" "Why are you in love
with me?" said the lady. "My sister is much handsomer than I; she is
coming after me--go and make love to her." The fellow went back and saw
a woman with an exceedingly ugly face, upon which he at once went after
the lady, and said to her: "Why did you tell me what was not true?"
"Neither did you speak the truth," answered she; "for if you were really
in love with me, you would not have turned to see another woman." And
the Persian poet Jami, in his _Baharistan_, relates that a man with a
very long nose asked a woman in marriage, saying: "I am no way given to
sloth, or long sleeping, and I am very patient in bearing vexations." To
which she replied: "Yes, truly: hadst thou not been patient in bearing
vexations thou hadst not carried that nose of thine these forty years."
The low estimation in which women are so unjustly held among Muhammedans
is perhaps to be ascribed partly to the teachings of the Kuran in one or
two passages, and to the traditional sayings of the Apostle Muhammad,
who has been credited (or rather _discredited_) with many things which
he probably never said. But this is not peculiar to the followers of the
Prophet of Mecca: a very considerable proportion of the Indian fictions
represent women in an unfavourable light--fictions, too, which were
composed long before the Hindus came in contact with the Muhammedans.
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