12 illustration(s) from this book
[102] In a great collection of Indian tales, the "Kathá Sarit
Ságara," is a story which may have been the original of that to
which this note refers. "Two young Brahmans travelling are
benighted in a forest, and take up their lodging in a tree near
a lake. Early in the night a number of people come from the
water, and having made preparation for an entertainment,
retire; a Yaksha, a genie, then comes out of the lake with his
two wives, and spends the night there: when he and one of his
wives are asleep, the other, seeing the youths, invites them to
approach her, and to encourage them, shews them a hundred rings
received from former gallants, notwithstanding her husband's
precautions, who keeps her locked up in a chest at the bottom
of the lake. The Hindu story-teller is more moral than the
Arab. The youths reject her advances; she wakes the genie, who
is going to put them to death, but the rings are produced in
evidence against the unfaithful wife, and she is turned away
with the loss of her nose. The story is repeated in the next
section with some variation; the lady has ninety and nine
rings, and is about to complete the hundredth, when her
husband, who is here a Naga, a snake-god, wakes, and consumes
the guilty pair with fire from his mouth."--British and Foreign
Review, No. xxi. page 266.
[103] Kitáb el-'Onwán fee Mekáid en-Niswán: a work on the
strategems of women (MS. in my possession).
[104] El-Imám El-Jara'ee, in his book entitled "Shir'at
el-Islám," ibid.
[105] Nuzhet el-Mutaämmil wa-Murshid el-Mutaähhil, section 2.
[106] Es-Suyooṭee, History of Egypt, account of the strange
events that have happened in Egypt during the time of El-Islám.
[107] Ch. xxvii. v. 16.