Shorter Novels, Eighteenth Century Part 43

PAGE 267. _... compensate for thy impieties by an exemplary life_

It is an established article of the Mussulman creed, that the actions of mankind are all weighed in a vast unerring balance, and the future condition of the agents determined according to the preponderance of evil or good. This fiction, which seems to have been borrowed from the Jews, had probably its origin in the figurative language of Scripture.

Thus, Psalm lxii, 9: "Surely men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie: to be laid in the balance, they are altogether lighter than vanity"; and in Daniel, the sentence against the King of Babylon, inscribed on the wall, "Thou art weighed in the balance, and found wanting."

PAGE 268. _Balkis_

This was the Arabian name of the Queen of Sheba, who went from the south to hear the wisdom and admire the glory of Solomon. The Koran represents her as a worshipper of fire. Solomon is said not only to have entertained her with the greatest magnificence, but also to have raised her to his bed and his throne.--_Al Koran_, ch. xxvii, and SALE'S notes.

D'HERBELOT, p. 182.

PAGE 270. _The pavement, strewed over with saffron_

There are several circ.u.mstances in the Story of the Third Calender, that resemble those here mentioned; particularly a pavement strewed with saffron, and the burning of ambergris and aloes-wood.

PAGE 271. _Ouranbad_

This monster is represented as a fierce-flying hydra, and belongs to the same cla.s.s with the _rakshe_, whose ordinary food was serpents and dragons; the _soham_, which had the head of a horse, with four eyes, and the body of a flame-coloured dragon; the _syl_, a basilisk with a face resembling the human, but so tremendous that no mortal could bear to behold it; the _ejder_, and others. See these respective t.i.tles in RICHARDSON'S _Persian, Arabic, and English Dictionary_.

PAGE 272. _Creatures of clay_

Nothing could have been more appositely imagined than this compellation.

Eblis, according to Arabian mythology, had suffered a degradation from his primeval rank, and was consigned to these regions, for having refused to worship Adam in obedience to the supreme command; alleging, in justification of his refusal, that himself had been formed of ethereal fire, whilst Adam was only a creature of clay.--_Al Koran_, c.

lv, etc.

PAGE 272. _... the fortress of Aherman_

In the mythology of the Easterns, Aherman was accounted _the Demon of Discord_. The ancient Persian romances abound in descriptions of this fortress, in which the inferior demons a.s.semble, to receive the behests of their prince; and from whom they proceed to exercise their malice in every part of the world.--D'HERBELOT, p. 71.

PAGE 272. _... the halls of Argenk_

The halls of this mighty dive, who reigned in the mountains of Kaf, contained the statues of the seventy-two Solimans, and the portraits of the various creatures subject to them; not one of which bore the slightest similitude to man. Some had many heads, others many arms, and some consisted of many bodies. Their heads were all very extraordinary, some resembling the elephant's, the buffalo's, and the boar's; whilst others were still more monstrous.--D'HERBELOT, p. 820. Some of the idols worshipped to this day in Hindostan answer to this description.

PAGE 272. _... holding his right hand, motionless, on his heart_

Sandys observes that the application of the right hand to the heart is the customary mode of Eastern salutation; but the perseverance of the votaries of Eblis in this att.i.tude was intended to express their devotion to him both heart and hand.

PAGE 273. _In my lifetime I filled, etc._

This recital agrees perfectly with those in the Koran, and other Arabian legends.

PAGE 274. _... an unrelenting fire preys on my heart_

Hariri, to convey the most forcible idea of extreme anxiety, represents the heart as tormented by fierce burning coals. This form of speech, it is observed, is _proverbial_; but do we not see whence the proverb arose?--CHAPPELOW'S _Six a.s.semblies_, p. 106.

PAGE 275. _Carathis on the back of an afrit_

The expedition of the afrit in fetching Carathis is characteristic of this order of dives. We read in the Koran that another of the fraternity offered to bring the Queen of Sheba's throne to Solomon before he could rise from his place.--Ch. xxvii.

PAGE 277. _... glanced off in a rapid whirl that rendered her invisible_

It was not ill conceived to punish Carathis by a rite, and one of the princ.i.p.al characteristics of that science in which she so much delighted, and which was the primary cause of Vathek's perdition and of her own. The circle, the emblem of eternity, and the symbol of the sun, was held sacred in the most ancient ceremonies of incantations; and the whirling round deemed as a necessary operation in magical mysteries. Was not the name of the greatest enchantress in fabulous antiquity, Circe, derived from ??????, a circle, on account of her magical revolutions, and of the circular appearance and motion of the sun, her father? The fairies and elves used to arrange themselves in a ring on the gra.s.s; and even the augur, in the liturgy of the Romans, whirled round to encompa.s.s the four cardinal points of the world. It is remarkable, that a derivative of the verb, rendered, _to whirl in a magical manner_ (see page 257), which corresponds to the Hebrew ???, and is interpreted _scindere, secare se in orbem, inde notio circinandi, mox gyrandi, et hinc a motu versatili, fascinavit, incantavit_, signifies in the Koran _the glimmering of twilight_: a sense deducible from the shapeless glimpses of objects when hurried round with the velocity here described, and very applicable to the sudden disappearance of Carathis, who, like the stone in a sling, by the progressive and rapid increase of the circular motion, soon ceased to be perceptible. Nothing can impress a greater awe upon the mind than does this pa.s.sage in the original.