ber of the stories, are older than that date ; and sonie oit 

 them have been traced back to Egyptian, old Persian, 

 Indian, and to Grecian sources. But inaGmueh a& one oi 

 the oldest Arabic versions retere; to coffee, and to cannon, 

 the Ara,bic test a«ed by Galland for his French translation 

 of 1703-17 couJd not be older than 1450. It wa.^ Galland's 

 version which first made the Thousand and One Nights 

 known in Europe. 



The best English translations of these tales are those- 

 respectively by Lfure, in 18-10; by Payne, in 1882-t; and 

 by Burton, in 1885-8. Lane omitted all stories he found 

 uninteresting and all he deemed objectiona.ble. The edition 

 by Payne, and that by Burton, were both privately printed. 

 Burton's, version is complete. It includes about two hun- 

 dred and fifty main stories, Vv'hich, with the secondary 

 stories these unfold, n:iak6 a total of about four hundred 

 tales. A score of these show traces of a Jewish origin; 

 and one wiiter of note argues that the framework of the 

 whole group is based on the Old Testament book of Esther. 



The deft setting of the Arabian Nights, however, sug- 

 gests their Indian kinship. The first minist'Cr of an eastern 

 sultan co'uld find no consort for his sovereign, who liad 

 eruelly put to death sundry former queens. The minister's 

 elder daughter, knowing her father's, peiplexity, much 

 against hia will insisted on being herself proffered in mar- 

 riage. Accepted by the sultan, the young queen, who 

 from a thousand books had learned the storieSi of past gen- 

 erations, made the sultan forget his cruelty by telling him 

 for a thousand and one nights the^e stories. The tales all 

 told and the queen become mother of three sons, she found 

 herself beloved by the regenerate sultan ; and with him and 

 the people of his empire lived happily till visited by Death, 

 "the terminator of delightis and separator of companions." 



The charm ot the Arabian Nights is their lifelike por- 

 trayal of eastern manners, i^id that charm is enhanced 

 by an admixtute of supernatural oecuiTences, thrown into 

 t'he ncirrative tiiifiei- thi exact light ieqiiis-itfe to n^iprfesis ihe 



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