Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers Part 17

The thief who finds no opportunity to steal considers himself an honest man.

Use thy n.o.ble vase to-day, for to-morrow it may perchance be broken.

Descend a step in choosing thy wife; ascend a step in choosing thy friend.

A myrtle even in the dust remains a myrtle.[107]

[107] Saadi has the same sentiment in his _Gulislan_--see _ante_, p. 49.

Every one whose wisdom exceedeth his deeds, to what is he like? To a tree whose branches are many and its roots few; and the wind cometh and plucketh it up, and overturneth it on its face.[108]

[108] See also Saadi's aphorisms on precept and practice, _ante_, p. 47.

If a word spoken in time be worth one piece of money, silence in its place is worth two.[109]

[109] Here we have a variant of Thomas Carlyle's favourite maxim, "Speech is silvern; silence is golden."

Silence is the fence round wisdom.[110]

[110] "Nothing is so good for an ignorant man as silence; and if he were sensible of this he would not be ignorant."--_Saadi_.

A saying ascribed to Esop has been frequently cited with admiration. The sage Chilo asked Esop what G.o.d was doing, and he answered that he was "depressing the proud and exalting the humble." A parallel to this is presented in the answer of Rabbi Jose to a woman who asked him what G.o.d had been doing since the creation: "He makes ladders on which he causes the poor to ascend and the rich to descend," in other words, exalts the lowly and humbles the haughty.

The lucid explanation of the expression, "I, G.o.d, am a jealous G.o.d,"

given by a Rabbi, has been thus elegantly translated by Coleridge:[111]

[111] _The Friend_, ed. 1850, vol. ii, p. 249.

"Your G.o.d," said a heathen philosopher to a Hebrew Rabbi, "in his Book calls himself a jealous G.o.d, who can endure no other G.o.d besides himself, and on all occasions makes manifest his abhorrence of idolatry.

How comes it, then, that he threatens and seems to hate the worshippers of false G.o.ds more than the false G.o.ds themselves?"

"A certain king," said the Rabbi, "had a disobedient son. Among other worthless tricks of various kinds, he had the baseness to give his dogs his father's names and t.i.tles. Should the king show anger with the prince or his dogs?"

"Well-turned," replied the philosopher; but if G.o.d destroyed the objects of idolatry, he would take away the temptation to it."

"Yea," retorted the Rabbi; "if the fools worshipped such things only as were of no farther use than that to which their folly applied them--if the idol were always as worthless as the idolatry is contemptible. But they worship the sun, the moon, the host of heaven, the rivers, the sea, fire, air, and what not. Would you that the Creator, for the sake of those fools, should ruin his own works, and disturb the laws applied to nature by his own wisdom? If a man steal grain and sow it, should the seed not shoot up out of the earth because it was stolen? O no! The wise Creator lets nature run its own course, for its course is his own appointment. And what if the children of folly abuse it to evil? The day of reckoning is not far off, and men will then learn that human actions likewise reappear in their consequences by as certain a law as that which causes the green blade to rise up out of the buried cornfield."

Not less conclusive was the form of ill.u.s.tration employed by Rabbi Joshuah in answer to the emperor Trajan. "You teach," said Trajan, "that your G.o.d is everywhere. I should like to see him." "G.o.d's presence,"

replied the Rabbi, "is indeed everywhere, but he cannot be seen. No mortal can behold his glory." Trajan repeated his demand. "Well," said the Rabbi, "suppose we try, in the first place, to look at one of his amba.s.sadors." The emperor consented, and Joshuah took him into the open air, and desired him to look at the sun in its meridian splendour. "I cannot," said Trajan; "the light dazzles me." "Thou canst not endure the light of one of his creatures," said the Rabbi, "yet dost thou expect to behold the effulgent glory of the Creator!"

Our selections from the sayings of the Hebrew Fathers might be largely extended, but we shall conclude them with the following: A Rabbi, being asked why G.o.d dealt out manna to the Israelites day by day, instead of giving them a supply sufficient for a year, or more, answered by a parable to this effect: There was once a king who gave a certain yearly allowance to his son, whom he saw, in consequence, but once a year, when he came to receive it; so the king changed his plan, and paid him his allowance daily, and thus had the pleasure of seeing his son each day.

And so with the manna: had G.o.d given the people a supply for a year they would have forgotten their divine benefactor, but by sending them each day the requisite quant.i.ty, they had G.o.d constantly in their minds.

There can be no doubt that the Rabbis derived the materials of many of their legends and tales of Biblical characters from foreign sources; but their beautiful moral stories and parables, which "hide a rich truth in a tale's pretence," are probably for the most part of their own invention; and the fact that the Talmud was partially, if not wholly, translated into Arabic shortly after the settlement of the Moors in Spain sufficiently accounts for the early introduction of rabbinical legends into Muhammedan works, apart from those found in the Kuran.

_ADDITIONAL NOTES._

ADAM AND THE OIL OF MERCY.

In the apocryphal Revelation of Moses, which appears to be of Rabbinical extraction, Adam, when near his end, informs his sons; that, because of his transgression, G.o.d had laid upon his body seventy strokes, or plagues. The trouble of the first stroke was injury to the eyes; the trouble of the second stroke, of the hearing; and so on, in succession, all the strokes should overtake him. And Adam, thus speaking to his sons, groaned out loud, and said, "What shall I do? I am in great grief." And Eve also wept, saying: "My lord Adam, arise; give me the half of thy disease, and let me bear it, because through me this has happened to thee; through me thou art in distresses and troubles." And Adam said to Eve: "Arise, and go with our son Seth near Paradise, and put earth upon your heads, and weep, beseeching the Lord that he may have compa.s.sion upon me, and send his angel to Paradise, and give me of the tree out of which flows the oil, that thou mayest bring it unto me; and I shall anoint myself and have rest, and show thee the manner in which we were deceived at first."... And Seth went with his mother Eve near Paradise, and they wept there, beseeching G.o.d to send his angel to give them the Oil of Compa.s.sion. And G.o.d sent to them the archangel Michael, who said to them these words: "Seth, man of G.o.d, do not weary thyself praying in this supplication about the tree from which flows the oil to anoint thy father Adam; for it will not happen to thee now, but at the last times.... Do thou again go to thy father, since the measure of his life is fulfilled, saving three days."

The Revelation, or Apocalypse, of Moses, remarks Mr. Alex. Walker (from whose translation the foregoing is extracted: _Apocryphal Gospels, Acts, and Revelations_, 1870), "belongs rather to the Old Testament than to the New. We have been unable to find in it any reference to any Christian writing. In its form, too, it appears to be a portion of some larger work. Parts of it at least are of an ancient date, as it is very likely from this source that the celebrated legend of the Tree of Life and the Oil of Mercy was derived"--an account of which, from the German of Dr. Piper, is given in the _Journal of Sacred Literature_, October, 1864, vol. vi (N.S.), p. 30 ff.

MUSLIM LEGEND OF ADAM'S PUNISHMENT, PARDON, DEATH, AND BURIAL.

When "our first parents" were expelled from Paradise, Adam fell upon the mountain in Ceylon which still retains his name ("Adam's Peak"), while Eve descended at Juddah, which is the port of Mecca, in Arabia. Seated on the pinnacle of the highest mountain in Ceylon, with the orisons of the angelic choirs still vibrating in his ears, the fallen progenitor of the human race had sufficient leisure to bewail his guilt, forbearing all food and sustenance for the s.p.a.ce of forty days.[112] But Allah, whose mercy ever surpa.s.ses his indignation, and who sought not the death of the wretched penitent, then despatched to his relief the angel Gabriel, who presented him with a quant.i.ty of wheat, taken from that fatal tree[113] for which he had defied the wrath of his Creator, with the information that it was to be for food to him and to his children.

At the same time he was directed to set it in the earth, and afterwards to grind it into flour. Adam obeyed, for it was part of his penalty that he should toil for sustenance; and the same day the corn sprang up and arrived at maturity, thus affording him an immediate resource against the evils of hunger and famine. For the benevolent archangel did not quit him until he had farther taught him how to construct a mill on the side of the mountain, to grind his corn, and also how to convert the flour into dough and bake it into bread.

[112] The number Forty occurs very frequently in the Bible (especially the Old Testament) in connection with important events, and also in Asiatic tales. It is, in fact, regarded with peculiar veneration alike by Jews and Muhammedans. See notes to my _Group of Eastern Romances and Stories_ (1889), pp. 140 and 456.

[113] The "fruit of the forbidden tree" was not an apple, as we Westerns fondly believe, but _wheat_, say the Muslim doctors.

With regard to the forlorn a.s.sociate of his guilt, from whom a long and painful separation const.i.tuted another article in the punishment of his disobedience, it is briefly related that, experiencing also for the first time the craving of hunger, she instinctively dipped her hand into the sea and brought out a fish, and laying it on a rock in the sun, thus prepared her first meal in this her state of despair and dest.i.tution.

Adam continued to deplore his guilt on the mountain for a period of one hundred years, and it is said that from his tears, with which he moistened the earth during this interval of remorse, there grew up that useful variety of plants and herbs which in after times by their medicinal qualities served to alleviate the afflictions of the human race; and to this circ.u.mstance is to be ascribed the fact that the most useful drugs in the _materia medica_ continue to this day to be supplied from the peninsula of India and the adjoining islands. The angel Gabriel had now tamed the wild ox of the field, and Allah himself had discovered to Adam in the caverns of the same mountain that most important of minerals, iron, which he soon learned to fashion into a variety of articles necessary to the successful prosecution of his increasing labours. At the termination of one hundred years, consumed in toil and sorrow, Adam having been instructed by the angel Gabriel in a penitential formula by which he might hope yet to conciliate Allah, the justice of Heaven was satisfied, and his repentance was finally accepted by the Most High. The joy of Adam was now as intense as his previous sorrow had been extreme, and another century pa.s.sed, during which the tears with which Adam--from very different emotions--now bedewed the earth were not less effectual in producing every species of fragrant and aromatic flower and shrub, to delight the eye and gratify the sense of smell by their odours, than they were formerly in the generation of medicinal plants to a.s.suage the sufferings of humanity.

Tradition has ascribed to Adam a stature so stupendous that when he stood or walked his forehead brushed the skies; and it is stated that he thus partook in the converse of the angels, even after his fall. But this, by perpetually holding to his view the happiness which he had lost, instead of alleviating, contributed in a great degree to aggravate his misery, and to deprive him of all repose upon earth. Allah, therefore, in pity of his sufferings, shortened his stature to one hundred cubits, so that the harmony of the celestial hosts should no longer reach his ear.

Then Allah caused to be raised up for Adam a magnificent pavilion, or temple, constructed entirely of rubies, on the spot which is now occupied by the sacred Kaaba at Mecca, and which is in the centre of the earth and immediately beneath the throne of Allah. The forlorn Eve--whom Adam had almost forgotten amidst his own sorrows--in the course of her weary wanderings came to the palace of her spouse, and, once more united, they returned to Ceylon. But Adam revisited the sacred pavilion at Mecca every year until his death. And wherever he set his foot there arose, and exists to this day, some city, town, or village, or other place to indicate the presence of man and of human cultivation. The s.p.a.ces between his footsteps--three days' journey--long remained barren wilderness.

On the twentieth day of that disorder which terminated the earthly existence of Adam, the divine will was revealed to him through the angel Gabriel, that he was to make an immediate bequest of his power as Allah's vicegerent on earth to Shayth, or Seth, the discreetest and most virtuous of all his sons, which having done, he resigned his soul to the Angel of Death on the following day. Seth buried his venerable parent on the summit of the mountain in Ceylon ("Adam's Peak"); but some writers a.s.sert that he was buried under Mount Abu Kebyss, about three miles from Mecca. Eve died a twelvemonth after her husband, and was buried in his grave. Noah conveyed their remains in the ark, and afterwards interred them in Jerusalem, at the spot afterwards known as Mount Calvary.

The foregoing is considerably abridged from _An Essay towards the History of Arabia, antecedent to the Birth of Mahommed, arranged from the 'Tarikh Tebry' and other authentic sources_, by Major David Price, London, 1824, pp. 4, 11.--We miss in this curious legend the brief but pathetic account of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, as found in the last two verses of the 3rd chapter of Genesis, which suggested to Milton the fine conclusion of his _Paradise Lost_: how "some natural tears they dropped," as the unhappy pair went arm-in-arm out of Paradise--and "the world was all before them, where to choose." Adam's prolonged residence at the top of a high mountain in Ceylon seems to be of purely Muhammedan invention; and a.s.suredly the Arabian Prophet did not obtain from the renegade Jew who is said to have a.s.sisted him in the composition of the Kuran the "information" that Allah taught Adam the mystery of working in iron, since in the Book of Genesis (iv, 22) it is stated that Tubal-cain was "an instructor of every artificer in bra.s.s and iron," as his brother Jubal was "the father of all such as handle the harp and the organ" (21).--The disinterment of the bones of Adam and Eve by Noah before the Flood began and their subsequent burial at the spot on which Jerusalem was afterwards built, as also the stature of Adam, are, of course, derived from Jewish tradition.

MOSES AND THE POOR WOODCUTTER.

The following interesting legend is taken from Mrs. Meer Ha.s.san Ali's _Observations on the Mussulmans of India_ (1832), vol. i, pp. 170-175.

It was translated by her husband (an Indian Muslim) from a commentary on the history of Musa, or Moses, the great Hebrew lawgiver, and in all probability is of rabbinical origin:

When the prophet Musa--to whose spirit be peace!--was on earth, there lived near him a poor but remarkably religious man, who had for many years supported himself and his wife by the daily occupation of cutting wood for his richer neighbours, four small copper coins being the reward of his toil, which at best afforded the poor couple but a scanty meal after his day's exertions. One morning the Prophet Musa, pa.s.sing the woodcutter, was thus addressed: "O Musa! Prophet of the Most High!

behold I labour each day for my coa.r.s.e and scanty meal. May it please thee, O Prophet! to make pet.i.tion for me to our gracious G.o.d, that he may, in his mercy, grant me at once the whole supply for my remaining years, so that I shall enjoy one day of earthly happiness, and then, with my wife, be transferred to the place of eternal rest." Musa promised, and made the required pet.i.tion. His prayer was thus answered from Mount Tor: "This man's life is long, O Musa! Nevertheless, if he be willing to surrender life when his supply is exhausted, tell him thy prayer is heard, the pet.i.tion accepted, and the whole amount shall be found beneath his prayer-carpet after his morning prayers."