"قاموس، فارسي، عربي، إنجليزي، مع أطروحة عن لغات أمم المشرق وآدابها وعاداتها" [ظ‎‎٣‎٢] (١٨٢٦/٦٩)

i TiinrniiM^ii^wiri i iimri
DISSERTATION.
xlviii
footing of prowess with those gigantic Dives, he
is in general armed with enchanted talismans, and
mounted on some tremendous monster. One of
the most famous adventurers in Faery-land is
Tahmuras, an ancient Persian king. The Paris
honour him with a splendid embassy; and the
Dives, who dread him, send also another. He
consults the griffon Slmurgh; she speaks all lan
guages, and knows future events ; she councils
him to aid the Paris, informs him of the dangers
he will encounter, and gives him instructions how
to proceed ; she offers her assistance to conduct
him to Jinnistan ; and, as a token of friendship,
pulls some feathers from her breast, with which he
ornaments his helmet. He then mounts the
Slmurgh; and, armed with the buckler of Jan bin
Jan, crosses the dark abyss, which mortals cannot
pass without supernatural assistance. He arrives
at Kaf; he defeats Arzshank, and also another
Dive, still more fierce, called Damrush, whose
residence is described as a gloomy cavern, where
he is surrounded by vast piles of wealth, amassed
by plunder. Here Tahmuras, amongst other rich
spoils, finds a fair captive, the Pari Marjan, whom
the Dive had carried off, and her brothers had
long searched for in vain. He chains the vanquish
ed demons in the centre of the mountain, sets Mar
jan at liberty, and then, in the true spirit of knight-
errantry, flies, at the Pari’s request, to the attack
of another powerful Dive, called Hudkunz; but
here Tahmuras falls. In the Shah-namah the cele
brated Rustam, many ages afterwards, engages the
Dive Arzshank, who had escaped from the chains
of lahmuras, and kills him, after a fierce battle.
Aizshank is there painted with a body somewhat
human, and the head of a bull, which Rustam
stiikes off at a blow. I he Dive Munheras is
wounded with an arrow in the mouth by Gershab,
the last king of the Peshdadian dynasty ; and he is
afterwards put to death by Suhrab the son of
Rustam. In the first encounter he has the head
of a hog ; but in the next he is pictured as a
bifrons; one resembling the head of a lion, the
other that of a wild boar. Rustam, who is con
sidered as the Hercules of Persia, among many
other Dives, dragons, and enchanters, whom he
destroys, kills a demon called the Dive Sapid; and
Father Angelo mentions having seen a stupendous
monument in the midst of a plain, near the city of
Fehelion, between Shustar and Shiraz, cut into a
quadrangular fortification, with such regularity,
that it has the appearance of being formed of one
entire stone. 89
This Dissertation would swell, however, to a
disproportioned bulk, were I to enter into a detail
of the various wonderful adventures with which
the Eastern poems and romances abound. I give
these few outlines, merely to show the general
prevalence of romantic ideas in Asia: but especially
in Versia, the great classic ground of Eastern fic
tion, and the centre whence it seems to have spread
to almost every surrounding and distant country.
So singular indeed is the resemblance, in number
less instances, between the wild imagery of this
style of fabling, with that which prevailed in
after-times in Europe, that we must either suppose,
in the writers, a wonderful coincidence of luxuriant
imagination, or conclude that the West must have
borrowed from the East. I shall not insist upon
Turpin's Twelve Peers, upon the Armorican,
Spanish, and other European romances, where the'
similarity of features is irregularly striking; but
even in the nobler works of Ariosto, Tasso, and
Spenser, we can discover the counterpart of all
their fanciful machinery in the fictions of Persia.
The Jpogriffo, on which Astolfo flies to heaven ;
and the magic ring of Bradamante in Orlando
Furioso ; the many-headed monster of Duessa, and
the shield of Prince Arthur, in the Faery Queen;
with the various enchantments of Armida and
Ismeno in Gierusalemme Liberala; may all be
traced to Oriental origin; whilst the Pari JSIarjan
has much the air of being the Faery or gain, who
conveyed away our King Arthur, after the battle of
Camelon ; and with whom, according to the old
British romances, he now resides in Faery land
with great happiness and splendour. 90
Some ingenious writers have considered this