The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 06 (of 10)
General
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 06 (of 10)
Fairy tales; Tales -- Arab countries
[FN#14] The second or warrior caste (Kshatriya), popularly supposed to
have been annihilated by Battle-axe Ramá (Parashu Ráma); but several
tribes of Rajputs and other races claim the honourable genealogy.
Colonel Watson would explain the word by “Shakháyát” or noble Káthis
(Kathiawar-men), or by “Shikári,” the professional hunter here acting
as stable-groom.
[FN#15] In Bul. Edit. “Kábil.” Lane (iii. 88) supposes it to be the
“Bartail” of Al-Kazwini near Borneo and quotes the Spaniard B. L. de
Argensola (History of the Moluccas), who places near Banda a desert
island, Poelsatton, infamous for cries, whistlings, roarings and
dreadful apparitions, suggesting that it was peopled by devils
(Stevens, vol. i., p. 168).
[FN#16] Some texts substitute for this last phrase, “And the sailors
say that Al-Dajjál is there.” He is a manner of Moslem Antichrist, the
Man of Sin per excellentiam, who will come in the latter days and lay
waste the earth, leading 70,000 Jews, till encountered and slain by
Jesus at the gate of Lud. (Sale’s Essay, sect. 4.)
[FN#17] Also from Al-Kazwini: it is an exaggerated description of the
whale still common off the East African Coast. My crew was dreadfully
frightened by one between Berberah and Aden. Nearchus scared away the
whales in the Persian Gulf by trumpets (Strabo, lib. xv.). The
owl-faced fish is unknown to me: it may perhaps be a seal or a manatee.
Hole says that Father Martini, the Jesuit (seventeenth century), placed
in the Canton Seas, an “animal with the head of a bird and the tail of
a fish,”—a parrot-beak?
[FN#18] The captain or master (not owner) of a ship.
[FN#19] The kindly Moslem feeling, shown to a namesake, however humble.
[FN#20] A popular phrase to express utter desolation.
[FN#21] The literature of all peoples contains this physiological
perversion. Birds do not sing hymns; the song of the male is simply to
call the female and when the pairing-season ends all are dumb.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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