JOURNAL 



or 



THE ASIATIC SOCIETY, 



No. 63. —March, 1837- 



I. — Remarks on M. Schlegel's objections to the restored editions of 

 the Alif Leilah, or Arabian Nights' Entertainments. By Henry 

 Torrens, Esq. B. A. and of the Inner Temple, B. C. S. 



At the time of the purchase of the Macan MS. by Mr. Brown- 

 low, several of the most distinguished Arabic scholars in this part 

 of India registered in this journal their opinion of its value. The 

 style of the language was declared to be singularly pure, the narra- 

 tive spirited and graphic, and the collection of stories enriched with 

 many tales either perfectly new to European readers, or else given 

 in a form very different from that under which they have been hither- 

 to known, garbled and abridged by the carelessness of translators, . 

 or by imperfection of the MSS. whence they were translated. Since 

 the publication of the opinions above alluded to, a letter addressed 

 by Mons. De Schlegel to Mons. le Baron De Sacy, upon the subject 

 of the thousand and one nights, has excited some attention in Calcutta* 

 with reference especially to the supposed excellence of the Macan 

 MS. Mons. De Schlegel has asserted of these celebrated tales 

 generally, that many, if not most of them, are plagiarized from a 

 Sanscrit original, and that others are " intercalated" stories, taking 

 their rise in neither India nor Arabia. Hence he concludes that the 

 greater the number of tales, the more frequent the plagiaries and 

 intercalations ; and such being the case, " we may be assured," he 

 says, " that the most voluminous edition of the thousand and one 

 nights will be the worst." Without stopping to weigh the soundness 

 of this line of argument, based on a petitio principii, and inducing a 

 most inconclusive conclusion, it is worth while (the attack being so 

 sweeping) to assume the validity of this reasoning, and prove the 



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