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Such is the frame within which nine different stories are inserted; and although it was doubtless imitated from, it has but a faint likeness to, that of the Book of Sindibād. The work which appears most closely to resemble the Romance of Prince Bakhtyār, in the frame, is a collection of Tales in the Tamul language, entitled, Alakeswara Kathá, in which four ministers of the King of Alakapur are falsely accused of violating the King’s private apartments, and vindicate their innocence, and disarm the King’s wrath, by relating a number of stories.[11]
According to M. Deslongchamps, in his learned and elaborate Essai sur les Fables Indiennes, there exist in Oriental languages three versions of the Bakhtyār Nāma—Persian, Arabic, and Turkī (i.e., Eastern Turkish—Uygur). Of the Persian version it is said there are numerous manuscripts in the great libraries of England and France; and besides the printed text appended to Sir William Ouseley’s English translation, published in 1800, a lithographed text was issued, at Paris, in 1839, probably from a manuscript in the Royal Library. The Arabian version, under the title of “The History of the Ten Viziers,” forms part of the text of the Thousand and One Nights, in 12 volumes, of which Dr Maximilian Habicht edited vols. 1 to 8, published at uncertain intervals, at Breslau, from 1825 to 1838 inclusive, when the work was stopped by Habicht’s death. In 1842–3 Professor H. L. Fleischer issued the remaining vols., 9 to 12. The same year when Habicht began the publication of his Arabian text he issued a complete German translation, also at Breslau, in 15 small square volumes, under the title of Tausend und Eine Nacht: Arabische Erzählungen. Zum erstenmal aus einer Tunesischen Handschrift, ergänzt und vollständig übersetzt, von Max. Habicht, F. H. Von der Hagen, und Karl Schall.[12] But both the number and the order of the tales of our romance are quite different in the translation and the text: the sixth volume of the latter, which contains the romance, was not published till 1834, or nine years after the first issue of the translation; and it would seem that Habicht, in editing his Tunisian manuscript, compared it with other texts, and made very considerable changes. The romance is found in a dislocated form in a work, published at Paris in 1788, entitled, Nouveaux Contes Arabice, ou Supplement aux Mille et Une Nuits, &c., par M. l’Abbè*** In this book (which is of little or no value) the several tales are not placed within the frame, or leading story, which, however, appears in connection with one of them. It is also included in the French Continuation of the Thousand and One Nights, translated by Dom Chavis and edited by M. Cazotte,[13] “but singularly disfigured,” says Deslongchamps, “like the other Oriental Tales published by Cazotte;” in Caussin de Perceval’s excellent edition of the Nights, published, at Paris, in 1806, vol. viii, and in Gauttier’s edition, vol. vi. The learned Swede Gustav Knös published, at Gœtingen, in 1806, a dissertation on the Romance of Prince Bakhtyār, and the year following the Arabic text, with a Latin translation, under the title of Historia Decem Vizirorum et filii Regis Azād-bacht. He also issued a translation in the Swedish language, at Upsal, in two parts, the second of which appeared in 1814. Of the Turkī version M. Amédée Jaubert has furnished, in the Journal Asiatique, Mars 1827, t. x, an interesting account, together with a translation of one of the stories,[14] from the unique manuscript preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, which he describes as very beautifully written, the titles of the several tales and the names of the principal characters being in red ink. Unfortunately the manuscript is imperfect; at present it comprises 294 folia. M. Jaubert remarks that this Turkī version is characterised by “great sobriety of ornament and extreme simplicity of style, and the evident intention on the part of the translator to suppress all that may not have appeared to him sufficiently probable, and all that might justly be taxed with exaggeration.”