction? True, he was very near losing his good fortune when he parted with the talismanic ring, and, by the art magic of Kashank the ’Ifrít, was changed to an old barber in Damascus; but here again have we not an illustration of another Sinhalese proverb which says that “you cannot even kick away good luck”? In this spirited little romance the interest is well sustained throughout, and the scene in Damascus will, I think, favourably compare with some of the facetious tales in the Arabian Nights. Variants and analogues of the principal incidents are given in the Appendix.

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III—The King and his Four Ministers, which is now for the first time presented in English, has been translated from the Tamil, at my suggestion, by my friend Pandit S. M. Natésa Sástrí, of Madras, who is already known in this country to students of the migrations of popular tales from his Folk-Lore in Southern India, published at Bombay, and his translation of another Tamil romance, Madanakámarájankadai, under the title of Dravidian Nights Entertainments, published at Madras: London agents for both works, Messrs. Trübner & Co. The Tamil title is Alakésa Kathá, or Story of (King) Alakésa, and a short but not quite accurate account of it is given by Dr. H. H. Wilson in his most valuable Descriptive Catalogue of the Oriental MSS. etc. in the Mackenzie Collection, published at Calcutta, 1828, vol. i, p. 220. Dr. Wilson describes the work as “a story of the rájá of Alakapúr and his four ministers, who, being falsely accused of violating the sanctity of the inner apartments, vindicate their innocence and disarm the king’s wrath by narrating a number of