シンドバッドの冒険／アリババと四十人の盗賊 — 作者不詳
You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org . If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title : The Arabian Nights Entertainments Author : Anonymous Illustrator : Milo Winter Release date : November 18, 2006 [eBook #19860] Language : English Other information and formats : www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19860 Credits : Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net *** START OF Page 168. THE WINDERMERE SERIES The Arabian Nights Entertainments WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY MILO WINTER RAND M c NALLY & COMPANY CHICAGO NEW YORK Copyright, 1914, by Rand McNally & Company THE INTRODUCTION The Arabian Nights was introduced to Europe in a French translation by Antoine Galland in 1704, and rapidly attained a unique popularity. There are even accounts of the translator being roused from sleep by bands of young men under his windows in Paris, importuning him to tell them another story. The learned world at first refused to believe that M. Galland had not invented the tales. But he had really discovered an Arabic manuscript from sixteenth-century Egypt, and had consulted Oriental story-tellers. In spite of inaccuracies and loss of color, his twelve volumes long remained classic in France, and formed the basis of our popular translations. A more accurate version, corrected from the Arabic, with a style admirably direct, easy, and simple, was published by Dr. Jonathan Scott in 1811. This is the text of the present edition. The Moslems delight in stories, but are generally ashamed to show a literary interest in fiction. Hence the world's most delightful story book has come to us with but scant indications of its origin. Critical scholarship, however, has been able to reach fairly definite conclusions. The reader will be interested to trace out for himself the similarities in the adventures of the two Persian queens, Schehera-zade, and Esther of Bible story, which M. de Goeje has pointed out as indicating their original identity ( Encyclopædia Britannica , "Thousand and One Nights"). There are two or three references in tenth-century Arabic literature to a Persian collection of tales, called The Thousand Nights , by the fascination of which the lady Schehera-zade kept winning one more day's lease of life. A good many of the tales as we have them contain elements clearly indicating Persian or Hindu origin. But most of the stories, even those with scenes laid in Persia or India, are thoroughly Mohammedan in thought, feeling, situation, and action. The favorite scene is "the glorious city," ninth-century Bagdad, whose caliph, Haroun al Raschid, though a great king, and heir of still mightier men, is known to fame chiefly by the favor of these tales. But the contents (with due regard to the possibility of later insertions), references in other writings, and the dialect show that our Arabian Nights took form in Egypt very soon after the year 1450. The author, doubtless a professional teller of stories, was, like his Schehera-zade, a person of extensive reading and faultless memory, fluent of speech, and ready on occasion to drop into poetry. The coarseness of the Arabic narrative, which does not appear in our translation, is characteristic of Egyptian society under the Mameluke sultans. It would have been tolerated by the subjects of the caliph in old Bagdad no more than by modern Christians. More fascinating stories were never told. Though the oath of an Oriental was of all things the most sacred, and though Schah-riar had "bound himself by a solemn vow to marry a new wife every night, and command her to be strangled in the morning," we well believe that he forswore himself, and granted his bride a stay of execution until he could find out why the ten polite young gentlemen, all blind of the right eye, "having blackened themselves, wept and lamented, beating their heads and breasts, and crying continually, 'This is the fruit of our idleness and curiosity.'" To be sure, when the golden door has been opened, and the black horse has vanished with that vicious switch of his tail, we have a little feeling of having been "sold,"—a feeling which great art never gives. But we are in the best of humor; for were we not warned all along against just this foible of curiosity, and is not the story-teller smiling inscrutably and advising us to be thankful that we at least still have our two good eyes? Beside the story interest, the life and movement of the tales, the spirits that enter and set their own precedents, there is for us the charm of mingling with men so different from ourselves: men adventurous but never strenuous, men of many tribulations but no perplexities. Fantastic, magnificent, extravagant, beautiful, gloriously colored, humorous—was ever book of such infinite contrasts? THE CONTENTS PAGE The Sultan and his Vow 9 The Story of the Merchant and the Genie 23 The Three Calenders, Sons of Kings, and the Five Ladies of Bagdad 36 The Story of the Three Sisters 119 The Story of Aladdin; or, The Wonderful Lamp 155 The History of Ali Baba, and of the Forty Robbers Killed by One Slave 216 The Story of Sindbad the Sailor 246 THE ILLUSTRATIONS The genie immediately returned with a tray bearing dishes of the most delicious viands Frontispiece PAGE He had the gift of understanding the language of beasts 17 He was chained to the spot by the pleasure of beholding three such beauties 40 These ladies vied with each other in their eager solicitude to do me all possible service 88 The gardener, with the rake which he had in his hand, drew the basket to the side of the canal 120 He presently discovered a gold box, about a foot square, which he gave into the princess's hands 144 She drew the poniard, and, holding it in her hand, began a dance 240 Having balanced my cargo