f
jewel-encrusted gold. Pausing close to the dervish, the lady said to her
maidens: "I hear a noise of somewhat within yonder shop; so do ye search
it, lest haply there be one hidden there, with intent to enjoy a look at
us while we have our faces unveiled." Accordingly they searched the shop
opposite the coffee-house, and brought forth a man. At the lady's
command the damsel with the sword smote off his head, and leaving the
corpse lying on the ground, the procession swept on. It turned out that
the lady was the wife of a jeweller to whom the King of Bassorah was
desirous of granting a boon, and at her request the boon obtained was a
proclamation commanding that all the townsfolk should every Friday enter
the mosques two hours before the hour of prayer, so that none might
abide in the town, great or small, unless they were in the mosques or in
the houses with the doors locked upon them; but all the shops were to be
left open. Then the lady had permission to ride with her slave-women
through the heart of the town, and none were to look on her from window
or lattice; and every one whom she found abroad she was at liberty to
kill. A similar incident is related in the life of Kurroglu, the
robber-poet of Persia, where a beautiful princess passes in state
through the bazaars every Friday on her way to the mosque, while all the
men are banished.[51] Here, again, some one was of course found playing
the spy.

A version of the incident, which can be traced further back in literary
form than either of the foregoing, occurs in the "Ardshi-Bordshi." This
book is a Mongolian recension of a Sanskrit collection of stories
concerning Vikramaditya, a monarch who, if he ever lived, seems to have
flourished about the beginning of the Christian era. He was celebrated,
like Solomon, for his wisdom and his might; and his name became the
centre of a vast accretion of legends. Some of these legends were
translated into Mongolian late in the Middle Ages, and formed a small
collection called after Ardshi-Bordshi, the nominal hero. In the story
to which I wish to direct attention, a certain king has a daughter
bearing the name of Sunshine, of whom he was so jealous that if any one
looked upon her his eyes were put out, and the man who entered her
apartments had his legs broken. Naturally, the young lady got tired of
being thus immured, and complained to her father that, as she had no
opportunity of seeing man or beast, the time hung heavily on