The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 1 | Page 9

avoid only one
subject, parallels of European folklore and fabliaux which, however
interesting, would overswell the bulk of a book whose speciality is
anthropology. The accidents of my life, it may be said without undue
presumption, my long dealings with Arabs and other Mahommedans,
and my familiarity not only with their idiom but with their turn of
thought, and with that racial individuality which baffles description,
have given me certain advantages over the average student, however
deeply he may have studied. These volumes, moreover, afford me a
long sought opportunity of noticing practices and customs which
interest all mankind and which "Society" will not hear mentioned.
Grate, the historian, and Thackeray, the novelist, both lamented that the
bégueulerie of their countrymen condemned them to keep silence
where publicity was required; and that they could not even claim the
partial licence of a Fielding and a Smollett. Hence a score of years ago
I lent my best help to the late Dr. James Hunt in founding the
Anthropological Society, whose presidential chair I first occupied (pp.
2-4 Anthropologia; London, Balliere, vol. i., No. I, 1873). My motive
was to supply travellers with an organ which would rescue their
observations from the outer darkness of manuscript, and print their
curious information on social and sexual matters out of place in the
popular book intended for the Nipptisch and indeed better kept from
public view. But, hardly had we begun when "Respectability," that
whited sepulchre full of all uncleanness, rose up against us. "Propriety"
cried us down with her brazen blatant voice, and the weak kneed
brethren fell away. Yet the organ was much wanted and is wanted still.

All now known barbarous tribes in Inner Africa, America and Australia,
whose instincts have not been overlaid by reason, have a ceremony
which they call "making men." As soon as the boy shows proofs of
puberty, he and his coevals are taken in hand by the mediciner and the
Fetisheer; and, under priestly tuition, they spend months in the "bush,"
enduring hardships and tortures which impress the memory till they
have mastered the "theorick and practick" of social and sexual relations.
Amongst the civilised this fruit of the knowledge tree must be bought at
the price of the bitterest experience, and the consequences of ignorance
are peculiarly cruel. Here, then, I find at last an opportunity of noticing
in explanatory notes many details of the text which would escape the
reader's observation, and I am confident that they will form a repertory
of Eastern knowledge in its esoteric phase. The student who adds the
notes of Lane ("Arabian Society," etc., before quoted) to mine will
know as much of the Moslem East and more than many Europeans who
have spent half their lives in Orient lands. For facility of reference an
index of anthropological notes is appended to each volume.
The reader will kindly bear with the following technical details.
Steinhaeuser and I began and ended our work with the first Bulak
("Bul.") Edition printed at the port of Cairo in A.H. 1251 = A.D. 1835.
But when preparing my MSS. for print I found the text incomplete,
many of the stories being given in epitome and not a few ruthlessly
mutilated with head or feet wanting. Like most Eastern scribes the
Editor could not refrain from "improvements," which only debased the
book; and his sole title to excuse is that the second Bulak Edition (4
vols. A.H. 1279 = A.D. 1863), despite its being "revised and corrected
by Sheik Mahommed Qotch Al- Adewi," is even worse; and the same
may be said of the Cairo Edit. (4 vols. A.H. 1297 = A. D. 1881). The
Calcutta ("Calc.") Edition, with ten lines of Persian preface by the
Editor, Ahmed al-Shirwani (A.D. 1814), was cut short at the end of the
first two hundred Nights, and thus made room for Sir William Hay
Macnaghten's Edition (4 vols. royal 4to) of 1839-42. This ("Mac."), as
by far the least corrupt and the most complete, has been assumed for
my basis with occasional reference to the Breslau Edition ("Bres.")
wretchedly edited from a hideous Egyptian MS. by Dr. Maximilian
Habicht (1825-43). The Bayrut Text "Alif-Leila we Leila" (4 vols. at.

8vo, Beirut, 1881-83) is a melancholy specimen of The Nights taken
entirely from the Bulak Edition by one Khalil Sarkis and converted to
Christianity; beginning without Bismillah, continued with scrupulous
castration and ending in ennui and disappointment. I have not used this
missionary production.
As regards the transliteration of Arabic words I deliberately reject the
artful and complicated system, ugly and clumsy withal, affected by
scientific modern Orientalists. Nor is my sympathy with their prime
object, namely to fit the Roman alphabet for supplanting all others.
Those who learn languages, and many do so, by the eye as well