The Indiscreet Jewels · Chapter
XXVIII: Thirteenth Trial of the Ring explained
Mangogul tests his ring on his mare, causing her to speak.
What happens
Mangogul tests his ring on his mare, causing her to speak. His secretary Ziguezague refuses to transcribe the mare's discourse and is banished. A Provençal deputy writes it down. The text is then analyzed by scholars who offer absurd interpretations, until Gulliver translates it as the amorous history of a Pacha and the mare.
Themes in this chapter
Satire of Court and Society
Mangogul's arbitrary dismissal of Ziguezague and the court's absurd reverence for the mare's speech critique the capriciousness and sycophancy of court life.
Literary and Intellectual Satire
The scholars' ridiculous conjectures about the mare's discourse—from Greek tragedy to Confucian prayer—mock the pretensions of academic interpretation.
Characters to notice
- Mangogul
Sultan who tests the ring on his mare and banishes Ziguezague for refusing to transcribe her speech.
- Ziguezague
First secretary who refuses to write down the mare's discourse and is dismissed by Mangogul.
- Gulliver
Referenced as the translator of the mare's discourse, drawing on his experience in the land of the Houyhnhnms.
Key passages
“I am not a great portrait-maker. I have exempted the reader from that of the favorite Sultana; but I can never condescend to remit him that of the Sultan’s mare.”
The narrator admits to being a poor describer of people but insists on detailing the Sultan's horse.
Sets up the chapter's focus on the mare rather than human characters.
“Poor Ziguezague disappear’d, having learn’d by experience, that a man of spirit ought not to enter the palaces of most part of the great, without leaving his sentiments at the gate.”
Ziguezague learned that one should check their pride before entering the courts of the powerful.
Moral commentary on the dangers of integrity in a despotic court.
“One said, that it was a scene of some old Greek tragedy, which to him appear’d very moving; another, by the strength of his genius discovered, that it was an important fragment of Egyptian theology: a third pretended, that it was the Exordium of Hannibal’s funeral oration in the Punic language; and a fourth asserted, that the piece was writ in Chinese, and that it was a very devout prayer to Confucius.”
Scholars offered wildly different interpretations of the mare's speech, each claiming it to be a text from a different ancient culture.
Satirizes the arbitrary and self-serving nature of academic exegesis.