The Laughable Stories Collected by Mar Gregory John

INTRODUCTION. XXIII
as likewise is No. CCCCXXXVII, a most repulsive
story. Whether we owe these marginal notes to tra-
dition or to Homo the scribe is a matter which cannot
be cleared up at present. That any reference to the
relations between the sexes should be expunged from
a book intended for the use of monks or of men liv-
ing in a monastery is not to be wondered at, but that
the reader should be specially directed to read certain
of the stories is a matter for surprise.
In reading the "Book of Laughable Stories" the most
casual reader will observe that Bar-Hebraeus must have
spent considerable labour in compiling his work, and
it is certain that he must have read a vast amount of
literature of all kinds written in several languages.
Some of the sayings' of the Greek, Persian, Indian,
The sources
and of the
Arabian sa8:es he probably took from some w^ork like "^^"g^^^^^
. . . . stories".
that of Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Miskavaih (died
A. H. 421 = A. D. 1030), who collected a number of
precepts of the ancient sages of Persia, India, Arabia,
and Greece, which were translated into Persian by
Taki Shushtari', and it seems that he supplemented
these from notes made during the course of his own
studies. It is clear that in some cases he amplified his
text, and that in others he modified and gave a dif-
ferent turn to the original story. Some of the stories
may have existed in more than one form, or they may
have been told in different ways. Thus in No. CCCLXXX
^ See Brit. Mus. MS. Orient. No. 457^ of the Javidan Khirad which,
inter alia, contains the Precepts of Buzurjmehr (fol. 20 a), the
Maxims of the Sages of India (fol. 59^), the Proverbs of the
Arabs (fol. iii^), and the Proverbs of the Greek Sages (fol. 119^).
See Rieu, Catalogue of the Persian MSS. in the British Museum,
p. 441 «.