Kora

“ The goddess was the first to break the silence. With all the sweet frailness that is born of woman, she, notwithstanding that she was a goddess, put forth her beautiful face and said:
“O Kora mine, let us each close our eyes, and then, inclining our forms one towards the other, imagine that we are lovers kissing.”
Kora replied:
“O Kasawayo, I will do this that you ask of me, but still am I sad to think that the meeting of our lips is only to be imagined. For we mortals love to feel the beauty of the maiden that we love ”

“ A party of people moved between the two women and the speakers. The Marquise heard Kora draw a sobbing breath. She hesitated an instant, her own eyes flashing, her cheeks burning. He to sit in judgment on others––he! ”

“ But Kora had lit a big fire in the cow house and sat by it warming himself, knowing that the girl would have to come to him; and as she could find no shelter elsewhere she had to go to his fire, and then she sat and warmed herself and thought “I fled for fear of this man and now I have come back to him; this is the end, I can no longer stay in this world; the people will not even let me into their houses. ”

“ Trouvelot, you care for?”
87
“Not this minute,” confessed the girl; “but,” and she shrugged her shoulders, “I probably shall tomorrow! I know myself well enough for that; and I won’t lie––to you! You saw how he could make me cry? It is only the man we care for who can hurt us.”
The Marquise did not reply; she was staring out of the window. Kora, watching her, did not know if she heard. She had heard and was angry with herself that her heart grew lighter when she heard the name of Kora’s lover. ”

“ Among the Moslems, the Koran has always been looked on as the most perfect model of style and language. This feature of it is in their dogmatic the greatest of all miracles, the incontestable proof of its divine origin. Such a view on the part of men who knew Arabic infinitely better than the most accomplished European Arabist will ever do, may well startle us. In fact, the Koran boldly challenged its opponents to produce ten súras, or even a single one, like those of the sacred book, and they never did so. ”

“ For every evil that man is heir to, the Koran is the cure. A few words from its precious pages are bound upon the arm of the camel driver, who feels that with this as guardian he will not be lost upon the trackless sands. When ill, the wife will call the astrologer, who writes a few words upon a piece of paper, and soaking it in water, gives it to the wailing child, and the mother is assured that all will soon be well, because has he not drunk of the very fount of wisdom, the words that came from God? ”

“ Probably the Koran is translated in a wrong spirit or to suit a British taste. But obviously it is meant to be chanted, and it is full of rhythms with which we are unfamiliar, as unfamiliar as we are with the sobbing, plaintive, screaming music that is melody in the Moslem’s ears. The soul of the Koran is not like the soul of the Bible, just as the soul of a mediæval Christian city such as Florence or Rome is unlike Khiva or Bokhara or Samarkand, just as the souls of our eager mystical populations are different from the souls of those simple, satisfied and fatalistic people. ”

“ Let us return for a moment to the Koran, that infallible touchstone by which every Mohammedan theory and practice must be proved. Are any germs of mysticism to be found there? The Koran, as I have said, starts with the notion of Allah, the One, Eternal, and Almighty God, far above human feelings and aspirations—the Lord of His slaves, not the Father of His children; a judge meting out stern justice to sinners, and extending His mercy only to those who avert His wrath by repentance, humility, and unceasing works of devotion; a God of fear rather than of love. ”

“ His attributes are expressed by ninety-nine epithets which are used in the Korān, and which in Arabic are single words, and generally participial forms, but in the translation they are sometimes rendered by verbs as “He creates” for “He is the creator.”
Besides a belief in God, the Korān requires a belief in angels; it is claimed that they are pure, without distinction of sex; are created of fire, and neither eat nor drink. Two angels are appointed for each human being, and one stands at his right hand, and the other at his left ”

“ And Korah went forth to his people in his pomp. Those who were greedy for this present life said, “ Oh that we had the like of that which hath been bestowed on Korah! Truly he is possessed of great good fortune.”
80⁠But they to whom knowledge had been given said, “ Woe to you! the reward of God is better for him who believeth and worketh righteousness, and none shall win it but those who have patiently endured.” ”

“ All Korai, with its five provinces, its 176 cities, and its four or five millions of people, was annexed to the Chinese empire. Tens of thousands of Koraian refugees fled into Shinra, thousands into Pu-hai, north of the Tumen, then a rising state; and many to the new country of Japan. Desolated by slaughter and ravaged by fire and blood, war and famine, large portions of the land lay waste for generations. Thus fell the second of the Corean kingdoms, and the sole dominant state now supreme in the peninsula was Shinra, an outline of whose history we shall proceed to give. ”

“ Every candid eye, I think, will read the Koran far otherwise than so. It is the confused ferment of a great rude human soul; rude, untutored, that cannot even read; but fervent, earnest, struggling vehemently to utter itself in words. With a kind of breathless intensity he strives to utter himself; the thoughts crowd on him pellmell: for very multitude of things to say, he can get nothing said. ”

“ Even the Arab Moslem of the present day can have but a very dim and imperfect understanding of the Koran, unless he has made a special study of its exegesis. For the great advantage, boasted by the holy book itself, of being perspicuous to every one, has in the course of thirteen centuries vanished. Moreover, the general belief is that in the ritual use of the Koran, if the correct recitation is observed, it is immaterial whether the meaning of the words be understood or not.
A great deal remains to be accomplished by European scholarship for the correct interpretation of the Koran. ”

“ Tried by such a standard, the Koran altogether fails. In its philosophy it is incomparably inferior to the writings of Chakia Mouni, the founder of Buddhism; in its science it is absolutely worthless. On speculative or doubtful things it is copious enough; but in the exact, where a test can be applied to it, it totally fails. Its astronomy, cosmogony, physiology, are so puerile as to invite our mirth if the occasion did not forbid. They belong to the old times of the world, the morning of human knowledge. The earth is firmly balanced in its seat by the weight of the mountains ”

“ The Koran treats of death, resurrection, the judgment, paradise, and the place of torment, in a style calculated powerfully to affect the imagination of the believer. The joys of paradise, promised to all who fall in the cause of religion, are those most captivating to an Arabian fancy. ”

“ Sincerity, in all senses, seems to me the merit of the Koran; what had rendered it precious to the wild Arab men. It is, after all, the first and last merit in a book; gives rise to merits of all kinds,—nay, at bottom, it alone can give rise to merit of any kind. Curiously, through these incondite masses of tradition, vituperation, complaint, ejaculation in the Koran, a vein of true direct insight, of what we might almost call poetry, is found straggling. The body of the Book is made-up of mere tradition, and as it were vehement enthusiastic extempore preaching. ”

“ In the earlier Koran, he is characterized as the “man in the blanket,” or the “man who is wrapped up.” For he fully appreciated the necessity of keeping his followers in a state of protracted mystification, and to that end he made use of many theatrical tricks. He would drum up a crowd with his ludicrous snortings and puffings until the resounding cry, “Inspiration hath descended on the Prophet!” assured him that he had a sufficiently large audience to warrant the ebullition of a new Sura. ”

“ THE KORAN From 'History of the Intellectual Development of Europe.' Copyright 1876, by Harper & Brothers
Arabian influence, thus imposing itself on Africa and Asia by military successes, and threatening even Constantinople, rested essentially on an intellectual basis, the value of which it is needful for us to consider. The Koran, which is that basis, has exercised a great control over the destinies of mankind, and still serves as a rule of life to a very large portion of our race. ”

“ For once in the life of each man—sayeth the Koran—comes to him his chance for happiness or woe. Once and only once. And while all else is written from the beginning in the book of each man's life by the Angel of the Scrolls—sayeth the Koran—there is left one page whereon each is permitted to trace, himself, the record of his choice. ”

“ To the south of Korai were the states of Shinra and Hiaksai, and between these and Korai, there was for a couple of centuries almost perpetual war, the only intervals being when the latter kingdom was suffering at the hands of the formidable Chinese invaders. But as I merely give this rough and very imperfect sketch of Corean history, to explain how the word Korai originated and was then applied to the whole of the peninsula, I must now proceed to explain in bold touches how the other states became united to Korai. ”

“ Korah, Kore, or Kárun, the Dives of his age, was an alchemist. He lived in an excess of luxury and show. At the height of his pride and gluttony he rebelled against Moses, refusing to pay a tithe of his possessions for the public use. The earth then opened and swallowed him up together with the palace in which he dwelt. (See Koran, chap, xxviii, and, for the Bible narrative, The Book of Numbers, chap, xvi.) ]
[Footnote 10: It was decreed from all eternity that Háfiz should drink wine. He had therefore no free agency and could not be justly blamed.] ”

“ The Arabs consider the Koran not only a divine revelation in the sense that it is the work of God, but in a more metaphysical one, namely, that the thoughts therein constitute the eternal mind of God, and are his word, his Logos; that they exist, as some say, in the divine essence; that the first copy of the Koran has been from all eternity at the throne of God, written on a vast table that contains his decrees as to the past and future. Is not this Hebrew doctrine uttered by the Arabs? Exoteric Judaism had been very explicit. ”

“ A wai-kol, a huge, fierce man, of gigantic aspect, with a bad head, though perhaps with good heart, a kind of ogre, is a Japanese kol or creature. A destructive wind or typhoon is a Japanese wind. As western Christendom for centuries uttered their fears of the Norse pirates, “From the fury of the Northmen, Good Lord, deliver us,” so the Korai people, along the coast, for many generations offered up constant petition to their gods for protection against these Northmen of the Pacific. ”

“ These documents collected together formed the Koran, that mass of wild and unmeaning matter, which has been received so devoutly by his followers. [29]
If we consult the opinions of the Moslem on the subject of the Koran, we shall find them as unintelligible and incoherent as the work itself. One tells us that it contains sixty thousand miracles; [30] another that it is itself a miracle greater even than that of raising the dead to life; [31] and all true believers were compelled to acknowledge that it was uncreate, and had been in existence long before the creation of the world. ”

“ The signs and tokens of the True One are as apparent as the sun in mid-heaven, yet people are bewildered in the desert of blindness and ignorance. Notwithstanding many of the Koranic verses and confirmed traditions indicate a new Law and Command, and a new Cause, they still await the promised Countenance to decree according to the law of the Koran; just as the Jews and Christians hold to the same saying. ”

“ The office wag established under the rule of Harun al-Rashid, who so entitled Abú Yúsuf Ya'akub al-Ansári: therefore the allusion is anachronistic. The same Caliph also caused the Olema to dress as they do still.
[FN#172] The allusion is Koranic: "O men, if ye be in doubt concerning the resurrection, consider that He first created you of the dust of the ground (Adam) ; afterwards of seed" (chaps. xxii.) . But the physiological ideas of the Koran are curious. It supposes that the Mani or male semen is in the loins and that of women in the breast bone (chaps Ixxxvi.) ”

“ A distinguishing feature of the Koran is a restless anxiety to mislead the mind by every species of artifice, and to anticipate and answer objections. Frequent challenges are thrown out, which, from the nature of the case could not be accepted, in a style of the most confident and arrogant boasting, and spectres of superstition are conjured up, to bear specific testimony to its merits. ”

“ The Koran, further, pronounces all earthly things to be indeed vain; yet it takes much account of human wants and desires, and lays down definite regulations about property and goods. If the Prophet had immediately met with recognition in his native town, he might perhaps have founded a contemplative monkish community; but, driven by necessity to become the ruler of a warrior State, he had to follow another course. After some hesitation he finally preached war against unbelievers as such; they have no choice but between acceptance of Islam and extermination. ”

“ The Koreish wanted strength or courage to pursue their advantages, by laying siege to Medina; and the Musulmans rallied again. The following specimen of his skill in restoring the spirits of his party, is in the third chapter of the Koran; "It was," he says, “to try and prove them. We cause these days of different success interchangeably to succeed each other among men, that God may know those who believe, and have martyrs from among you; and that God might prove those that believe, and destroy the infidels." ”