The first and second are from Eccles. chapts. vii. 1, and ix. 4. The Bul. Edit. reads for the third, “The grave is better than the palace.” None are from Solomon, but Easterns do not “verify quotations.”
7
1
Lane (vol. iii. 1) calls our old friend “Es-Sindibád of the Sea,” and Benfey derives the name from the Sanskrit “Siddhapati” = lord of sages. The etymology (in Heb. Sandabar and in Greek Syntipas) is still uncertain, although the term often occurs in Arab stories; and some look upon it as a mere corruption of “Bidpai” (Bidyápati). The derivation offered by Hole (Remarks on the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, by Richard Hole, LL.D. London, Cadell, 1797) from the Persian ábád (a region) is impossible. It is, however, not a little curious that this purely Persian word (= a “habitation”) should be found in Indian names as early as Alexander’s day, e.g. the “Dachina bades” of the Periplus is “Dakhshin-ábád,” the Sanskr. being “Dakshinapatha.”
2
A porter like the famous Armenians of Constantinople. Some edits call him “Al-Hindibád.”
3
Arab. “Karawán” (Charadrius œdicnemus, Linn.): its shrill note is admired by Egyptians and hated by sportsmen.
4
This ejaculation, still popular, averts the evil eye. In describing Sindbad the Seaman the Arab writer seems to repeat what one reads of Marco Polo returned to Venice.
5
Our old friend must not be confounded with the eponym of the “Sindibád-námah;” the Persian book of Sindbad the Sage. See Night dlxxviii.
6
The first and second are from Eccles. chapts. vii. 1, and ix. 4. The Bul. Edit. reads for the third, “The grave is better than the palace.” None are from Solomon, but Easterns do not “verify quotations.”
7
Arab. “Kánún”; a furnace, a brasier before noticed (vol. v., p. ); here a pot full of charcoal sunk in the ground, or a little hearth of clay shaped like a horse-shoe and opening down wind.
8
These fish-islands are common in the Classics, e.g. the Pristis of Pliny (xvii. 4), which Olaus Magnus transfers to the Baltic (xxi. 6) and makes timid as the whales of Nearchus. C. J. Solinus (Plinii Simia) says, “Indica maria balænas habent ultra spatia quatuor jugerum.” See also Bochart’s Hierozoicon (i. 50) for Job’s Leviathan (xli. 16–17). Hence Boiardo (Orl. Innam, lib. iv.) borrowed his magical whale and Milton (P.L. i.) his Leviathan deemed an island. A basking whale would readily suggest the Kraken and Cetus of Olaus Magnus (xxi. 25). Al-Kazwíni’s famous treatise on the “Wonders of the World” (Ajáib al-Makhlúkát) tells the same tale of the “Sulahfah” tortoise, the colossochelys, for which see Night dl.
9
Sindbad does not say that he was a shipwrecked man, being a model in the matter of “travellers’ tales,” i.e. he always tells the truth when an untruth would not serve him.
10
Lane (iii. 83) would make this a corruption of the Hindu “Maharáj” = great Rajah: but it is the name of the great autumnal fête of the Guebres; a term composed of two good old Persian words “Mihr” (the sun, whence “Mithras”) and “ján” = life. As will presently appear, in the days of the Just King Anushirwán, the Persians possessed Southern Arabia and East Africa south of Cape Guardafui (Jird Háfún.) On the other hand, supposing the word to be a corruption of Maharaj, Sindbad may allude to the famous Narsinga kingdom in Mid-south India whose capital was Vijayanagar; or to any great Indian Rajah even he of Kachch (Cutch), famous in Moslem story as the Balhará (Ballaba Rais, who founded the Ballabhi era; or the Zamorin of Camoens, the Samdry Rajah of Malabar). For Mahrage, or Mihrage, see Renaudot’s “Two Mohammedan Travellers of the Ninth Century.” In the account of Ceylon by Wolf (English Transl. p. 168) it adjoins the “Ilhas de Cavalos” (of wild horses) to which the Dutch merchants sent their brood-mares. Sir W. Jones (Description of Asia, chapt. ii.) makes the Arabian island Soborma or Mahráj = Borneo.
11
Arab. “Sáis”; the well-known Anglo-Indian word for a groom or rather a “horsekeeper.”
