290
portion, though bearing evident traces of the work of different authors, offer such general similarity in style and diction as to warrant us in supposing them to have been composed or arranged and adapted to the framework of the external fable by several persons of the same nationality acting in concert and at one and the same time. It is practically useless to enquire what portion of this original is a survival of the Hezar Efsan, as it is at once evident that such features of the old Pehlevi work as might possibly have been borrowed by the authors of the Thousand and One Nights must have been so disfeatured by the radical process of adaptation and remodelment to which they appear to have subjected all foreign material employed by them, as to defy identification: even in the Introduction, which is certainly (with the exception, perhaps, of the Enchanted Horse[1]) the oldest portion of the original, the remains of the old Persian cadre are evidently confined to the names of the principal personages (Shehriyar, Shahzeman, Shehrzad or Shirzad, Dunyazad or Dinarzad), the period (the reign
- ↑ The Enchanted Horse is probably the oldest story in the collection that cannot be traced to a separate origin: it appears to be of Persian extraction and may perhaps be a survival from the Hezar Efsan, in which connection it is worth while to note that, to the best of my knowledge, it is the only story in the whole work in which (except in the case of “There is no power and no virtue but in God!” and “I crave help from God the Supreme!” which occur once each only and which are probably interpolations) the common Muslim formulas, such as “There is no god but God,” “We are God’s and to Him we return,” “I take refuge with God,” etc., etc., which so abound in Arabic fiction proper, are conspicuous by their absence.
