Note 21 — INTRODUCTION.

In this entertaining book a Parrot is represented as relating stories night after night, in order to prevent a merchant’s wife from carrying on a criminal intrigue during her husband’s absence. Nakshabī’s work has not yet been wholly translated into English—see foot note, page 197. Of Kāderī’s abridgment (which is very clumsily done) a translation, together with his Persian text, was published at Calcutta, and reprinted at London in 1801. Kāderī has certainly done Nakshabī’s literary reputation no small injury, by the manner in which he has cut down the stories, and by substituting his own inexpressive and bald style for the graceful composition of the original. It is to be hoped that ere long some competent scholar will present English readers with a fair translation of Nakshabī’s excellent work, which would prove of considerable service to those interested in tracing the migrations and transformations of popular tales.—Besides the Suka Saptati, above mentioned, there is another Indian book, in Tamul, on the same plan, entitled Hamsa Vinsati, Twenty Tales of a Hamsa, or Goose, told with the same object as that of the Parrot—to keep an amorous lady at home until her husband returns.