12 illustration(s) from this book
The evidences of a late date scattered through the book may be additions
of copyists and reciters; but considered with reference to its general
character, they have a certain weight that cannot be overlooked: this is
carefully stated in the Review.
Mr. Lane's arguments in favour of the collective "Thousand and One
Nights" being an individual work, and not one of many similar
collections, seem to me to be conclusive: not the least important of
these is the fact that no similar collection is known to exist, nor is
mentioned by any Arab author, with the sole exception of the old
"Thousand Nights," which I believe he has demonstrated to be the
prototype, in a remote degree, of the "Thousand and One." To cite the
words of the Preface on the question of the original of the work as it
is known to us--"I have shewn it to be my opinion that all the complete
copies of 'The Thousand and One Nights' now known are in the main
derived, though not immediately, from one original; and I hold the same
opinion with respect to every fragment containing the commencement of
the work;" "not regarding the work as wholly original, nor as the first
of its kind; for many of the tales which it contains are doubtless of
different and early origins; and I think that its general plan is
probably borrowed from a much older production, bearing the same title
of 'The Thousand and One Nights,' [or 'The Thousand Nights,'] a
translation of a Persian work having a corresponding title, namely
'Hezár Afsáneh.'... One thing is certain--that 'The Thousand and One
Nights,' [or 'The Thousand Nights,'] translated from the Persian was
much older than the work now known by that title, and also extremely
different from the latter."