Three printed editions, more or less complete,
exist of the Arabic text of the Thousand and One Nights; namely,
those of Breslau, Boulac (Cairo) and Calcutta (1839), besides an
incomplete one, comprising the first two hundred nights only,
published at Calcutta in 1814. Of these, the first is horribly
corrupt and greatly inferior, both in style and completeness, to
the others, and the second (that of Boulac) is also, though in a
far less degree, incomplete, whole stories (as, for instance,
that of the Envier and the Envied in the present volume) being
omitted and hiatuses, varying in extent from a few lines to
several pages, being of frequent occurrence, whilst in addition
to these defects, the editor, a learned Egyptian, has played
havoc with the style of his original, in an ill-judged attempt to
improve it, producing a medley, more curious than edifying, of
classical and semi-modern diction and now and then, in his
unlucky zeal, completely disguising the pristine meaning of
certain passages. The third edition, that which we owe to Sir
William Macnaghten and which appears to have been printed from a
superior copy of the manuscript followed by the Egyptian editor,
is by far the most carefully printed and edited of the three and
offers, on the whole, the least corrupt and most comprehensive
text of the work. I have therefore adopted it as my standard or
basis of translation and have, to the best of my power, remedied
the defects (such as hiatuses, misprints, doubtful or corrupt
passages, etc.
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