Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp | Page 6

it as belonging to the Thousand Nights and One Night proper. As shown by Galland's own experience, complete copies of the genuine work were rarely to be met with, collections of "silly stories" (as the Oriental savant, who inclines to regard nothing in the way of literature save theology, grammar and poetry, would style them), being generally considered by the Arab bibliographer undeserving of record or preservation, and the fragmentary copies which existed were mostly in the hands of professional story-tellers, who were extremely unwilling to part with them, looking upon them as their stock in trade, and were in the habit of incorporating with the genuine text all kinds of stories and anecdotes from other sources, to fill the place of the missing portions of the original work. This process of addition and incorporation, which has been in progress ever since the first collection of the Nights into one distinct work and is doubtless still going on in Oriental countries, (especially such as are least in contact with European influence,) may account for the heterogeneous character of the various modern MSS. of the Nights and for the immense difference which exists between the several texts, as well in actual contents as in the details and diction of such stories as are common to all. The Tunis MS. of the 1001 Nights (which is preserved in the Breslau University Library and which formed the principal foundation of Habicht's Edition of the Arabic text) affords a striking example of this process, which we are here enabled to see in mid-operation, the greater part of the tales of which it consists having not yet been adapted to the framework of the Nights. It is dated A.H. 1144 (A.D. 1732) and of the ten volumes of which it consists, i, ii (Nights I--CCL) and x (Nights DCCCLXXXV-MI) are alone divided into Nights, the division of the remaining seven volumes (i.e. iii--ix, containing, inter alia, the Story of the Sleeper Awakened) being the work of the German editor. It is my belief, therefore, that the three "interpolated" tales identified as forming part of the Baghdad MS. of 1703 are comparatively modern stories added to the genuine text by Rawis (story-tellers) or professional writers employed by them, and I see no reason to doubt that we shall yet discover the Arabic text of the remaining eight, either in Hanna's version (as written down for Galland) or in some as yet unexamined MS. of the Nights or other work of like character.

V.

M. Zotenberg has, with great judgment, taken as his standard for publication the text of Aladdin given by the Sebbagh MS., inasmuch as the Shawish MS. (besides being, as appears from the extracts given. [FN#20] far inferior both in style and general correctness,) is shown by the editor to be full of modern European phrases and turns of speech and to present so many suspicious peculiarities that it would be difficult, having regard, moreover, to the doubtful character and reputation of the Syrian monkish adventurer who styled himself Dom Denis Chavis, to resist the conviction that his MS. was a forgery, i.e. professedly a copy of a genuine Arabic text, but in reality only a translation or paraphrase in that language of Galland's version,--were it not that the Baghdad MS. (dated before the commencement, in 1704, of Galland's publication and transcribed by a man--Mikhail Sebbagh--whose reputation, as a collaborator of Silvestre de Sacy and other distinguished Orientalists, is a sufficient voucher for the authenticity of the copy in the Bibliotheque Nationale,) contains a text essentially identical with that of Shawish. Moreover, it is evident, from a comparison with Galland's rendering and making allowance for the latter's system of translation, that the Arabic version of Aladdin given him by Hanna must either have been derived from the Baghdad text or from some other practically identical source, and it is therefore probable that Shawish, having apparently been employed to make up the missing portion of Galland's Arabic text and not having the Hanna MS. at his command, had (with the execrable taste and want of literary morality which distinguished Cazotte's monkish coadjutor) endeavoured to bring his available text up to what he considered the requisite standard by modernizing and Gallicizing its wording and (in particular) introducing numerous European phrases and turns of speech in imitation of the French translator. The whole question is, of course, as yet a matter of more or less probable hypothesis, and so it must remain until further discoveries and especially until the reappearance of Galland's missing text, which I am convinced must exist in some shape or other and cannot much longer, in the face of the revived interest awakened in the matter and the systematic process of investigation now likely to be employed, elude research.
M. Zotenberg's publication having been confined to