Arabian Nights 1001 Nights

The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 01 [Supplement]

To whom with more pleasure or propriety can I inscribe this volume than to my preceptor of past times; my dear old friend, whose deep study and vast experience of such light literature as The Nights made me so often resort to him for good counsel and right direction? Accept this little token of gratitude, and believe me, with the best of wishes and the kindest of memories, After offering my cordial thanks to friends and subscribers who have honoured The Thousand Nights and a Night (Kama Shastra Society) with their patronage and approbation, I would inform them that my Anthropological Notes are by no means exhausted, and that I can produce a complete work only by means of a somewhat extensive Supplement. I therefore propose to print (not publish), for private circulation only, five volumes, bearing title This volume and its successor (Nos. i. and ii.) contain Mr. John Paynes Tales from the Arabic; his three tomes, being included in my two. The stories are taken from the Breslau Edition where they are distributed among the volumes between Nos. iv. and xii., and from the Calcutta fragment of 1814. I can say little for the style of the story-stuff contained in this Breslau text, which has been edited with phenomenal incuriousness. Many parts are hopelessly corrupted, whilst at present we have no means of amending the commissions and of supplying the omissions by comparison with other manuscripts. The Arabic viiiis not only faulty, but dry and jejune, comparing badly with that of the Thousand Nights and a Night, as it appears in the Macnaghten and the abridged Bulak Texts. Sundry of the tales are futile; the majority has little to recommend it, and not a few require a diviner rather than a translator. Yet they are valuable to students as showing the different sources and the heterogeneous materials from and of which the great Saga-book has been compounded. Some are, moreover, striking and novel, especially parts of the series entitled King Shah Bakht and his Wazir Al-Rahwan (pp. 191355). Interesting also is the Tale of the Ten Wazirs (pp. 55155), marking the transition of the Persian Bakhtiyr-Nmeh into Arabic. In this text also and in this only is found Gallands popular tale Abou-Hassan; or, the Sleeper Awakened, which I have entitled The Sleeper and the Waker. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 59156
Author: Burton, Richard Francis
Release Date: Mar 30, 2019
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Translator: Burton, Richard Francis, Sir, 1821-1890