HIKAYAT ABU NAWAS. 21 



Rahman is persuaded by Abu Nawas to follow his advice, be 

 shrouded aud put ou a bier : whereupon Abu Xawas takes him be- 

 fore the Sultan as proof that all people of that name are fools. 



XVIII. An unsavoury tale of how Abu Xawas gets into 

 disgrace for fouling a stream. 



XIX. Harun asks his vizier Ja'far Barmaki (the Barmecide) 

 what the water, bubbling in a hookah is saying. He cannot tell. 

 Abu Xawas avers it is asking the news from the burning tobacco. 



XX. Harun stipulates that Abu Xawas shall travel neither 

 on the ground, nor in a carriage neither in the sun nor in the shade. 

 Abu Xawas fixes a broken umbrella on a pony's back, puts one foot 

 in a stirrup and ties one to the umbrella and so rides. 



XXI. Abu Xawas repays a nasty trick to Harun in kind : 

 tale (11) of the Singapore recension. 



XXII. A hump-back has a beautiful wife. A lover im- 

 personates the husband and the wife cannot distinguish between 

 them. Abu Xawas makes a big gendi with two spouts and bids 

 both the fellows scramble through the spouts. The man who sticks 

 is declared to be the real hump-back and the other is punished. 



Two short tales of Abu Xawas, that do not appear in either of 

 the above recensions, are printed in Penimbau AJcal my Jawi Eeader 

 for Standard II of the Government Malay Schools. 



In the large (unpublished) version of the Hikayat Bakhtiar 

 (Raffles* MS. 63, Library of Royal Asiatic Society, London; vide 

 van der Timk's " Account " in " Essays relating to Indo-China/ ? 

 Second Series, vol. II) among many other tales occur two of Abu 

 Xawas. which Dr. Brandes in his paper on the Hikayat BaMtiar 

 ("Tijdschrift voor Ind. T. L. & Yk. v. X. I. Deel XXXVIII ") 

 summarizes as follows : — 



■* Tale 53. Sleepless, Sultan Harun a'r-Rashid visits a mistress 

 Kamar a'z-zaman. He bids Abu Xawas compose a poem 

 on the incident. It is so lifelike that the Sultan thinks 

 Abu Xawas must have spied on him. But Abu Xawas 

 denies this and gets a reward. 



Tale 54. Harun a'r-Eashid visits fW^j-^. a mistress 



he has neglected. He keeps her standing but she excuses 

 herself from his presence. In vain he awaits her return. 

 He seeks her next day and tells her promises are made to 

 be kept. She replies that one does not do by day what 



one promises at night, Abu X'awas ^J^ and ^-X**. 



are bidden to write poems on the incident. Again Abu 

 Xawas is accused of having played eaves-dropper, so life- 

 like is his poem." 



ft. A. Soc, No. 



