Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/199

Rh probation" (p. 17), and one or two others, appear to be survivals from the Pehlevi version; but the Syriac translator has in other respects played sad havoc with the text by the ruthless interpolation of a number of Biblical expressions and phrases that jar in the absurdest manner with its general character. The dragging in by the head and shoulders of the Cedars of Lebanon (twice), and "the good things of Jerusalem," and the introduction Cp. 95) of the Lion-king's chief butler and baker, in evident imitation of the story of Joseph (Gen. xl.)—to say nothing of the references to "the Church of Christ" and the studding of almost every page with citations from the Christian Scriptures, or allusions to Christian dogma—have the most comical effect in conjunction with the sententious pessimism of the Arabised Indian original, and this peculiarity intensifies our regret that Mr. Falconer did not turn his attention to producing an improved and literal English translation of the Arabic text, rather than to a certain extent waste his pains and scholarship on the rendering of the doubly-diluted and garbled Syriac version.

For the purely scholastic portion of Mr. Falconer's work we can have little but praise. His introductory account of the history and bibliography of this famous book (which, as he says, has probably had more readers in its various versions than any other except the Bible), is lucid, complete, and excellent, and his notes, as a whole, are all that can be wished. It may, however, be remarked that the note (p. 1. of Introduction) concerning Firdausi should properly have been placed at the foot of p. xxii., where the first mention of the national poet of Persia occurs, and that lugha (p. xl. of Introduction) should be lugheh, of which word it is the plural form. A note is badly wanted at p. 283, where it should be explained that a must elephant is by no means (as the reader is left to suppose) the same thing as an "untrained" one, the first being, indeed, an elephant in heat (lit. drunken), and the term must being also applied to an elephant trained for fighting and brought to a peculiar state of exasperation by means of a heating diet. Dinar (p. 300), again, cannot be said to be equivalent to the Latin denarius, the former coin representing a value of (circa) ten shillings, and the latter one of ten asses, or about sevenpence. We regret, also, that Mr. Falconer should think it necessary to write Sheik Shēkh (p. lxvii.), in pursuance of