A Group of Eastern Romances and Stories from the Persian, Tamil and Urdu

A Group of Eastern Romances and Stories from the Persian, Tamil and Urdu

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 similarmutatis mutandisamong 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 identicalin 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 Brhmans 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 medival 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 Kath Sarit Sgara (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 Kath (Great Story), of Gunadhya; and Nakhshab states that his Tti Nma (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 bb, or chapter, of a Persian collection of moral tales and anecdotes entitled Mahbb ul-Kalb, or the Delight of Hearts, written by Barkhurdr bin Mahmd Turkman Farh, surnamed Mumtz, 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, Farh, for Marv Shhijn, where he entered the service of the governor, Asln Khn, and two years afterwards he proceeded to Ispahn and became secretary to Hasan Kul Khn Shml: both amrs flourished during the reign of Shh Sultan Husain, A.H. 1105-1135 (A.D. 1693-1722). At Ispahn 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 Hikyt-i Ran Zb. 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 bbs, and a khtimah, or conclusion, and he entitled the work Mahfil-rAdorner of the Assembly. After a visit to his native place, he went to Hert, 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-r. Returning[xxiv] to Ispahn, 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 bbs, and a khtimah. The work is formed on the plan of the Gulistn, or Rose-Garden, of the illustrious Persian poet Sad, each section being devoted to the exemplification of a special subject or theme. The introduction comprises dissertations ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 57468
Author: Clouston, W. A. (William Alexander)
Release Date: Jul 8, 2018
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Translator: Rehatsek, Edward, 1819-1891