Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights — Volume 6 (of 6)
General
Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights — Volume 6 (of 6)
Fairy tales; Tales -- Arab countries
Again, in Lane's text the tales number 62 (viz. 35 + 14 + 13), and as has been
stated, all the longest have been omitted, save only Sindbad the Seaman. The
anecdotes in the notes amount to 44 1/2 (viz. 3 1/2 + 35 + 6): these are for
the most pert the merest outlines and include the 3 1/2 of volume i. viz. the
Tale of Ibrahim al-Mausilí (pp. 223-24), the Tale of Caliph Mu'áwiyah (i. pp.
521-22), the Tale of Mukhárik the Musician (i. pp. 224- 26), and the half tale
of Umm 'Amr (i. p. 522). They are quoted bodily from the "Halbat al- Kumayt"
and from the "Kitáb al-Unwán fí Makáid al-Niswán," showing that at the early
stage of his labours the translator, who published in parts, had not read the
book on which he was working; or, at least, had not learned that all the three
and a half had been borrowed from The Nights. Thus the grand total is
represented by 106 1/2 tales, and the reader will note the difference between
106 1/2 and the diligent and accurate reviewer's "not much more than two
hundred." In my version the primary tales amount to 171; the secondaries, &c.,
to 96 and the total to 267, while Mr. Payne has 266.[FN#449] And these the
critic swells to "over four hundred!" Thus I have more than double the number
of pages in Lane's text (allowing the difference between his 38 lines to an
oft-broken page and my 41) and nearly two and a half tales to his one, and
therefore I do not mean "a third as much again."
Thus, too, we can deal with the dishonest assertions concerning Lane's
translation "not being absolutely complete" (p. 171) and that "nobody desired
to see the objectionable passages which constituted the bulk of Lane's
omissions restored to their place in the text" (p. 175).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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