سندبادنامه 183
English (machine translation) 183
- Language
- English
183.1
'The demon flees from the deed of a woman / when she mixes together an act of deception.
In deceit, incantation, cunning, and guile, / Iblīs would show her acts of servitude.'
183.3
[...]
183.4
5. The Story of the Householder, the Wife, and the Parrot
The man went out of the house, and the parrot abandoned sleep, drew the kohl of sleeplessness across
its eyes, and peered out through the lattice of the cage. The woman thought to herself:
'A subtle stratagem must be devised against this parrot, so that it does not attend to watching and examining us; for
its gaze is a partition between me and my lover, and its vigilance and wakefulness are an obstacle between me and my lover;
and whenever its words deviate and turn aside from the path of rectitude, and fall away from the highway of balance,
and change and discrepancy find their way into them, reliance upon its speech will be removed, and thereafter
whatever it says, he will deem it the phantasms of madness and the absurdities of suspicious fancies; and whatever it explains
and reports, he will consider it the whisperings of fantasy and the constructions of impossibility.' Then she commanded that where
the parrot was, a lamp be placed beneath a basin, and hung several pieces of tinder from the walls,
and turned a hand-mill atop the roof with varied motions, and brought a fan
and a sieve, and sprinkled water over the fan, so that from the fan and sieve it fell in the manner of wind
and rain; and hour by hour they would draw out the lampstand from under the basin, and hold it
opposite the surfaces of the tinder-pieces, so that the rays of the lamp were reflected from the surfaces of the tinder
like lightning and flashes; and from the grinding together of the heavy masses of the hand-mill,
183.19
[...]
183.20
the semblance of thunder was manifested in the space of the house. All night long, the sum of the matter was that,
183.21
from the reflection of the lightning’s flash, from the friction of the millstone's thunder, and from the movement of the fan
and the sieve, wind and rain were joined together. When the parrot saw the clamor of the thunder, the flare of the lightning, the movement
of the wind, and the distress of the rain, it said: 'Tonight a storm of wind will tear up the world by its roots,
or a torrent of rain will lay waste the universe.' It remained bewildered and distraught; whenever it opened its eyes
and saw lightning, thunder, rain, and wind, it would pull its head under its feathers. On the next day,
when the morning breeze blew and the rose-garden of dawn blossomed on the eastern horizon, the master of the house
returned home, went up to the parrot's cage, and said: 'Bring forth that in which my healing lies, and dispel my ailment with wine!' Tell me, have last night's companions, together with the companions of the night before, still been drinking
sweet wine?
And have they made any motion toward those matters?' The parrot said: 'Last night, from the affliction
of the wind and clouds, and the commotion of the lightning and thunder, the eye had no power of seeing, nor did insight have the capacity for reflection.
I could not apply myself with sincere and unadulterated scrutiny. From the moment you set foot out of the house,
the deluge of Noah, the thunderbolt of Hūd, and the torment of Thamūd broke out! The lightning cast fire
upon the world, and the thunder hurled an uproar into the sky and an earthquake into the earth! All night long in
the cage I trembled with cold, terrified by the dread of thunder, and I was reciting this verse:
183.35
"Glory be to Him whom the thunder praises with His laud," and I kept breathing [charms] upon myself, saying:
183.36
[...]
183.37
Story of the Master of the House with the Woman and the Parrot
Linked texts (1)
- سندبادنامه — Ẓahīrī Samarqandī, Persian