The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10
by
Richard F. Burton
Part 4 out of 10
pleasure, in the luxury of sin, are drawn with an experienced and
loving hand. Yet not the less do we meet with examples of the
dutiful daughter, the model lover matronly in her affection, the
devoted wife, the perfect mother, the saintly devotee, the
learned preacher, Univira the chaste widow and the
self-sacrificing heroic woman. If we find (vol. iii. 216) the sex
described as:--
An offal cast by kites where'er they list,
and the studied insults of vol. iii. 318, we also come upon an
admirable sketch of conjugal happiness (vol. vii. ? 43); and, to
mention no other, Shahryar's attestation to Shahrazad's
excellence in the last charming pages of The Nights.[FN#342] It
is the same with the Katha whose praise and dispraise are equally
enthusiastic; e.g., "Women of good family are guarded by their
virtue, the sole efficient chamberlain; but the Lord himself can
hardly guard the unchaste. Who can stem a furious stream and a
frantic woman?" (i. 328). "Excessive love in woman is your only
hero for daring" (i. 339). "Thus fair ones, naturally feeble,
bring about a series of evil actions which engender discernment
and aversion to the world; but here and there you will find a
virtuous woman who adorneth a glorious house as the streak of the
moon arrayeth the breadth of the Heavens" (i. 346). "So you see,
King, honourable matrons are devoted to their husbands and 'tis
not the case that women are always bad" (ii. 624). And there is
true wisdom in that even balance of feminine qualities advocated
by our Hindu-Hindi class-book the Toti-nameh or Parrot volume.
The perfect woman has seven requisites. She must not always be
merry (1) nor sad (2); she must not always be talking (3) nor
silently musing (4); she must not always be adorning herself (5)
nor neglecting her person (6); and, (7) at all times she must be
moderate and self possessed.
The legal status of womankind in Al-Islam is exceptionally high,
a fact of which Europe has often been assured, although the truth
has not even yet penetrated into the popular brain. Nearly a
century ago one Mirza Abu Talib Khan, an Amildar or revenue
collector, after living two years in London, wrote an "apology"
for, or rather a vindication of, his countrywomen which is still
worth reading and quoting.[FN#343] Nations are but superficial
judges of one another: where customs differ they often remark
only the salient distinctive points which, when examined, prove
to be of minor importance. Europeans seeing and hearing that
women in the East are "cloistered" as the Grecian matron was wont
and ; that wives may not walk out with
their husbands and cannot accompany them to "balls and parties";
moreover, that they are always liable, like the ancient Hebrew,
to the mortification of the "sister-wife," have most ignorantly
determined that they are mere serviles and that their lives are
not worth living. Indeed, a learned lady, Miss Martineau, once
visiting a Harem went into ecstasies of pity and sorrow because
the poor things knew nothing of--say trigonometry and the use of
the globes. Sonnini thought otherwise, and my experience, like
that of all old dwellers in the East, is directly opposed to this
conclusion.
I have noted (Night cmlxii.) that Mohammed, in the fifth year of
his reign,[FN#344] after his ill-advised and scandalous
marriage[FN#345] with his foster-daughter Zaynab, established the
Hijab or veiling of women. It was probably an exaggeration of
local usage: a modified separation of the sexes, which extended
and still extends even to the Badawi, must long have been
customary in Arabian cities, and its object was to deliver the
sexes from temptation, as the Koran says (xxxii. 32), "purer will
this (practice) be for your hearts and their hearts."[FN#346] The
women, who delight in restrictions which tend to their honour,
accepted it willingly and still affect it, they do not desire a
liberty or rather a licence which they have learned to regard as
inconsistent with their time-honoured notions of feminine decorum
and delicacy, and they would think very meanly of a husband who
permitted them to be exposed, like hetairae, to the public
gaze.[FN#347] As Zubayr Pasha, exiled to Gibraltar for another's
treason, said to my friend, Colonel Buckle, after visiting
quarters evidently laid out by a jealous husband, "We Arabs think
that when a man has a precious jewel, 'tis wiser to lock it up in
a box than to leave it about for anyone to take." The Eastern
adopts the instinctive, the Western prefers the rational method.
The former jealously guards his treasure, surrounds it with all
precautions, fends off from it all risks and if the treasure go
astray, kills it. The latter, after placing it en evidence upon
an eminence in ball dress with back and bosom bared to the gaze
of society, a bundle of charms exposed to every possible
seduction, allows it to take its own way, and if it be misled, he
kills or tries to kill the misleader. It is a fiery trial and the
few who safely pass through it may claim a higher standpoint in
the moral world than those who have never been sorely tried. But
the crucial question is whether Christian Europe has done wisely
in offering such temptations.
The second and main objection to Moslem custom is the
marriage-system which begins with a girl being wedded to a man
whom she knows only by hearsay. This was the habit of our
forbears not many generations ago, and it still prevails amongst
noble houses in Southern Europe, where a lengthened study of it
leaves me doubtful whether the "love-marriage," as it is called,
or wedlock with an utter stranger, evidently the two extremes, is
likely to prove the happier. The "sister-wife" is or would be a
sore trial to monogamic races like those of Northern Europe where
Caia, all but the equal of Caius in most points mental and
physical and superior in some, not unfrequently proves herself
the "man of the family," the "only man in the boat." But in the
East, where the sex is far more delicate, where a girl is brought
up in polygamy, where religious reasons separate her from her
husband, during pregnancy and lactation, for three successive
years; and where often enough like the Mormon damsel she would
hesitate to "nigger it with a one-wife-man," the case assumes a
very different aspect and the load, if burden it be, falls
comparatively light. Lastly, the "patriarchal household" is
mostly confined to the grandee and the richard, whilst Holy Law
and public opinion, neither of which can openly be disregarded,
assign command of the household to the equal or first wife and
jealously guard the rights and privileges of the others.
Mirza Abu Talib "the Persian Prince"[FN#348] offers six reasons
why "the liberty of the Asiatic women appears less than that of
the Europeans," ending with,
I'll fondly place on either eye
The man that can to this reply.
He then lays down eight points in which the Moslem wife has
greatly the advantage over her Christian sisterhood; and we may
take his first as a specimen. Custom, not contrary to law,
invests the Mohammedan mother with despotic government of the
homestead, slaves, servants and children, especially the latter:
she alone directs their early education, their choice of faith,
their marriage and their establishment in life; and in case of
divorce she takes the daughters, the sons going to the sire. She
has also liberty to leave her home, not only for one or two
nights, but for a week or a fortnight, without consulting her
husband; and whilst she visits a strange household, the master
and all males above fifteen are forbidden the Harem. But the main
point in favour of the Moslem wife is her being a "legal sharer":
inheritance is secured to her by Koranic law; she must be dowered
by the bridegroom to legalise marriage and all she gains is
secured to her; whereas in England a "Married Woman's Property
Act" was completed only in 1882 after many centuries of the
grossest abuses.
Lastly, Moslems and Easterns in general study and intelligently
study the art and mystery of satisfying the physical woman. In my
Foreword I have noticed among barbarians the system of "making
men,"[FN#349] that is, of teaching lads first arrived at puberty
the nice conduct of the instrumentum paratum plantandis avibus: a
branch of the knowledge-tree which our modern education grossly
neglects, thereby entailing untold miseries upon individuals,
families and generations. The mock virtue, the most immodest
modesty of England and of the United States in the xixth century,
pronounces the subject foul and fulsome:"Society" sickens at all
details; and hence it is said abroad that the English have the
finest women in Europe and least know how to use them. Throughout
the East such studies are aided by a long series of volumes, many
of them written by learned physiologists, by men of social
standing and by religious dignitaries high in office. The
Egyptians especially delight in aphrodisiac literature treating,
as the Turks say, de la partie au-dessous de la taille; and from
fifteen hundred to two thousand copies of a new work, usually
lithographed in cheap form, readily sell off. The pudibund Lane
makes allusion to and quotes (A. N. i. 216) one of the most out
spoken, a 4to of 464 pages, called the Halbat al-Kumayt or "Race-
Course of the Bay Horse," a poetical and horsey term for grape-
wine. Attributed by D'Herbelot to the Kazi Shams al-Din Mohammed,
it is wholly upon the subject of wassail and women till the last
few pages, when his reverence exclaims:--"This much, O reader, I
have recounted, the better thou mayst know what to avoid;" and so
forth, ending with condemning all he had praised.[FN#350] Even
the divine and historian Jalal al-Din al-Siyuti is credited with
having written, though the authorship is much disputed, a work
entitled, "Kitab al-Izah fi 'ilm al-Nikah" =The Book of
Exposition in the Science of Coition: my copy, a lithograph of 33
pages, undated, but evidently Cairene, begins with exclaiming
"Alhamdolillah--Laud to the Lord who adorned the virginal bosom
with breasts and who made the thighs of women anvils for the
spear handles of men!" To the same amiable theologian are also
ascribed the "Kitab Nawazir al-Ayk fi al-Nayk" = Green Splendours
of the Copse in Copulation, an abstract of the "Kitab al-Wishah
fi fawaid al-Nikah" = Book of the Zone on Coition-boon. Of the
abundance of pornographic literature we may judge from a list of
the following seven works given in the second page of the "Kitab
Ruju'a al-Shaykh ila Sabah fi 'l-Kuwwat al-Bah[FN#351]" = Book of
Age-rejuvenescence in the power of Concupiscence: it is the work
of Ahmad bin Sulayman, surnamed Ibn Kamal Pasha.
1. Kitab al-Bah by Al-Nahli.
2. Kitab al'-Ars wa al'-Arais (Book of the Bridal and the
Brides) by Al-Jahiz.
3. Kitab al-Kiyan (Maiden's Book) by Ibn Hajib al-Nu'man.
4. Kitab al-Izah fi asrar al-Nikah (Book of the Exposition on
the Mysteries of married Fruition).
5. Kitab Jami' al-Lizzah (The Compendium of Pleasure) by Ibn
Samsamani.
6. Kitab Barjan (Yarjan?) wa Janahib (? ?)[FN#352]
7. Kitab al-Munakahah wa al-Mufatahah fi Asnaf al-Jima' wa
Alatih (Book of Carnal Copulation and the Initiation into the
modes of Coition and its Instrumentation) by Aziz al-Din
al-Masihi.[FN#353]
To these I may add the Lizzat al-Nisa (Pleasures of Women), a
text-book in Arabic, Persian and Hindostani: it is a translation
and a very poor attempt, omitting much from, and adding naught
to, the famous Sanskrit work Ananga-Ranga (Stage of the Bodiless
One i.e. Cupido) or Hindu Art of Love (Ars Amoris
Indica).[FN#354] I have copies of it in Sanskrit and
Marathi,Guzrati and Hindostani: the latter is an unpaged 8vo of
pp. 66, including eight pages of most grotesque illustrations
showing the various san (the Figurae Veneris or positions of
copulation), which seem to be the triumphs of contortionists.
These pamphlets lithographed in Bombay are broad cast over the
land.[FN#355]
It must not be supposed that such literature is purely and simply
aphrodisiacal. The learned Sprenger, a physician as well as an
Arabist, says (Al-Mas'udi p. 384) of a tractate by the celebrated
Rhazes in the Leyden Library, "The number of curious
observations, the correct and practical ideas and the novelty of
the notions of Eastern nations on these subjects, which are
contained in this book, render it one of the most important
productions of the medical literature of the Arabs." I can
conscientiously recommend to the Anthropologist a study of the
"Kutub al-Bah."
C.--Pornography.
Here it will be advisable to supplement what was said in my
Foreword (p. xiii.) concerning the turpiloquium of The Nights.
Readers who have perused the ten volumes will probably agree with
me that the naive indecencies of the text are rather gaudis-serie
than prurience; and, when delivered with mirth and humour, they
are rather the "excrements of wit" than designed for debauching
the mind. Crude and indelicate with infantile plainness; even
gross and, at times, "nasty" in their terrible frankness, they
cannot be accused of corrupting suggestiveness or subtle
insinuation of vicious sentiment. Theirs is a coarseness of
language, not of idea; they are indecent, not depraved; and the
pure and perfect naturalness of their nudity seems almost to
purify it, showing that the matter is rather of manners than of
morals. Such throughout the East is the language of every man,
woman and child, from prince to peasant, from matron to
prostitute: all are as the naive French traveller said of the
Japanese: "si grossiers qu'ils ne scavent nommer les choses que
par leur nom." This primitive stage of language sufficed to draw
from Lane and Burckhardt strictures upon the "most immodest
freedom of conversation in Egypt," where, as all the world over,
there are three several stages for names of things and acts
sensual. First we have the mot cru, the popular term, soon
followed by the technical and scientific, and, lastly, the
literary or figurative nomenclature, which is often much more
immoral because more attractive, suggestive and seductive than
the "raw word." And let me observe that the highest civilisation
is now returning to the language of nature. In La Glu of M. J.
Richepin, a triumph of the realistic school, we find such
"archaic" expressions as la petee, putain, foutue a la six-
quatre-dix; un facetieuse petarade; tu t'es foutue de, etc. Eh
vilain bougre! and so forth.[FN#356] To those critics who
complain of these raw vulgarisms and puerile indecencies in The
Nights I can reply only by quoting the words said to have been
said by Dr. Johnson to the lady who complained of the naughty
words in his dictionary--"You must have been looking for them,
Madam!"
But I repeat (p. xiv.) there is another element in The Nights and
that is one of absolute obscenity utterly repugnant to English
readers, even the least prudish. It is chiefly connected with
what our neighbours call le vice contre nature--as if anything
can be contrary to nature which includes all things.[FN#357] Upon
this subject I must offer details, as it does not enter into my
plan to ignore any theme which is interesting to the Orientalist
and the Anthropologist. And they, methinks, do abundant harm who,
for shame or disgust, would suppress the very mention of such
matters: in order to combat a great and growing evil deadly to
the birth-rate--the mainstay of national prosperity--the first
requisite is careful study. As Albert Bollstoedt, Bishop of
Ratisbon, rightly says.--Quia malum non evitatum nisi cognitum,
ideo necesse est cognoscere immundiciem coitus et multa alla quae
docentur in isto libro. Equally true are Professor Mantegazza's
words:[FN#358] Cacher les plates du coeur humain au nom de la
pudeur, ce n'est au contraire qu'hypocrisie ou peur. The late Mr.
Grote had reason to lament that when describing such institutions
as the far-famed of Thebes, the Sacred Band
annihilated at Chaeroneia, he was compelled to a reticence which
permitted him to touch only the surface of the subject. This was
inevitable under the present rule of Cant[FN#359] in a book
intended for the public: but the same does not apply to my
version of The Nights, and now I proceed to discuss the matter
serieusement, honnetement, historiquement; to show it in decent
nudity not in suggestive fig-leaf or feuille de vigne.
D.--Pederasty.
The "execrabilis familia pathicorum" first came before me by a
chance of earlier life. In 1845, when Sir Charles Napier had
conquered and annexed Sind, despite a fraction (mostly venal)
which sought favour with the now defunct "Court of Directors to
the Honourable East India Company," the veteran began to consider
his conquest with a curious eye. It was reported to him that
Karachi, a townlet of some two thousand souls and distant not
more than a mile from camp, supported no less than three lupanars
or borders, in which not women but boys and eunuchs, the former
demanding nearly a double price,[FN#360] lay for hire. Being then
the only British officer who could speak Sindi, I was asked
indirectly to make enquiries and to report upon the subject; and
I undertook the task on express condition that my report should
not be forwarded to the Bombay Government, from whom supporters
of the Conqueror's policy could expect scant favour, mercy or
justice. Accompanied by a Munshi, Mirza Mohammed Hosayn of
Shiraz, and habited as a merchant, Mirza Abdullah the
Bushiri[FN#361] passed many an evening in the townlet, visited
all the porneia and obtained the fullest details, which were duly
despatched to Government House. But the "Devil's Brother"
presently quitted Sind leaving in his office my unfortunate
official: this found its way with sundry other reports[FN#362] to
Bombay and produced the expected result. A friend in the
Secretariat informed me that my summary dismissal from the
service had been formally proposed by one of Sir Charles Napier's
successors, whose decease compels me parcere sepulto. But this
excess of outraged modesty was not allowed.
Subsequent enquiries in many and distant countries enabled me to
arrive at the following conclusions:--
1. There exists what I shall call a "Sotadic Zone," bounded
westwards by the northern shores of the Mediterranean (N. Lat.
43 ) and by the southern (N. Lat. 30 ). Thus the depth would be
780 to 800 miles including meridional France, the Iberian
Peninsula, Italy and Greece, with the coast-regions of Africa
from Marocco to Egypt.
2. Running eastward the Sotadic Zone narrows, embracing Asia
Minor, Mesopotamia and Chaldaea, Afghanistan, Sind, the Punjab and
Kashmir.
3. In Indo-China the belt begins to broaden, enfolding China,
Japan and Turkistan.
4. It then embraces the South Sea Islands and the New World
where, at the time of its discovery, Sotadic love was, with some
exceptions, an established racial institution.
5. Within the Sotadic Zone the Vice is popular and endemic,
held at the worst to be a mere peccadillo, whilst the races to
the North and South of the limits here defined practice it only
sporadically amid the opprobrium of their fellows who, as a rule,
are physically incapable of performing the operation and look
upon it with the liveliest disgust.
Before entering into topographical details concerning pederasty,
which I hold to be geographical and climatic, not racial, I must
offer a few considerations of its cause and origin. We must not
forget that the love of boys has its noble, sentimental side. The
Platonists and pupils of the Academy, followed by the Sufis or
Moslem Gnostics, held such affection, pure as ardent, to be the
beau ideal which united in man's soul the creature with the
Creator. Professing to regard youths as the most cleanly and
beautiful objects in this phenomenal world, they declared that by
loving and extolling the chef-d'oeuvre, corporeal and
intellectual, of the Demiurgus, disinterestedly and without any
admixture of carnal sensuality, they are paying the most fervent
adoration to the Causa causans. They add that such affection,
passing as it does the love of women, is far less selfish than
fondness for and admiration of the other sex which, however
innocent, always suggest sexuality;[FN#363] and Easterns add that
the devotion of the moth to the taper is purer and more fervent
than the Bulbul's love for the Rose. Amongst the Greeks of the
best ages the system of boy-favourites was advocated on
considerations of morals and politics. The lover undertook the
education of the beloved through precept and example, while the
two were conjoined by a tie stricter than the fraternal.
Hieronymus the Peripatetic strongly advocated it because the
vigorous disposition of youths and the confidence engendered by
their association often led to the overthrow of tyrannies.
Socrates declared that "a most valiant army might be composed of
boys and their lovers; for that of all men they would be most
ashamed to desert one another." And even Virgil, despite the foul
flavour of Formosum pastor Corydon, could write:--
Nisus amore pio pueri.
The only physical cause for the practice which suggests itself to
me and that must be owned to be purely conjectural, is that
within the Sotadic Zone there is a blending of the masculine and
feminine temperaments, a crasis which elsewhere occurs only
sporadically. Hence the male feminisme whereby the man becomes
patiens as well as agens, and the woman a tribade, a votary of
mascula Sappho,[FN#364] Queen of Frictrices or Rubbers.[FN#365]
Prof. Mantegazza claims to have discovered the cause of this
pathological love, this perversion of the erotic sense, one of
the marvellous list of amorous vagaries which deserve, not
prosecution but the pitiful care of the physician and the study
of the psychologist. According to him the nerves of the rectum
and the genitalia, in all cases closely connected, are abnormally
so in the pathic, who obtains, by intromission, the venereal
orgasm which is usually sought through the sexual organs. So
amongst women there are tribads who can procure no pleasure
except by foreign objects introduced a posteriori. Hence his
threefold distribution of sodomy; (1) Peripheric or anatomical,
caused by an unusual distribution of the nerves and their
hyperaesthesia; (2) Luxurious, when love a tergo is preferred on
account of the narrowness of the passage; and (3) the Psychical.
But this is evidently superficial: the question is what causes
this neuropathy, this abnormal distribution and condition of the
nerves.[FN#366]
As Prince Bismarck finds a moral difference between the male and
female races of history, so I suspect a mixed physical
temperament effected by the manifold subtle influences massed
together in the word climate. Something of the kind is necessary
to explain the fact of this pathological love extending over the
greater portion of the habitable world, without any apparent
connection of race or media, from the polished Greek to the
cannibal Tupi of the Brazil. Walt Whitman speaks of the ashen
grey faces of onanists: the faded colours, the puffy features and
the unwholesome complexion of the professed pederast with his
peculiar cachetic expression, indescribable but once seen never
forgotten, stamp the breed, and Dr. G. Adolph is justified in
declaring "Alle Gewohnneits-paederasten erkennen sich einander
schnell, oft met einen Thick." This has nothing in common with
the feminisme which betrays itself in the pathic by womanly gait,
regard and gesture: it is a something sui generic; and the same
may be said of the colour and look of the young priest who
honestly refrains from women and their substitutes. Dr. Tardieu,
in his well-known work, "Etude Medico-regale sur les Attentats
aux Moeurs," and Dr. Adolph note a peculiar infundibuliform
disposition of the "After" and a smoothness and want of folds
even before any abuse has taken place, together with special
forms of the male organs in confirmed pederasts. But these
observations have been rejected by Caspar, Hoffman, Brouardel and
Dr. J. H. Henry Coutagne (Notes sur la Sodomie, Lyon, 1880), and
it is a medical question whose discussion would here be out of
place.
The origin of pederasty is lost in the night of ages; but its
historique has been carefully traced by many writers, especially
Virey,[FN#367] Rosenbaum[FN#368] and M. H. E. Meier.[FN#369] The
ancient Greeks who, like the modern Germans, invented nothing but
were great improvers of what other races invented, attributed the
formal apostolate of Sotadism to Orpheus, whose stigmata were
worn by the Thracian women;
--Omnemque refugerat Orpheus
Foemineam venerem;--
Ille etiam Thracum populis fuit auctor, amorem
In teneres transferre mares: citraque juventam
AEtatis breve ver, et primos carpere flores.
Ovid Met. x. 79-85.
Euripides proposed Laius father of Oedipus as the inaugurator,
whereas Timaeus declared that the fashion of making favourites of
boys was introduced into Greece from Crete, for Malthusian
reasons said Aristotle (Pol. ii. 10), attributing it to Minos.
Herodotus, however, knew far better, having discovered (ii. c.
80) that the Orphic and Bacchic rites were originally Egyptian.
But the Father of History was a traveller and an annalist rather
than an archaeologist and he tripped in the following passage (i.
c. 135), "As soon as they (the Persians) hear of any luxury, they
instantly make it their own, and hence, among other matters, they
have learned from the Hellenes a passion for boys" ("unnatural
lust," says modest Rawlinson). Plutarch (De Malig, Herod.
xiii.)[FN#370] asserts with much more probability that the
Persians used eunuch boys according to the Mos Graeciae, long
before they had seen the Grecian main.
In the Holy Books of the Hellenes, Homer and Hesiod, dealing with
the heroic ages, there is no trace of pederasty, although, in a
long subsequent generation, Lucian suspected Achilles and
Patroclus as he did Orestes and Pylades, Theseus and Pirithous.
Homer's praises of beauty are reserved for the feminines,
especially his favourite Helen. But the Dorians of Crete seem to
have commended the abuse to Athens and Sparta and subsequently
imported it into Tarentum, Agrigentum and other colonies. Ephorus
in Strabo (x. 4 Section 21) gives a curious account of the violent
abduction of beloved boys ({Greek}) by the lover ({Greek}); of
the obligations of the ravisher ({Greek}) to the favourite
({Greek})[FN#371] and of the "marriage-ceremonies" which lasted
two months. See also Plato, Laws i. c. 8. Servius (Ad AEneid. x.
325) informs us "De Cretensibus accepimus, quod in amore puerorum
intemperantes fuerunt, quod postea in Lacones et in totam Graeciam
translatum est." The Cretans and afterwards their apt pupils the
Chalcidians held it disreputable for a beautiful boy to lack a
lover. Hence Zeus, the national Doric god of Crete, loved
Ganymede;[FN#372] Apollo, another Dorian deity, loved Hyacinth,
and Hercules, a Doric hero who grew to be a sun-god, loved Hylas
and a host of others: thus Crete sanctified the practice by the
examples of the gods and demigods. But when legislation came, the
subject had qualified itself for legal limitation and as such was
undertaken by Lycurgus and Solon, according to Xenophon (Lac. ii.
13), who draws a broad distinction between the honest love of
boys and dishonest ({Greek}) lust. They both approved of pure
pederastia, like that of Harmodius and Aristogiton; but forbade
it with serviles because degrading to a free man. Hence the love
of boys was spoken of like that of women (Plato: Phaedrus; Repub.
vi. c. I9 and Xenophon, Synop. iv. 10), e.g., "There was once a
boy, or rather a youth, of exceeding beauty and he had very many
lovers"--this is the language of Hafiz and Sa'adi. AEschylus,
Sophocles and Euripides were allowed to introduce it upon the
stage, for "many men were as fond of having boys for their
favourites as women for their mistresses; and this was a frequent
fashion in many well-regulated cities of Greece." Poets like
Alcaeus, Anacreon, Agathon and Pindar affected it and Theognis
sang of a "beautiful boy in the flower of his youth." The
statesmen Aristides and Themistocles quarrelled over Stesileus of
Teos; and Pisistratus loved Charmus who first built an altar to
Puerile Eros, while Charmus loved Hippias son of Pisistratus.
Demosthenes the Orator took into keeping a youth called Cnosion
greatly to the indignation of his wife. Xenophon loved Clinias
and Autolycus; Aristotle, Hermeas, Theodectes[FN#373] and others;
Empedocles, Pausanias; Epicurus, Pytocles; Aristippus, Eutichydes
and Zeno with his Stoics had a philosophic disregard for women,
affecting only pederastia. A man in Athenaeus (iv. c. 40) left in
his will that certain youths he had loved should fight like
gladiators at his funeral; and Charicles in Lucian abuses
Callicratidas for his love of "sterile pleasures." Lastly there
was the notable affair of Alcibiades and Socrates, the "sanctus
paederasta"[FN#374] being violemment soupconne when under the
mantle:--non semper sine plaga ab eo surrexit. Athenaeus (v. c.
I3) declares that Plato represents Socrates as absolutely
intoxicated with his passion for Alcibiades.[FN#375] The Ancients
seem to have held the connection impure, or Juvenal would not
have written:--
Inter Socraticos notissima fossa cinaedos,
followed by Firmicus (vii. 14) who speaks of "Socratici
paedicones." It is the modern fashion to doubt the pederasty of
the master of Hellenic Sophrosyne, the "Christian before
Christianity;" but such a world-wide term as Socratic love can
hardly be explained by the lucus-a-non-lucendo theory. We are
overapt to apply our nineteenth century prejudices and
prepossessions to the morality of the ancient Greeks who would
have specimen'd such squeamishness in Attic salt.
The Spartans, according to Agnon the Academic (confirmed by
Plato, Plutarch and Cicero), treated boys and girls in the same
way before marriage: hence Juvenal (xi. 173) uses ''Lacedaemonius"
for a pathic and other writers apply it to a tribade. After the
Peloponnesian War, which ended in B.C. 404, the use became merged
in the abuse. Yet some purity must have survived, even amongst
the Boeotians who produced the famous Narcissus,[FN#376] described
by Ovid (Met. iii. 339);--
Multi ilium juvenes, multae cupiere puellae;
Nulli ilium juvenes, nullae tetigere puellae:[FN#377]
for Epaminondas, whose name is mentioned with three beloveds,
established the Holy Regiment composed of mutual lovers,
testifying the majesty of Eros and preferring to a discreditable
life a glorious death. Philip's redactions on the fatal field of
Chaeroneia form their fittest epitaph. At last the Athenians,
according to AEschines, officially punished Sodomy with death; but
the threat did not abolish bordels of boys, like those of
Karachi; the Porneia and Pornoboskeia, where slaves and pueri
venales "stood," as the term was, near the Pnyx, the city walls
and a certain tower, also about Lycabettus (AEsch. contra Tim.);
and paid a fixed tax to the state. The pleasures of society in
civilised Greece seem to have been sought chiefly in the heresies
of love--Hetairesis[FN#378] and Sotadism.
It is calculated that the French of the sixteenth century had
four hundred names for the parts genital and three hundred for
their use in coition. The Greek vocabulary is not less copious,
and some of its pederastic terms, of which Meier gives nearly a
hundred, and its nomenclature of pathologic love are curious and
picturesque enough to merit quotation.
To live the life of Abron (the Argive), i.e. that of a ,
pathic or passive lover.
The Agathonian song.
Aischrourgia = dishonest love, also called Akolasia, Akrasia,
Arrenokoitia, etc.
Alcinoan youths, or "non conformists,"
In cute curanda plus aequo operate Juventus.
Alegomenos, the "unspeakable," as the pederast was termed by the
Council of Ancyra: also the Agrios, Apolaustus and Akolastos.
Androgyne, of whom Ansonius wrote (Epig. lxviii. 15):--
Ecce ego sum factus femina de puero.
Badas and badizein = clunes torquens: also Batalos= a catamite.
Catapygos, Katapygosyne = puerarius and catadactylium from
Dactylion, the ring, used in the sense of Nerissa's, but applied
to the corollarium puerile.
Cinaedus (Kinaidos), the active lover ({Greek}) derived either
from his kinetics or quasi {Greek} = dog modest. Also
Spatalocinaedus (lascivia fluens) = a fair Ganymede.
Chalcidissare (Khalkidizein), from Chalcis in Euboea, a city famed
for love a posteriori; mostly applied to le lechement des
testicules by children.
Clazomenae = the buttocks, also a sotadic disease, so called from
the Ionian city devoted to Aversa Venus; also used of a pathic,
--et tergo femina pube vir est.
Embasicoetas, prop. a link-boy at marriages, also a "night-cap"
drunk before bed and lastly an effeminate; one who perambulavit
omnium cubilia (Catullus). See Encolpius' pun upon the Embasicete
in Satyricon, cap. iv.
Epipedesis, the carnal assault.
Geiton lit. "neighbour" the beloved of Encolpius, which has
produced the Fr. Giton = Bardache, Ital. bardascia from the Arab.
Baradaj, a captive, a slave; the augm. form is Polygeiton.
Hippias (tyranny of) when the patient (woman or boy) mounts the
agent. Aristoph. Vesp. 502. So also Kelitizein = peccare superne
or equum agitare supernum of Horace.
Mokhtheria, depravity with boys.
Paidika, whence paedicare (act.) and paedicari (pass.): so in the
Latin poet:--
PEnelopes primam DIdonis prima sequatur,
Et primam CAni, syllaba prima REmi.
Pathikos, Pathicus, a passive, like Malakos (malacus, mollis,
facilis), Malchio, Trimalchio (Petronius), Malta, Maltha and in
Hor. (Sat. ii. 25)
Malthinus tunicis demissis ambulat.
Praxis = the malpractice.
Pygisma = buttockry, because most actives end within the nates,
being too much excited for further intromission.
Phoenicissare ({Greek})= cunnilingere in tempore menstruum, quia
hoc vitium in Phoenicia generate solebat (Thes. Erot. Ling.
Latinae); also irrumer en miel.
Phicidissare, denotat actum per canes commissum quando lambunt
cunnos vel testiculos (Suetonius): also applied to pollution of
childhood.
Samorium flores (Erasmus, Prov. xxiii ) alluding to the
androgynic prostitutions of Samos.
Siphniassare ({Greek}, from Siphnos, hod. Sifanto Island) =
digito podicem fodere ad pruriginem restinguendam, says Erasmus
(see Mirabeau's Erotika Biblion, Anoscopie).
Thrypsis = the rubbing.
Pederastia had in Greece, I have shown, its noble and ideal side:
Rome, however, borrowed her malpractices, like her religion and
polity, from those ultra-material Etruscans and debauched with a
brazen face. Even under the Republic Plautus (Casin. ii. 21)
makes one of his characters exclaim, in the utmost sang-froid,
"Ultro te, amator, apage te a dorso meo!" With increased luxury
the evil grew and Livy notices (xxxix. 13), at the Bacchanalia,
plura virorum inter sese quam foeminarum stupra. There were
individual protests; for instance, S. Q. Fabius Maximus
Servilianus (Consul U.C. 612) punished his son for dubia
castitas; and a private soldier, C. Plotius, killed his military
Tribune, Q. Luscius, for unchaste proposals. The Lex Scantinia
(Scatinia?), popularly derived from Scantinius the Tribune and of
doubtful date (B.C. 226?), attempted to abate the scandal by fine
and the Lex Julia by death; but they were trifling obstacles to
the flood of infamy which surged in with the Empire. No class
seems then to have disdained these "sterile pleasures:" l'on
n'attachoit point alors a cette espece d'amour une note
d'infamie, comme en pais de chretiente, says Bayle under
"Anacreon." The great Caesar, the Cinaedus calvus of Catullus, was
the husband of all the wives and the wife of all the husbands in
Rome (Suetonius, cap. Iii.); and his soldiers sang in his praise,
Gallias Caesar, subegit, Nicomedes Caesarem (Suet. cies. xlix.);
whence his sobriquet "Fornix Birthynicus." Of Augustus the people
chaunted
Videsne ut Cinaedus orbem digito temperet?
Tiberius, with his pisciculi and greges exoletorum, invented the
Symplegma or nexus of Sellarii, agentes et patientes, in which
the spinthriae (lit. women's bracelets) were connected in a chain
by the bond of flesh[FN#379] (Seneca Quaest. Nat.). Of this
refinement which in the earlier part of the nineteenth century
was renewed by sundry Englishmen at Naples, Ausonius wrote (Epig.
cxix. I),
Tres uno in lecto: stuprum duo perpetiuntur;
And Martial had said (xii. 43)
Quo symplegmate quinque copulentur;
Qua plures teneantur a catena; etc.
Ausonius recounts of Caligula he so lost patience that he
forcibly entered the priest M. Lepidus, before the sacrifice was
completed. The beautiful Nero was formally married to Pythagoras
(or Doryphoros) and afterwards took to wife Sporus who was first
subjected to castration of a peculiar fashion; he was then named
Sabina after the deceased spouse and claimed queenly honours. The
"Othonis et Trajani pathici" were famed; the great Hadrian openly
loved Antinous,and the wild debaucheries of Heliogabalus seem
only to have amused, instead of disgusting, the Romans.
Uranopolis allowed public lupanaria where adults and meritorii
pueri, who began their career as early as seven years, stood for
hire: the inmates of these cauponae wore sleeved tunics and
dalmatics like women. As in modern Egypt pathic boys, we learn
from Catullus, haunted the public baths. Debauchees had signals
like freemasons whereby they recognised one another. The Greek
Skematizein was made by closing the hand to represent the scrotum
and raising the middle finger as if to feel whether a hen had
eggs, tater si les poulettes ont l'oeuf: hence the Athenians
called it Catapygon or sodomite and the Romans digitus impudicus
or infamis, the "medical finger"[FN#380] of Rabelais and the
Chiromantists. Another sign was to scratch the head with the
minimus--digitulo caput scabere Juv. ix. 133).[FN#381] The
prostitution of boys was first forbidden by Domitian; but Saint
Paul, a Greek, had formally expressed his abomination of Le Vice
(Rom. i. 26; i. Cor. vi. 8); and we may agree with Grotius (de
Verit. ii. c. 13) that early Christianity did much to suppress
it. At last the Emperor Theodosius punished it with fire as a
profanation, because sacro-sanctum esse debetur hospitium virilis
animae.
In the pagan days of imperial Rome her literature makes no
difference between boy and girl. Horace naively says (Sat. ii.
118):--
Ancilla aut verna est praesto puer;
and with Hamlet, but in a dishonest sense:--
--Man delights me not
Nor woman neither.
Similarly the Spaniard Martial, who is a mine of such pederastic
allusions (xi. 46):--
Sive puer arrisit, sive puella tibi.
That marvellous Satyricon which unites the wit of Moliere[FN#382]
with the debaucheries of Piron, whilst the writer has been
described, like Rabelais, as purissimus in impuritate, is a kind
of Triumph of Pederasty. Geiton the hero, a handsome, curly-pated
hobbledehoy of seventeen, with his calinerie and wheedling
tongue, is courted like one of the sequor sexus: his lovers are
inordinately jealous of him and his desertion leaves deep scars
upon the heart. But no dialogue between man and wife in extremis
could be more pathetic than that in the scene where shipwreck is
imminent. Elsewhere every one seems to attempt his neighbour: a
man alte succinctus assails Ascyltos; Lycus, the Tarentine
skipper, would force Encolpius and so forth: yet we have the neat
and finished touch (cap. vii.):--"The lamentation was very fine
(the dying man having manumitted his slaves) albeit his wife wept
not as though she loved him. How were it had he not behaved to
her so well?"
Erotic Latin glossaries[FN#383] give some ninety words connected
with pederasty and some, which "speak with Roman simplicity," are
peculiarly expressive. "Averse Venus" alludes to women being
treated as boys: hence Martial, translated by Piron, addresses
Mistress Martial (x. 44):--
Teque puta, cunnos, uxor, habere duos.
The capillatus or comatus is also called calamistratus, the
darling curled with crisping-irons; and he is an Effeminatus,
i.e., qui muliebria patitur; or a Delicatus, slave or eunuch for
the use of the Draucus, Puerarius (boy-lover) or Dominus (Mart.
xi. 7I). The Divisor is so called from his practice Hillas
dividere or caedere, something like Martial's cacare mentulam or
Juvenal's Hesternae occurrere caenae. Facere vicibus (Juv. vii.
238), incestare se invicem or mutuum facere (Plaut. Trin. ii.
437), is described as "a puerile vice," in which the two take
turns to be active and passive: they are also called Gemelli and
Fratres = compares in paedicatione. Illicita libido is =
praepostera seu postica Venus, and is expressed by the picturesque
phrase indicare (seu incurvare) aliquem. Depilatus, divellere
pilos, glaber, laevis and nates pervellere are allusions to the
Sotadic toilette. The fine distinction between demittere and
dejicere caput are worthy of a glossary, while Pathica puella,
puera, putus, pullipremo pusio, pygiaca sacra, quadrupes,
scarabaeus and smerdalius explain themselves.
From Rome the practice extended far and wide to her colonies,
especially the Provincia now called Provence. Athenaeus (xii. 26)
charges the people of Massilia with "acting like women out of
luxury"; and he cites the saying "May you sail to Massilia!" as
if it were another Corinth. Indeed the whole Keltic race is
charged with Le Vice by Aristotle (Pol. ii. 66), Strabo (iv. 199)
and Diodorus Siculus (v. 32). Roman civilisation carried
pederasty also to Northern Africa, where it took firm root, while
the negro and negroid races to the South ignore the erotic
perversion, except where imported by foreigners into such
kingdoms as Bornu and Haussa. In old Mauritania, now
Marocco,[FN#384] the Moors proper are notable sodomites; Moslems,
even of saintly houses, are permitted openly to keep catamites,
nor do their disciples think worse of their sanctity for such
licence: in one case the English wife failed to banish from the
home "that horrid boy."
Yet pederasty is forbidden by the Koran. In chapter iv. 20 we
read: "And if two (men) among you commit the crime, then punish
them both," the penalty being some hurt or damage by public
reproach, insult or scourging. There are four distinct references
to Lot and the Sodomites in chapters vii. 78; xi. 77-84; xxvi.
I60-I74 and xxix. 28-35. In the first the prophet commissioned to
the people says, "Proceed ye to a fulsome act wherein no creature
hath foregone ye? Verily ye come to men in lieu of women
lustfully." We have then an account of the rain which made an end
of the wicked and this judgment on the Cities of the Plain is
repeated with more detail in the second reference. Here the
angels, generally supposed to be three, Gabriel, Michael and
Raphael, appeared to Lot as beautiful youths, a sore temptation
to the sinners and the godly man's arm was straitened concerning
his visitors because he felt unable to protect them from the
erotic vagaries of his fellow townsmen. He therefore shut his
doors and from behind them argued the matter: presently the
riotous assembly attempted to climb the wall when Gabriel, seeing
the distress of his host, smote them on the face with one of his
wings and blinded them so that all moved off crying for aid and
saying that Lot had magicians in his house. Hereupon the "Cities"
which, if they ever existed, must have been Fellah villages, were
uplifted: Gabriel thrust his wing under them and raised them so
high that the inhabitants of the lower heaven (the lunar sphere)
could hear the dogs barking and the cocks crowing. Then came the
rain of stones: these were clay pellets baked in hell-fire,
streaked white and red, or having some mark to distinguish them
from the ordinary and each bearing the name of its destination
like the missiles which destroyed the host of Abrahat
al-Ashram.[FN#385] Lastly the "Cities" were turned upside down
and cast upon earth. These circumstantial unfacts are repeated at
full length in the other two chapters; but rather as an instance
of Allah's power than as a warning against pederasty, which
Mohammed seems to have regarded with philosophic indifference.
The general opinion of his followers is that it should be
punished like fornication unless the offenders made a public act
of penitence. But here, as in adultery, the law is somewhat too
clement and will not convict unless four credible witnesses swear
to have seen rem in re. I have noticed (vol. i. 211) the vicious
opinion that the Ghilman or Wuldan, the beautiful boys of
Paradise, the counter parts of the Houris, will be lawful
catamites to the True Believers in a future state of happiness:
the idea is nowhere countenanced in Al-Islam; and, although I
have often heard debauchees refer to it, the learned look upon
the assertion as scandalous.
As in Marocco so the Vice prevails throughout the old regencies
of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli and all the cities of the South
Mediterranean seaboard, whilst it is unknown to the Nubians, the
Berbers and the wilder tribes dwelling inland. Proceeding
Eastward we reach Egypt, that classical region of all
abominations which, marvellous to relate, flourished in closest
contact with men leading the purest of lives, models of
moderation and morality, of religion and virtue. Amongst the
ancient Copts Le Vice was part and portion of the Ritual and was
represented by two male partridges alternately copulating
(Interp. in Priapi Carm. xvii). The evil would have gained
strength by the invasion of Cambyses (B.C. 524), whose armies,
after the victory over Psammenitus. settled in the Nile-Valley
and held it, despite sundry revolts, for some hundred and ninety
years. During these six generations the Iranians left their mark
upon Lower Egypt and especially, as the late Rogers Bey proved,
upon the Fayyum, the most ancient Delta of the Nile.[FN#386] Nor
would the evil be diminished by the Hellenes who, under Alexander
the Great, "liberator and saviour of Egypt" (B.C. 332),
extinguished the native dynasties: the love of the Macedonian for
Bagoas the Eunuch being a matter of history. From that time and
under the rule of the Ptolemies the morality gradually decayed;
the Canopic orgies extended into private life and the debauchery
of the men was equalled only by the depravity of the women.
Neither Christianity nor Al-Islam could effect a change for the
better; and social morality seems to have been at its worst
during the past century when Sonnini travelled (A.D. 1717). The
French officer, who is thoroughly trustworthy, draws the darkest
picture of the widely spread criminality, especially of the
bestiality and the sodomy (chaps. xv.), which formed the "delight
of the Egyptians." During the Napoleonic conquest Jaubert in his
letter to General Bruix (p. I9) says, "Les Arabes et les
Mamelouks ont traite quelques-uns de nos prisonniers comme
Socrate traitait, dit-on, Alcibiade. Il fallait perir ou y
passer." Old Anglo-Egyptians still chuckle over the tale of Sa'id
Pasha and M. de Ruyssenaer, the high-dried and highly respectable
Consul-General for the Netherlands, who was solemnly advised to
make the experiment, active and passive, before offering his
opinion upon the subject. In the present age extensive
intercourse with Europeans has produced not a reformation but a
certain reticence amongst the upper classes: they are as vicious
as ever, but they do not care for displaying their vices to the
eyes of mocking strangers.
Syria and Palestine, another ancient focus of abominations,
borrowed from Egypt and exaggerated the worship of androgynic and
hermaphroditic deities. Plutarch (De Iside) notes that the old
Nilotes held the moon to be of "male-female sex," the men
sacrificing to Luna and the women to Lunus.[FN#387] Isis also was
a hermaphrodite, the idea being that Aether or Air (the lower
heavens) was the menstruum of generative nature; and Damascius
explained the tenet by the all-fruitful and prolific powers of
the atmosphere. Hence the fragment attributed to Orpheus, the
song of Jupiter (Air):--
All things from Jove descend
Jove was a male, Jove was a deathless bride;
For men call Air, of two fold sex, the Jove.
Julius Pirmicus relates that "The Assyrians and part of the
Africians" (along the Mediterranean seaboard?) "hold Air to be
the chief element and adore its fanciful figure (imaginata
figura), consecrated under the name of Juno or the Virgin Venus.
* * * Their companies of priests cannot duly serve her unless
they effeminate their faces, smooth their skins and disgrace
their masculine sex by feminine ornaments. You may see men in
their very temples amid general groans enduring miserable
dalliance and becoming passives like women (viros muliebria
pati), and they expose, with boasting and ostentation, the
pollution of the impure and immodest body." Here we find the
religious significance of eunuchry. It was practiced as a
religious rite by the Tympanotribas or Gallus,[FN#388] the
castrated votary of Rhea or Bona Mater, in Phrygia called Cybele,
self mutilated but not in memory of Atys; and by a host of other
creeds: even Christianity, as sundry texts show,[FN#389] could
not altogether cast out the old possession. Here too we have an
explanation of Sotadic love in its second stage, when it became,
like cannibalism, a matter of superstition. Assuming a nature-
implanted tendency, we see that like human sacrifice it was held
to be the most acceptable offering to the God-goddess in the
Orgia or sacred ceremonies, a something set apart for peculiar
worship. Hence in Rome as in Egypt the temples of Isis (Inachidos
limina, Isiacae sacraria Lunae) were centres of sodomy, and the
religious practice was adopted by the grand priestly castes from
Mesopotamia to Mexico and Peru.
We find the earliest written notices of the Vice in the mythical
destruction of the Pentapolis (Gen. xix.), Sodom, Gomorrah (=
'Amirah, the cultivated country), Adama, Zeboim and Zoar or Bela.
The legend has been amply embroidered by the Rabbis who make the
Sodomites do everything a l'envers: e.g., if a man were wounded
he was fined for bloodshed and was compelled to fee the offender;
and if one cut off the ear of a neighbour's ass he was condemned
to keep the animal till the ear grew again. The Jewish doctors
declare the people to have been a race of sharpers with rogues
for magistrates, and thus they justify the judgment which they
read literally. But the traveller cannot accept it. I have
carefully examined the lands at the North and at the South of
that most beautiful lake, the so-called Dead Sea, whose tranquil
loveliness, backed by the grand plateau of Moab, is an object of
admiration to all save patients suffering from the strange
disease "Holy Land on the Brain."[FN#390] But I found no traces
of craters in the neighbourhood, no signs of vulcanism, no
remains of "meteoric stones": the asphalt which named the water
is a mineralised vegetable washed out of the limestones, and the
sulphur and salt are brought down by the Jordan into a lake
without issue. I must therefore look upon the history as a myth
which may have served a double purpose. The first would be to
deter the Jew from the Malthusian practices of his pagan
predecessors, upon whom obloquy was thus cast, so far resembring
the scandalous and absurd legend which explained the names of the
children of Lot by Pheine and Thamma as "Moab" .(Mu-ab) the water
or semen of the father, and "Ammon" as mother's son, that is,
bastard. The fable would also account for the abnormal fissure
containing the lower Jordan and the Dead Sea, which the late Sir
R. I. Murchison used wrong-headedly to call a "Volcano of
Depression": this geological feature, that cuts off the
river-basin from its natural outlet, the Gulf of Eloth (Akabah),
must date from myriads of years before there were "Cities of the
Plains." But the main object of the ancient lawgiver, Osarsiph,
Moses or the Moseidae, was doubtless to discountenance a
perversion prejudicial to the increase of population. And he
speaks with no uncertain voice, Whoso lieth with a beast shall
surely be put to death (Exod. xxii. I9): If a man lie with
mankind as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an
abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall
be upon them (Levit. xx. 13; where v.v. 15-16 threaten with death
man and woman who lie with beasts). Again, There shall be no
whore of the daughters of Israel nor a sodomite of the sons of
Israel (Deut. xxii. 5).
The old commentators on the Sodom-myth are most unsatisfactory,
e.g. Parkhurst, s.v. Kadesh. "From hence we may observe the
peculiar propriety of this punishment of Sodom and of the
neighbouring cities. By their sodomitical impurities they meant
to acknowledge the Heavens as the cause of fruitfulness
independently upon, and in opposition to, Jehovah;[FN#391]
therefore Jehovah, by raining upon them not genial showers but
brimstone from heaven, not only destroyed the inhabitants, but
also changed all that country, which was before as the garden of
God, into brimstone and salt that is not sown nor beareth,
neither any grass groweth therein." It must be owned that to this
Pentapolis was dealt very hard measure for religiously and
diligently practicing a popular rite which a host of cities even
in the present day, as Naples and Shiraz, to mention no others,
affect for simple luxury and affect with impunity. The myth may
probably reduce itself to very small proportions, a few Fellah
villages destroyed by a storm, like that which drove Brennus from
Delphi.
The Hebrews entering Syria found it religionised by Assyria and
Babylonia, whence Accadian Ishtar had passed west and had become
Ashtoreth, Ashtaroth or Ashirah,[FN#392] the Anaitis of Armenia,
the Phoenician Astarte and the Greek Aphrodite, the great Moon-
goddess,[FN#393] who is queen of Heaven and Love. In another
phase she was Venus Mylitta = the Procreatrix, in Chaldaic
Mauludata and in Arabic Moawallidah, she who bringeth forth. She
was worshipped by men habited as women and vice-versa; for which
reason in the Torah (Deut. xx. 5) the sexes are forbidden to
change dress. The male prostitutes were called Kadesh the holy,
the women being Kadeshah, and doubtless gave themselves up to
great excesses. Eusebius (De bit. Const. iii. c. 55) describes a
school of impurity at Aphac, where women and "men who were not
men" practiced all manner of abominations in honour of the Demon
(Venus). Here the Phrygian symbolism of Kybele and Attis (Atys)
had become the Syrian Ba'al Tammuz and Astarte, and the Grecian
Dionaea and Adonis, the anthropomorphic forms of the two greater
lights. The site, Apheca, now Wady al-Afik on the route from
Bayrut to the Cedars, is a glen of wild and wondrous beauty,
fitting frame-work for the loves of goddess and demigod: and the
ruins of the temple destroyed by Constantine contrast with
Nature's work, the glorious fountain, splendidior vitro, which
feeds the River Ibrahim and still at times Adonis runs purple to
the sea.[FN#394]
The Phoenicians spread this androgynic worship over Greece. We
find the consecrated servants and votaries of Corinthian
Aphrodite called Hierodouli (Strabo viii. 6), who aided the ten
thousand courtesans in gracing the Venus-temple: from this
excessive luxury arose the proverb popularised by Horace. One of
the headquarters of the cult was Cyprus where, as Servius relates
(Ad AEn. ii. 632), stood the simulacre of a bearded Aphrodite with
feminine body and costume, sceptered and mitred like a man. The
sexes when worshipping it exchanged habits and here the virginity
was offered in sacrifice: Herodotus (i. c. 199) describes this
defloration at Babylon but sees only the shameful part of the
custom which was a mere consecration of a tribal rite. Everywhere
girls before marriage belong either to the father or to the clan
and thus the maiden paid the debt due to the public before
becoming private property as a wife. The same usage prevailed in
ancient Armenia and in parts of Ethiopia; and Herodotus tells us
that a practice very much like the Babylonian "is found also in
certain parts of the Island of Cyprus:" it is noticed by Justin
(xviii. c. 5) and probably it explains the "Succoth Benoth" or
Damsels' booths which the Babylonians bans planted to the cities
of Samaria.[FN#395] The Jews seem very successfully to have
copied the abominations of their pagan neighbours, even in the
matter of the "dog."[FN#396] In the reign of wicked Rehoboam
(B.C. 975) "There were also sodomites in the land and they did
according to all the abominations of the nations which the Lord
cast out before the children of Israel" (I Kings xiv. 20). The
scandal was abated by zealous King Asa (B.C. 958) whose
grandmother[FN#397] was high-priestess of Priapus (princeps in
sacris Priapi): he took away the sodomites out of the land" (I
Kings XV. I2). Yet the prophets were loud in their complaints,
especially the so-called Isaiah (B.C. 760), "except the Lord of
Hosts had left to us a very small remnant, we should have been as
Sodom (i. 9); and strong measures were required from good King
Josiah (B.C. 641) who amongst other things, "brake down the
houses of the sodomites that were by the house of the Lord, where
the women wove hangings for the grove" (2 Kings xxiii. 7). The
bordels of boys (pueris alienis adhaeseverunt) appear to have been
near the Temple.
Syria has not forgotten her old "praxis." At Damascus I found
some noteworthy cases amongst the religious of the great Amawi
Mosque. As for the Druses we have Burckhardt's authority (Travels
in Syria, etc., p. 202), "unnatural propensities are very common
amongst them."
The Sotadic Zone covers the whole of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia
now occupied by the "unspeakable Turk," a race of born pederasts;
and in the former region we first notice a peculiarity of the
feminine figure, the mammae inclinatae, jacentes et pannosae, which
prevails over all this part of the belt. Whilst the women to the
North and South have, with local exceptions, the mammae stantes of
the European virgin,[FN#398] those of Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan
and Kashmir lose all the fine curves of the bosom, sometimes even
before the first child; and after it the hemispheres take the
form of bags. This cannot result from climate only; the women of
Maratha-land, inhabiting a damper and hotter region than Kashmir,
are noted for fine firm breasts even after parturition. Le Vice
of course prevails more in the cities and towns of Asiatic Turkey
than in the villages; yet even these are infected; while the
nomad Turcomans contrast badly in this point with the Gypsies,
those Badawin of India. The Kurd population is of Iranian origin,
which means that the evil is deeply rooted: I have noted in The
Nights that the great and glorious Saladin was a habitual
pederast. The Armenians, as their national character is, will
prostitute themselves for gain but prefer women to boys: Georgia
supplied Turkey with catamites whilst Circassia sent concubines.
In Mesopotamia the barbarous invader has almost obliterated the
ancient civilisation which is ante-dated only by the Nilotic: the
mysteries of old Babylon nowhere survive save in certain obscure
tribes like the Mandaeans, the Devil-worshippers and the
Ali-ilahi. Entering Persia we find the reverse of Armenia; and,
despite Herodotus, I believe that Iran borrowed her pathologic
love from the peoples of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley and not from
the then insignificant Greeks. But whatever may be its origin,
the corruption is now bred in the bone. It begins in boyhood and
many Persians account for it by paternal severity. Youths arrived
at puberty find none of the facilities with which Europe supplies
fornication. Onanism[FN#399] is to a certain extent discouraged
by circumcision, and meddling with the father's slave-girls and
concubines would be risking cruel punishment if not death. Hence
they use each other by turns, a "puerile practice" known as
Alish-Takish, the Lat. facere vicibus or mutuum facere.
Temperament, media, and atavism recommend the custom to the
general; and after marrying and begetting heirs, Paterfamilias
returns to the Ganymede. Hence all the odes of Hafiz are
addressed to youths, as proved by such Arabic exclamations as
'Afaka 'llah = Allah assain thee (masculine)[FN#400]: the object
is often fanciful but it would be held coarse and immodest to
address an imaginary girl.[FN#401] An illustration of the
penchant is told at Shiraz concerning a certain Mujtahid, the
head of the Shi'ah creed, corresponding with a prince-archbishop
in Europe. A friend once said to him, "There is a question I
would fain address to your Eminence but I lack the daring to do
so." "Ask and fear not," replied the Divine. "It is this, O
Mujtahid! Figure thee in a garden of roses and hyacinths with the
evening breeze waving the cypress-heads, a fair youth of twenty
sitting by thy side and the assurance of perfect privacy. What,
prithee, would be the result?" The holy man bowed the chin of
doubt upon the collar of meditation; and, too honest to lie,
presently whispered, "Allah defend me from such temptation of
Satan!" Yet even in Persia men have not been wanting who have
done their utmost to uproot the Vice: in the same Shiraz they
speak of a father who, finding his son in flagrant delict, put
him to death like Brutus or Lynch of Galway. Such isolated cases,
however, can effect nothing. Chardin tells us that houses of male
prostitution were common in Persia whilst those of women were
unknown: the same is the case in the present day and the boys are
prepared with extreme care by diet, baths, depilation, unguents
and a host of artists in cosmetics.[FN#402] Le Vice is looked
upon at most as a peccadillo and its mention crops up in every
jest-book. When the Isfahan man mocked Shaykh Sa'adi by comparing
the bald pates of Shirazian elders to the bottom of a lota, a
brass cup with a wide-necked opening used in the Hammam, the
witty poet turned its aperture upwards and thereto likened the
well-abused podex of an Isfahani youth. Another favourite piece
of Shirazian "chaff" is to declare that when an Isfahan father
would set up his son in business he provides him with a pound of
rice, meaning that he can sell the result as compost for the
kitchen-garden, and with the price buy another meal: hence the
saying Khakh-i-pai kahu = the soil at the lettuce-root. The
Isfahanis retort with the name of a station or halting-place
between the two cities where, under presence of making travellers
stow away their riding-gear, many a Shirazi had been raped: hence
"Zin o takaltu tu bi-bar" = carry within saddle and saddle-cloth!
A favourite Persian punishment for strangers caught in the Harem
or Gynaeceum is to strip and throw them and expose them to the
embraces of the grooms and negro-slaves. I once asked a Shirazi
how penetration was possible if the patient resisted with all the
force of the sphincter muscle: he smiled and said, "Ah, we
Persians know a trick to get over that; we apply a sharpened tent
peg to the crupper bone (os coccygis) and knock till he opens." A
well known missionary to the East during the last generation was
subjected to this gross insult by one of the Persian Prince-
governors, whom he had infuriated by his conversion-mania: in his
memoirs he alludes to it by mentioning his "dishonoured person;"
but English readers cannot comprehend the full significance of
the confession. About the same time Shaykh Nasr, Governor of
Bushire, a man famed for facetious blackguardism, used to invite
European youngsters serving in the Bombay Marine and ply them
with liquor till they were insensible. Next morning the middies
mostly complained that the champagne had caused a curious
irritation and soreness in la parse-posse. The same Eastern
"Scrogin" would ask his guests if they had ever seen a man-cannon
(Adami-top); and, on their replying in the negative, a grey-beard
slave was dragged in blaspheming and struggling with all his
strength. He was presently placed on all fours and firmly held by
the extremities; his bag-trousers were let down and a dozen
peppercorns were inserted ano suo: the target was a sheet of
paper held at a reasonable distance; the match was applied by a
pinch of cayenne in the nostrils; the sneeze started the
grapeshot and the number of hits on the butt decided the bets. We
can hardly wonder at the loose conduct of Persian women
perpetually mortified by marital pederasty. During the unhappy
campaign of 1856-57 in which, with the exception of a few
brilliant skirmishes, we gained no glory, Sir James Outram and
the Bombay army showing how badly they could work, there was a
formal outburst of the Harems; and even women of princely birth
could not be kept out of the officers' quarters.
The cities of Afghanistan and Sind are thoroughly saturated with
Persian vice, and the people sing
Kadr-i-kus Aughan danad, kadr-i-kunra Kabuli:
The worth of coynte the Afghan knows: Cabul prefers the
other chose![FN#403]
The Afghans are commercial travellers on a large scale and each
caravan is accompanied by a number of boys and lads almost in
woman's attire with kohl'd eyes and rouged cheeks, long tresses
and henna'd fingers and toes, riding luxuriously in Kajawas or
camel-panniers: they are called Kuch-i safari, or travelling
wives, and the husbands trudge patiently by their sides. In
Afghanistan also a frantic debauchery broke out amongst the women
when they found incubi who were not pederasts; and the scandal
was not the most insignificant cause of the general rising at
Cabul (Nov. 1841), and the slaughter of Macnaghten, Burnes and
other British officers.
Resuming our way Eastward we find the Sikhs and the Moslems of
the Panjab much addicted to Le Vice, although the Himalayan
tribes to the north and those lying south, the Rajputs and
Marathas, ignore it. The same may be said of the Kash mirians who
add another Kappa to the tria Kakista, Kappado clans, Kretans,
and Kilicians: the proverb says,
Agar kaht-i-mardum uftad, az in sih jins kam giri;
Eki Afghan, dovvum Sindi[FN#404] siyyum
badjins-i-Kashmiri:
Though of men there be famine yet shun these three-
Afghan, Sindi and rascally Kashmiri.
M. Louis Daville describes the infamies of Lahore and Lakhnau
where he found men dressed as women, with flowing locks under
crowns of flowers, imitating the feminine walk and gestures,
voice and fashion of speech, and ogling their admirers with all
the coquetry of bayaderes. Victor Jacquemont's Journal de Voyage
describes the pederasty of Ranjit Singh, the "Lion of the
Panjab," and his pathic Gulab Singh whom the English inflicted
upon Cashmir as ruler by way of paying for his treason. Yet the
Hindus, I repeat, hold pederasty in abhorrence and are as much
scandalised by being called Gand-mara (anus-beater) or Gandu
(anuser) as Englishmen would be. During the years 1843-44 my
regiment, almost all Hindu Sepoys of the Bombay Presidency, was
stationed at a purgatory called Bandar Gharra,[FN#405] a sandy
flat with a scatter of verdigris-green milk-bush some forty miles
north of Karachi the headquarters. The dirty heap of mud-and-mat
hovels, which represented the adjacent native village, could not
supply a single woman; yet only one case of pederasty came to
light and that after a tragical fashion some years afterwards. A
young Brahman had connection with a soldier comrade of low caste
and this had continued till, in an unhappy hour, the Pariah
patient ventured to become the agent. The latter, in Arab.
Al-Fa'il =the "doer," is not an object of contempt like Al-Maful
= the "done"; and the high caste sepoy, stung by remorse and
revenge, loaded his musket and deliberately shot his paramour. He
was hanged by court martial at Hyderabad and, when his last
wishes were asked, he begged in vain to be suspended by the feet;
the idea being that his soul, polluted by exiting "below the
waist," would be doomed to endless trans-migrations through the
lowest forms of life.
Beyond India, I have stated, the Sotadic Zone begins to broaden
out, embracing all China, Turkistan and Japan. The Chinese, as
far as we know them in the great cities, are omnivorous and
omnifutuentes: they are the chosen people of debauchery, and
their systematic bestiality with ducks, goats, and other animals
is equalled only by their pederasty. Kaempfer and Orlof Toree
(Voyage en Chine) notice the public houses for boys and youths in
China and Japan. Mirabeau (L'Anandryne) describes the tribadism
of their women in hammocks. When Pekin was plundered the Harems
contained a number of balls a little larger than the old
musket-bullet, made of thin silver with a loose pellet of brass
inside somewhat like a grelot;[FN#406] these articles were placed
by the women between the labia and an up-and-down movement on the
bed gave a pleasant titillation when nothing better was to be
procured. They have every artifice of luxury, aphrodisiacs,
erotic perfumes and singular applications. Such are the pills
which, dissolved in water and applied to the glans penis, cause
it to throb and swell: so according to Amerigo Vespucci American
women could artificially increase the size of their husbands'
parts.[FN#407] The Chinese bracelet of caoutchouc studded with
points now takes the place of the Herisson, or Annulus
hirsutus,[FN#408] which was bound between the glans and prepuce.
Of the penis succedaneus, that imitation of the Arbor vitae or
Soter Kosmou, which the Latins called phallus and
fascinum,[FN#409] the French godemiche and the Italians
passatempo and diletto (whence our "dildo"), every kind abounds,
varying from a stuffed "French letter" to a cone of ribbed horn
which looks like an instrument of torture. For the use of men
they have the "merkin,"[FN#410] a heart-shaped article of thin
skin stuffed with cotton and slit with an artificial vagina: two
tapes at the top and one below lash it to the back of a chair.
The erotic literature of the Chinese and Japanese is highly
developed and their illustrations are often facetious as well as
obscene. All are familiar with that of the strong man who by a
blow with his enormous phallus shivers a copper pot; and the
ludicrous contrast of the huge-membered wights who land in the
Isle of Women and presently escape from it, wrinkled and
shrivelled, true Domine Dolittles. Of Turkistan we know little,
but what we know confirms my statement. Mr. Schuyler in his
Turkistan (i. 132) offers an illustration of a "Batchah" (Pers.
bachcheh = catamite), "or singing-boy surrounded by his
admirers." Of the Tartars Master Purchas laconically says (v.
419), "They are addicted to Sodomie or Buggerie." The learned
casuist Dr. Thomas Sanchez the Spaniard had (says Mirabeau in
Kadhesch) to decide a difficult question concerning the
sinfulness of a peculiar erotic perversion. The Jesuits brought
home from Manilla a tailed man whose moveable prolongation of the
os coccygis measured from 7 to 10 inches: he had placed himself
between two women, enjoying one naturally while the other used
his tail as a penis succedaneus. The verdict was incomplete
sodomy and simple fornication. For the islands north of Japan,
the "Sodomitical Sea," and the "nayle of tynne" thrust through
the prepuce to prevent sodomy, see Lib. ii. chap. 4 of Master
Thomas Caudish's Circumnavigation, and vol. vi. of Pinkerton's
Geography translated by Walckenaer.
Passing over to America we find that the Sotadic Zone contains
the whole hemisphere from Behring's Straits to Magellan's. This
prevalence of "mollities" astonishes the anthropologist, who is
apt to consider pederasty the growth of luxury and the especial
product of great and civilised cities, unnecessary and therefore
unknown to simple savagery, where the births of both sexes are
about equal and female infanticide is not practiced. In many
parts of the New World this perversion was accompanied by another
depravity of taste--confirmed cannibalism.[FN#411] The forests
and campos abounded in game from the deer to the pheasant-like
penelope, and the seas and rivers produced an unfailing supply of
excellent fish and shell-fish;[FN#412] yet the Brazilian Tupis
preferred the meat of man to every other food.
A glance at Mr. Bancroft[FN#413] proves the abnormal development
of sodomy amongst the savages and barbarians of the New World.
Even his half-frozen Hyperboreans "possess all the passions which
are supposed to develop most freely under a milder temperature"
(i. 58). "The voluptuousness and polygamy of the North American
Indians, under a temperature of almost perpetual winter, is far
greater than that of the most sensual tropical nations" (Martin's
Brit. Colonies iii. 524). I can quote only a few of the most
remarkable instances. Of the Koniagas of Kadiak Island and the
Thinkleets we read (i. 81-82), "The most repugnant of all their
practices is that of male concubinage. A Kadiak mother will
select her handsomest and most promising boy, and dress and rear
him as a girl, teaching him only domestic duties, keeping him at
women s work, associating him with women and girls, in order to
render his effeminacy complete. Arriving at the age of ten or
fifteen years, he is married to some wealthy man who regards such
a companion as a great acquisition. These male concubines are
called Achnutschik or Schopans" (the authorities quoted being
Holmberg, Langsdorff, Billing, Choris, Lisiansky and Marchand).
The same is the case in Nutka Sound and the Aleutian Islands,
where "male concubinage obtains throughout, but not to the same
extent as amongst the Koniagas." The objects of "unnatural"
affection have their beards carefully plucked out as soon as the
face-hair begins to grow, and their chins are tattooed like those
of the women. In California the first missionaries found the same
practice, the youths being called Joya (Bancroft, i. 415 and
authorities Palon, Crespi, Boscana, Mofras, Torquemada, Duflot
and Fages). The Comanches unite incest with sodomy (i. 515). "In
New Mexico, according to Arlegui, Ribas, and other authors, male
concubinage prevails to a great extent; these loathsome
semblances of humanity, whom to call beastly were a slander upon
beasts, dress themselves in the clothes and perform the functions
of women, the use of weapons being denied them" (i. 585).
Pederasty was systematically practiced by the peoples of Cueba,
Careta, and other parts of Central America. The Caciques and some
of the headmen kept harems of youths who, as soon as destined for
the unclean office, were dressed as women. They went by the name
of Camayoas, and were hated and detested by the good wives (i.
733-74). Of the Nahua nations Father Pierre de Gand (alias de
Musa) writes, "Un certain nombre de pratres n'avaient point de
femmes, sed eorum loco pueros quibus abutebantur. Ce peche etait
si commun dans ce pays que, jeunes ou vieux, tous etaient
infectes; ils y etaient si adonnes que memes les enfants de six
ens s'y livraient" (Ternaux,Campans, Voyages, Serie i. Tom. x. p.
197). Among the Mayas of Yucatan Las Casas declares that the
great prevalence of "unnatural" lust made parents anxious to see
their progeny wedded as soon as possible (Kingsborough's Mex.
Ant. viii. 135). In Vera Paz a god, called by some Chin and by
others Cavial and Maran, taught it by committing the act with
another god. Some fathers gave their sons a boy to use as a
woman, and if any other approached this pathic he was treated as
an adulterer. In Yucatan images were found by Bernal Diaz proving
the sodomitical propensities of the people (Bancroft v. 198). De
Pauw (Recherches Philosophiques sur les Americains, London, I77I)
has much to say about the subject in Mexico generally: in the
northern provinces men married youths who, dressed like women,
were forbidden to carry arms. According to Gomara there were at
Tamalpais houses of male prostitution; and from Diaz and others
we gather that the pecado nefando was the rule. Both in Mexico
and in Peru it might have caused, if it did not justify, the
cruelties of the Conquistadores. Pederasty was also general
throughout Nicaragua, and the early explorers found it amongst
the indigenes of Panama.
We have authentic details concerning Le Vice in Peru and its
adjacent lands, beginning with Cieza de Leon, who must be read in
the original or in the translated extracts of Purchas (vol. v.
942, etc.), not in the cruelly castrated form preferred by the
Council of the Hakluyt Society. Speaking of the New Granada
Indians he tells us that "at Old Port (Porto Viejo) and Puna, the
Deuill so farre prevayled in their beastly Deuotions that there
were Boyes consecrated to serue in the Temple; and at the times
of their Sacrifices and Solemne Feasts, the Lords and principall
men abused them to that detestable filthinesse;" i.e. performed
their peculiar worship. Generally in the hill-countries the
Devil, under the show of holiness, had introduced the practice;
for every temple or chief house of adoration kept one or two men
or more which were attired like women, even from the time of
their childhood, and spake like them, imitating them in
everything; with these, under pretext of holiness and religion,
principal men on principal days had commerce. Speaking of the
arrival of the Giants[FN#414] at Point Santa Elena, Cieza says
(chap. lii.), they were detested by the natives, because in using
their women they killed them, and their men also in another way.
All the natives declare that God brought upon them a punishment
proportioned to the enormity of their offence. When they were
engaged together in their accursed intercourse, a fearful and
terrible fire came down from Heaven with a great noise, out of
the midst of which there issued a shining Angel with a glittering
sword, wherewith at one blow they were all killed and the fire
consumed them.[FN#415] There remained a few bones and skulls
which God allowed to bide unconsumed by the fire, as a memorial
of this punishment. In the Hakluyt Society's bowdlerisation we
read of the Tumbez Islanders being "very vicious, many of them
committing the abominable offence" (p. 24); also, "If by the
advice of the Devil any Indian commit the abominable crime, it is
thought little of and they call him a woman." In chapters lii.
and lviii. we find exceptions. The Indians of Huancabamba,
"although so near the peoples of Puerto Viejo and Guayaquil, do
not commit the abominable sin;" and the Serranos, or island
mountaineers, as sorcerers and magiclans inferior to the coast
peoples, were not so much addicted to sodomy.
The Royal Commentaries of the Yncas shows that the evil was of a
comparatively modern growth. In the early period of Peruvian
history the people considered the crime "unspeakable:" if a Cuzco
Indian, not of Yncarial blood, angrily addressed the term
pederast to another, he was held infamous for many days. One of
the generals having reported to the Ynca Ccapacc Yupanqui that
there were some sodomites, not in all the valleys, but one here
and one there, "nor was it a habit of all the inhabitants but
only of certain persons who practised it privately," the ruler
ordered that the criminals should be publicly burnt alive and
their houses, crops and trees destroyed: moreover, to show his
abomination, he commanded that the whole village should so be
treated if one man fell into this habit (Lib. iii. cap. 13).
Elsewhere we learn, "There were sodomites in some provinces,
though not openly nor universally, but some particular men and in
secret. In some parts they had them in their temples, because the
Devil persuaded them that the Gods took great delight in such
people, and thus the Devil acted as a traitor to remove the veil
of shame that the Gentiles felt for this crime and to accustom
them to commit it in public and in common."
During the times of the Conquistadores male concubinage had
become the rule throughout Peru. At Cuzco, we are told by Nuno de
Guzman in 1530 "The last which was taken, and which fought most
couragiously, was a man in the habite of a woman, which confessed
that from a childe he had gotten his liuing by that filthinesse,
for which I caused him to be burned." V. F. Lopez[FN#416] draws a
frightful picture of pathologic love in Peru. Under the reigns
which followed that of Inti-Kapak (Ccapacc) Amauri, the country
was attacked by invaders of a giant race coming from the sea:
they practiced pederasty after a fashion so shameless that the
conquered tribes were compelled to fly(p. 271). Under the
pre-Yncarial Amauta, or priestly dynasty, Peru had lapsed into
savagery and the kings of Cuzco preserved only the name. "Toutes
ces hontes et toutes ces miseres provenaient de deux vices
infames, la bestialite et la sodomie. Les femmes surtout etaient
offensees de voir la nature frustree de tous ses droits. Wiles
pleuraient ensemble en leurs reunions sur le miserable etat dans
loquel elles etaient tombees, sur le mepris avec lequel elles
etaient traitees. * * * * Le monde etait renverse, les hommes
s'aimaient et etaient jaloux les uns des autres. * * * Elles
cherchaient, mais en vain, les moyens de remedier au mal; elles
employaient des herbes et des recettes diaboliques qui leur
ramenaient bien quelques individus, mais ne pouvaient arreter les
progres incessants du vice. Cet etat de choses constitua un
veritable moyen age, qui aura jusqu'a l'etablissement du
gouvernement des Incas" (p. 277).
When Sinchi Roko (the xcvth of Montesinos and the xcist of
Garcilazo) became Ynca, he found morals at the lowest ebb. "Ni la
prudence de l'Inca, ni les lois severes qu'il avait promulguees
n'avaient pu extirper entierement le peche contre nature. I1
reprit avec une nouvelle violence, et les femmes en furent si
jalouses qu'un grand nombre d'elles tuerent leurs maris. Les
devins et les sorciers passaient leurs journees a fabriquer, avec
certaines herbes, des compositions magiques qui rendaient fous
ceux qui en mangaient, et les femmes en faisaient prendre, soit
dans les aliments, soit dans la chicha, a ceux dont elles etaient
jalouses'' (p. 291).
I have remarked that the Tupi races of the Brazil were infamous
for cannibalism and sodomy; nor could the latter be only racial
as proved by the fact that colonists of pure Lusitanian blood
followed in the path of the savages. Sr. Antonio Augusto da Costa
Aguiar[FN#417] is outspoken upon this point. "A crime which in
England leads to the gallows, and which is the very measure of
abject depravity, passes with impunity amongst us by the
participating in it of almost all or of many (de quasi todos, ou
de muitos) Ah! if the wrath of Heaven were to fall by way of
punishing such crimes (delictos), more than one city of this
Empire, more than a dozen, would pass into the category of the
Sodoms and Gomorrains" (p. 30). Till late years pederasty in the
Brazil was looked upon as a peccadillo; the European immigrants
following the practice of the wild men who were naked but not, as
Columbus said, "clothed in innocence." One of Her Majesty's
Consuls used to tell a tale of the hilarity provoked in a
"fashionable" assembly by the open declaration of a young
gentleman that his mulatto "patient" had suddenly turned upon
him, insisting upon becoming agent. Now, however, under the
influences of improved education and respect for the public
opinion of Europe, pathologic love amongst the Luso-Brazilians
has been reduced to the normal limits.
Outside the Sotadic Zone, I have said, Le Vice is sporadic, not
endemic: yet the physical and moral effect of great cities where
puberty, they say, is induced earlier than in country sites, has
been the same in most lands, causing modesty to decay and
pederasty to flourish. The Badawi Arab is wholly pure of Le Vice;
yet San'a the capital of Al-Yaman and other centres of population
have long been and still are thoroughly infected. History tells
us of Zu Shanatir, tyrant of "Arabia Felix," in A.D. 478, who
used to entice young men into his palace and cause them after use
to be cast out of the windows: this unkindly ruler was at last
poniarded by the youth Zerash, known from his long ringlets as
"Zu Nowas." The negro race is mostly untainted by sodomy and
tribadism. Yet Joan dos Sanctos[FN#418] found in Cacongo of West
Africa certain "Chibudi, which are men attyred like women and
behaue themselves womanly, ashamed to be called men; are also
married to men, and esteem that vnnaturale damnation an honor."
Madagascar also delighted in dancing and singing boys dressed as
girls. In the Empire of Dahomey I noted a corps of prostitutes
kept for the use of the Amazon-soldieresses.
North of the Sotadic Zone we find local but notable instances.
Master Christopher Burrough[FN#419] describes on the western side
of the Volga "a very fine stone castle, called by the name Oueak,
and adioyning to the same a Towne called by the Russes, Sodom, *
* * which was swallowed into the earth by the justice of God, for
the wickednesse of the people." Again: although as a rule
Christianity has steadily opposed pathologic love both in writing
and preaching, there have been remarkable exceptions. Perhaps the
most curious idea was that of certain medical writers in the
middle ages: "Usus et amplexus pueri, bene temperatus, salutaris
medicine" (Tardieu). Bayle notices (under "Vayer") the infamous
book of Giovanni della Casa, Archbishop of Benevento, "De
laudibus Sodomiae,"[FN#420] vulgarly known as "Capitolo del
Forno." The same writer refers (under "Sixte iv.") to the report
that the Dominican Order, which systematically decried Le Vice,
had presented a request to the Cardinal di Santa Lucia that
sodomy might be lawful during three months per annum, June to
August; and that the Cardinal had underwritten the petition "Be
it done as they demand." Hence the Faeda Venus of Battista
Mantovano. Bayle rejects the history for a curious reason, venery
being colder in summer than in winter, and quotes the proverb
"Aux mods qui n'ont pas d' R, peu embrasser et bien boire." But
in the case of a celibate priesthood such scandals are
inevitable: witness the famous Jesuit epitaph Ci-git un Jesuite,
etc.
In our modern capitals, London, Berlin and Paris for instance,
the Vice seems subject to periodical outbreaks. For many years,
also, England sent her pederasts to Italy, and especially to
Naples, whence originated the term "Il vizio Inglese." It would
be invicious to detail the scandals which of late years have
startled the public in London and Dublin: for these the curious
will consult the police reports. Berlin, despite her strong
devour of Phariseeism, Puritanism and Chauvinism in religion,
manners and morals, is not a whit better than her neighbours. Dr.
Gaspar,[FN#421] a well-known authority on the subject, adduces
many interesting cases, especially an old Count Cajus and his six
accomplices. Amongst his many correspondents one suggested to him
that not only Plato and Julius Caesar but also Winckelmann and
Platen(?) belonged to the Society; and he had found it
flourishing in Palermo, the Louvre, the Scottish Highlands and
St. Petersburg to name only a few places. Frederick the Great is
said to have addressed these words to his nephew, "Je puis vous
assurer, par mon experience personelle, que ce plaisir est peu
agreable a cultiver." This suggests the popular anecdote of
Voltaire and the Englishman who agreed upon an "experience" and
found it far from satisfactory. A few days afterwards the latter
informed the Sage of Ferney that he had tried it again and
provoked the exclamation, "Once a philosopher: twice a sodomite!"
The last revival of the kind in Germany is a society at Frankfort
and its neighbourhood, self-styled Les Cravates Noires, in
opposition, I suppose, to Les Cravates Blanches of A. Belot.
Paris is by no means more depraved than Berlin and London; but,
whilst the latter hushes up the scandal, Frenchmen do not: hence
we see a more copious account of it submitted to the public. For
France of the xviith century consult the "Histoire de la
Prostitution chez tous les Peuples du Monde," and "La Prance
devenue Italienne," a treatise which generally follows"L'Histoire
Amoureuse des Gaules" by Bussy, Comte de Rabutin.[FN#422] The
headquarters of male prostitution were then in the Champ Flory,
i.e., Champ de Flore, the privileged rendezvous of low
courtesans. In the xviiith century, "quand le Francais a tete
folle," as Voltaire sings, invented the term "Peche
philosophique," there was a temporary recrudescence; and, after
the death of Pidauzet de Mairobert (March, 1779), his "Apologie
de la Secte Anandryne" was published in L'Espion Anglais. In
those days the Allee des Veuves in the Champs Elysees had a "fief
reserve des Ebugors"[FN#423]--"veuve" in the language of Sodom
being the maitresse en titre, the favourite youth.
At the decisive moment of monarchical decomposition
Mirabeau[FN#424] declares that pederasty was reglementee and
adds, Le gout des pederastes, quoique moins en vogue que du temps
de Henri III. (the French Heliogabalus), sous le regne desquel
les hommes se provoquaient mutuellement[FN#425] sous les
portiques du Louvre, fait des progres considerables. On salt que
cette ville (Paris) est un chef-d'oeuvre de police; en
consequence, il y a des lieux publics autorises a cet effet. Les
jeunes yens qui se destinent a la professign, vent soigneusement
enclasses; car les systemes reglementaires s'etendent jusques-la.
On les examine; ceux qui peuvent etre agents et patients, qui
vent beaux, vermeils, bien faits, poteles, sont reserves pour les
grands seigneurs, ou se font payer tres-cher par les eveques et
les financiers. Ceux qui vent prives de leurs testicules, ou en
termes de l'art (car notre langue est plus chaste qui nos moeurs),
qui n'ont pas le poids du tisserand, mais qui donnent et
recoivent, forment la seconde classe; ils vent encore chers,
parceque les femmes en usent tandis qu'ils servent aux hommes.
Ceux qui ne sont plus susceptibles d'erection tant ils sont uses,
quoiqu'ils aient tous ces organes necessaires au plaisir,
s'inscrivent comme patiens purs, et composent la troisieme
classe: mais celle qui preside a ces plaisirs, verifie leur
impuissance. Pour cet effet, on les place tout nus sur un matelas
ouvert par la moitie inferieure; deux filles les caressent de
leur mieux, pendant qu'une troisieme frappe doucement avec
desorties naissantes le siege des desire veneriens. Apres un
quart d'heure de cet essai, on leur introduit dans l'anus un
poivre long rouge qui cause une irritation considerable; on pose
sur les echauboulures produites par les orties, de la moutarde
fine de Caudebec, et l'on passe le gland au camphre. Ceux qui
resistent a ces epreuves et ne donnent aucun signe d'erection,
servent comme patiens a un tiers de paie seulement.[FN#426]
The Restoration and the Empire made the police more vigilant in
matters of politics than of morals. The favourite club, which had
its mot de passe, was in the Rue Doyenne, old quarter St Thomas
de Louvre; and the house was a hotel of the xviith century. Two
street-doors, on the right for the male gynaeceum and the left for
the female, opened at 4 p.m. in winter and 8 p.m. in summer. A
decoy-lad, charmingly dressed in women's clothes, with big
haunches and small waist, promenaded outside; and this continued
till 1826 when the police put down the house.
Under Louis Philippe, the conquest of Algiers had evil results,
according to the Marquis de Boissy. He complained without ambages
of moeurs Arabes in French regiments, and declared that the result
of the African wars was an effrayable debordement pederastique,
even as the verole resulted from the Italian campaigns of that
age of passion, the xvith century. From the military the fleau
spread to civilian society and the Vice took such expansion and
intensity that it may be said to have been democratised in cities
and large towns; at least so we gather from the Dossier des
Agissements des Pederastes. A general gathering of "La Sainte
Congregation des glorieux Padarastes" was held in the old Petite
Rue des Marais where, after the theatre, many resorted under
pretext of making water. They ranged themselves along the walls
of a vast garden and exposed their podices: bourgeois, richards
and nobles came with full purses, touched the part which most
attracted them and were duly followed by it. At the Allee des
Veuves the crowd was dangerous from 7 to 8 p.m.: no policeman or
ronde de nun' dared venture in it; cords were stretched from tree
to tree and armed guards drove away strangers amongst whom, they
say, was once Victor Hugo. This nuisance was at length suppressed
by the municipal administration.
The Empire did not improve morals. Balls of sodomites were held
at No. 8 Place de la Madeleine where, on Jan. 2, '64, some one
hundred and fifty men met, all so well dressed as women that even
the landlord did not recognise them. There was also a club for
sotadic debauchery called the Cent Gardes and the Dragons de
l'Imperatrice.[FN#427] They copied the imperial toilette and kept
it in the general wardrobe: hence "faire l'Imperatrice" meant to
be used carnally. The site, a splendid hotel in the Allee des
Veuves, was discovered by the Procureur-General, who registered
all the names; but, as these belonged to not a few senators and
dignitaries, the Emperor wisely quashed proceedings. The club was
broken up on July 16, '64. During the same year La Petite Revue,
edited by M. Loredan Larchy, son of the General, printed an
article, "Les echappes de Sodome": it discusses the letter of M.
Castagnary to the Progres de Lyons and declares that the Vice had
been adopted by plusieurs corps de troupes. For its latest
developments as regards the chantage of the tantes (pathics), the
reader will consult the last issues of Dr. Tardieu's well-known
Etudes.[FN#428] He declares that the servant-class is most
infected; and that the Vice is commonest between the ages of
fifteen and twenty five.
The pederasty of The Nights may briefly be distributed into three
categories. The first is the funny form, as the unseemly
practical joke of masterful Queen Budur (vol. iii. 300-306) and
the not less hardi jest of the slave-princess Zumurrud (vol. iv.
226). The second is in the grimmest and most earnest phase of the
perversion, for instance where Abu Nowas[FN#429] debauches the
three youths (vol. v. 64 69); whilst in the third form it is
wisely and learnedly discussed, to be severely blamed, by the
Shaykhah or Reverend Woman (vol v. 154).
To conclude this part of my subject, the eclaircissement des
obscanites. Many readers will regret the absence from The Nights
of that modesty which distinguishes "Amadis de Gaul," whose
author, when leaving a man and a maid together says, "And nothing
shall be here related; for these and suchlike things which are
conformable neither to good conscience nor nature, man ought in
reason lightly to pass over, holding them in slight esteem as
they deserve." Nor have we less respect for Palmerin of England
who after a risque scene declares, "Herein is no offence offered
to the wise by wanton speeches, or encouragement to the loose by
lascivious matter." But these are not oriental ideas, and we must
e'en take the Eastern as we find him. He still holds "Naturalla
non sunt turpia," together with "Mundis omnia munda"; and, as
Bacon assures us the mixture of a lie cloth add to pleasure, so
the Arab enjoys the startling and lively contrast of extreme
virtue and horrible vice placed in juxtaposition.
Those who have read through these ten volumes will agree with me
that the proportion of offensive matter bears a very small ratio
to the mass of the work. In an age saturated with cant and
hypocrisy, here and there a venal pen will mourn over the
"Pornography" of The Nights, dwell upon the "Ethics of Dirt" and
the "Garbage of the Brothel"; and will lament the "wanton
dissemination (!) of ancient and filthy fiction." This self-
constituted Censor morum reads Aristophanes and Plato, Horace and
Virgil, perhaps even Martial and Petronius, because "veiled in
the decent obscurity of a learned language"; he allows men Latine
loqui; but he is scandalised at stumbling-blocks much less
important in plain English. To be consistent he must begin by
bowdlerising not only the classics, with which boys' and youths'
minds and memories are soaked and saturated at schools and
colleges, but also Boccaccio and Chaucer, Shakespeare and
Rabelais; Burton, Sterne, Swift, and a long list of works which
are yearly reprinted and republished without a word of protest.
Lastly, why does not this inconsistent puritan purge the Old
Testament of its allusions to human ordure and the pudenda; to
carnal copulation and impudent whoredom, to adultery and
fornication, to onanism, sodomy and bestiality? But this he will
not do, the whited sepulchre! To the interested critic of the
Edinburgh Review (No. 335 of July, 1886), I return my warmest
thanks for his direct and deliberate falsehoods:--lies are one-
legged and short-lived, and venom evaporates.[FN#430] It appears
to me that when I show to such men, so "respectable" and so
impure, a landscape of magnificent prospects whose vistas are
adorned with every charm of nature and art, they point their
unclean noses at a little heap of muck here and there lying in a
field-corner.
Section V
ON THE PROSE-RHYME AND THE POETRY OF THE NIGHTS
A.--The Saj'a.
According to promise in my Foreword (p. xiii.), I here proceed to
offer a few observations concerning the Saj'a or rhymed prose and
the Shi'r, or measured sentence, that is, the verse of The
Nights. The former has in composition, metrical or unmetrical
three distinct forms. Saj'a mutawazi (parallel), the most common
is when the ending words of sentences agree in measure, assonance
and final letter, in fact our full rhyme; next is Saj'a mutarraf
(the affluent), when the periods, hemistichs or couplets end in
words whose terminal letters correspond, although differing in
measure and number; and thirdly, Saj'a muwazanah (equilibrium) is
applied to the balance which affects words corresponding in
measure but differing in final letters.[FN#431]
Al-Saj'a, the fine style or style fleuri, also termed Al-Badi'a,
or euphuism, is the basis of all Arabic euphony. The whole of the
Koran is written in it; and the same is the case with the Makamat
of Al-Hariri and the prime masterpieces of rhetorical
composition: without it no translation of the Holy Book can be
satisfactory or final, and where it is not the Assemblies become
the prose of prose. Thus universally used the assonance has
necessarily been abused, and its excess has given rise to the
saying "Al-Saj's faj'a"--prose rhyme's a pest. English
translators have, unwisely I think, agreed in rejecting it, while
Germans have not. Mr Preston assures us that "rhyming prose is
extremely ungraceful in English and introduces an air of
flippancy": this was certainly not the case with Friedrich
Rueckert's version of the great original and I see no reason why
it should be so or become so in our tongue. Torrens (Pref. p.
vii.) declares that "the effect of the irregular sentence with
the iteration of a jingling rhyme is not pleasant in our
language:" he therefore systematically neglects it and gives his
style the semblance of being "scamped" with the object of saving
study and trouble. Mr. Payne (ix. 379) deems it an "excrescence
born of the excessive facilities for rhyme afforded by the
language," and of Eastern delight in antithesis of all kinds
whether of sound or of thought; and, aiming elaborately at grace
of style, he omits it wholly, even in the proverbs.
The weight of authority was against me but my plan compelled me
to disregard it. The dilemma was simply either to use the Saj'a
or to follow Mr. Payne's method and "arrange the disjecta membra
of the original in their natural order"; that is, to remodel the
text. Intending to produce a faithful copy of the Arabic, I was
compelled to adopt the former, and still hold it to be the better
alternative. Moreover I question Mr. Payne's dictum (ix. 383)
that "the Seja-form is utterly foreign to the genius of English
prose and that its preservation would be fatal to all vigour and
harmony of style." The English translator of Palmerin of England,
Anthony Munday, attempted it in places with great success as I
have before noted (vol. viii. 60); and my late friend Edward
Eastwick made artistic use of it in his Gulistan. Had I rejected
the "Cadence of the cooing dove" because un-English, I should
have adopted the balanced periods of the Anglican marriage
service[FN#432] or the essentially English system of
alliteration, requiring some such artful aid to distinguish from
the vulgar recitative style the elevated and classical tirades in
The Nights. My attempt has found with reviewers more favour than
I expected; and a kindly critic writes of it, "These melodious
fray meets, these little eddies of song set like gems in the
prose, have a charming effect on the ear. They come as dulcet
surprises and mostly recur in highly-wrought situations, or they
are used to convey a vivid sense of something exquisite in nature
or art. Their introduction seems due to whim or caprice, but
really it arises from a profound study of the situation, as if
the Tale-teller felt suddenly compelled to break into the
rhythmic strain."
B.--The Verse.
The Shi'r or metrical part of The Nights is considerable
amounting to not less than ten thousand lines, and these I could
not but render in rhyme or rather in monorhyme. This portion has
been a bugbear to translators. De Sacy noticed the difficulty of
the task (p. 283). Lane held the poetry untranslatable because
abounding in the figure Tajnis, our paronomasia or paragram, of
which there are seven distinct varieties,[FN#433] not to speak of
other rhetorical flourishes. He therefore omitted the greater
part of the verse as tedious and, through the loss of measure and
rhyme, "generally intolerable to the reader." He proved his
position by the bald literalism of the passages which he rendered
in truly prosaic prose and succeeded in changing the facies and
presentment of the work. For the Shi'r, like the Saj'a, is not
introduced arbitrarily; and its unequal distribution throughout
The Nights may be accounted for by rule of art. Some tales, like
Omar bin al-Nu'man and Tawaddud, contain very little because the
theme is historical or realistic; whilst in stories of love and
courtship as that of Rose-in-hood, the proportion may rise to
one-fifth of the whole. And this is true to nature. Love, as
Addison said, makes even the mechanic (the British mechanic!)
poetical, and Joe Hume of material memory once fought a duel
about a fair object of dispute.
Before discussing the verse of The Nights it may be advisable to
enlarge a little upon the prosody of the Arabs. We know nothing
of the origin of their poetry, which is lost in the depths of
antiquity, and the oldest bards of whom we have any remains
belong to the famous epoch of the war Al-Basus, which would place
them about A.D. 500. Moreover, when the Muse of Arabia first
shows she is not only fully developed and mature, she has lost
all her first youth, her beaute du diable, and she is assuming
the characteristics of an age beyond "middle age." No one can
study the earliest poetry without perceiving that it results from
the cultivation of centuries and that it has already assumed that
artificial type and conventional process of treatment which
presages inevitable decay. Its noblest period is included in the
century preceding the Apostolate of Mohammed, and the oldest of
that epoch is the prince of Arab songsters, Imr al-Kays, "The
Wandering King." The Christian Fathers characteristically termed
poetry Vinum Daemonorum. The stricter Moslems called their bards
"enemies of Allah"; and when the Prophet, who hated verse and
could not even quote it correctly, was asked who was the best
poet of the Peninsula he answered that the "Man of Al-Kays," i.e.
the worshipper of the Priapus-idol, would usher them all into
Hell. Here he only echoed the general verdict of his countrymen
who loved poetry and, as a rule, despised poets. The earliest
complete pieces of any volume and substance saved from the wreck
of old Arabic literature and familiar in our day are the seven
Kasidahs (purpose-odes or tendence-elegies) which are popularly
known as the Gilded or the Suspended Poems; and in all of these
we find, with an elaboration of material and formal art which can
go no further, a subject-matter of trite imagery and stock ideas
which suggest a long ascending line of model ancestors and
predecessors.
Scholars are agreed upon the fact that many of the earliest and
best Arab poets were, as Mohammed boasted himself,
unalphabetic[FN#434] or rather could neither read nor write. They
addressed the ear and the mind, not the eye. They "spoke verse,"
learning it by rote and dictating it to the Rawi, and this
reciter again transmitted it to the musician whose pipe or zither
accompanied the minstrel's song. In fact the general practice of
writing began only at the end of the first century after The
Flight.
The rude and primitive measure of Arab song, upon which the most
complicated system of metres subsequently arose, was called
Al-Rajaz, literally "the trembling," because it reminded the
highly imaginative hearer of a pregnant she-camel's weak and
tottering steps. This was the carol of the camel-driver, the
lover's lay and the warrior's chaunt of the heroic ages; and its
simple, unconstrained flow adapted it well for extempore
effusions. Its merits and demerits have been extensively
discussed amongst Arab grammarians, and many, noticing that it
was not originally divided into hemistichs, make an essential
difference between the Sha'ir who speaks poetry and the Rajiz who
speaks Rajaz. It consisted, to describe it technically, of iambic
dipodia (U-U-), the first three syllables being optionally long
or short It can generally be read like our iambs and, being
familiar, is pleasant to the English ear. The dipodia are
repeated either twice or thrice; in the former case Rajaz is held
by some authorities, as Al-Akhfash (Sa'id ibn Masadah), to be
mere prose. Although Labid and Antar composed in iambics, the
first Kasidah or regular poem in Rajaz was by Al-Aghlab al-Ajibi
temp. Mohammed: the Alfiyah-grammar of Ibn Malik is in Rajaz
Muzdawij, the hemistichs rhyming and the assonance being confined
to the couplet. Al-Hariri also affects Rajaz in the third and
fifth Assemblies. So far Arabic metre is true to Nature: in
impassioned speech the movement of language is iambic: we say "I
will, I will," not "I will."
For many generations the Sons of the Desert were satisfied with
Nature's teaching; the fine perceptions and the nicely trained
ear of the bard needing no aid from art. But in time came the
inevitable prosodist under the formidable name of Abu Abd al-
Rahman al-Khalil, i. Ahmad, i. Amru, i. Tamim al-Farahidi (of the
Farahid sept), al-Azdi (of the Azd clan), al Yahmadi (of the
Yahmad tribe), popularly known as Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Basri,
of Bassorah, where he died aet. 68, scanning verses they say, in
A.H. 170 (= 786-87). Ibn Khallikan relates (i. 493) on the
authority of Hamzah al-Isfahani how this "father of Arabic
grammar and discoverer of the rules of prosody" invented the
science as he walked past a coppersmith's shop on hearing the
strokes of a hammer upon a metal basin: "two objects devoid of
any quality which could serve as a proof and an illustration of
anything else than their own form and shape and incapable of
leading to any other knowledge than that of their own
nature."[FN#435] According to others he was passing through the
Fullers' Bazar at Basrah when his ear was struck by the Dak dak
(Arabic letters) and the Dakak-dakak (Arabic letters) of the
workmen. In these two onomapoetics we trace the expression which
characterises the Arab tongue: all syllables are composed of
consonant and vowel, the latter long or short as B and B ; or of
a vowelled consonant followed by a consonant as Bal, Bau (Arabic)
.
The grammarian, true to the traditions of his craft which looks
for all poetry to the Badawi,[FN#436] adopted for metrical
details the language of the Desert. The distich, which amongst
Arabs is looked upon as one line, he named "Bayt," nighting-
place, tent or house; and the hemistich Misra'ah, the one leaf of
a folding door. To this "scenic" simile all the parts of the
verse were more or less adapted. The metres, our feet, were
called "Arkan," the stakes and stays of the tent; the syllables
were "Usul" or roots divided into three kinds: the first or
"Sabab" (the tent-rope) is composed of two letters, a vowelled
and a quiescent consonant as "Lam."[FN#437] The "Watad" or tent
peg of three letters is of two varieties; the Majmu', or united,
a foot in which the two first consonants are moved by vowels and
the last is jazmated or made quiescent by apocope as "Lakad"; and
the Mafruk, or disunited, when the two moved consonants are
separated by one jazmated, as "Kabla." And lastly the "Fasilah"
or intervening space, applied to the main pole of the tent,
consists of four letters.
The metres were called Buhur or "seas" (plur. of Bahr), also
meaning the space within the tent-walls, the equivoque alluding
to pearls and other treasures of the deep. Al-Khalil, the
systematiser, found in general use only five Dairah (circles,
classes or groups of metre); and he characterised the harmonious
and stately measures, all built upon the original Rajaz, as Al-
Tawil (the long),[FN#438] Al-Kamil (the complete), Al-Wafir (the
copious), Al-Basit (the extended) and Al-Khafif (the
light).[FN#439] These embrace all the Mu'allakat and the Hamasah,
the great Anthology of Abu Tammam; but the crave for variety and
the extension of foreign intercourse had multiplied wants and Al-
Khalil deduced from the original five Dairah, fifteen, to which
Al-Akhfash (ob. A.D. 830) added a sixteenth, Al-Khabab. The
Persians extended the number to nineteen: the first four were
peculiarly Arab; the fourteenth, the fifteenth and seventeenth
peculiarly Persian and all the rest were Arab and
Persian.[FN#440]
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