Note 446 — KING SHAH BAKHT AND HIS WAZIR AL-RAHWAN.[295] (continued 2)

I here quote Mr. Payne’s note. “Sic in the text; but the passage is apparently corrupt. It is not plain why a rosy complexion, blue eyes and tallness should be peculiar to women in love. Arab women being commonly short, swarthy and black-eyed, the attributes mentioned appear rather to denote the foreign origin of the woman; and it is probable, therefore, that this passage has by a copyist’s error, been mixed up with that which relates to the signs by which the mock physician recognized her strangerhood, the clause specifying the symptoms of her love-lorn condition having been crowded out in the process, an accident of no infrequent occurrence in the transcription of Oriental works.”