Merchant of Baghdád, the motif is that Fate, or Destiny, is paramount in all human affairs, and so long as Fortune frowns all the efforts of men to better their condition are utterly futile: an essentially Asiatic notion, and quite foreign to the sentiments of the more manly and self-relying Western races. It must be allowed, however, that there seems to be a mysterious factor in human life which we call “luck,” against which it were vain to struggle;—only it is seldom to be recognised until it has worked out its purpose! How, for example, are we to account for a soldier escaping uninjured after taking an active part in many battles, while his comrade by his side is shot dead at the first fire of the enemy? There are certainly lucky and unlucky men who have done little or nothing to bring about their own good or ill fortune. “Fate,” says Defoe, “makes footballs of men: kicks some upstairs and some down. Some are advanced without honour, and others are suppressed without infamy. Some are raised without merit; some are crushed without crime. And no man knows, by the beginning of things, whether his course will end in a peerage or a pillory.” And a Persian poet chants in melancholy strain:
Strive not to grapple with the grasp of Fate;
Canst thou with feebleness success combine?
All vain, ’gainst Destiny thy watchful state;
Go thou, and to its force thyself resign.
But the Bard of Rydal Mount—the Christian Philosopher, whose grand poetry is out of vogue in these “double-distilled” days—tells us that
One adequate support
For the calamities of mortal life
Exists—one only: an assured belief
That the procession of our fate, howe’er
Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being
Of infinite benevolence and power;
Whose everlasting purposes embrace
All accidents, converting them to good.
And it may be safely asserted that no great things were ever done by any man whose actions were controlled by a belief in mere “luck.” The great American poet lustily sings:
Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.
The Sinhalese have a number of proverbs about “luck” which might very suitably serve as mottoes for the Tale of Násir and the subordinate stories of Mansúr and of Shoayb; for instance, they say: “It hails whenever an unlucky man goes abroad”; and again: “Even if the unlucky man have a gold coin in his purse, he is sure to be accused of having stolen it.” In the tale of Prince Kasharkasha, when the ruined merchant comes to the young king whom he had formerly befriended, he is dismissed with a small sum of money, the king fearing lest his old friend’s ill-luck should also affect him: an idea which is constantly cropping up in Asiatic stories; though, by the way, it does not appear that the worthy merchant had himself any such fear when he so generously relieved the prince from his bitter distress.
It can hardly be said that the “moral” to be drawn from the career of Násir is a very elevating one. The three pieces of wholesome advice bestowed on him by his father’s ancient friend, and enforced with such appropriate stories, did the young traveller little good; for we find him go on blundering out of one scrape into another, until his “lucky star” is once more in the ascendant. And in the case of poor Mansúr, though he does ultimately attain wealth and ease through his own exertions, yet he was in the first instance indebted to sheer luck in discovering a treasure-crock in an old ruin. From one point of view, there is droll humour in some of the incidents in these tales, more especially in Násir’s unlucky exhibitions of his accomplishments before the king; and in the narrative of the misfortunes of poor Shoayb, whom another king strove so persistently to benefit, disregarding the counsel of his prime minister and setting at defiance the evident decree of Fate;—though one cannot help regretting that he should have been expelled from the country after all he had suffered. Let us believe that ere long his “run of ill-luck” came to an end!
II—The History of Farrukhrúz may be considered as exemplifying the Sinhalese proverb which asserts that “the teeth of the dog that barks at the lucky man will fall out;” for did not all the vile schemes of the envious vazírs, to compass the death of this Favourite of Fortune, turn to his advantage and finally to their own well-merited destruction? True, he was very near losing his good fortune when he parted with the talismanic ring, and, by the art magic of Kashank the ’Ifrít, was changed to an old barber in Damascus; but here again have we not an illustration of another Sinhalese proverb which says that “you cannot even kick away good luck”? In this spirited little romance the interest is well sustained throughout, and the scene in Damascus will, I think, favourably compare with some of the facetious tales in the Arabian Nights. Variants and analogues of the principal incidents are given in the Appendix.
III—The King and his Four Ministers, which is now for the first time presented in English, has been translated from the Tamil, at my suggestion, by my friend Pandit S. M. Natésa Sástrí, of Madras, who is already known in this country to students of the migrations of popular tales from his Folk-Lore in Southern India, published at Bombay, and his translation of another Tamil romance, Madanakámarájankadai, under the title of Dravidian Nights Entertainments, published at Madras: London agents for both works, Messrs. Trübner & Co. The Tamil title is Alakésa Kathá, or Story of (King) Alakésa, and a short but not quite accurate account of it is given by Dr. H. H. Wilson in his most valuable Descriptive Catalogue of the Oriental MSS. etc. in the Mackenzie Collection, published at Calcutta, 1828, vol. i, p. 220. Dr. Wilson describes the work as “a story of the rájá of Alakapúr and his four ministers, who, being falsely accused of violating the sanctity of the inner apartments, vindicate their innocence and disarm the king’s wrath by narrating a number of stories.” It is, however, only one of the ministers who is believed by the rájá and the rání to have thus offended, and his three colleagues successively urge the rájá to inquire into all the circumstances of the affair before proceeding to punish him, and they support their arguments with Tales showing the deplorable evils which may result from inconsiderate actions. An aged minister of the rájá’s father then comes before the king and relates a story to the same purpose, and he is followed by the accused minister, who also tells a story as a warning against hasty decisions, after which he not only makes his innocence manifest, but shows how he had saved the rájá and his spouse from a terrible fatality.[4]
In the Appendix of the present work will be found abstracts of Bengalí and Kashmírí oral variants of this Tale, the frame of which was evidently suggested by that of the Book of Sindibád, of which the numerous European versions are commonly known under the title of the History of the Seven Wise Masters of Rome, where a young prince is falsely accused, as Joseph was by the wife of Potiphar, and his father the king orders him to be put to death; but he alternately reprieves and condemns him during seven days, in consequence of his Seven Vazírs, day after day, and the Lady, night after night, relating to the king stories of the wickedness of women and of the depravity of men, till at length the innocence of the prince is proved, and the wanton, treacherous lady is duly punished.—The leading tale of the Turkish History of the Forty Vazírs (which has been completely translated into English by Mr. E.J.W. Gibb; London: Mr. George Redway) is on the same plan, though the stories related by the Vazírs and the Lady are almost all different.
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