The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume X Part 68

[FN#332] I have elsewhere noted its strict conservatism which, however, it shares with all Eastern faiths in the East. But progress, not quietism, is the principle which governs humanity and it is favoured by events of most different nature. In Egypt the rule of Mohammed Ali the Great and in Syria the Ma.s.sacre of Damascus (1860) have greatly modified the const.i.tution of Al- Islam throughout the nearer East.

[FN#333] Chapt. viii. "Narrative of a Year's Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia;" London, Macmillan, 1865.

[FN#334] The Soc. Jesu has, I believe, a traditional conviction that converts of Israelitic blood bring only misfortune to the Order.

[FN#335] I especially allude to an able but most superficial book, the "Ten Great Religions" by James F. Clarke (Boston, Osgood, 1876), which caricatures and exaggerates the false portraiture of Mr. Palgrave. The writer's admission that, "Something is always gained by learning what the believers in a system have to say in its behalf," clearly shows us the man we have to deal with and the "depths of his self-consciousness."

[FN#336] But how could the Arabist write such hideous grammar as "La Il h illa All h" for "La ilaha (accus.) ill' Allah"?

[FN#337] p. 996 "Muhammad" in vol. iii. Dictionary of Christian Biography. See also the Ill.u.s.tration of the Mohammedan Creed, etc., from Al-Ghazali introduced (pp. 72-77) into Bell and Sons'

"History of the Saracens" by Simon Ockley, B.D. (London, 1878). I regret some Orientalist did not correct the proofs: everybody will not detect "Al-Lauh al-Mahfuz" (the Guarded Tablet) in "Allauh ho'hnehphoud" (p. 171); and this but a pinch out of a camel-load.

[FN#338] The word should have been Arianism. This "heresy" of the early Christians was much aided by the "Discipline of the Secret," supposed to be of apostolic origin, which concealed from neophytes, catechumens and penitents all the higher mysteries, like the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Metastoicheiosis (transubstantiation), the Real Presence, the Eucharist and the Seven Sacraments; when Arn.o.bius could ask, Quid Deo c.u.m vino est?

and when Justin, fearing the charge of Polytheism, could expressly declare the inferior nature of the Son to the Father.

Hence the creed was appropriately called Symbol i.e., Sign of the Secret. This "mental reservation" lasted till the Edict of Toleration, issued by Constantine in the fourth century, held Christianity secure when divulging her "mysteries"; and it allowed Arianism to become the popular creed.

[FN#339] The Gnostics played rather a fantastic role in Christianity with their Demiurge, their aeonogony, their aeons by syzygies or couples, their Maio and Sabscho and their beatified bride of Jesus, Sophia Achamoth, and some of them descended to absolute absurdities, e.g., the Tascodrugitae and the Pattalorhinchitae who during prayers placed their fingers upon their noses or in their mouths, &c., reading Psalm cxli. 3.

[FN#340] "Kitab al-'Unwan fi Makaid al-Niswan" = The Book of the Beginnings on the Wiles of Womankind (Lane i. 38).

[FN#341] This person was one of the Amsal or Exampla of the Arabs. For her first thirty years she wh.o.r.ed; during the next three decades she pimped for friend and foe, and, during the last third of her life, when bed-ridden by age and infirmities, she had a buckgoat and a nanny tied up in her room and solaced herself by contemplating their amorous conflicts.

[FN#342] And modern Moslem feeling upon the subject has apparently undergone a change. Ashraf Khan, the Afghan poet, sings,

Since I, the parted one, have come the secrets of the world to ken, Women in hosts therein I find, but few (and very few) of men.

And the Osmanli proverb is, "Of ten men nine are women!"

[FN#343] His Persian paper "On the Vindication of the Liberties of the Asiatic Women" was translated and printed in the Asiatic Annual Register for 1801 (pp. 100-107); it is quoted by Dr. Jon.

Scott (Introd. vol. i. p. x.x.xiv. et seq.) and by a host of writers. He also wrote a book of Travels translated by Prof.

Charles Stewart in 1810 and re-issued (3 vols. 8vo.) in 1814.

[FN#344] The beginning of which I date from the Hijrah, lit.= the separation, popularly "The Flight." Stating the case broadly, it has become the practice of modern writers to look upon Mohammed as an honest enthusiast at Meccah and an unscrupulous despot at Al- Medinah, a view which appears to me eminently unsound and unfair. In a private station the Meccan Prophet was famed as a good citizen, teste his t.i.tle Al-Amin =The Trusty. But when driven from his home by the pagan faction, he became de facto as de jure a king: nay, a royal pontiff; and the preacher was merged in the Conqueror of his foes and the Commander of the Faithful.

His rule, like that of all Eastern rulers, was stained with blood; but, a.s.suming as true all the crimes and cruelties with which Christians charge him and which Moslems confess, they were mere blots upon a glorious and enthusiastic life, ending in a most exemplary death, compared with the tissue of horrors and havock which the Law and the Prophets attribute to Moses, to Joshua, to Samuel and to the patriarchs and prophets by express command of Jehovah.

[FN#345] It was not, however, incestuous: the scandal came from its ignoring the Arab "pundonor."

[FN#346] The "opportunism" of Mohammed has been made a matter of obloquy by many who have not reflected and discovered that time-serving is the very essence of "Revelation." Says the Rev.

W. Smith ("Pentateuch," chaps. xiii.), "As the journey (Exodus) proceeds, so laws originate from the accidents of the way," and he applies this to successive decrees (Numbers xxvi. 32-36; xxvii. 8-11 and x.x.xvi. 1-9), holding it indirect internal evidence of Mosaic authorship (?). Another tone, however, is used in the case of Al-Islam. "And now, that he might not stand in awe of his wives any longer, down comes a revelation," says Ockley in his bluff and homely style, which admits such phrases as, "the imposter has the impudence to say." But why, in common honesty, refuse to the Koran the concessions freely made to the Torah? It is a mere pet.i.tio principii to argue that the latter is "inspired" while the former is not, moreover, although we may be called upon to believe things beyond Reason, it is hardly fair to require our belief in things contrary to Reason.

[FN#347] This is noticed in my wife's volume on The Inner Life of Syria, chaps. xii. vol. i. 155.

[FN#348] Mirza preceding the name means Mister and following it Prince. Addison's "Vision of Mirza" (Spectator, No. 159) is therefore "The Vision of Mister."

[FN#349] And women. The course of instruction lasts from a few days to a year and the period of p.u.b.erty is feted by magical rites and often by some form of mutilation. It is described by Waitz, Reclus and Schoolcraft, Pachue-Loecksa, Collins, Dawson, Thomas, Brough Smyth, Reverends Bulmer and Taplin, Carlo Wilhelmi, Wood, A. W. Howitt, C. Z. Muhas (Mem. de la Soc.

Anthrop. Allemande, 1882, p. 265) and by Professor Mantegazza (chaps. i.) for whom see infra.

[FN#350] Similarly certain Australian tribes act scenes of rape and pederasty saying to the young, If you do this you will be killed.

[FN#351] "Bah," is the popular term for the amatory appet.i.te: hence such works are called Kutub al-Bah, lit. = Books of l.u.s.t.

[FN#352] I can make nothing of this t.i.tle nor can those whom I have consulted: my only explanation is that they may be fanciful names proper.

[FN#353] Amongst the Greeks we find erotic specialists (1) Aristides of the Libri Milesii; (2) Astyana.s.sa, the follower of Helen who wrote on androgvnisation; (3) Cyrene, the artist of amatory Tabellae or ex-votos offered to Priapus; (4) Elephantis, the poetess who wrote on Varia concubitus genera; (5) Evemerus, whose Sacra Historia, preserved in a fragment of Q. Eunius, was collected by Hieronymus Columnar (6) Hemitheon of the Sybaritic books, (7) Musaeus, the Iyrist; (8) Niko, the Samian girl; (9) Philaenis, the poetess of Amatory Pleasures, in Athen. viii. 13, attributed to Polycrates the Sophist; (10) Protagorides, Amatory Conversations; (11) Sotades, the Mantinaean who, says Suidas, wrote the poem "Cinaedica"; (12) Sphodrias the Cynic, his Art of Love; and (13) Trepsicles, Amatory Pleasures. Amongst the Romans we have Aedituus, Annia.n.u.s (in Ausonius), Anser, Ba.s.sus Eubius, Helvius Cinna, Laevius (of Io and the Erotopaegnion), Memmius, Cicero (to Cerellia), Pliny the Younger, Sabellus (de modo coeundi); Sisenna, the pathic Poet and translator of Milesian Fables and Sulpitia, the modest erotist. For these see the Dictionnaire erotique of Blondeau pp. ix. and x. (Paris, Liseux, 1885).

[FN#354] It has been translated from the Sanskrit and annotated by A.F.F. and B.F.R. Reprint Cosmopoli: mdccclx.x.xv.: for the Kama Shastra Society, London and Benares, and for private circulation only. The first print has been exhausted and a reprint will presently appear.

[FN#355] The local press has often proposed to abate this nuisance of erotic publication which is most debasing to public morals already perverted enough. But the "Empire of Opinion"

cares very little for such matters and, in the matter of the "native press," generally seems to seek only a quiet life. In England if erotic literature were not forbidden by law, few would care to sell or to buy it, and only the legal pains and penalties keep up the phenomenally high prices.

[FN#356] The Spectator (No. 119) complains of an "infamous piece of good breeding," because "men of the town, and particularly those who have been polished in France, make use of the most coa.r.s.e and uncivilised words in our language and utter themselves often in such a manner as a clown would blush to hear."

[FN#357] See the Novelle of Bandello the Bishop (Tome 1, Paris, Liseux, 1879, small in 18) where the dying fisherman replies to his confessor, "Oh! Oh! your reverence, to amuse myself with boys was natural to me as for a man to eat and drink; yet you asked me if I sinned against nature!" Amongst the wiser ancients sinning contra naturam was not marrying and begetting children.

[FN#358] Avis au Lecteur "L'Amour dans l'Humanite," par P.

Mantegazza, traduit par Emilien Chesneau, Paris, Fetscherin et Chuit, 1886.

[FN#359] See "H. B." (Henry Beyle, French Consul at Civita Vecchia) par un des Quarante H. B." (Prosper Merimee), Elutheropolis, An mdccclxiv. De l'Imposture du Nazareen.

[FN#360] This detail especially excited the veteran's curiosity.

The reason proved to be that the s.c.r.o.t.u.m of the unmutilated boy could be used as a kind of bridle for directing the movements of the animal. I find nothing of the kind mentioned in the Sotadical literature of Greece and Rome; although the same cause might be expected everywhere to the same effect. But in Mirabeau (Kadhesch) a grand seigneur moderne, when his valet-de-chambre de confiance proposes to provide him with women instead of boys, exclaims, "Des femmes! eh! c'est comme si tu me servais un gigot sans manche." See also infra for "Le poids du tisserand."

[FN#361] See Falconry in the Valley of the Indus, London, John Van Voorst, 1852.

[FN#362] Submitted to Government on Dec. 3', '47, and March 2, '48, they were printed in "Selections from the Records of the Government of India." Bombay. New Series. No. xvii. Part 2, 1855.

These are (1) Notes on the Population of Sind, etc., and (2) Brief Notes on the Modes of Intoxication, etc., written in collaboration with my late friend a.s.sistant-Surgeon John E.

Stocks, whose early death was a sore loss to scientific botany.

[FN#363] Glycon the Courtesan in Athen. xiii. 84 declares that "boys are handsome only when they resemble women," and so the Learned Lady in The Nights (vol. v. 160) declares "Boys are likened to girls because folks say, Yonder boy is like a girl."

For the superior physical beauty of the human male compared with the female, see The Nights, vol. iv. 15; and the boy's voice before it breaks excels that of any diva.

[FN#364] "Mascula," from the priapiscus, the over-development of c.l.i.toris (the veretrum muliebre, in Arabic Abu Tartur, habens cristam), which enabled her to play the man. Sappho (nat. B.C.

612) has been retoillee like Mary Stuart, La Brinvilliers, Marie Antoinette and a host of feminine names which have a savour not of sanct.i.ty. Maximus of Tyre (Dissert. xxiv.) declares that the Eros of Sappho was Socratic and that Gyrinna and Atthis were as Alcibiades and Chermides to Socrates: Ovid who could consult doc.u.ments now lost, takes the same view in the Letter of Sappho to Phaon and in Tristia ii. 265.

Lesbia quid docuit Sappho nisi amare puellas?

Suidas supports Ovid. Longinus eulogises the (a term applied only to carnal love) of the far-famed Ode to Atthis:--

Ille mi par esse Deo videtur * * *

(Heureux! qui pres de toi pour toi seule soupire * * *

Blest as th' immortal G.o.ds is he, etc.)

By its love symptoms, suggesting that possession is the sole cure for pa.s.sion, Erasistratus discovered the love of Antiochus for Stratonice. Mure (Hist. of Greek Literature, 1850) speaks of the Ode to Aphrodite (Frag. 1) as "one in which the whole volume of Greek literature offers the most powerful concentration into one brilliant focus of the modes in which amatory concupiscence can display itself." But Bernhardy, Bode, Richter, K. O. Muller and esp. Welcker have made Sappho a model of purity, much like some of our dull wits who have converted Shakespeare, that most debauched genius, into a good British bourgeois.

[FN#365] The Arabic Sabhakah, the Tractatrix or Subigitatrix who has been noticed in vol. iv. 134. Hence to Lesbianise ( ) and triba.s.sare ( ); the former applied to the love of woman for woman and the latter to its mecanique: this is either natural, as friction of the l.a.b.i.a and insertion of the c.l.i.toris when unusually developed, or artificial by means of the fascinum, the artificial p.e.n.i.s (the Persian "Mayajang"); the patte de chat, the banana-fruit and a mult.i.tude of other succedanea. As this feminine perversion is only glanced at in The Nights I need hardly enlarge upon the subject.

[FN#366] Plato (Symp.) is probably mystical when he accounts for such pa.s.sions by there being in the beginning three species of humanity, men, women and men-women or androgynes. When the latter were destroyed by Zeus for rebellion, the two others were individually divided into equal parts. Hence each division seeks its other half in the same s.e.x, the primitive man prefers men and the primitive woman women. C'est beau, but--is it true? The idea was probably derived from Egypt which supplied the Hebrews with androgynic humanity, and thence it pa.s.sed to extreme India, where Shiva as Ardhanari was male on one side and female on the other side of the body, combining paternal and maternal qualities and functions. The first creation of humans (Gen. i. 27) was hermaphrodite (=Hermes and Venus), masculum et f?minam creavit eos--male and female created He them--on the sixth day, with the command to increase and multiply (ibid. v. 28), while Eve the woman was created subsequently. Meanwhile, say certain Talmudists, Adam carnally copulated with all races of animals.

See L'Anandryne in Mirabeau's Erotika Biblion, where Antoinette Bourgnon laments the undoubling which disfigured the work of G.o.d, producing monsters incapable of independent self-reproduction like the vegetable kingdom.