Magic of a classic

THE BOOK OF THE THOUSAND NIGHTS AND ONE NIGHT: E. Powys Mathers; Illustrations from drawings by Roderick McRae in four volumes: Rupa & Co., 7/16, Daryaganj, New Delhi-110002. Price not mentioned.

WHAT HAS Mahayogi Sri Aurobindo to do with the dulcet-toned, erotically flavoured Arabian Nights cycle of stories? Well, one of his five major plays, ``The Viziers of Bassora,'' is based on the tale of the Sweet- Friend and Ali-Nur that gets started on the 32nd second night by Princess Shahrazad to keep King Shahryar engaged in the world of imagination. Aurobindo had received the Arabian Nights entertainments as a school prize in England. He seems to have retained it for quite a few years and then woven a five-act Elizabethan drama out of it while he was a professor at Baroda.

When he was jailed in 1908 for sedition, the manuscript became a trial exhibit. Then nothing more was heard about it. For several decades it remained amid a jungle of government files. The manuscript was rescued in the 1940s by the record keeper of the Alipore Court from being sold away as waste paper. Published for the first time in 1959, The Viziers of Bassora captures the shimmering original with telling effect.

That is the magic of the Arabian Nights entertainments. Often dismissed with a snigger, the tales yet carry profound humanism found in the situations of love and hate, compassion and revenge, youthful rebellion and gnarled renunciation. Always an ornament to one's shelf of classics, the publisher has done well to make the sumptuous work lovingly put together in English by Powys Mathers in easy-to-handle volumes readily available again. One can read from the beginning to the end or just dip in at random. Shahrazad never fails and for us the memories are all welcome. After all, its origins may be India, the tales having been carried to Arabian lands through the trade route.

There are tales like that of Alibaba and the Forty Thieves (told from 852nd night onwards) made familiar a million times through story and the silver screen; little known marvels like the magic sea rose that gave sight even to those born blind (955th night); the sheer romance of embroidered sheets in the non-spartan Islamic world of long ago (112th night); the succulent descriptions of human peccadilloes; the tremendous impact of religion on everday speech as when the porter finds himself in a Kamasutran situation and exclaims piously: ``As Allah lives, this is the most blessed day of all my life.'' (9th night)

Times are bad all over the world. The global socio-economic scene has been made worse by widespread political chicanery. But when tired with the present we feel like crying out for restful death, Shahrazad draws us back from the brink with buttered suger tarts, musk-perfumed velvet pastries, satoun biscuits, loucmet-el-cadi (souffled pattis) and oliver- clear wine.

Good to remain linked to this age by a volume generously sprinkled with prayers to Allah, the Merciful. Blest be the classic that has survived the Satanic Verses uproar.

PREMA NANDAKUMAR

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