One of these problems, and in my own view, the single biggest problem, is that the knowledge base people were operating from during the specific time in question of the record being actually made, is usually completely different or substantially lacking, from what we can employ today.
A gold 'Mohur' of the East India Company |
And so, a simple casual or colloquial statement, turns out to be anything but simple when viewed in context of the obtaining knowledge base.
There are no people who are academically-learned in the subject itself either as folklore or narrative fiction, who do not 'believe' that the story of Aladdin relates to 'China,' even though the tale itself appears to have come from a Syrian or Persian storyteller or group of them.
The essential fact is, however, that the phrase in the original source texts we have, taken to imply 'China,' actually says 'utter East.'
And... ...that would in fact be in keeping with the actual location of the Travancore cavern of almost countless amounts of gold and jewels with its 'magical door' able to be opened by the saying of a mantra, albeit only able to be safely entered into by a guileless youth. ...Which actual real location is in the deepest end-point of INDIA, in Kerala State.
It is the essence of the door itself - the subjects depicted thereupon, and their meaning - which we will consider next, and you will see that the true 'priceless treasure' is out there on the visible surface; but it too, is subject to complete misunderstandings that have made their way into various commonplace interpretations and 'translations' of whatever is written and drawn there.