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AStAftCK RESEARCHES i

OR

TRANSACTIONS

OF THE

SOCIETt INSTITUTED IN BENGAL

JOR INQUIRING INTO THS .

HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES,

THB

ARTS* SCIENCES, AND LITERATURE*

OF

A S I A.

ttUjm

.Urn

VOLUME TftE SECOND-

Ptinted verbatim from the Calcutta Editiotii

LONDON:'

Ihineed by G. A«M, GreviUe-ftreet,

t^ J. tlWlLL; VtllNOK AMD ftOOO; J. CUTHItL ] J. WALKBA| x.x^SA; VackxnotoNi alcen, and CO.; OTRIOOS AM|» tOM( (OTTOMAN AND KiZS ; K, TAV LDUH J AND J. SCATCHIRV.

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ADVERTISEJVteNT,

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It may greatly conduce to the advancement of ufeful knowledge, if the learned Societies eliablifhed in Europe^.ill tranfmit to the Secre- tary of the Society in Bengal a CoUedlion of Ihort and precife Queries on every Branch of Afiatic Hiftory, Natural and Civil, on the Phi- lofophy. Mathematics, Antiquities, and Polite Literature of Afidy and on Eaftern Arts, both I^iberal and Mechanic ; fince it is hoped that accurate Anfwers may in due time be procured to any Queflions that can be propofed on fhofe lubje6ls ; vvhich muft in all events be curious and interefting, and may prove in the higheft* degree beneficial to mankind.

>«

I ^

I.

THE FOUkTH

ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE,

DELIVERED t5 FEBRtJARY, t?^;.

^Y THE PRESIDENT.

I ■ 1i ■' i'

Oenflemen,

I HAD the honour laft year of opening to you my intention to difcourfe at our annual meetings on the Jive principal nations who have peopled the continent and iflands of ^Jia, fo as to trace, by an historical and philological analyfis> the number of ancient ftems from which thofe five branches have feverally fprung, and the central region from which they appear to have proceeded ; you may, therefore^ exped. th^t^ having fubmitted to your confideration a few general remarks on the old inhabitants of Lidiay I (hould now offer my fentiments on fome other nation, whoy from a fimilarity of language^ religion^ artSy and manners, may be fuppofed to have had an eafly con- nexion with the Hindics'y but, fince we 6nd fome Afiatic nations totally diffimilar to them in all ormoft of thofe particulars, and fince the difference will ftrike you more forcibly by an immediate and clofe compj^rifon, 1 defign at prefent to give a fhort ac- count of a wonderful people, who feem in every refpeA fo ftrongly contrafted to the jariginal natives of this country, that they muft have oeen for ages a fiiilind: and feparate race*

» ■

I.

2 THE FOITRTH DISCOURSE •

For the purpofe of thefe difcourfes 1 difcovered In^ dia on its largeft fcale, delctibing it as lying between Perfia and China ^ Tariary and Java \ and, for the fame purpofe, I now apply the name of jirahia^ as the Arabian geographers often apply it, to that exten- five pcninfula which the Red Sea divides from Afncay the great AJfyrian river frbm Iran^ and of which the Erythrean Sea wafhes the bafe, without ex- cluding any part of its weftern fides, which would be completely maritime, if no ifthmus intervened between the Mediterranean and the Sea of Kolzom : that coun- try in (hort I call Arabia^ in which the Arabic lan- guage and letters, or fuch as have a near affinity tc them, have been immemorially current.

Arabia^ thus divided from India by a vaft ocean or at leaft by a broad bay, could hardly have beei conne&ed in any degree with this country, until na vigation and commerce had been confiderably im proved ; yet, as the Hiftdus and the people of Yeme. were both commercial nations in a very early age jhey were probably the firft inftruments of convey in to the weflern world the gold, ivory, and perfume of India J as well as the fragrant wood, called Alluwu in Arabic J and Aguru in Sanfcrity which grows in tl: grcateft perfedion in Anam^ or Cochinchina. It is po iible too that a part of the Arabian idolatry might hai been derived from the fame fource with that of tl Hindus J but fuch ah intercourfe may be confidcred partial and accidental only ; nor am I more convince than I w^ fifteen years ago, when I took the liberty animadvert on a ^paffage in the Hiftory of Prin Kantemiry that the Turh have any juft reafon f holding the coafl: of Yemen to be a part of India, ai calling its inhabitants Yellow Indians.

The Arabs nave never been entirely fubdued, r has any impreflion been m^ide on them> except

OK THE ARABi;

f

; iheit bbrders ; where^ indeed, the Phenicians\ Per^

I /ians, Ethiopians^ Egyptians^ and, in modern times,

the Othman TarJarSy have feverally acquired fettle- ments; but, with thefe exceptions, the natives of Hejaz and Yemen have preferved for ages the folc dominion of their defens and paftures, their moun- tains and fertile valleys }, thus apart frdm the reft of mankind, this extraordinary people have retained their primitive manners and language, features and I character, as long and as remarkably as the ISndta

themfelves. All the genuine Alrabs of Syria whom I knew in Europe -^ thofe of Yemen whom I faw in the ifle of Hinttmn^ whither many had come from Majkai for the putpofe of trade \ and thofe of Hejaz^ whom I have met in Bengal, form a ftriking contrail to the Hindu inhabitants of thofe provinces 2 their eyes arc full of vivacity, their fpeech voluble and articulate^ their deportment manly and dignified, their apprehen- iion quick, their minds always prefent and att^ntive^ with a fpirit of independence appearing in the GOUti* tenances even of the loweft among them. Men Will always differ in their ideas of civilization, each meafur« ing it by the habits and prejudices of his own country 1 but, if courtefy and urbanity, a love of poetry and elo* quence, and the pradice of exalted virtues be a jufter mealure of perfeft focicty, we have certain proof that the people of ArahtUy both on plains and in cities, in republican and monarchical ftates, were eminently ci* vilized for many ages before their conqueft of Perjia*

It is deplorable, that the ancient hiftory of thisi majeftic race (hould be as little known in detail before the time of Dhu Yezen, as th^t of the Hindus before Vicramaditya 5 for, although the vaft hiftorical work of jilnuwairiy and-the Murujuldhahab or Golden Mea^ dows of jilmafuitdij contain chapters on the kings of fBmyar^^ Ghafan^ and Hirah^ with lifts of them and iMiches of their feveral reigns } and although gen^^

4 THE rOVBLTH DISCOURSE:

logical tables, from which chronology might be better afcertained, are prefixed to many compoiitions of the old Arabian Poets, yet "tnoft manufcripts arc {o incorreA, and fo many contradictions are found ia the beft of them, that we can fcarce lean upon tra- dition with fecurity, and mufl have recourfe to the feme media for inveftigating the hiftory of the Arabs chat I before adopted in regard to that of the Indians ; namely, their language; letters^ and religion, their an*- cient monuments, and the certain remains of ihenarfs ; on «ich of which heads I (hall touch very concifely, iiaving premifed that my obfervations will in general be confined to the ftate of Arabia before that fingular revolution at the beginning of xhc/evenlb century^ the effefts of which we feel at this day from the Pyre^ nean mountains and the Danube, to the fartheft parts cf the Indian Empire, and even to the.Eafkern Iflands.

L For the knowledge which any European who pleaies may attain of the Arabian language, we arc principally indebted to the univerfity of L^den : for, (hough leveral Italians have affiduoufly laboured in the ume wide field, yet the fruit of their labours has been rendered almoft ufelefs by more commodious und more accurate works printed in Holland*,, and, though Pocock certainly accomplithed much, and was able to accomplish any thing, yet the academical eafc which he enjoyed, and liis theological purfiiits, in*" duced him to leave unfinifhed the valuable work of Maidani which he had prepared for publication ; nor, even if that mine of Arabian philology had feen the light, would it have borne any comparifon with the fifty differtatiohs of Hariris which the firft Ah iert Schultens tranflated and explained, though he fent abroad but few erf them, and has left his wortl^ grandiba, from whom perhaps Maidam alfa may be expeded, the honour of publiftiing the reft: but the palm of glory ia thi^ branch of literal

•. 0» THE ARABS^ ^

ture IS due to Gohis^ whofe works are equally pro^ found' xnA elegant ; fo perfpicuous in method^ that chey luay always be .coniuked without fatigue, and read wid^out languor, yet fo abundant in matter, that any man who (hall begin with his noble edition of the Granunar compiled by his imAcr ErpeniuSy and proceed with the help of his incomparable didionary, to ftudy his Hiftory of Taimur by Ibni Arabjhah^ and fhall make himfelf complete mafker of that fublime work, will underiland the learned Arabic better than the deepeft fchol^r, at ConftantinopJe or at Mecca. The Arabic langdage, therefore, is almofl wholly in our power ; and, as it is unqueftionably one of the mod ancient in the world, fo it yields to none ever ipoken by mortals in the number of its words and the precifion of its phrafes ; ^but it is equally true and wonderful, that it bears not the lead refemblance, either in words or the ftru£hire of them, to the San*^ fcritj or great parent of the Indian dialefts ; of which dif&milarity I (hall mention two remarkable inftan- ccs ; the Sanfcrit^ like the Greeks Perjian^ and Ger^- many delights in compounds, but in a much higher degree, and indeed to fuch an excefs, that I could produce words of more than twenty fyllables, not formed ludicroufly, like that by which the bufFopn in Arifiofhanes defcribes a feaft, but with perfeftferi- oufnefs, on the moft folemn occa(ions, and in the moft elegapt works ; while the Arabic , on the other hand, and all its fifter dialefts, abhor the, compofition of words, and invariably exprefs very, complex ideas- by circumlocution ; fo that if a compound word be found in any genuine language of the Arabian pen- infula {%enmerdah ioi inftance, which octurs in the Mama/alt) it may iat once be pronounced an exotic. Again: It is the^ genius of the Sanfcrit^ and other languages of the fame ftock, that the roots of verbs be almoft univerfally ^i/zV^r/^/, fo t\iax. five-and- tvfmtjf hundred fuch : wots might be formed by the.

6 THE FOURTH DISCOVUSE :

compofition of ^^ fifty Indian letters ; but the Arahte roots are as univerfally triliteraU fo that the compo- fition of the twenty -eight Atabian letters would give near two-and-twenty thoufand elements of the language : and this will demonftrate the furprizing extent of it ; for, although great numbers of its roots are confefled- ly loft, and fome,- perhaps, were never in ufe ; yet^ if we fuppofe ten thoufand of ihem (without reck- oning qmdriVtterah) to exift, and each of them to admit o^^ five variations, one with another, in form- ing derivative nounSy even then a perfedt Arabic dic- tionary ought to contain fifty thoufand words, each of which may receive a multitude of changes by the rules of grammar. The derivatives in Sanfcrit are conliderably more numerous : but a farther compa- rifon between the two languages is here unneceflary, fince, in whatever light we view them, they feem totally diftinct, and muft have been invented by two different races of men; nor do I recoiled a fingle word in common between them, except Suruj^ the plural of Sirajj 'meaning both a lamp and ihtfim ; the Sanfcrit name of which is, in Bengal j pronounced. Surja ; and even this refemblance may be purely ac- cidental. We may ealily believe with the Hindus^ that not e^en Indra hinfelf and his heavenly hands y much lefs any mortal^ ever comprehended in his mind fuch an ocean of words as their facred language con^ tains I and with the Arabs^ that no man uninfpired was ever a complete mafter of Arabic: in faft, no perfon, I believe, now living in Europe or Afiaj can read without ftudy an hundred couplets together, in any connexion of ancient Arabian poems ; and we are told, that the great author of the Ramus learned by accident from the mouth of a child, in a village of Arabia^ the meaning of three words, which he had long fought in vain from grammarians, and firom books, of the higheft reputation. It is by approxi- mation alone that a knowledge of thefe two venerable languages can be acquired; and^ with moderate atten--

OK THE ARABS. 'J

tion, enough of them may be known to defight and inftru<5t us in an infinite degree. I Conclude this head with remarking, that the nature of the Ethiopic dia- ' ledl feems to prove an early 'eflabliihment of the Arahs in part of Ethiopia ^ from which they were afterwards expelled, and attacked even in their own country by the AhyJJinianSy who had been invited over as aiixibaries againft the tyranny oi Yemen j about a century before the birth of Muhammed.

'Of the charafters in which the old cotnpoiitions of Arabia were written, we know but little, except that the Koran originally appeared in thofe of Cirfahy ftoux which the modem Arabian letters, with all their ele^ gant variations, were derived, and which unqueftion- ably had a common origin with the Hebrew or ChaUaic^ but, as to the. Himyaric letters, or thofe which we fee mentioned by the name of AhmJnad^ we are ftill in total darknefs; the traveller mebuhr having been unfortunately prevented from vifiting fome ancient monuments in Yemen^ which are faid to have infcrip- tions t)n them. If thofe letters bear a ftrong refem. blance to the Nagarij and if a flory current in India be true, that (bmc Hindu merchants heard the Sanf^ crit language fpoken in Arabia the Happy^^e might be confirmed in our opinion that an intercourfe for- merly fubfifted between the two nations of oppofite coafts, — but fhould have no reafon to believe that they fprang from the fame immediate flock. The firft fyllable of Hamyar^ as many Europeans write it, ' might perhaps induce an etymologift to derive the Arabs of Yemen from the great anceflor of the /«- dians ; but we mufl obferve, that Himyar is the proper appellation of thofe Arabs ; and many rea- fons concur to prove that the word is purely Arabic. The fimilarity of fome proper names on the borders of India to thofe of Arabia^ as the river ArabiuSy a place calkd Arabia^ a people named Aribes or Am

. S4

8 THE FOURTH -DISCOtTRSE:

hiesj and another called Sahai, is indeed remarkablCji and may hereafter furni(h me with obfervations of ibme importance! but not at all inconliilent with my prefent ideas.

11. It is generally aflerted that the old religion of the ^rah was entirely Sabian ; but I can offer fo little accurate information concerning the Sabian faith, or even the meaning of the word, that I dare not yet fpeak on the fubjedt with confidence. This at leaft is. certain^ that the- people of Yemen very foon fell into the common, but faial, error of adoring the fun and the firmament ; for even the third in defcent from^ Yoktan; who was confeqiiently as old as Nahor^ took the furr^ame of Abdujliavis^ or Servant of the Sim \ i ' and his family, we are aflTured, paid particular ho-

i nourstothat luminary; other tribes worfliipped tho

J planets and fixed ftars ; but the religion of the poets

; atlealt, leems to have been pure Theifm ; and this w

fc know with certainty, becaufe we have Arabian verf

f.i of unfufpefted antiquity, which contain pious ar

£ elevated fentiments on the goodnefs and juftice, t

4»i power and omnipotence, oi Allah ^ or the God.

\ an infcription, faid to have been found on mar,ble

\ Yemeny be. authentic, the ancient inhabitants of tl

country: preferved the religion of Eber, and profefl } a belief /Vi miracles and a future ^ate.

.i

r

I

If

We ^are alio told, that a flrong refemblar may be found between the religions of the pag Araks KXiA ih^^ Hindus; but, though this may true, yet an agreement in worlhipping the i and ftars will not prove an affinity between the t nations: the powers of God, reprefented as fern deities, the adoration of^ones, and the name of idol Wuddy may lead us indeed to fufpect that fo of the Hirulu fuperftitions had found their way i Arabia ; and, though we have no traces in Arr

4

OK THE ARABS.

hiftory of fuch a conqueror or legiflator as the great Sefac^ who is faid to have raifed pillars in Yemen as well as at the mouth of the Gangesy yet, fince we know that Sacya is a title of Buddha^ whom (bme fup- pofe to be fVoden^ fince htiddha was not a native of Indiay and fince the age of Sefac perfedly agrees with that of Sacya^ we may form a plaufible conjefturo that they were in fa6t the fame perfqn who travelled eaftward from Ethiopia^ either as a warrior or as a law- giver, about a thouland years before Chrift^ and whole rites we now fee extended as far as the country of Niforij or, as the Chinefe call it, Japuen^ both words fignifying the Rifitig Sun. Sacya may be derived from a word meaning power ^ 6v from another denoting ve^ getabJeJood ; fo that this epithet will not determine whether he was a hero or a philofopher ; but the title Buddha or wife^ may induce us to believe that he was rather a benefaAor than a deftroyer of his fpeciej : if his religion, however, was really introduced into any part of Arabia, it could not have been general in that country ; and we may fafely pronounce, that before the Mohammedan revolution, the noble and learne4 Arabs were Theifts, but that a ftupid idolatry pre- vaned among the lower orders of the people.

I find no trace among them, till their emigration, of any phijofophy but ethics ; and even their fyftem of morals, generous and enlarged as it feems to have beer^ in the minds of a few illuftrious chieftains, was on the whole miferably depraved for a century at lead before Muhammed. The diftinguifhing virtues which they boafted of inculcating and praclifing, were a con? tempt of riches, and even of death j but, in the age of the Seven Poets^ their liberality had deviated into mad profiifion, their courage into ferocity, and their patience into an obftinate Ipirit of encountering fruit- Icfs dangers ; but I forbear to expatiate on the n^an? pcrs of the Arabs in that age, becaufe the poems, en-

ID THE FOURTH DISCOURSE:

titled AlmoalJakaty which have appeared in our own language, exhibit an exa£t pidlure of their virtues and their vices, their wifdom and their tolly; and 0]iow what may be conftantly expedted from men of open hearts and boiling paflions, with no law to con- trol> and little religion to redrain them.

III. Few monuments of antiquity are preferved iji Arahiay and of thofe few the beft accounts are very uncertain; but we are affured that infcriptions on rocks and mountains are ftill ieen in various parts of the peninfula ; which, if they are in any known lan- guage, and if correft copies of them can be procured, may be decyphered by eafy and infallible rules.

. The firft Albert SchuJtens has preferved in his An- cient Memorials of Arabia^ the moft pleafing of all his works, two little poems in an elegiac ftrain, which arefaid to have been found, about the middle of the feventh century, on fome fragments of ruined edifices in Hadramutj near Aden, and are fuppofed to be of an . indefinite, but very remote age. It may naturally be alked, — In what characters were they written? Who decyphered them ? Why were not the original letters preferved in the book where the veries are cited ? What became of the marbles which Abdurrahnuin^ then governor of Yemen^ moft probably fent to the Khalfah at Bagdad? If they be genuine, xhey prove the people of Yemen to have been * herdfmen and war* ? riors, inhabiting a fertile and well watered country ^ full of game, and near a fine fea abounding with ^ fiQi, under a monarchical government, ^nd dreffed ip ^ green filk, or vefts of needle-work,* either of their own mahufafture or imported from India. The mea- fure of thefe verfes is perfeftly regular, and the dia-» left undiftinguifliable, at leaft by me, from that of Kuraijh ; fo that, if the Arabian writers were much i4difl:ed to litferary impofturcs, I fliould ftrongly fuf*

ON THE ARABS. H

peft them to be modern compofitions on the inftabi- lity of huaian greatnefs, and the confequences of ir- religion, illuftrated by the example of the Hxmyaric princes ; and the fame may be fufpeded of the firft poem quoted by Schultens, which he afcribes to an jiralf iij the age of Solomon.

i The fuppofed houfes of the people called Thamud^ are alfo ftill to be feen in excavations of rocks ; and, in the time of Tabrizi the Grammarian, a caftle was extant in Yemen which bore the name of Atadbat^ an old bard and warrior, who firft, we are told, formed bis army, thence called alkhamisyxnjive parts, by which arrangement he defeated the troops of Hi?nyar in an expedition againft Sanaa.

Of pillars ere<5led by Se/acy after his invafioa of Yemen, we find no mention in Arabian hiftories ; and, perhaps, the ftory has no more foundation than ano- ther told by the Greeks and adopted by Newton, that the Arabs worfhipped Urania^ and even Bacchis by name, which, they fay, means great in Arabic ; but where they found fuch a word, we cannot difcover : it is true, that Beccah fignifies a great and tumultuous crowd \ and, in this fenfe, is one name of the facred city commonly called Meccah*

The Cabahy or quadrangular edifice at Meccah, \% indifputably fo ancient, that its original ufe and the name of its builder are loft in a cloud of idle tradi- tions. An Arab told me gravely, that it was raifed by Abraham, who, as I aflured him, was never there ; others afcribe it, with more probability, to Jfmail, or one of his immediate defcendants ; but whether it was built as a place of divine worfhip, as a fortrefs, as a fepukhre, or as a monument of the treaty between the old pofleffors of Arabia and the foi^s of Kidar, artti-

quaries may difpgte, but no mpnal can determiiie.

,i is *o«S^^^i.S! ««^ ^-'Ich t now are af. Jme ^«^f C ri.e room m l^}^\^yian edifice^

*^ tfd io,Sd contain ^^^^^l Z^X^r.%-^f'^ fcntibkd, wou , -e enougb tor ^^e ^ ^gdio tbe

a, if it rr^^'fZ it wood feem lU ^o P ^^^^^^^ ^ patriarchal family- ;s:,^r»*«. ^/^•^f^.adaK or

t&oral J^f ^f , ° e name of ^'^^^^iZ may fmi^* ■Sfifts ^^f '^\yMoon -, but, al hough ^^^^,

the r^^'' f *„ ie cannot but ^^J^'^llPviaious P^^ ^ t^ ??t2' orig'naily defigned tor r^g^.^ the ^^''^^^Ji'c^plets are c««^.^,V extreme fimpU pofcs. ^^,'^^-^„rwhicb, fronj 5^^%^,. than 'othc Sd^is b«^tf3%tarance of '^npo^^^ ,^ ^/,. citv, fei''^' r ^^ind : they '^^^ .*^^"° ^-Wv aUowe . vefes of th\t?/.y L' #■«»' ^5° a IS tw nty-eig^'

«m?te, ^°^7Ube«nft^*^s1^?t'ofa^ i« ^

ty kAf^f'thet « ^^' "^^f . un on the triur J his ^^^^'JaUf^bjeas. and often on ^

^ith poems on ^" ; i^ ihe f »^^^^ ° fo^ fo\e int vbich the mercnai

^Auin, ""'? «*;,«« ; »»''• ?'Jr ,°,;£ bards « »"*' . toft. %« »' "" S chtonoloecal

By reaibning downwards, however, we mzf afccrtaia fome points of cpniiderable importance. The uni« verfal tradition of Yenutn is^ That YokUm^ the foa of Eber^ fifft fettled his family in the country; which Cbttlement, by the computation admitted in Europe^ mufl haye been above three thoufandfix hundred years ago, and nearly at the time when the Hindus^ under the condu6: of Ratna^ were fubduing the firft inhabit- ants of .thefe regions, and extending the Indian etn- pire from jlyodhya or jiudh^ as far as the ifle of Sinhal^ or Silan. According to this calculation, Nuuman^ king of Y^men^ in the ninth generation from Eber^ was fcon- tempcMrary with Jqfeph ; and, if a verfe compofed bjT that prince, and quoted by Ahulfeda^ was reially pre- ferved, as it might eafily have been, by oral tradition^ k proves the great antiquity of the jirabian language and metre. This is a literal verfion of the couplets

* When thou, who art in power, condudteft affairs with

* courtefy, thou altairieft the high honours of thofe ^ who are moft exalted, and whofe mandates are *- obeyed.' We are told that, from an elegant verb in ^his diftich, the royal poet acquired the furnamc of Almuaafer^ or the Courteous. Now tlye reafons foe believing this verfe genuine are its brevity, which made it eafy to be remembered, and the good fenfe com- prized in it, which made it become proverbial ; ta which we may add, that the dialed is apparently old* and differs in three words from the idiom oi Hejaz. The reafons for doubting are, that fentencesand verfes of indefinite antiquity are fometimes afcribed by the Arabs to particular perfons of eminence; and they even go fo far as to cite a pathetic elegy of Adam faimfelf on the death of Ahel^ but in very good Arabic and correfl: meafure. Such are the doubts which neceifarily muft arife on fuch a fubjeA ; yet we have no need of ancient monuments or traditions to prove all that oar analyfis requires, namely, that the Arabs di B^% and Y^im fprang £i:om a flock entirely differ*

14 THE FOURTH DlSGOtTRSE I

cnt from that of the Hindus^ and that their firft efbt-* bjifhmcnts in the refpeftivc countries where We no\^ find .them, were nearly coeval*

I cannot finifh this article without ob{trving, that^ when the King of Denmark's miniftcrs itiftrufted the Damfh travellers to colleft hiftorical books in Arabic ^ but not to bkify themfelves with procuring Arahiatt foemsj they certainly were ignorant that the only mo- numents of old Arabian hiftory are colleftions of poe- tical pieces and the cosKnentaries on them ; that all memorable tranfadiions in Arabia were recorded in Terfe ; and that more certain fafts may be known by reading the Haniafah, the Diwan of Hudhaily and the valuable work of ObaiJuJlah, than by turning over a hundred volumes in profe, unlefs indeed tbofe poe^ns are cited by the hiftorian^ as their authorities.

IV. The manners of the Hejazi Arabs, which have continued, we know, from the time of Solomon to the prefent age, were by no means favourable to the cul- tivation of arts'y and, as to fclenceSj wc have no rea- fen to believQ that they were acquainted with any ; fer the mere amufement of giving names to ftars^ which were ufeful to them in their paftoral or preda- tory rambles through the deferts, and in their obfer- vations on the weather, can hardly be confidered as a material part of aftronomy. The only arts in which they pretended to excellence (I except horfemanlhip and military accompli(hments) were poetry and rA^- toric^ That we have none of their compofitions in profe^ before the Koran, n^ay be afcribed, perhaps, to the little fkill which they feem to have had in writing, to their predileftion in favour of poetical meafure, and to the facility with which verfes are committed to memory ; but all their ftories prove, thgt they were eloquent in a high degree, and poiTefTed wonderful powers of fpeaking, wiiUoot preparation, in flowing

I' ON THE ARABS* I5

i and forcible periods. I have never been able to dif-

I cover what was meant by their books called Rawa»

Jim ; but fuppofe that they were coUeAions of their common or cuftomary law. Writing was fo little prai^ifed. among them, that their old poems, which e ; are now acceffible to us, may aimoft be confidered as

:, ! originally unwritten ; and 1 am inclined to think that

n \ Samuel JohifotC% reafoning on the extreme imperfec-

». ' tion of unwritten languages, was too general ; fince a

y j language that is only fpoken, may neverthelefs be

U highly poliihed by a people who, like the ancient

n Arahsy make the improvement of their idiom a na-

j tionad concern, appoint folemn aflfemblies for the pur-

pofe of difplaying their poetical talents, and hold it a duty to exercife their children in getting by heart

•i

a

A f their moft approved compofitions.

\

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The people of Yemen had poffibly more mechanical e \ arfs^ and, perhaps, more Jcience ; but, although their

e ? ports mud have been the emporia of coniiderable

i- \ commerce between Egyjit and /W//i, or part of Perfiu^

I yet we have no certain proofs of their proficiency in

navigation, or even in manufaftures. That the Arabs \ of the X>efert had mufical inftruments, and names for

the different notes, and that they were greatly delighted with melody, w^ know from themfelves; but their lutes and pipes were probably very (imple, and their i^ mufic, 1 fufped:, was little more than a natural and

3 tuneful recitation of their elegiac verfes and love**

?- fongs. The Angular property of their language, in

fc- (hunning' compound words, may be urged,^ according

fc to Baem*% idea, as a proof that they had made no

r^ progrefs in arts^ ^ which require,' fays he, * a variety

f, * of combinations to exprefs the complex notions arif-

3 I ing from them ;' but the fingularity may perhaps be

^ imputed wholly to the genius of the language,- and the

J tafte of thofe who fpoke it, fmce the old Germans

^ . 4firbo kneiv np art^ appear to have delighted in com*

l6 THE FOURTH DISCOURSE :

pound words^, which poetry and oratory, one Would conceive, might require as much as any meaner art whatfocven »

So great, on /the whole, was the iirength of parts of capacity, either natural or acquired from habit, for, which the jirah were ever diftinguifhed, that We can^. not be furprifed ^hen we fee that blaze of geniuJi which they difplayed, as far as their arms extended, when they burft, like their own dvke oi Jlrim^ through their ancient limits, and fpreaicU like an inundation, over the great emjnre of Iran. That a race of Taxis or Courfers as the Perfians call them, *who drank

* the milk of camels and fed on lizards, (hould enter-

* tain a thought of fubduing the kingdom of Feridunl was confidered by the General of Yezdegird^s army as the ftrongeft inftance of fortune's levity and muta- bility ; but Firdaufi^ a coniplete mafter of AJtatic manners, and fingularly impartial, reprcfents \\MzArahs^ even in the age of Feriduriy as * difclaiming any kind

* of dependence on that monarch, exulting in their •liberty, delighting in eloquence, ads of liberality, and

* martid achievements; and thus making the whole

* earth,' fays the poet, * red as wine with the blood

* of their foes, and the air like a foreft o£ canes with •their tall fpears/ With fuch a charafter they were likely to conquer any country that they could invade ; and, \{ Alexander had invaded their dominions, they would unqueftionably have made an obftinate, and probably a fuccefsful refinance. . .

But I have detained you too long, gentlemen, with a nation who have ever been my favourites, and hope at your next anniverfary meeting to travel with you over a part of AJia which exhibits a race of men dif- tinft both from Hindus and from the Arabs. In the mean time, it (hall be my care to fuperintend the . publication of your tranfadtions; in which if the karned.

ON THE ARABS. I7

in Europe have not railed their expedations too high, they will not, I believe, be difappointed : my owa imperfect effays I always except; but, though my other engagements have prevented my attendance on your tociety for the greateft part of laft year, and I have fet an example of that freedom from reflraint, without which no fociety can flourifh ; yet, as my few hours of leifure will now be devoted to Sanfcrit literature, I cannot but hope, though my chief objeft be a knowledge of Hindu law, to make ibme diico- very in other fciences, which I fhall impart with hu- mility, and which you will^ I doubt not^ receive with indulgence*

/

Vol. IL

%Z THE FIFTH DISCOURSE :

of litde confequence when our ideas are diftinft witlr^ out them. Having given, therefore, a corred notion of the country which I propofed to examine, I fliall not fcruple to call it by the general name of Tartaryy though I am confcious of ufing a term equally impro- per in the pronunciation and the application of it.

Tartary^ then, which contained, according to Pliny^ an innumerahle multitude of nations, by whom the reft of AJia and Europe has in different ages been over- run, is denominated, as various images have prefented themfelves to various fancies, the great hive of the northern fwarnis^ the nurfery of irrefifiihle legions ^ ana "by flronger metaphor, the foimdery of the human race ; but M. Bailly^ a wonderfully ingenious man and a very lively writer, feems firfl to have confidered it as the cradle of our fpecies^ and to have fupported an opinion that the whole ancient world was enlightened by fciences brought from the moft northern parts of Scythiay particularly from the banks of the Jenifea, ot from the Hyperhorean i*egions. All the fables of old Greece^ Italy ^ Perjiay India, he derives from the north ; and it muft be owned, that he maintains his paradox with acutenefs and learning. Great learning and great acutenefs, together with the charms of a moft engaging ftyle, were indeed neceflary to render even tolerable a fyflem which places an earthly paradife, the gardens of Hefperus, the iflands of the Macares, the groves of Elyjium, if not of Eden^ the heaven of Indra, the Teriftan^ or fairy -land of the Fer- Jian poets, with its city of diamonds and its country of Shadeam, fo named from Pleqfure and Love, not in any one climate wliich the common fenfe of mankind confiders as the feat of de- lights, but beyond the mouth of the Oby, in the Frozen Sea, in a region equalled only by that where the wild imagination of Dante led him to fix the wdrft of criminals in a ftate of punilhment after

ON THE TARTARS* XJ

death, and of which he could not^ he fays, even think toithout Jhivering. A very curious paffage in a traft of Plutarch on the figure in the moor!s orbj naturally induced M. Bailly to place Ogygia in the north ; and he concludes that ifland, as others have concluded rather fallacioufly, to be the Atlantis of Plato ; but is at a lofs to determine whether it was Iceland or Greenland.^ Spitzbergen or l^ew Zembla. Among (b many charms it was difficult, indeed, to give a pre- ference ; but our philofopher, though as much per- plexed by an option of beauties as the fhepherd of Ida J feems on the whole to think Zembla the moll worthy of the golden fruit ; becaufe it is indifputably an illand, and lies oppofite to a gulph near a conti- nent, from which a great number of rivers defcendi into the ocean. He appears equally diftreffed among five nations, real and imaginary, to fix upon that which the GreeW named Atlantes ; and his conclufion in both cafes mull remind us of the (howman at Eton^ who, having pointed out in his box all the crowned heads of the world, and being alked by the fchool- boys who looked through the glafs, which was the Emperor, which was the Pope, which the Sultan, and which the Great Mogul, anfwered eagerly, * Which you pleafe, young gentlemen, which you pleafe/ His letters, however, to Voltaire^ in which he unfolds his new fyftem to his friend, whom he had not been able to convince, are by no means to be derided ; and his general propofition, that arts and fciences had their fource in Tartary^ delerves a longer examination than can lie given to it in this difcourfe. I (hall, neverthe- lefs, with your permiffion, Ihortly difcufs the queftion under the feveral heads, that will prefent themfelves in order.

Although we may naturally fuppofe that the numberlefs communities of Tartars, fome of whom &re ellablifhed in great cities^ and fome encamped

C4 -'

Af THX FIFTH DlSCOtTR^S :

on plains in ambulatory manfions, which they retiiove from pafture to paflure, muft be as different in their features as in their dialeds ; yet, among thofe who have not emigrated into another country^ and mixed with another nation, we may difcern a ^Etmtly-likenefs, cfpecially in their eyes and countenance, and in that configuration of lineaments which we genei[ally call a Tartar face \ but, without making anxious enquiries^ whether all the inhabitants of the vaft region before defcribed have fimilar features, we may conclude f rom^ diofe whom we have feen, and from the original por- traits of Taimuf and his defcendants, that the Tartan in general differ wholly in complexion and counte- nance from the Hindus and from the Arabs : an ob- lervation which tends, in fome degree, to confirm the au:counr given by modern Tartars themfelves of their defcent from a common anceftor. Unhappily, their lineage cannot be proved by authentic pedigrees, ot hiftorical monuments ; for all their writings extant, even thofe in the il/o^w/dialedt, are long fubfequent to the time oiMuhatnmedy nor is it poflSble to diftinguifh their genuine traditions from thofe of the Arabs y whofe religious opinions they have in general adopted. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, Khwajah Rajhidj furnamed Fadlullah^ a native of Katvin^ com- piled his account of the Tartars and Mongals from the papers of one PuJad, whom the great-grandfon or Holacu had fent into Tartarijlan for the fole purpofe of coUc&ing hiftorical information ; and the com^ miffion itfelf (hows how little the Tartarian princes really knew of their own origin. From this work of Rajhidy and from other materials, AbuU ghazij king of Khwarezm, compofed in the M&r gul language liis Genealogical Hijloryy which, hav- ing been purchafed from a merchant of Bokhara by fome Swedifi ofEcers, prifoners of war in Siberia^ has found its way into feveral . European tongues : it contains much valuable matter^ but, like

ON THE TARTARS, If

all Muhammedan hiftofies, exhibits tribes or nations as individual fovereigns ; and, if Baron De Tott had not ftrangely «negle£ted to procure a copy of the Tartarian > hiftory, for the origrnal of which he imnecerffarily offer- ed a iarge fum, we fliould probably have found that it begins with an account of the deluge, taken from the Koran^ and proceeds to rank Tz/nr, Chin^ Tatar, and Mongal^ among the fons of Yafet. The genuine tra- ditional Eiftorj' of the Tartars , in all thd books that I have infpet9:ed, feems to begin with O^huz, as that '" of the Hindus does with Hama : tHey pfacc their mira- culous hero and patriarch four thoti/and years before Ci^ti^iz Kharij who was born^jn the year 1164, and with whofe reign their hiftorical period commences- It is rather furprizing that Mr. Bad/y, wlio makes fire- quent appeals to etymological arguments, has not de- rived Ogyges from Oghuz^ and Atlas from Atlaly or the Golden Mountain oi Tartary: the Greek termina- tions might have been rejeded from both words ; and a m^re tranfpofition of letters is no difSculty with aa etymologill*

, My remarks in this addrefs, 'Gentlemen, will be confined to the period preceding Chengiz ; and, al- though the learned labours of M. de Guignes^ and the Fathers Visdehuy DemaiUa^ ap.d Gaubil^ who have made an incomparable ufe of their Chinefe literature, exhibit probable accounts of the Tartars from a very early age ; yet the old hiftorians of Chhia were not only foreign, but generally hofcilc to them, and for both- thofe reafons, either through ignorance or malignity, may be fufpctfled of miiieprefenting their tranfaAions: if they fpeak truth, the anciert .hiftory of the lartars prcfcnts us, like mod otl er hiftories, with a feries of afiaffinations, plots, trea^ ions, mafTacres, and all the natural fruits of fclfifh .ambition. I fhould have no inclination to give jou a (ketch of fuch horrors, even if the' oc-

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«6 THE FIFTH DISCOURSE:

cafion called for it ; and will barely obfen the firft king of the H^unmuSj or HutiSj be reign, according to VisJetmij aGout three \ five hundred and Jixty years ago^ not long a time fixed in my former difcourfes for the fir! hr eftabliOiments of the Himlus and Arabs

m

feveral countries*

1. Our firft enquiry concerning the langua^ letters of the Tartars^ prefents us with a dej void, or with a profpect as barren and dreary of their deferts. The Tartars ^ in general, literature (in this point all authorities appear cur) ; the Turcs had no letters ; the Huns^ ac to Procof'ms^ had not even heard of them ; the ficent Chengizj whofe empire included an area cigRty fquare degrees, could find none of 1 Mongals^ as the beft authors inform us, able his difpatches ; and Taimur^ a lavage of ftror ral parts, and paffionately fond of hearing read to him, could himfelf neither write nt It is true that Ilmu jirahjhah mentions a fet : *■ racters called Dilberjin^ which were ufed in

^' f * he had feen them,' he fays, < and found

; \ * confift of /or/y o«^ letters, a diftinft fymb

• appropriated to each long and ftiort vov ; '. * to each confonant hard or foft, or otherwi

■ -. • in pronunciation ;' but Khata was in South

^ :! tary^ on the confines of India ; and, from his

tion of the charaders th^re in ufe, we car fufped them to have been thofe of Tibet, v manifeftly Indian j bearing a greater refeml thofe of Bengal than to Devanagari. The and eloquent Arab adds, * that the Tartars i

* write, in the Dilberjin letters, all their « hiftories, their journals, poems, and mi(

* their diplomas, records of ftate and juftice,

• of Cheng izy their public regifters, and their

• r

ON THE TARTARS. fj

I * tlons of every fpecies.' If this be true, the people of

\ Khata muft have been a poliflbed, and even a lettered

^ nation ; and it may be true, without affeding the

\ general pofition, that the Tartars were illiterate ; but

\ Ibnu jirahjhah was a profeired rhetorician, and it is

impofSble to read the original palTage without full convidtion that his objeft in writing it was to difplay his power of words in a flowing and modulated pe- riod. He fays further, that in Jaghataij the people of Oighur, as he calls them, * have a fyftem of fourteen * letters only, denominated, from themfelyes, Oighuri-y and thofe are the charaders which the MongaJs are fuppofed, by moft authors, to have borrowed, jibul" gha%i tells us only, that Chengiz employed the natives of Eighur as excellent penmen ; but the Chinefe af- fert, that he was forced to employ them, becaufe he had no writers at all among his natural-born fubjeds ; and we are aflured by many, that Kublaikhan ordered [*• letters to be invented for his nation by a Tihetian^

whom he rewarded with the dignity of chief Lama. The fmall number of Eighuri letters might induce us to believe that they were Zend or Pahlaviy which muft have been current in that country when it was go- verned by the fons of Feridun ; and, if the alphabet afcribed to the Eighurians by M. Des Hautefrayes be corre<5t, we may fafely decide, that in many of its letters it refembles both the Zend and the Syriac^ with a remarkable difference in the mode of conneding them ; but, as we can fcarce hope to fee a genuine fpecimenof them, our doubt muft remain in regard to their form and origin. The page exhibited by Hyde as Khatayan writing, is evidently a fort of broken Cufick\ and the fine manufcript at Oxford^ from which it was taken, is more probably a Mendeanv^oxV, on fome reli- gious fubjecl, than, as he imagined, a code of Tarta^ rian laws. That very learned man appears to have •made a worfe miftake, in giving us for Mongal charac- ters a page of writing which has the appearance of Ja^nefe^ or mutilated Chinefe letters.

i

aS THE FIFTH DISCOURSE:

If the Tartars in general, as we have every reafon to believe, had no written memorials, it cannot be thought wonderful that their languages^ like thofe of America^ (hould have been in perpetual fludluation, and that more than fifty diale(5ls, as Hyde had been credibly informed, (hould be fpoken between Mqfcow » and China^ by the many kindred tribes or their feve- ral branches, which are enumerated by Ahulghazi. What thofe dialefts are, and whether they really {prang from a common flock, we (hall probably learn from Mr. Pallasj and other indefatigable men employed by the Ruffian court ; and it is from the Rufsians that wc xnuft expedl the moft accurate information concerning the -/^^z//V fubjeds : I perfuade myfelf that, if their enquiries be judicioufly made and faithfully reported, the refult of them will prove that all the languages profferly Tat tartan j arofe from one common fource; excepting always the jargons of fuch wanderers or mountaineers as, having long been divided from the main body of the nation, muft, in a courfe of ages, have framed feparate idioms for themfelves. The ohly Tartarian language X)f which I have any know- ledge, is the T.urkijh c^ Conjiantinoplej which is how* ever fo copioi^ that whoever (hall know it perfeftly, will e^'fily underftand, as we are affured by intelligent authors, the dialefts of Tartarijtan ; and we may col- left from Abul^haziy that he would find little diffi- culty in the Calmac and the Mogul. I will not offend your ears by a dry catalogue of fimilar words in thofe different languages.; but a careful inveftigation has convinced me that, as the Indian and Arahian tongues are feverally defcended from a common parent, fo thofe of Tartary might be traced to One ancient flem, effentially differing from the two others. It appears, indeed, from a flory told by Ahulghaxi^ that the Virats and the Mongals could not underftand each other;/ but no more can the Danes and the Englijhy yet their dialeds, beyond a doubt^ are branches of

ON THE TARTARSr I9

dhc (amc Gothic tree. The dialeft of the Moguls^ in which fomc hiftories of Taimur and his defcendants were originally compofed, is called in India ^ where a learned iji^cive fct me right when I ufed another word, Turci ; Rot that it is prccifely the fame with the Turk^ i/h of the Othmanhis^ but the two^idioms differ, per- haps, lefs than Swedijh and German^ or Spanijh and Portuguefey and certainly lefs than Weljh and Irijh. In hope of afcertaining this point, I have long fearch* ed in vain for the original works afcribed to Taimur and Baberi but all the Moguls with whom I have converfed in this country, refemble the crow in one of their popular fables, who, having, long afFefted to walk like a pheafant, was unable, after all, to acquire the gracefulnefs of that elegant bird, and in the mean time forgot his own natural gait. They have not learned the dialed of Perjia^ but have wholly forgot- ten that of their anceftors. A very confiderable part of the old Tartarian language, which in Afta would probably have been loft, is happily preferved in Eu^ rope-, and, ifthe,ground-work of the weftern Turhjh^ when feparated from the Perjian and Arahic^ with which it is embellifhed, be a branch of the loft Oghu- %tan tongue, I can affert with confidence that it has not the leaft refemblance either to Arabic or Sanfcrif^ and muft have been invented by a race of men wholly diftind from the Arabs or Hindus. This fad alone overfets the fyftem of M. Bailly^ who confiders the Sanfcrit, of which he gives in feveral places a moft erroneous account, as * A fine monument of his prime-' * val Scythians, the preceptors of mankind y and plant- ^ ers of a fublime phdofophy even in India ;' for he holds it an inconteftable truth, that a language which is dead J fuppofes a nation which is defiroyed ; and he ' feems to think fuch reafoning perfedly decifive of the queftion, without having recourfe to aftronomical arguments, or the fpirit of ancient inftitutions. For toy part, I ^efire no better proof than that which the

JO THE FIFTH DISCOURSE:

language df the Brakmahs affords, of an immemorial and total difference between thcfavages of the moun' iainsy as the old CZfmg/^ juftly called the Tartars^ and the ftvidious, placid, contemplative inhabitants of thefc Indian plains.

II. The geographical xt'^{ox{\Vi^ of M. BaiUy may, perhaps, be thought equally (hallow, if not inconfift- ent in fome degree with itfelf. * An adoration of the

* fun and of fire,' fays he, ^ muft neceiTarily have

* arifen in a cold region ; therefore it muft ha^e been

* foreign to Indta^ P^rfia, Arahia ; therefore it muft

* have been derived from Tartary^ No man, I be- lieve, who has travelled in winter through Bahar^ or has even paflTed a cold feafon at Calcutta within the tropic, can doubt that the folar warmth is often de- firable by all, and might have been confidered as ado- rable by the ignorant in thefe climates; or that the return of fpring deferves all the falutations which ic receives from the Perfian and Indian poers ; not to rely on certain hiftorical evidence, that Antarah^ a celebrated warrior and bard, adlually perifhed with cold on a mountain of Arahia. To meet, hov/eyer, an objedion which might naturally enough be made to the voluntary fettlement and amazing population of his primitive race, in the icy regions of the north, he takes refuge in the hypothefis of M. Biijfony who imagines that our whole globe was at firft of a white heat, and has been gradually cooling from the poles of the equator ; fo thar the Hyperborean countries had once a delightful temp^-rature ; and Siberia itfelf was hotter than the climate of our temperate -zones ; that is, was in too hot a climate, by his firft propofition, for the primary worfliip of the fun. That the tempera,- ture of countries has not fuftained a change in the lapfe of ages, I will by no means infift ; but we can hardly realbn conclufivdy from a variation of tempe- rature to the cultivation and difFufion of (cience. If ^ many female elephants arid tigrelTes as we now find in

ON THE TARTARS. 31

Bengal had formerly littered in the Siberian forefts, and the young, as the earth cooled, had fought a ge- nial warmth in the climate of the fouth, it would not follow that other favages, who migrated in the fame dire&ion, and on the fame account, brought religion and philofophy, language and writing, art and fcience, into the fouthern latitudes.

We are told by jihulghazi that the primitive reli- gion of human creatures, or the pure adoration of one Creator, prevailed in Tartary during the firft genera- tions of Yafet^ but was ektinft before the birth of OghuZf who reftored it in his dominions ; that, fome ages after him, the Mongals and the Turcs relapfed into grofs idolatry ; but that Chengiz was a Theift, and, in a converfation with the Muhamfnedan doftors, admitted their arguments for the being and attributes of the Deity to be unanfwerable, while he contefted the evidence of their prophet's legation. From old- Grecian authorities we learn that the Majjaget^ wor- fliipped the fun; and the narrative ot an embafly from Jiiftin to the Rhahen^ or emperor, who then re- fided in a fine vale near the fource of the Irtijh^ men- tions the Tartarian ceremony of purifying the Roman ambafiadors by conducting them between two fires. The Tartars of that age are reprefented as adorers of the ybwr elements^ and believers in an invifible fpirit, to whom ,they facrificed bulls and rams. Modern travellers relate, that, in the feftivals of fome Tarta* rian tribes, they pour a few drops of a confecrated . liquor on the ftatues of their gods; after which an attendant fprinkles a little ot what remains three times toward the fouth, in honour of fire; toward the weft and eaft, in honour of water and air ; and as often toward the north, in honour of the earth, which contained the reliques of their deceafed an- ceftors. Now all this may be very true, without proving a national affinity between the Tartars

32 /THE FIFTH DISCOURSE:

and Hindtis ; for the Arabs adored the planets the beauties of Nature; the Arabs had carved ii ges^ and made libations on a black done ; the Ai turned in prayer to different quarters of the \ vens; yet we know with certainty, that the At are a diftirtft race from the Tartars ; and we mi as well infer that they were the fame people, bec2 they had each their NomadeSy or wanderers for pa^t and becaufe the Turcmans, defcribed by Ibmuat Jhahy and by him called Tartars^ are, like moji A hian tribes, paftoral and warlike, hofpitable j generous, wintering and fummering on different pla and rich in herds and flocks, horfes and camels : this agreenliAt in manners proceeds from the fi lar nature of their feveral deferts, and their fim choice of a free rambling life, without evincir community of origin, which they could fcarce had without preferving fome remnant at lead common language.

Many Lamas ^ we are affured, or priefts of Buc have been found fettled in Siberia ; byt it can hi be doubted that the Lamas had travelled th ' from Tibet ; whence it is more than probable, the religion of the BaiuJdhas was imported into Si ern, or Chinefe Tartary ; fince we know that xi Tibetian writing have been brought even fro' borders of the Cafpian. The complexion of i himfelf, which, according to the Hindus ^ was / white and ruddy y woJld perhaps have con vine Baillvj had he known the Indian tradition, t laft great legiflator and god of the eaft was ; ti2r'y but the Chinefe confider him as a nf India \ the Brahmans infift that he was bo foreft near Gaya ; and many reafons may lea fufpeft, that his religion was carried from and the fouth, to thofe eaftern and northc tri^s in which it prevails. On the whole^

ON THE TARTAI^S. 33

vrith few or no traces in Scythia of Indian rites and fuperilitions, or of that poetical mythology with which the Sanfcrit poems are decorated ; and we may allow"" the Tartars to have adored the Sun with more reafon than any fouthern people, without admitting them to have been the fole original inventors of tliat univerial folly. We may even doubt the originality of their veneration for the yi?«r^/<?w^;i/^, which forms a principal part of the ritual introduced by Zer<ilu/ht\ a native of Rai in Perfia^ born in the reign of Gufh^ tafp^ whofe fon Pashuten is believed by the Parjis to-have refided long in Tartary^ at a place called Cati'- gidizy where a ihagnificent palace is faid to have been built by the father of Cyrus, and where the Perjian prince, who was a zealot in the new faith, would na-s tiirally have diffeminated its tenets among the neigh-^ bouring Tartars^

Of any philofophy, except natural ethics, which the rudeft fociety requires and experience teaches, we find no more veftiges in AJiatic Scythia than in ancient Ara* hia ; nor would the name of aphilofopher and a Scythian have ever been connected, if Anacharjis had not vi- fited Athens and Lydia for that inftruftion, which his birth-place could not have afforded him : but Ana^^ tharjis was the Ton of a Grecian woman, who had taught him her language ; and he foon learned to de- fpife his own. He was unqueftionably a man of \ found underftanding and fine parts ; and, among th^ lively fayings which gained him the reputation of a wit even in Greece, it is related by Diogenes Laertiiis^ that, when an Athenian reproached him with being a Scythian, heanfwered, ^ My country is, indeed, a dif- * grace to me; but thou art a difgrace to thy country,- What his country was, in regard to manners and civil duties, we may learn from his fate in it; for when, oa Jiis return from Athens, he attempted to reform it by introducing the wife laws of his frieij4 Sohn:^ he WfB

34 THE FIFTH DISCOURSE:

killed on a hunting party with an arrow, fliot by hif own brother, a Scythian chieftain. Such was the philofophy of M. Bailiff Atlanles^ the firfl; and moft enlightened of nations ! We are aflbred, however, by the learned author of the Dahiftatiy that the Tartars under Chengjz, and his defcendants, were lovers of truth, and would not even preferve their lives by a^ violation of it. De Guignes afcribes the fame veracity the parent of air*virtues, to the Huns-j znd St ropo^ wftO'migHt~6hTy nieali to lafh the Gi^eeks by praifing Barbarians, as Horace extolled the wandering Scj/thiatis merely to fatirize his luxurious countrymen, intoFRas us that the nations of Scythia deferve the praife due to wildom, heroic friendfhip, and juftice ; and this, praife we may readily allow them on his authority, without fuppofing them to have been the preceptors of mankind.

r f

As to the laws of Zamolxis^ concerning whom We know as little as of the Scythian Deucalion^ or of Abaris the Hyperborean^ and to whole ftory even jFfe-^ fodotus gave no credit, I lament, for many reafonSj that if ever they exifted they have not been preferved.. It is certain that a fyftem of laws, called Yafac^ has been celebrated in lartary fince the time of Chengiz^ who^ is faid to have republiflied them in his empire, as hi^ inftitutions were afterwards adopted and enforced by laimur ; but they feem to have been a common or traditionary law, land were probably not reduced inro writing till Chengiz h3idi concj^txed, a nation who were able to write.

III. Had the religious opinions and allegorical fables of the Hindus been aftually borrowed from Scythia, travellers muft have difcovered in that country fome Ancient monuments of them; fuch as pieces of gro- lefque fculpture, images of the Gods and AvatarSi

ON THE TARTARS, 35

and infcripiions on pillars or in caverns, analogous to thofe which remain in every -part of the weftern peninfula, or to thofe which many of us have feen in B<ihar and at Banares 5 but (except a few detached idols) the only great monuments of Tartarian anti- quity are in a line of ramparts on the weft and eaft of the Cq/pian, afcribed indeed by igporant Miifelmans to 2^£i2^^fld .t^^2^> or Gog and Magog ; that is, to the ^cphiansy but ixianifeftly raifed by a very different nation, in order to Hop their predatory inroads through the paffes of Caucafus. The Chinefe wall was built, or finiflied, on a (imilar conllrudlion and for a fimilar purpofe, by an emperor, who died only two hundred and ten years before the beginning of our sera; and the other mounds were very probably conftrufted by the old PcrJianSy though, like many works of unknown origin, they are given to Secander, not the Macedo-' niauy but a more ancient hero, fuppofed by fome to hvfc h^cn Jemshid. It is related, that pyramids and ton^bs have been found \n Tatariflan, or fVeftern Scy^ thm^ and fome remnants of edifices in the lake Sai^ Jon ; that veftiges of a deferted city have been recently difeovered by the Ruffians near the Cafpian Sea, and the Mountain of Eagles ; and that golden ornaments and utenfils, figures of elks and other quadrupeds in metal, weapons of various kinds, and even imple- ments for mining, but made of copper inftead of iron, have been dug up in the country of the TJIiudes\ whence M. Bailly infers, with great reafon, the high antiquity of that people : but the high antiquity of the Tartars^ and their eitablifiiment in that country near four thoufand. years ago, no man difputes; we . are inquiring into their ancient religion and philofophy; which neither ornaments of gold nor tools of copper will prove to have had an arfinity wirh the reliyjous rites, and the fciences of India. The golden utenfils might polSbly have been fabricated by ihc Tartars

V

i

iirin

'X.

i\\,

I.-

36 THE FIFTH DISCOURSE :

themfelves ; but it is pofEble too, that they v Tied from Rome or from Ch'ma^ whence o< embafiies were fent to the kings of Eighur. ' the end of the tenth century the Chinefe emp patched an ambaflador to a prince, named which, in the Turkijh of Coriftantinophy fi| lion^ who refided near the Golden Mountain \ fame ftation, perhaps, where the Romans had ceived in the piiddle of the fixth century. Th on his return home reported the Eighuris to b people, with fair complexions, diligent worki irigenious artificers not only in gold, filverj j but in jafper and fine ftones \ and the Roman fore defcribed their magnificent reception ; palace adorned with Chinefe manufaftures : times were comparatively modern j and, e^ (hould admit that the Eighuris, who are fai been governed for a period of two thoufanc an Idecut, or fovereign, of their own race fome very early age a literary and poliflied would prove nothing in favour of the Hurt Mongals, and other lavages to the north of / feem in all ages before Muhammedj to 1 equally ferocious and illiterate,

Without aftual infpeflion of the manuf have beer^ found near the Cafpian, it woi poflible to give a correft opinion concern but one of them% defcribed as written on paper in letters of gold and filver, not unlik was probably a Tiheiiati compofition of the with that of which lay near the fource of tlie of which CafsianOy 1 believe, made the fi: verfionf ^ Another, if we may judge from t tion of it, was probably modern Turhijh\ 2 them could have been of great antiquity,

IV. From ancient monuments, therefor

ON THE TARTARS^ §f

h6 proof that the Tartars were themfelves welUin- ftruqed^ m that thefy inftrufted the world;

iior have we any ftVonger realbh to conclude from their general manners and charafter, that they had made aa early proficiency in arts ^nd Jciences. Even of poetry^ the moft univerfaTand moft natural of the fine arts^ we find no genuine fpecimens afcribed to theih, ex- cept fome horrible wai*-fongs exprefled in Ferjian by All of Yezdj and poflibly invented by him. After the conqueft of Perfia by the Mongols ^ their princesl indeed encouraged learning, and even made aftrond'- toical obfervations at Samarkand^ as the Turc becamd poliftied by mixing with the Perjidns and Arahsy though their very nature ^ as one of their own writerSI confefles, had before been like an incurable difterfiper^ and their minds clouded with ignorance : thus alfb jthe Manchea nionarchs of China have been patrons of thfiJ learned and ingenious 5 and the Emperor Kien Long is, if he be iiow living, a fine Chinefe poet. In all thefe inftances the Tartars have refenibled the iJo- nians^ who, before they had fubdued Greece j were little better than tigers in war, and Jawns or Jylvani in fcience and art*

Before^! left J^ztrope^ t had infifted in conVerfation^ that the Tuzuc, tranflated by Major Davy^ was never written i)y Taimur himlelf, at leaft not as Cafar wrote? his Commentaries, for one Very plain reafon, that no ^^ • Tartarian king of his age could write at all j and, in

P^ \ fijpport of ray opinion, I had cited Ibnu Arabjhah^ who,

though juftly hoftile to the favage by whom his na-j tive city, Damafcus^ had been ruined, vet praifes his talents and the real greatnefs of his mind 5 but adds, " He was' wholly illiterate 1 he neither red nor wrote ** any thing ; and he kndw nothing of Arabic 5 " though of Per/tan^ TurhiJIi^ and the Mogul dialed:, *^ he knew as much as was fufTicient for his purpofe, and no more. He ufed with pleafure to hear hiftories

P3

•€

i

3^ ^ THE FIFTH DISCOURSE:

•* read to him, and fo frequently heard the fame book,' ** that he was able by itiemory to correft an inaccurate *^ reader." I'his paflage had no effed on the trahf* lator, whom great atul learned men in India had of- Jured^ it feems, that the work was authentic, by which he meant compqfed by the conqueror him/elf: but thef great in this country might have been unlearned, or the learned might not have been great enough tb an-^ fwer any leading queftion in a manner that oppofed the declared inclination of a Britijh inquirer ; and," m either cafe, fince no witneffes are named, fo gene- ral a reference to them will hardly be thought conclu- live evidence. On my part, I will name a Mufehnartj whom we all know,' and who has enough both of greatnefs and of learning to decide the queftion both impartially and fatisfaftorily : The Nawwah Mozaffer Jang informed me of his own accord, that no man of fenfe in Ilindnjlan believed the work to have been compofed by Tahnur, but that his favourite, furnamed ITmdu Shah, was known to have written that book and others, afcribed to his patron, after many confidential . difcourfes with the E??iir, and perhaps nearly in the prince's words as well as in his perfon : a ftory which j4li of Yezd, who attained the court of Taimur, and has given us a flowery panegyric inltead of hiftory, renders highly probable, by confirming the latter part of the Arabian account, and by a total filence as to the literary produftions of his maften It is true, that a very ingenious but indigent native, whom Davy{\Mp^ f>orted, has given me a written memorial on the fub- jedt, in which he mentions Taimur as the author of two works in Turkijh\ but the credit of his informa- tion is overfet by a ftrange apocryphal ftory of a king of Yemen^ who invaded, he fays, the Emir*s domi- nions, and in whofe library the manufcript was after- wards found, and tranflated by order of Alijhir, firft minifter of Taimur % grandfon; and Major Davy him-.

1

xydkf urate ranf-

/hich It the J, or

0 an- pofed

and, gene- )nclu-

ith of

1 both zaffer D man 5 been lamed )k and ieniial in the which r, and i ft cry, sr part

to the that a jy fup- le fub- hor of ?brma- a king domi- ; after- r, firft y hira-

ON THE TARTARS. ,3

fclf, before he departed from Bengal^ told me, ths he was greatly perplexed by finding in a very ac curate and old copy of the Tuzucy which he defigne< to republifh with confiderable additions, a particuls account, written unqueftionably by Taimur^ of his ow death. No evidence, therefore, has been adduce to (hake my opinion, that the Moguls and Tartan before their conqueft of India and Perjia^ were whoU unlettered ; although it may be poffible that, eve without art or fcience, they had, like the Htms^ bot warriors and lawgivers in tlieir own country fbme cer tunes before the birth of Chrift.

If learning was ever anciently cultivated in tl

region to the north of Itidiaj the feats of it, I ha\

reafbn to fufpeft mud have been EighiiTy Cajhgha%

Khatay Chitiy Tancuty and other countries of Chinej

Tartaryy which lie between the thirty-fifth and fort)

fifth degrees of northern latitude ; but I (hall, in ar

other difcourfe, produce my reafons for fuppo(in

that thofe very countries were peopled by a race allie

to the Hindus, or enlightened at lead by their vie

.miy io India and China -, yet in Tancuty which b

fome is annexed to Tibet y and even among its ol

inhabitants, the Seres y we have no certain accounts <

uncommon talents or great improvements : they wei

.famed, indeed, for the faithful difcharge of mor

duties, for a pacific difpofition, and for that long

vity which is often the reward of patient virtues and

.calm temper 5 but they are faid to have been whol

indifferent in former ages to the elegant arts, and eve

.to commerce; though tadluHlah had been informer

that near the clofe of the thirteenth century mar

branches of natural philofophy were cultivated ;

Camcheuy then the metropolis ofSerica.

We may readily believe thofe, who afTure us, th

D4

i

46 THfe FIFTH DtS(!OttftS£ !

^ fome tribes of wandering Tartars had real :ikL _^ plying herbs and minerals to the purpofe c^^

j cine, and pretended to fkill in magic ; but t V^^. ral charafter of their nation feems to have b ^*^ They were profeffed hunters or fifhers, dw ^J that account in forefts or near great rivers, wtid or rude tents, or in waggons drawn by then from ftation to ftation ; they were dexterous ^ excellent horfeman, bold combatants, appeariiv to flee in diforder for the fake of renewing theirs with advantages ; drinking the milk of mares, eating the flefh of colts ; and thus in many ref refembing the old Arahs^ but io nothing more in their love of intoxicating liquors, and in no%^^^^ lefs than in a tafte for poetry and the improven^^ of their language.

Thus has it been proved, and, in my humble o^,^^ nion, beyond controv'eify, that the far greater part of jijia has been peopled and imrnemorially poffeffed by three confiderable nations, whom, for v»'ant of better names, we may call Hindus^ Arabs ^ and Tartar^^: tach of them divided and fubdivided into an infinite number of branches, and all of them fo different in form and features, language, manners, and religion, that, if they fprang originally from a. common root, they muft have been feparated for ages. Whether more than three primitive flocks can be found, or, in other words, whether the Chinefe, Jaj^aneje^ and Perjians^^ are entirely diftindl from them, or formed by iheir in- termixture, I (hall hereafter, if your indulgence to me continue, diligently inquire. To what conclufions thefe inquiries will lead, I cannot yet clearly difcern; but, if they lead to truth, we fhall not regret our journey through ihis dark region of ancient hiftory,. in which, >vhile we proceed ftep by ftep, and follow every glimmering of certain light that prefenia itfelf.

ON THE TARTARS. 4I

we niufl: beware of thofe falfe rays and luminous va- pours which miflead AJtahc travellers, by an appear- ance of water, but are found on a near approach to be deferts of fand.

V.

III.

/

THE SIXTH

DISCOURSE:

ON THE

PERSIANS.

DELIVERED I9 FEBRUARY, l*]^^i

Gentlemen^

I TURN with delight from the vaft mountains and barrel deferts of Turauj over which we travelled laffi year with no perfed: knowledge of our courfe, and requeft you now to accompany me on a literary jour- , ney through one of the moft celebrated and moft beautiful coufttrres in ttie world : a country/the hif- tory and languages of which, both ancient and mo- dern, I have long attentively ftudied, and on which I may without arrogance promife you more pofitive information than I could poffibly procure on a na- tion fo dilunited and fo unlettered as the Tartars^: I mean that ^\\vAiJEsuropeans improperly call Perfia^ the name of a fingle province being applied to tHe whole empire of Irariy as it is corredly denominated by the prefent natfves of it, and by the learned MiifeU nam who refide in thefe Britijh territories. To give you an account of its largeft boundaries, agreeably to xay former mode of defcribing India^ Arabia^ and

44 'THE SIXTH DISCOURSE f

Tartary^ bet\Veen which it lies, let us begin with tfecf Iburce of the great AJfyrian ftream Euphrates (as thd Greeks y according to their cuftom, were pleafed to mifcall the Forat) and thence defcend to its mouth in the Green Sea, or Perjiaft Gulf, including in ouir line fome Confiderable diftrids and towil^ on both fides of the river ; then, coafting Perfta^ properly {o named, and other Iranian provinces, we come to the Delta of the Sindhu or Incms ; whence afcending to the mountains of Cajhghar, we discover its fountains and thofe'of the Jaihuny down which we are conduft- ed to the Cajpian, which formerly perhaps ic entered, though it lofes itfelf now in the fands and lakes of Kkivarezn. We next are led from the Sea of Khozar^ by the banks of ^ the Cwr, or Cyrus ^ and along thjd Cauca/ean ridges to the fliore of The Euxine^ and thence by the feveral Grecian Seas to the point whence we took our departure, at no confiderable diftance from the Mediterranean. We cannot but include the Lower Afta within this outline, becaufe it was un- queftionably a part of the Perjian^ if not of the old Ajjyrian empire; for we know that it was under the dominion of Caikhofrau; and Diodorits^ we find, af- ens,"^ that the kingdom of Troas was dependent oH

AJfyrta^ fince Priam implored and obtained fiiccours from his emperor Teutantes, whofe name approaches nearer to Tahmuras than to that of any other AJJy^ rian monarch. Thus may we look on Iran as the no- bleft ijland (for fo the Greeks and the Arabs would have called it) or at leaft as the nohltO: penin/iila on this habitable globe ; and if M. Bail/y had fixed on it as the Atlantis of Plato, he mighty have fuppdrted his opinion with far ftronger arguments than any that he lias adduced in favour of New Zembla. If the account, indeed, ofthpAtlantes be not purely an Egyptian^ ot an Utopian^ fsblcy I ffiouI3 Be more inclined to place them in Iran than in any region with which I am ac* quainted.

ON THE PERSIANS. 45

It may feem ftrange, that the ancient hiftory of fo diftingaifhed an empire (liould be yet fo imperfefVly known ; but very fatisfaftory reafons may be affigned 1 for our ignorance of it: the principal of them are the fuperficial knowledge of the Greeks and Jews^ and the lofs of Perj^an archives^ or hiflorical compo- fitionsr "THat the Grecmi writers, before Xenophon^ hidino acquaintance with Perfia, and that all their accounts of it are wholly fabulous, is a paradox too extravagant to be ferioufly maintained : but their con- nexion with it in war or peace had indeed been ge- nerally confined to bordering kingdoms under feuda- tory princes ; and the firft Pigry?/?;? emperor, whofe life and character they feem to have known wlrh tole- rable accuracy, was the great Cyrus^ whom I call,

without fear of contradiction, CI^(^''^?/^^" > ^^^ I ^^1 then only doubt that the K^ofrau o^ the Cyrus of the firft Greek hiftorian, and the hero of the oldeft political and moral romance, when I doubt that Louis Quatorze and Lewis the Fourteenth were one and the fame French King. It is utterly inr credible that two different princes of Perjia flhould each have been born in a foreign and hoftile territory ; (hould each have been doomed to death in his infancy by his maternal grandfather, in confequence of por- tentous dreams, real or invented ^ (hould each have been faved by the remorfe of his deftined murderer ; and (hould each, after a fimilar education among herdfmen, as the fon of a herdfman, have found means to revifit his paternal kingdom ; and having delivered it, after a long and triumphant war, from the tyrant who had invaded it, (hould have reftored it to the funimit of power and magnificence ! Whether fo romantic a ftory, which is the fubjedl of an epic poem as majeftic and entire as the Iliady be hiftorically true, we may fed perhaps an inclination to doubt ; but it cannot with reafon be denied, that the outline of ?t r(l§tdd tQ ^ fmgle hero, whom the jifiatics^ converf*

1

i

/

4^^ THE SIXTH discourse:

iog with the father of European hiftory, defcribed according to their popular traditions by his true name^ which the (jrcek alphabet could not exprefs : nor will a difference of names affcdt the queftion, fince the Greeks had little regard for truth, which ihty facrificed willingly to the graces of their language, and the nicety of their ears ; and, if they could render foreiga words melodious, they were never folicitous to make ihem exaft ; hence they probably formed Camhyfes^ from Cambakhjhj or granting dejires, 2l title rather than a name ; and Xerxes from Shiri^i^ a prince and warrior in the Shahnarnakj or from Shirjhah, which might alfo have been a title ; for the Afiatic princes liave conftantly affumed new titles or epithets at dif- ferent periods of their lives, or on different occalions ; ■ a cuftom which we have feen prevalent in our own times both in Iran and H'mdujtan^ and which has been a fource of great confufion even in the fcriptural accounts of Babylonian occurrences. Both Greekx and Jews have in fa<ft accommodated Ferfian names to their own articulation ; and both feem to have dit regarded the native literature of Iran^ without which they could at moft attain but a general and imperfo^ knowledge of the country. As to the Perjians them^ lelves, who were contemporary with the Jews and Greeks^ they muft have been acquainted with the hif- tory of their own times, and with the traditional ac* counts of paft ages ; but for a reafon, which will pre* fently appear, they chofe to confider Cayumers as the founder of their empire ; and, in the numerous dif* tradlion which followed the overthrow of Dara^ efpecially in the great revolution on the defeat of Yezdegird^ their civil hiftories were loft, as thofe of India have unhappily been, from the folicitude of the priefts, the only, depoficaries of their learning, tQ preferve their books of law and religion at the expencc of all others. Hence it has happened, that nothing; remains of genuine Perjian liiftpry before the dynafty

ON THE PERSIANS. 47

of Safari^ except a few ruftic traditions^ and ^bles^ which fanrilhed materials for the Shahnamahy and which are ftill fuppofed to exift in the Pahlavi lan- guage. All the annals of the Pijhdadiy or AJyriam race, muft be confidered as dark and fabulous ; and thofe of the Cay am family, or the Medes and Perfians^ as heroic and poetic?^! ; though the lunar eclipfes, faid to be mentioned by Ptolerr^\ fix the time rf Gujhtafpy the prince by whom Zeratujh was pro- tefted, of the Parthian kings defcended from Ar-- Jhac or Arfaces^ we know little more than the names ; But the Safanis had fo long an intercourfe with the enjperors of Rome and Byzantium^ that the period of their dominion may be called an hiftorical age* In attempting to afcertain the beginning of the AJly^ rian empire, we are deluded, as in a thoufand inftanccs, by names arbitrarily impofed. It had httn fettled by chronologers, that the firfl" monarchy eftabli(hed in Perfta was the Aj]yrian\ and Newton^ finding fome of opinion that it rofe in the firft century af- ter the Flood, but unable by his own calculations to extend it farther back than feven hundred afid mttety years before Chrifl, rejefted part of the old fyftem, and adopted the reft of it ; concluding, that the Af- fyrian monarchs began to reign about two hundred years after Solomon^ and that, in all preceding ages^ the government oi Iran had been divided into feveral petty ftates and principalities. Of this opinion I con- fefs myfelf to have been ; when, difregarding the wild chronology of the Mufelmans and Gabrs^ 1 had al- lowed the utmoft natural duration to the reigns of eleven Pijhdadi kings, without being able to add ihore than a hundred years to Newton^s computation. Itfeemed indeed unaccountably ftrange, that, although Abraham had found a regular monarchy in Rgypty although the kingdom of Yernen had juft pretenfions tQ very high antiquity ; although the .Chinefe^in the twelfth century before our sera, had made approache3

48 THE SIXTH DISCOITRSE:

at leaft to the prefcftt form of their extenfive domt- nion ; and although we can hardly fuppofe the firft Indian monarchs to have reigned lefs than three thou- fend years ago, yet Perfia^ the moft delightful, the moft compaft, the moft defirable country of them all, (hould have remained for fo many ages unfettled and difunited. A fortunate difcovery, few which I was firft indebted to Mtr Muhammed Hufainy one of the moft intelligent Mufelmans in India^ has at onice diffipated the cloud, and caft a gleam of it on the primeval hiftory of Iran and of the human race, of which I had long defpaired, and which could hardly have dawned from any other quarter.

The rare and interefting traft on twelve^ different religionsy entitled the Dahiftinj and compofed by a Mohammedan traveller, a native of Cajhmir^ natned Mohfany but diftinguiOied by the affumed furname of JR?«/, oxperijhahky begins with the wonderfully curi- ous chapter on the religion of Hujhan^, which was long anterior to that ot Zeratujki^ but had conti- nued to be fecretly profeffed by many learned Per^ fians even to the author's time ; and feveral of the moft eminent of them, diffenting in many points from the Gabrsy and perfecuted by the ruling powers pt their country, had retired to India \ where they compiled a number of books, now extremely fcarce, which Mohfan had perufed, and with the writers of which,, or with many of them, he had contrafted aa intimate friendftiip. From them he learned, that a powerful monarchy had been eftabliflied for ages in Jran before the acceflion of Cayumers ; that it was called the Mahahadian dynafty, for a rejifon whic^i V^ill foon be mentioned ; and that many princes, of whom feven or eight are only named in the Dahiftan^ ^nd among them A/^A/'m/, at^Maha Beli^ had ra.ife(J th^ir empire to tb? ;^enith pf l)uman glory. If vfg

biff THE PERSIIANd. 49

. • * • •

!ban rely on this evidence, which to me appears unex- ceptidnable, the Iranian monarchy riiuft have been the oldeft in the World ; but it will remain dubious to which of the three (locks Hindu, Af-ahidn^ or Tar^ idr, the fif ft Kings of Iran belonged j or whether they iprang from a fourth raCe diftiruS from ariy of the others j add thefe are qugftiohs which w^ (hall be able^ I imaginef, to ahfwef precifely, When w^ have carefully inquired into the language^ arid tetters^ religion and philofophy, ind incidentally irttd the arh ind/ciences^ 6f the ancii^ht Perfiani^

I. in tiie iiew aha important remarks which I ani going to offer on the ancient languages and 'chard6ieri of Irdn^ I am fenfible that Jroii muft give me credit for many aueftionii which, on this occalion, it is im- poffible to prove ; fdf I (hbuid ill deferve ybUr indul- gent attention, if I were to abufe it by r^pleating a dry lift of detached words, and j^referiting jrou with a vocabulary inftead of a diflertatiori ; but, flnce \ have no fytleni to mairitaiti, arid have hot fufFered imagiriatidn to delude my judgmdnt J fince 1 have ha- bituated myfelf to fdriti opinions of men and things from evidence, which is the only fcflid ba(i§ of civily ais experinieni is of natural knowledge ; arid fince I have maturely confidered the queftions which I mean to difcufs, you will not, I am perfustded, fufpedt my teftimony, or think that I go too far, when I af- fUre you, thlt I will aflTert nothing positively which I aril not able fatisfdftorily to denionftrate. When Muhamhied was born, arid Anicshif'a'Van^ Whom he calls the JiXft King^ fat ort the throne of Perjia^ two lan- ;es appear to have been generally prevalent in thd "empire of Iran ; that ot the Court ^ thence named Deri, which Was only a refined and elegant dialeft of mTTarJi, fo called trom the province, of wTiich Wi- f&z\s nOw the capiral, and that of the learned, in whicii indft botoks were compofed; and whiqh had the

Vol, II. B

50 THE SIXTH discourse:

name of Pahhvij either from the heroes who {polc(f it in former times, or from Pahlu^ a track of land, which included, we are told, fome confiderable cities of Irak. The ruder dialefts of both were, and, I be- lieve, ftill are fpoken by the ruftics in feveral pro- vinces; and in many of them, as Herat y Zahulj Sif' iariy and others, diftinft idioms were vernacular, as it happens in every kingdom of great extent. BeHdes the Parfi and Paklavi, a very ancient and abftrufe tongue was known' to the priefts and philofophers, called the language of the Zend^ becaulc a book on religious and moral duties, which they held facred, and which bore that name, had been written in it; while the Pazand, or comment on that work, was compofed in PahJavi^ as a more popular idioin ; but a learned follower of Zeratiijht^ nanied Bahman^ who lately di^d in Calcutta^ where he had lived with nac as a Perjian reader about three years, affured me thaf the letters of his prophet's book were properly called Zend J and the language Avejia^ as the words of the Vedus are Sanfcrit^ and the charaders Nagdri'y or as the old Sagas and poems of Iceland were expreffed in Runic letters. Let us however, in compliance with cuf- tom, give the name of Zend to the facred language of Perjia, until we can find, as we fhall very foon, a fitter appellation for it. The Zend and the old Pahlavi arc almofl extind in 'Iran ; for among fix or feven thou- fand GabrSy who refide chiefly at Yezd^ and in 6/r- manj there are very few who can read Pahlavi ; and fcarce any who even boafl of knowing the Zend; while the Par/iy which remains almofl pure in the Bhahnamahy has now become by the intermixture of numberlefs -^r^^/V words, and many imperceptible changes, a hew language exquifitely poliflied by a fc- ries of fine writers in profe and verfe, and analogous to ?be different idioms gradually formed in Europe^" ter the I'ubverfion of the Roman empire : *but with modern Peffiun we have no concern in our prefent in-

ON THE PERSIANS, 5I

Ouiry, which I confine to the ages that preceded the Mohammedan coriqueft. Having twice read the wofIcb of tirdauji with gre.at attentidn fince I applied myi felf to the ftudy of old Indian literature, I can affure you with confidence, that hundreds of Farfi nouns are pure Sanfcrity with no other change than fuchas may be obferved in the numerous bhajhas, or verna- cular dialefts of India ; that very many Persian im- peratives are the roots of Sanfcrit verbs ; and tha^ even the moods and tenfcs of the Persian verb fub- ftamive, which is the mod:?l of all the reft, are dedu- cible from the Sanfcrit by ari eafy and clear analogy « we may hence conclude, that the Parji was derived, like the various Indian dialedlS, from the language of the Brahman^ I and I fnuft add, that in the -pure Per^ Stan I find no trace of any Arabian tongne, except what proceeded from the known iniercourfe 'between the Perfians and Arabs ^ efpedally in the time of liakram, who was educated in Arabia, and whofe j^rabic verfes are ftill extant, together with his heroic line in Deri, which many fuppofe to be the firft attempt at Persian verfification in Arabian.mttxt\ but, without having re- courfe to other arguments, ihe composition of words , in which the genius of the Persian delights, and which that df the Arabic abhors, is a decifive proof that the Ptff^ fprang from an Indian, and not from an Arabian ftock. Confidering languages as mere inftruments of knowledge, and having ftrong reafons to doubt the evidence of genuine books in Zend or Pahlavi (efpe- ^cially fince the well-infornxed author of the Dabifian affirms the work of Zeratujht to have been lofl:, and its place fupplied by a recent compilation) I had no I 'inducement, though I had an opportunity, to learn what reihains of thofe ancient languages ; but I often converfed on them with my friend Bahman j and both, of us were convinced after full confideration, that the Zend bore a ftrong reiemblance to Sanfcrit^ and the Pahlavi to Arabic, He had at my requeft tranflated

%v

5ft rnt SIXTH discourse!

into Pahlavi jAit fine infcription exhibited in tttf Gulijhn^ on the diadem of Cyrus y and I hadlHe pa- ticnce to f ead the lift of words from the Pazand in the appendix to the Farhangi Jehangiri. T his examina* tion gave me perfect conviftion that the Pahlavj was a dialed^ of the Chaldaic ; and of this cunouslaSt J will exhibit a (hort proof. By tiie nature of the Chaldean tongue, moft words ended in the firft long vowel, like Jhemiay heaven ; and that very word, un- •altered in a fingle letter, we find in the Pazmdj toge* 4her with laila^ night; meydy water; mruy fire; vtatray rain ; and a multitude of others, all Arabic or Mehrew^ with a Chaldean Xt\vti\x\'^\\Qw ; To %amaf\^i k beautiful metaphor, from pruning trees^ means in Hebrew to conipofe verfes^ and thence, by an eafy itranfition to sing them ; and in Pahlavi we fee the cverb zamrwiifen, toftng^ with its forms zafnrunemiy 1 .sing^ and xanirtmid^ \\^ fang ; the verbal terminations :X)f the Persian^ being added tp the Chaldaic root, .Now all tbofe words are integral parts of the lan- guage, not adventitious to it like the Arabic nouns . and verbals engrafted on modern Per/tan ; and this diftindion convinces me, that the dialeft of . the Gabrs^ which they pretend to be that of ZeratufiU and of which Bahman gave me a variety of written fpecimens, is a late invention of their priefts, or fub- fequent at leaft to the Mufelfnaninvsdion; for, : although it may be poffible that a few of their (acred books were preferved, as he ufed to affert, in (heets of lead or copper, at the botom of wells near Yezd^ yet, as the conquerors had not only a fpiritual, but a political intereft in perfecuting a warlike, robuft, and indignant race of irreconcileable, conquered fubjefts, .a long time muft have elapfed, before the hidden fcriptures could have been fafely brought to light, and few, who could perfcftly underftand theiii, muft then have remained; but, as they continued . to profefs among tbemlelves the religion of their forefathers^ it then becaiQe expedient for the Mubeds

ON THE PERSIANS. 53

to fupply the loft or mutilated works of their legif* lator by new compofitions, partly from their imper- fed recolleAion, and partly from fuch moral and re- ligious knowledge as they gleaned, moft probably, among the Chriftlans^ with whom they had an inter- courfe* One rule we may fairly eftablifti in deciding the qiieftion. Whether the books of the modern Gabrs were anterior to the invafion of the Arabs ? Whei^ an At able noun occurs in them, changed only by the fpirit of the Chaldean idiom ; as werta for werd^ a rofe ; daba for dhahab, gold ; or deman for zetnan^ time, we may allow it to have been ancient PahJavi j but when we meet with verbal nouns or infinitives, evidently formed by the rules of Arabian grammar, we may be fure that the phrafes in which they occar are comparatively modern^ and not a fingle paflage which Bahman produced from the books of his reli* gion would abide this tefL

We come now to the language of the Zend ; and here I muft impart a difcovery which I lately made, and from which we may draw* the moft interefting confequences. M. Anquetil^ who had the merit of undertaking a voya!ge to India^ in his earlieft youth, with no other view than to recover writings of Zera^ tujhtj and who would have acquired a brilliant repu- tation in France, if he had not luUied it by his immo* derate vanity and virulence of temper, which alienated the good will even of his own countrymen, has ex- hibitcd in his work, entitled Zetidavefta^ two vocabu- lar^ies in Zend and Pahhvi, which he had found in ah approved colleftion of Rawayat, or Traditional Pieces^ in modern Perjian. Of his Pahlai>i no more need to be faid than that it ftrongly confirms my opi- nion concerning the Chaldaic origin of that language | but, when I perufed the Zend glouary, I was inexpref- fibly (lirprized to find that fix or feven words in ten fff rQ pure S^nfcrit^ and even fome of their inflexioiui

i

54 • THE SIXTH discourse:

formed by the rules of the Vyacaran ; z.% yujhmacami the genitive plural oi yujhmad. Now M. jinquetil mod certainly, and the Persian compiler moft proba- bly, had no knowledge of Sanfcrit \ and could not, therefore, have invented a lift of Sanfcrit words : it is, therefore, an authentic lift of Zend words which had been prefervcd in books, or by tradition : and it follows, that the language of the Zend was at leaft a diale<ft of the Sanfcrit^ approaching perhaps as nearly to it as the Pracrit, or other popular idioms, which we know to have been fpoken in India two thoufand years ago. From all tbefe fafts it is a neceflary con- fequence, that the oldeft difcoverable languagesjof Persia were ChaJdaic and Sanfcrit ; and that, when they had ceafed to be vernacular, the Pahlavi and Zend were deduced from them refpeftively, and the Parsi either from the Zendy or immediately from the dialed of the Brahmans ; but all had perhaps a mix- ture of Tartariafi -, tor the beft lexicographers aflert, that numberlels words in ancient Persian are taken from* the language of the Cimmeria^ts^ or the Tartars of Kipcha'k; fo that the three families, whofe line^e we have examined in former difcourfes, had left vifible traces of themfelves in Iran long before the Tartars ^nd j^rahs had ruftied from their deferts, and re- turned from that very country from which, in all pro- bability, they originally proceeded, and which the Hindm had abandoned in an earlier age, with pofi- tive commands from their legiflators to revifit it no more. I clofethis head with obferving, that no fup- pofition of a mere political or commercial inter- courie between the different nations, will account for the Sanfcrit and ChaJdaic words, which we find in the old Persian tongues; becaufe they are, in the firft place, too numerous to have been introduced by fuch means; and fecondly, are not thje. names of exotic animals, commodities, or arts, but thpfe of material eleracnts, pa^tsof the body, na,tvic^Lobjeds

ON THE PERSIANS. ^^

and relations, affeftions of the mind, and other ideas common to the whole race of man.

If a nation of Hindus, it may be urged, ever pof- feffed and governed the country of Iran^ we Qiould find on the very ancient ruins ot the temple or pa- lace, now called the Throne of Jernjhid^ fome m- fcriptions in Devanagariy or at lead in the characters on the ftones at Elephanta, where the fculptnre is unqueftionably Indian^ or in thofe on the Jiaff of Firuz Shah, which exift in the heart of India j and fuch infcriptions we probably (hould have found, if that edifice had not been erefted after the migra- tion of the Brahmans from Iran, and the violent fchifm in the Perjian religion, of which we (hall prefently fpeak^ for, although the popular name of the build- ing at Istakar, or Perfepolis, be no certain proof that it was raifed in the time of Jemjhid, yet fuch a faft might eafily have been preferved by tradition ; and we Ihall foon have abundant evidence that the tem- ple was poller ior to the reign of the Hindu mo- narchs. Tht cyprejfes indeed, which are reprefented with the figures in proceffion, might induce a rea- der of the Shahnamah to believe, that the fculptures related to the new faith introduced by Zeratujht\ but as a cyprefs is a beautiful ornament, and as many of the figures - appear inconfiftent with the reformed adoration of fire, we muft have recourfe to ftronger proofs, that the Takhti JemJIiid was urefted after Cayumers. The building has lately been vifited, and the charafters on it examined, by Mr. Franck- lin; from whom we learn, that ISiebuhr has delineated them' with great accuracy ; but without fuch tefti- mony I (hould have lufpefted the corred:nefs of the delineation, becaufe the Danijh traveller has ex- hibited two infcriptions in modern Persian, and ore of them from the fame place, which canno; hiive^

E4

1

i!»

If

'- I

f

I I

■ 1. 1

• ' "t

■'.Jf

V

1 ..

%

•■Hi-

II

56 THE SIXTH discourse:

been exaftly tranfcribed : they are very verfes of JNizami and Sadi, on the inftaVtlity c greatnejsy but fo ill engraved or fo ill copied I had not had them nearly by heart, I (h< have been able to read them; and M. /2p: Isfdhqrij who tranllated them with fhamel i; Jl curacy, niufl have been deceived by the bi

TJ if the copy, or he never would have created a i

Waham^ by forming one word of Jem and tide prefix:ed to it. Afluming, however, may reafon as conclufively on the cbarad lilhed by Niehuhr as we might on the mc thenifelves, were they now before us, we ir with obferving, as Chardin bad obferved on fpot, that they bear no refemblance whatev letters ufed by the Gabrs in their copies Vendtdad. This I once urged, in an amicat with Bahman^ as a proof that the Zend let a modern invention ; but he feemed *to without furprize, and infifted that the \ which I alluded, and which he had often fi Iff i monumental characters never ufed in bo

intended either to Conceal feme religious

from the vulgar, or to difplay the art of the

like the embellilhed Cufick and Nag^ri c

Arabian and Indian monuments. He won<

'I' I any man could ferioufly doubt the antiqu'

Y^\ Pahlavi letters ; and in truth the infcripti<

IjHill the horfe of Rujiam^ which Niehuhr has ;

US, is apparently Pahlavi^ and plight with f , „ be decyphered ; that character was extrer

Ifrjl and feems to have been written, like the i

the Arabic^ in a variety of hands ; for I to have examined a rare colleftion of o coins in the mufupm of the great Anatc Ham Hunter-^ and, though I believed thp . be Pahlavi^ and had no doubt that they of Parthian kings, yet I could not read tl

!

slt^

f ■■

I

■ ' ! ■ !i

ft:

».

ON THE PERSIANS* l^J

tioqs without wafting more time than I had then at command, in comparing the letters and afcert^ining the proportipns in which they fevcrally occurred. The grofs Pahlavi was improved by Zeratujht or his difciples into an elegant and perfpicuous character, in which the Zendavefta was copied ; and both were written from the risht hand to the left, like other ^Chaldaic alphabets, for they are manifeftly both of Chaldean origin ; but the Zend has the Angular ad- vantage of expreffing all the long and (hort vowels by diftindt marks in the body of each word, and all the words are diftinguiftied by full points between them j fo that if modern Persian were unmixed with j^tahic^ it might be written in Zend with the greateft conveni- ence, as any one may perceive, by copying in that charafter a few pages of the Shahnamah. As to the unknown infcriptions in the palace oi Jemjhidj it may reafonably be doubted whether they contain a fyftem pf letters which any nation ever adopted: mjiveoi them the letters, which are feparated by points, may be reduced to forty, at leaft I can diftinguifli no more eflentially different; and they all feerh to be regular variations and compofitions of a ftraight line and an angular figure like the head of a javelin, or a leaf (to ufe the language of botanifts) hearted and lanced. Many of the Runic letters appear to have been formed of fitnilar elements ; and it has been ob- ferved, that the writing at PerfepoHs bears a ftrong ^refemblance to that which the Irijh call Ogham. The ^oxdi jj^am in Sanfcrit means myjterious knowledge ; but r^dare'not affirm that the two words had a com- mon origin ; and only mean to fuggeft that, if the characfters in queftion be really alphabetical, they were probably fecret and facerdotal, or a mere cypher per- haps, of which the priefts only had the key. They might, I imagine, be decyphered if the language were f mainly known s but in all other infcriptions of thp

ll

i

58 THE SIXTH DISCOL\RSE :

lame fort, the charaders are too complex, and nations of them too numerous, to admit an • that they could be fymbols of articulate foun even the Nagari fyftem, which has more difti ters than any known alphabet, confifts only o: nine fimple charafters, two of which are mere tutions, and four of little ufe in Sanfcrit^ or other language ; while the more complicated I ij exhibited by Niebuhr^ muft be as numerous

as the Chinefe keys, which are the figns of idee and fome of which refemble the old Perfiai at Istakhr. The Danijh traveller was convince his own obfervation that they were written fi left hand, like all the charaders ufed by /£; tions ; but I muft leave this dark fubjedt, \ cannot illuminate, with a remark formerly n: inyfelf,tliat the fquare Cialciaic letters j a few o are found on the Perjtan ruins, appear to ha originally the fame with the Devanagarii bef latter were enclofed, as we now fee them, in frames.

J

'lii I

( \

I

IL The primeval religion of Iran^ if we rel' authorities adduced hyMohJam Family was tha • Newton, calls the oldeft (and icmay be juftl A .the nobleft) of all religions : '' A firm 'belief tl / " *' Supreme God made the world by his pow •^ continually governed it by his providence; i ** fear, love, and adoration of him ; a due re [ <* for parents and aged perfons ; a fraternal < *' for the whole human fpecies, and a comp; { *^ tendernefs even for the brute creation*'* 1 ji! i of devotion fo pure and fublime could hardly.

il; mortals, be of long duration; and we learn f

'j l)abijian^ that the popular worlhip of the.

unvier Hnjhang^ was purely Siihian ; a word o 1 cannot offer any certain etymology, but w been deduced by grammarians from Saba^

N

i

r

ON THE PERSIANS. 59

and particularly the hojl oj heaven^ or the celeftial \l : 'iodieJ^~^m~l^t adoratrdn^r wHTch the Sabian ritiial / is telieved to have confifted. There is a defcription ' lir the learned work juft mentioned, of the feveral Perjian teniples dedicated to the Sun and Planets, of the iniages adored in them, and of the magnificent proceflions to them on prefcribed feftivals; one of which is probably reprefented by fculpture in the ruined city of Jemjhid. But the planetary worfliip in Perfia feems only a part of a far more complicated religion, which we now find in thefe Indian provinces; for Mob/an aflures us that, in the opinion of the beft- informed Per/ianSp.^Vfho profeffed the faith of Hu' . Jhang^ diflinguiftied from that of Zeratujht^ the firft monarch of Iran, and of the whole earth, was MaHia^ ^3^^ word apparently Sanfcrit) who divided the people into four orders, the religious, the military y the commercial^ 2Lnd the fervile, to which he affigned names linqueftionably the fame in their origin vyith thofe now applied to the four primary claffes of the Hindus, They added, that he received from the Creator, and promulgated among men, a facred hook in a heavenly language ^ to which the Mufelman author "gives the Arabic title of Defatiry or Regulations, but the Original name of which he has not mentioned ; and xhdX fourteen Mahabads had appeared or would appear in human ftiapes for the government of this world. Now when we know that the Hindus believe in fourteen Menus, or celeftial perfonages with fimilar fundtions, iht frft of whom left a book oi regulations ^ or divine ordinances^ which they hold equal to the Veddy and the language of which they believe to be that of the 'gods, we can hardly doubt that the firft corruption of the pureft and oldeft religion was the fyf- tem of Indian theology invented by the Brahmans^ and prevalent in thele territories, where the book of Majiabady or Menu, is at this moment the ftandard ojE ^tTTeliglbus and moral duties. The acceffion of Gi>'^?

6o THE SIXTH Discourse:

mers to the throne of Persia^ in the eighth or ninth century before Chrijlj feems to have been accompi- nied by a confiderable revolution both in governtlicnt and religion : he was moft probably of a different lace from the Mahabadians who preceded him, and began perhaps the new fyflem of national faith which Hujhangy whole name it bears, completed; but the reformation was partial ; for, while they rejcA- cd the complex polytheifm of their predeceflbrs, they retained the laws of Mahabad^ with a fuperflitioirs ve. Deration for the fun, the planets, and fire ; thus re^ fembling the Hindu feds, called Sauras and Sagmcas^ the fecond of which is very numerous at Banares^ where many agnihotras are continually blazing, and where the Sagnicus^ when they enter on their facerdo« fal office, kindle, with two pieces of the hard wood Semi^ a fire which they keep lighted through their live^ for their nuptial ceremony, the performance of fblemn facrifices, the obfequiesof departed anceftors,' and their own funeral pile. This remarkable rite was continued by Zeratujht^ who reformed the old re- ligion by the addition of genii, or angels, prefiding over months and days, of new ceremonies in the ve- neration (hown to fire, of a new work which he pre- tended to have received from Heaven, and, above all, by eftabliQiing the adtual adoration of one Supreme Being. He was born, according to Mohfan, in the diftrift of Rat ; and it was he (not, as jimmianus af- ferts, his protedor Gujhtajb) who travelled into India^ that he might receive information from the Brahmans in theology and ethics. It is barely poffible that Py^ ihagoras knew him in the capital of Irak ; but the Grecian fage muft then have been far advanced in years ; and we have no certain evidence of an inter- courfe between the two philofophers* The reformed religion of Persia continued in force till that coumi^ was fubdued by the Miifehians\ and, without ftuidy^ iDg the "Lendy we have ampl^ information con^er^ing

ON THR P^RSIAKSi ' 6t

it in the modern Persian writings of fcveral who pro- fefled it. Bahman always named Zeratti/ht y/\th rC" vcrence ; but lie was in truth a pure Theift, and ftron^y <f3claimed'any adoration of ihtjire or other elements : he denied that the doArine of two coeval principles^ fupremely good and fupremely bad, form-" ed any part of his faith ; and he often repeated with emphails the ve?fes^of FirdqusJ on tht Jfrojlration oi Cyrus andjiis paternal grandfather before the blazing

iitar: •* Think not that they were adorers of fire ; **Ior that element was only an exalted objedt, on the ** luflre of which they fixed their eyes ; they humbled ** themfelves a while week before God\ and, if thy ** undcrftanding be ever fo litde exerted, thou muft ** acknowledge thy dependence on the Being fupreme- ** ly pure." In a ftory of Sadiy near the clofe of his beautifiil Buftariy concerning the idol of Somanathj or Mahadevdy he confounds the religion of the Hindus with that of the Gabrs^ calling the Brahmans not only Moghs (which might be juftified by a paiTage in the Mejfuyvi) but even readers of the Zend and Pazend* Now, whether this confufion proceeded from real or pretended ignorance I cannot decide, but am as firmly convinced that the doftrines of the Zend were diftinft from thofe of the Feduj as 1 am that the reli- gion of the Brahmans^ with whom we converfe every day, prevailed in Persia before the acceffion of Cayu^ mersj whom the Parsisy from refpeft to his memory, .confider as the firft of men, although they believe in an univeffal deluge before his reign.

With the religion of the old Persians, their ^A;-. lofophy (or as much as we know of it) was inti- mately conneded ; for they were affiduous obferv- ers of the luminaries, which they adored and efta- bliflied, according to Mohfan^ /who confirms in fomc dfigree the fragments of Berofus^ a number of arti-

62 TH£ SIXTH DISCOURSE :

ficial cycles with diftind names, which feem to indi- cate a knowledge of the period in which the equinoxes appear to revolve. They are faid alfo to have known the moft wonderful powers of nature, and thence to have acquired the fame of magicians and enchanters: but I will only detain you with a few remarks on that metaphyfical theology which has been profefled im- memorially by a numerous feft of Perfians and Hin^ dtiSy was carried in part into Greece^ and prevails even now among the learned MufehnanSj who fometimes avow it without referve. The modern philofophers of this perfuafion are called Sufis ^ either from the Greek word for a /age, or from the woollen mantlt which they ufed to wear in fome provinces of Persia ? their fundamental tenets are, that nothing exifts abfo- lutcly but God'y that the human foul is an emanation from his eflence, axid though divided for a time from its heavenly fource, will be finally reunited "with it ; that the higheft poffible happinefs will arife froril its reunion ; and that the chief good of mankind in this tranfitory world, confifts in as perfect an union with the Eternal Spirit as the incumbrances of a monal frame will allow ; that for this purpofe they fliould break all connexion (or taalluk^ as they call it) with extrinfic objedts, and pafs throueh life withoi^ attachments, as a fwimmer m the ocean ftrikes fireely without the impediment of clothes ; that they fhould be ftraight and free as the cyprefs, whofe fruit is hardly perceptible, and not fink under a load, like fruit-trees attached to a trellis ; that, if mere earthly charms have power to influence the foul, the idea of celeftial beauty muft overwhelm it in extatic delight; that for want of apt words to exprefs the div'me perfec- tions and the ardour of devotion, we muft borrow fuch cxpreflions as approach the neareft to our ideas, and fpeak of Beauty and Love in a tranfcendent and myftical fenfe i that, like a. reed torn from its native

/

*'**■

r

ON THE PERSIANS. ^%

bank, Tike wax feparated from its delicious honey, the fon of man bewails its difunion with melancholy rnufic^ and flieds burning tears, like the lighted taper wait- ing paffiopately for the moment of its extinftion, as a difengagement from earthly trammels, and the means of returning to its Only Beloved. Such in part (for 1 omit the minuter and more fubtil metaphyfics of the Sufis^ which are mentioned in the DaViJlayi) is the wild and cnthufiaftic religion of the modern Per^ Jian poets, efpecially of the fweet Hafiz and the great Maula'vi : ,(jLich is the fyftem of the Vedunti philo- fophers'and beft lyric poets of huliwy and, as it was ^- ' a Tyftern of the higjten: antiquity in both nations, it may be added to the many other proofs of an imme- morial affinity between them.

Ill; On the ancient monument: of Perjian fculpture and architefture, Wc halve already made fuch obfer- vations as were fufficient for our purpofe ; nor will you be furprized at the diverfity between the figures at Elep'ha7itaj^\\\c\\ aire manifeftly Hhidu^ and thofe at Perfe^lisj which are ttterely Sabian^ if you concur with me in believing that the Takhti Jemjhid was ereAed after the time of CayumerSy (vhen the Brahmans had migrated from Iran^ and when their intricate my- thology had been fuperfeded by the fimplcr adoration of the planets and of fire.

IV. As to xhtfciences or arts of the old Perfians^ I have little to fay ^ and no complete evidence of them feems to exift. * Mohfan fpcaks more than once of an. cicnt verfes in the Pahlavl language; and Bahman aflured me, that fonie fcanty remains of them had been preferved : their mufic and painting, which Nizami celebrated, have irrecoverably perifhed; and in regard to Man'h the painter and impoftor, whofe book of drawings, called Artang, which he pretended to be

^4 '^HX SIXTH DISCOURSE :

divine, is fuppofed to have been deftroyed by the C nefe^ in whofe dominions he had fought refuge, — i whole tale is too modern to throw any light on i queftions before us concerning the origin of nations a the inhabitants of the primitive world.

Thus has It been proved by clear evidericc and pi reafoning, that a powerful monarchy was eftablifl: in Iran long, before the AJjyrian^ or P'ljhdadi^ govci ment : jliat it was in truth a jH/Ww monarchy, thou if any chufe to call it Cuftah^ Cafdean^ or Scythian^ (hali not enter into a debate on mere names ; that Tubfifled many centuries, and that its hidory has be engrafted on that of the Hindus^ who founded t monarchies o^Ayodhyd and Indraprefiha ; that the li guage of the firft Perfian empire was the mother the Sanfcrit^ and confequently of the Zend and Pi as well as of Greeks Latin^ and Gothic i that language of the Affyrians was the parent of Chal and Pahlaviy and that the primary Tartarian guage alfo had been current in the fame emp although, as the Tartars had no books or even ters, we cannot with certainty trace their unpol' and variable idioms. We difcover, therefore i Jia^ at the earlieft dawn of hiftory, the three ( races of men, whom we defcribed on formei 7ions7 as pofleflbrs of India y Arabia^ Tartar whether they were colleftcd in Iran from regions, or diverged from it as from a cc centre^ we {hall eafily detertnine by the ing confiderations. Let us obferv/?, in t place, the central pofition of Iran^ w bounded by Arabld, by Tariary, and b* whilft Arabia lies contiguous to Iran 0 is remote from Tartary^ and divided e the Ikirts of India by a eonfiderable g country, thefefote, but Perfia feems likel;

ON THE PERSIANS. 6^

lent forth its colonies to all the kingdbms of ^Jta. The Brahmans could never have migrated from India to Iran^ becaufe they are exprefsly forbidden by their oldeft cxifting laws to leave the region which they in- habit at this day j the Arabs have not even a tradition of an emigration into Perjia before Mohammed^ nor had they indeed Ifciy inducement to quit their beauti- ful and extenfive domains ; and as to the Tartars ^ we have ne trace in hiftory of their departure from their plains and forefts till the invaiion of the Medes^ who, according to etymologifts, were the fons of Madai ; and even they were condufted by princes of an AJly^ fian family. The three races, therefore, whom we have alresidy mentioned (and more than three we have not yet found) migrated from Iran as from their common country ; and thus the Saxon Chronicle, I prefume frotn good authority, brings the firft inhabit- ants of Britain {TqiQ^^Arme7itai while a late very leameT wTrTtcr concludes, after all his laborious re- fearches, that the Goths or Scythians came from Per^^ Jia ; and another contends with great force, that both the Irijh and old Britons proceeded feverally from the borders of the Cafpian ; a coincidence of conclufions from different media by perfons wholly unconneded, ivhich could fcacce have happened if they were not.

f rounded on folid principles. We may therefore old this propofition firmly eftablilhed, that Iran^ or Perjia in its largeft fenfe, was the true centre of popu- lation, of knowledge, of languages, and of arts; which, inftead of travelling weft ward only, as it has been fan- cifully fuppofed, or eaftward, as might with equal reaion have been afferted, were expanded in all di- redions to all the regions of the world in which the Hindu race had fettled under various denominations : but whether jisia has not produced other races of men, diftindt from the Hindus^ the Arabsy or the Tartars ; or whether any apparent diveriity may not have fprung from an intermixture of thgfe three N9ulh F

($6 THE SIXTU discourse: on the PERSXANSf

in different. proportions, muft be tlic lubjeft of a fii-^ ture inquiry. There is another queftion of more im- mediate importance, which you, gentlemen, only can decide j namely, " By what means we can prefer vc *' our Society from dyinggradually away ? as it has ad- *« vanced gradually to its prefent (fhall I fay flourifli- ^* ing'or knguifliing?) ftate/' It has fubfifted five years without any expence to the members of it, until the firft volume of our Tranfadions was pubUfhed ; and the price of that large volume, if we compare the . different values of money in Bengal and in England^ is not more than equal to the annual contribution to- >■ wards the charges of the Royal Society by each of its fellows, \llrho may not have chofen to compound for it on his admiflion. Thi^ I mention not from an ide that any of us could objeA to the purchafe of on copy at leaft, but from a wifti to inculcate the nece' fity of our cqmmon exertions in promoting the '' of the work, both here and in London^ In- vain we meet as a literary body, if our meetings (hall < to be fupplied with original difTertations and m( rials ; and in vain (hall we coUedl the moft intere papers, if we cannot publilh them occafionally out expoling the fupprintendents of the Cor prefs, who undertake to print them at their o zard, to the danger of a confiderable lofs. Bj efforts the French have compiled their fluper pofitories of univerfel knowledge ; and by forts only can we hope to rival them, or over our own country and the reft of Eufop' attainable by our uljiatic Re/earches.

.>'

( 67 y

IV.

A LETTER

FKOM

TJJM LjTTE henry FJNSITI^RT, 55Q,

TQ TIfE PRESIDENT, Sir,

HAVING fome' time ago met with a Per^n abridgment^ compofed by Mauhvi Khairuddin, of the q/rarul Afaghinahy or the fecrets of the Afghans^ a book written in the Pujhto language by Hufain^ th« fon of Sahir^ the foii of Khizr, the difciple of Hazrat Shah Kafrm Suhimaniy whofe tomb is m Chtmargur^ J was induced to tranilate it. Although it opens with a very wild defcription of the origin of that tribe, and contains a narrative whichxan by no means be offered vpoa the whole as a ferious and probable hiftory i yet I conceive that the knowledge of what a nation fuppofe themfelves to be, may be"" interefting to a So- ciety like this, as well as of what they really are. In- deedj the commencement of almoft every hiftory is fabulous; and the moft enlightened nations^ after they have arrived at that degree of civili2:ation and importance which has enabled and induced them to commemorate their aftions, have always found a va- cancy at their outfet, which inveption, or at beft pi:«-' fumption, muft fupply. Such' fiftions appear at firft in the form of traditions ; and having in this fhape amufcd fuccelKve generations by a gratification of their national vanity, they are committed to writing, and acqv\ire t;he authority of hiftory.

Sccoo^fS^ibettvfc\^'\vveVaft»^ • ^ foretime

vso-^^ sir.

( «9 )

out

THE DESCENT OF THE AFGHANS FROM THE JEWS.

rTTWE Afghans J accbrdihg to their own traditionSt

I are the pofterity pf Jfefc&_^3i^/«t.(kiiig Saul)

iwno, in the opinion of fomt, vas a defcendant of Ju^

^^,theibn oi Jacob i and, according to others^ of Bert-

jatnin^ the brother of Jojeph.

- - I • *- • "

. In a war which raged betwi^n the children of Ifrael and the AmaUkiies^ the latter being viAorious, plun- dered the Jevos^ and obtained pofleflfion of the ark of the covenant. Confidering this the god of the Jews\i they threw it into the fire, which did not aflFeft it. They afterwards attempted to cleave it with axes, but without fuccefs : every individual who treated it with indignity was punifhed for his temerity. They then placed it in their temple; but all their idols bow- ed to It. At length they fattened it upon a cow, which they turned loofe in a wildernefs.

When the prophet Samuel arofe, the children of Ifrael faid to him, ** We have been totally fubdued " by the Amalehtesj and have no king. Raife to us " a king, that we may be enabled to contend for the " glory of God." Samuel faid, ** In cafe you are led '' out to battle, are you determined to figftt ?** They anfwered, ^< What has befallen us that we fllould not ** fight againft infidels ? That nation has banilhed •* us firom our country and children." At this time the angel G^MV/defcended, and, delivering a wandt faid, " It is the command of God that the perfpnr •* whofe ftature (hall correfpond with this wand, (|iaU i)e king of lfraeU\

yO ON THE DESCEVT OF TflE

Melic TaJuf was at that time a man of inferior con« dition, and performed the humble employment of feeding the goats and (^ows of others. One day a cow under his. charge was accidentally loftr Being difappointed in his (earches^ he was greatly diftreSedy and applied to Samuel^ faying, *^ I have lofl K, coWf *^ and do not poflefs the means of fatisfying the Owner. '^ Pray for me^ that I may be extricat^ from this ^* difficulty •" Satmielj perceiving that he was a man * of lofty ftature^ alked his namb. He anfwered^ TaluU Samuel .then fiiid, '< Meafure Tli/i^/ with the wand ♦' which the angel Gabriel brought." Hir ftature was equal to it. Samuel ^tn faid, '^ Godhg^ raifed Talut to be your king.'* The children of IJmelzxi^ Iwercd, **"Weare greater than our king. We arc ^' men of dignity, and he is of inferior condition. *^ How (hall he be our krn^." Samuel informed them ihey (hould know that God had conftituted Taba their king, by his refloripg the ark of the covenant. He accordingly reftored it, and they acknowledged him their foyereign.

After Talut obtained the kingdom^ he feizecT part pf the territories of Jaht^ or Goliah, who affembled a large army^ but was killed by David. Talut after- Wards died a martyr in a war againft the infidels ; and God cohftituted David king of the Jews.

Melic Talut had two fons, one called Berkia^ and the other Jrmiay who ferved David^ and were beloved by him. • He fent them to fight againft the infidels f l&nd^ by God's afliftance, they were vidtorious.

The Ton of Berkia was caUed Afghariy and the foil of Irmia was named UJbec. Thofe youths diffin- guiflhed themifelves in the reign of David, and ^^e. QiDj^loyed by Siokmon. Zifghan wag difiin«

Atr^fiAKS FROM THE JSWS; jf

guifhed by his corporal (Irength, Which. (Iruck ter- ror into Demons and Genii; C!/bec was eminent for his learning.

Afghan tifed freqiiehtly to make exciiriiohs to the mountams ; wherb bis pix>geny, after his death eftab-^ lifhed themfelves, lived in a ftate of independence^ built forts, and exterminated the infidels;

When the feledt of creatures, Muhammed, appeared iipon earth, hisfame reached the Afghans ^ who fought him in multitudes under their leaders Khalid and jibdulRaJhidi fons of Walid. The prophet ho- noured .them with the moft graciotis reception, fay- ing, f* Come, O Muluc, or Kings j" whence they aiTumed the title of Melic^ which they enjoy to this day^ The prophet gave them his enfign^ and laid that the faith would be ftrengtbened by them.

Many fons wete born of Khalid^ the fon of IVa^ lidi who fignalized themfelves in the prefence of the prophet, by fighting againft the infidels. Muhammed honoured and prayed for them;

In the reign of Sultan M/At/zwJ of Ghaznah, eight, men arrived, of the pofterity of KhaJ'td the fon of Walidy whofe names were KaJun, Alun^ Daud, Yaliuij Ahmed, uiwin, and Ghazi. The SuItaA was much pleafed with thein, and appointed each a com- mander in his army. He alfo conferred on them the offices of Fazir^ and Fakili Mutlak, ot Regent of the Empire.

Wherever they were ftationed they obtiaincd pof-^ fefiion of the country, built mofques, and over- threw the temples of idols. They encreafed fo ^iuch; that the army of Mahmucf wa$ chiefly

?4

72 OK THE DESCENT OF THE

compofed of jifghans. When Herhmdi a powerful prince of Hinduftaity meditated an invafion. of Ghax^ nahy Sultan Mahmud difpatched againfl htm the defcendants of Khalid with twenty thoufand horfe: a batde enfued ; the Afghans made the attack ; and, after a fevere engagement, which laded from day-' break till noon, defeated H^rhltidj killed many of the iiiiidels, and converted fome to the Mtihammedau faith.

. The Afghans now began to eftablifli themfelves in the mountains ; and fome fettled in cities with the permiflion of Sultan Mahmud. They framed regu- lations, dividing themfelves into four clafles, agree* ably to the following defcription : — ^The firft is the pure ciafs, coniifling of thofe whofe Others and mothers were Afghans. The fecond clafs confifts of thofe whofe fathers were Afghans^ and mothers of another nation. The third clafs contains thole whofe mothers were Afghans^ and fathers of another nation. The fourth clafs is compofed of the chil« dren of women whofe mothers were Afghans^ and fathers and hufbands of a different nation. Perfbns who do not belong to one of thefe clafles, are not called Afghans.

After the death of Sultan Mahmud they made anou* ther fettlement in the mountains. Shthahuddm Gaurif a fubfequent Sultan of Ghaxnah^ was twice repulfcd from Hindujian. His Vazir aflembled the people, and alked if any of the pofterity of Khalid were living. They anfwered, *^ Many now live ** in a ftate of independence in the mountains, f« where ihey have a confiderable army.** The Va%ir requefted them to go to the mountains, and by entreaties prevail on the Afghans to come ; for they, were the defcendapts of companions of the proph^ .

AFGHANS FROM THE JSWS» J^

The inhabitants of Ghaznah undertook this em- baiTy, and, by entreaties and prefems, conciliated the minds of the Afghans, who promifed to engage in the ferviceof the Sultan, provided he would himfelf come and enter into an agreement with them. The Sultan vifited them in their mountains, honoured them, and gave them dreffes and other prefents. They fupplied bim with twelve thoufand horfe, and a confiderable army of infantry. Being difpatched by the Sultan before his own army, they took Dehli, killed Roy Pah* toura the king, his minillers and nobles ; laid wade the city, and made the infidels prifoners. They after- wards exhibited nearly the fame fcene in Canauj.

The Sultan, pleafcd by the rcdudion of thofe cities, conferred honours upon the Afghans. It is faid that he then gave them the tides of Patan and Khan. The word Patan is derived fiom the Hindi verb Paifna^ to rujk^ in allulion to their alacrity in attacking the ene. my. The Paians have gready diftinguiftied them- (elves in the hiftory of Hindujlany and are divided into a variety of feds.

The race of Afghans poflefled themfclves of the Mountain of Solomon, which is near Kandahar, and the circumjacent country, where they have built forts* this tribe has furnilhed many kings. The following monarchs of this race have fat upon the throne of JDehli : — -Sultan BehJohy Afghan Lodi, Sultan Secan^ der. Sultan Ibrahim, Shir Shah, IJIum Shah, Add Shah Sur. They alfo number the following kings of Gaur: —Solaiman Shah Gurxavi, Bayazid Shah^ and Kutb Shah \ befides whom their nation has produced many conquerors of provinces. The Afghans are called So* laimani, either becaufc they were formerly the fub- jcfts oi Solomon, king of the Jews, or bccaufe they in- habit the Mountain of Solomon.

74 0*^ TfHE DESCENT. OP TkE

The tranflation being finifhed, I (hall only add that the country of the Ajghans^ which is a province of Cahuly was originally called Roh^ and from hence is derived the name of the Rokillahs. The city, which was eftablilhed in it by the Afghans^ was called by them Paijhwer^ or Paijhor, and is now the name of the whole diftrift. The fedks of the Afghans^ or P^- tatis^ are very numerous. The principal are thefe: — * Ladiy Lohauui^ Sur^ Serwarriy Yufufzihi^ Bangi/hy Di' lazaiy Khafti^ Yasiri, Khail^ and Baloje. The mean- ing of Zihiy is offspring; and of Khail, feet. A veiy particular account of the Afghans has been written by the late Hqfiz Rahmat Khariy a chief of the Rohillahs^ from which the curious reader may derive much infor- mation, They are Mufehians^ partly of the Sunni^ and partly of tht'Shtah perfuafion. They are great boaften of the antiquity of their origin, and reputation of their tribe ; but other Mufelmam entirely rejedt their claim, and confider them of modern and even bafe extrac- tion. However, their charafter may be collefted from hiftory, they have dillinguifhed themfelves by theif courage, both fingly and unitedly, as principals and auxiliaries. They have conquered for their own prin- ces and for foreigners, and have always been confidcr- ed the main ftrength of the army in which they have ferved. As they have been applauded for virtues, they havealfo been reproached for vices, having fbme- times been guilty of treachery, and even aded the bafe ^rt of aiTaffin^^

ArOBAKS FHOU THS JBWt. 7f

^ Sfecimm of the Fvshto Languagb.

O^ > O ^ O^ • O ■ • O J o>

r the opprcflion of tyrannical rulers,

re, the gi^ve, and PaiJIidr^ all three have been

nxd equal.

Hith refpeft to praycrg enjoined by the Sunnahg are remitted.

is thus exprelTed in the reports :

^ n ^ O n ^ ^ s- y^ o -wx-yO 5j^ >

jj'c^T^. u-^*-^* c^ ^^^j*^ *»y.^ ^j' c^^^

f a fm/« perform them, it is very laudable. If do not perform them, it is no crime in him.

o > o >o o ^ > > >

yy y 4^ O y O y yy my •

^lie difpofition be not good, 0 Mirzd^

liat difference is there between a Sayyed and a

\ I

J9 REMARKS ON TItE ISLAND

jiefs. The weather was fair, the water fmooth ; and t gentle breeze drove us eafily before dinner- time round ^ rock, on which the Brilliant ftruck juft a year before, into a commodious road*, where we dropped our tochor early in the evening. We had feen Mohi^, another fifter ifland^ in the courfe of the day.

The frigate was prefently furrounded with canocp, Ind the deck foon crowded with natives of all ranks^ from the high-born chief, who waflied linen, to the half-naked flave, who only paddled. Moft of them had letters of recommendation from EngUJhmeny whicli none of them were able to read, though they fpoke EngUJh intelligibly f and fome appeared vain of titles, which our countrymen had given them in play, ac« tording to their fuppofed ftations. We had Lords ^ Dukesy and Princes on board, foliciting our cuftom, and importuning us for prefents. In fa6b, they were too fenfible to be proud of empty founds, but jufrly imagined, that thofe ridiculous titles would ferve as iparks of diftindtion, and, by attracting notice, pro- cure for them fomething fubftantial. The only men of real confequence in the ifland, whom we faw before we landed, were the Governor Ahdullahj fecond cou- fin to the king, and his brother Alwi^ with their fede- ral Tons ; all of whom will ^ain be particularly men- tioned : they underftood Arabic j feemed zealots in the Mohammedan faiths and admired my copies of the Alkoran ; fome verfes of which they read, whilft AU ivi perufed the opening of another Arabian manu- fcript, and explained it in EngUJh more accurately th^li could have been ezpedted.

The next morning fhowed us the ifland in all its beauty s and thefcene was fo divedified, tlvit a di&

• ■

^ Ul i/^W 4f S. Lopg. 44^ 2i' s^' E.>y the Wj&tf.

OF HINZUAN, OR JOKAlfl^A. J^

tioSt view of it could hardly have been exhibited by the beft pencil : you muft, therefore, be fatisfied with a mere defcription, written on the very fpot, and compared attentively with the natural landfcape. We were at anchor in a fine bay, and before us was a vaft amphitheatre, of which you may form a ge- neral notion by pifturing in your minds a multi- tude of hills infinitely varied in fize and figure, and then fuppofing them to be thrown together, with a kind of artlefs fymmetry, in all imaginable pofi- tions. Th? back ground was a feries of moun- tsuns, one of which is pointed, near half a mile perpendicularly high from the level of the fea, and little more than three miles from the (hore : all of them were richly clothed with wood, chiefly fruit- trees, of s^n exquifite verdure. I had feen many a mountain of a ftupendous height in ff^ales and Swijferhn^y but never faw one before, round the bofom of which the clouds were almoft continu- ally rolling, while its green fummit rofe flourilhing above theqj, and received from them an additional brightnefs. Next to this diftant range of hills was another tier, part ot which appeared charmingly- verdant, and part rather barren ; but the contraft of coloufs changed even this nakednefs into a beauty. Nearer ftill were innumerable mountains, or rather cliffs, which brought down their verdure and fertility quite to the beach ; fo that every Qiade of green, the fweeteft of colours, was dilplayed at* one vievy by land and by water. But nothing con- duced more to the variety of this enchanting prof- pe6t, than the many rows of palm-trees, efpeci- ally the tall and graceful Arecas on the (hores, in the valleys, and on the ridges of hills, where one might almofl fuppofe them to have been planted regularly by defign. A more beautiful appearance can fcarce be conceived, than fuch a number of ele- gant palps in fuch a fituation, with luxuriant tops, "like vcrijiant plumes, placed at juft iatervals, and

f..

V

->,

to REMARKS ON THE ISLAND

(bowing between them part of the remoter landfcape^.l while ^hey left the reft to be fupplied by the be- holder's imagination. The town of Matfmnudo lay in our left, remarkable at a diftance for the tower of the principal mofque, which was built by HaU* mah^ a queen of the iiland, from whom the pre- fent king is defcended : a little on our right was a fmall town, called Bantani. Neither the territory of IJice^ with its olives, date-trees, and cyprefles, nor the ifles of HiereSy with their delightful orange- groves, appeared fo charming to me as the view from the road of ITinzuan; which, neverthelefe, is far furpafled, as the Captain of the Crocodile afTured us, by many of the iflands in the Southern Ocean. If life were not too (hort for the complete dtfcharge of all our refpeftive duties, public and private, and for the acquifition even of neceffary knowledge in any degree of perfedion, with how much pleafurc and improvement might a great part of it be fpent in admiring the beauties of this wonderful orb, and contemplating the nature of man in all its varieties !

We haftened to tread on firm land, to which wc had been fo long difufed, and went on fliore, after breakfaft, to fee the town, and return the Governor's vifit. As we walked, attended by a crowd of natives^ I furpiized them by reading aloud an Arabic infcrip- tion over the gate of a mofque, and ftill more, when 1 entered it, by explaining four fentences, which were written very diftinftly on the wall, fignifying, ** that •* the world was given us for our own edification, •' not for the purpofe of raifing fumptuous build* «' ings; life, for the difcharge of moral and reli- gious duties, not for pleafurable indulgences j wealth, to be liberally beftowed, not avaricioufly hoarded ; and learning, to produce good a6lions^ ** not empty difputes." We could not but refpe6t the temple ^ven of a falfe prophet^ in which w<^

•cc

'^ C^ dm^2UAK> OR JOIiAKHA. Si

Ibund fuch excellent morality t we faw nothing bet- tef among the Roml/h trumpery in the church at Ma* deira. When we came to AbdullaV% houfe, we were condufted through a fmall court-yard into an open room, on each fide of which was a large and conve-* nient fofa, and above it a high bed-place in a dark recefs, over which a chintz counterpoint hung down from the ceiling. This is the general form of the beft rooms \n the ifland ; and mofl of the tolerable houfes have a fimilar apartment on the oppofite fide of the court, that there may be at all hours a place in the ihade for dinner, or for repofe. We were entertained with ripe dates from Yemertj and the milk of cocoa- nuts; but the heat of the room, which feemed acceffi- ble to all who chofe to enter it/and the fcent of muik» or civet, with which it was perfumed, foon made us defirous of breathing a purer air; nor could I be detained long by the Arabic manufcripts which the Governor produced^ but which appeared of lit- tle ufe, and confequently of no value, except to fuch as love mere curiofities. One of them, indeed, relat- ing to the penal law of the Mohammedans j I would ^adly have purchafed at a juft price ; but he knew not what to afk ; and I knew that better books on that fub- jed: might be procured in Bengal. He then offered me a black boy for one of my Alkorans, and preffed me to barter an Indian drefs, which he had feen on board the (hip, for a cow and calf. The golden flippers attracted him moft, fince his wife, he faid, would like to wear them ; and, for that reafon, I made him a prefent of them ; but had deftined the book and the robe for his fuperior. No high opi- nion could be formed of Sayyad Abdullahy who feemed very es^er for gain, and very fervile where be e3q>ed:ed it.

* Our next vifit was to Shaikh Salim^ the kinrV Clden (on ; and if we had feen blm firft. the itatc ■ Vol. JL G

/■'■- V

' *• ■ ■

?. -.■.• ■ ■ -"I

X ' : ■ 1

9% REMARKS ON THE IStAKD ^'*^

cf civilization in Hinzuan would have appeared ak its loweft ebb. The worft EngJi^ hackney in thd worft flable is better lodged, and looks more princely than this heir apparent; but though his mien and apparel were extremely favs^, yet allowance (hould have been made for his illnefs; which, as we after^ >> l^ards learned, was an abfcefs in the fpleen : a .difor« der not uncommon in that country, and frequently cured, agreeably to the j^rabian practice, by the aftuiu cautery. He was incefl'antly chewing pieces of the Areca-nut with fhelMime : a cuflom borrowed, I fup^ J)ofe, from the Indians^ who greatly improve the compofition with fpices and betel-leaves^ to which they formerly added camphor : all the natives of tank chewed it, but not^ I think, to fo great an ex* cefs. Prince Salim from time to time gazed at him^' felf with complacency in a piece of broken looking* glafs, which was glued on a fmall board : a fpecimen of wretchednefs, which we obfervcd in no other houfe ; but many circumftances convinced us that the apparently low condition of his royal highnefi^ who was not on bad terms with his father, and ieem« ed not to want authority, proceeded wholly from his ^avarice. His brother Haindullah^ who generally fc- lides in the town of Dofnoni, has a very difrerent cbsk rafter, being efteemed a man of worth, good fenie» and learning : he had come, the day before, to Aft/* /amudoy on hearing that an U^ngliJA frigate was in <he road ; and I, having gone out for a few minutes to read an Arabic inlcnption, found him on my rettini devouring a manufcript which I had left with iocnt of the company. He is a Kadi or Mohammedan yxxA^ti And as he feemed to have more knowledge than hii countrymen, I was extremely concerned that I had (o little converfation with him. The king. Shaikh Ah" med^ has a younger fon, named /Ibdullah^ whofe ufuj refidence is in the town of Ifani^ which he feldbi leaves, as the ilate of his health ^ is very infw Since the fucceflion to th^ title and authomy of &

bP klNZiXAN, OR JOHANNA; ftj

sfcni i^ not unalterably fixed in one line, but requires confirmation by the chiefs of the ifland, it is not im^ probable that they may hereafter be conferred oa prince HamduUahi

A little beydnd the hole in which Salhn received us, was his haram^ or the apartment of his women ^ which he permitted us all to fee, not through polite- nefs to ftrangers, as We believed at firft, but as I learned afterwards from his own lips^ in expeftatioa of a prefent. W^ faw only two or three miferable tre^tures with their heads covered, while the favour- ite^ as we fuppofed, flood behind a coarfe curtain^ and (howed her ankles under it, loaded with filver Ungs i which, if (he was capable of refledtion, (he mud have tonfidered as glittering fetters rather than ornaments ; but a ratiohal being would have preferred the condition of a wild beaft, expofed to perils and hunger in a foreft, to the fplendid mifery of being wife or miftrefs to Salimi

, Alix)i was defirous of fliowing tne his books ^ but the day was too far advanced, and I promifed to vifit him fome other morning; The governor however prevailed on us to fee his palace in the country, where he invited us to dine the next day. The walk was extremely pkafant from the town to the fide of a rivulet^ which formed iii one part a •imall pool very convenient for bathing, and thenc^ through groves and alleys to the foot of a hill ; but the dining-room was little better than an open barn, and was recommended only by the coolnefs of its fliade. AhduUah would accompany us on our return to the (hip, together with two Muftis who fpoke Ara^ lie indifferently, and feemed eager to fee all my ma^ nufciripts i but they were very moderately learned^ and gazed with ftupid wonder on a fine copy of the >^an^fahi and on other coUedions of ajietem pQetr)%.

G a

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t/L llfiMARKS OK THE ISLAN1> .'I

■ ■* *'

Early the next morning a black melTenger, wiA i| ' tawny lad as his interpreter, came from prince Salim ) who having broken his perfpedtive glafs, wifhed to procure another by purchafe or barter. A polite an- fwer was returned, and ftcps taken to gratify his wiflies. As we on our part expreffed a defirc to vifit the king at Domonij the prince's meffenger told u% that his mafter would, no doubt, lend us palan* quins (for there was not a horfe in the ifland) and order a fufEcient number of his vaflals to carry us, whom we might pay for their trouble as we thought juft. We commiffioned him therefore to aik that favour, and begged that all might be ready for oar excurfion before fun-rife, that we might efcape the heat of the noon, which, though it was the middle of winter, we had found exceffive. The boy, whofe name was Combo Madi^ ilaid with us longer tfaaa his companion : there was fomething in his look fo ingenuous, and in his broken Engli/h fo (imple, that we encouraged him to continue his innocent prattle. He wrote and read jiralnc tolerably well, and fet down at my defire the names of feveral towns in the iiland, which he fird told me was properly called Hkt* zuan. The fault of begging for whatever he likedp^ he had in common with the governor and other nobles, but hardly in a greater degree : his firft pe- tition for fome lavender-water was readily granted^, and a fmall bottle of it was fo acceptable to him, that if we had fuffered him, he would have kiffcd our feet ^ but it was not for himfelf that he rejoiced fo extra- vagantly : he told us^ with tears darting from his eyes, that his mother would be pleafed with it, and the idea of her pleafure feemed to fill him with rap- ture. Never did I fee filial afFeftion more warmly felt, or more tenderly and, in my opinion, unaffedt- edly expreffed; yet this boy was not a favourite of the ofiicers, who thought him artful. His moiher^s juunc^ he iaid^ was iaiima i and he importgae4 us cgi ^

, I •.

CfV HINZUAK, OR JOHANNA.

H

fifii^Bcr; conceiving, I fuppofe, that all mankind muft love and admire her. We promifed to gratify him ; and having made him feveral prefents, permit- ted him to return. As he reminded me of AJaJdin iii the Arabian tale, I defigned to give him that name in a Jecommcndatory letter, which he prefled me to vvrite^ inftead of St. Domingo, as fome European vifitor had ridicuoully called him; but, fince the allufion would notliave been generally known, and fince the title of yilaiCldin^ or efninence in faith^ might have offend d his fuperiors, I thought it advifeabie for him to keep his Jf/ricanrn^mc. A very indifferent dinner was prepared for us at the houfe of the Governor, whom we did not fee the whole day, as it was the beginning of Ramadan^ the Mohammedan lent, and he was en- gaged in his devotions, or made them his excufe; but his eideft fon fat by us while we dine J., together with: Mufa^ who was employed, jointly with his bro- ther ,fl555/&/w, as purveyor to the Captain of the frigate.

Having obferved a vef y elegant fhrub that grew abont fix feet high, in the court-yard, but was not then in flower, I learned with pleafure, that it was hinndj of which I had read fo much in Arabian poems, ^d V/h\ch European botanifts have ridiculoufly named hanx^onia* Mt'ifa bruifed fome of the leaves, and, having nioiftened them with water, applied them to our nails and the: tips of our fingers, which in a (hort time became of a dark orange- fcarlet. 1 had be- fore conceived a different idea of this dye, and ima- gined that it was ufed by the Arabs to imitate the riatural rednefs of thofe parrs in young and healthly per- fbhs,' which in all countries mull be confidere.i as a beauty :— perhaps a lefs quantity oihinna, or the fame differently prepared, might have produced that efteit. Therold mtn^n Arabia ufed the fame dye to conceal their grey hairs, while their daughters were dyeing their

G3

\

t6 REMARKS OK THE ISIAKB'

lips and ^ms black, to fet off the whitenefs tjf lUitk] ttcth J fo univerfal ki all nations and ages are pci^ fonal vanity and a love of difguifing truth ; thougH in all cafes, the farther our fpecies recede from na- ture, the farther they depart from true beauty ; and men at leaft (hould difdain to ufe artifice or deceit for any purpofe or on any occafion. If the women of rank at Paris, or thofe in London who wifli to imitate them, be inclined to call the Arabs Barbarians, let them view their own head dreffcs and cheeks in a glafs, and, if they have left no room for blulbes, bo inwardly at leaft afhamed of their x:enfure.

In the afternoon I walked a long way up the moun* ' tains in a winding path, amid plantsand trees no lefs^hctiiF than beautiful, and regretted exceedingly that vwy few of them were in bloffora, as I (hould then hav^ had leifure to examine them. Curiofity led me.ftom hill to hill } and I came at laft to the fqurces of a £i« vulet, which we had pafled near to the (hore, and from which the (hip was to be lupplied with exccUenf i^a- ter. 1 faw no birds on the mountains but Gm* tiea-fowl^ which might have been eafily caught: no infeds were troublefome to me but mcuqui-^ tos ; and I had no fear of venomous reptileSy having been aflTured that the air was too pure for any to exift in it; but I was often unwillingly i caufe of fear to the gentle and harmlefs lizard, who ran among the (hrubs. On my return, Imilfed the path by which I had afcendedj hut, having met fome blacks laden with yams and plantains, I was by them direded to another, which led me round,, .through a charming grove of cocoa-trees, to thei Governor's countrv-feat, where our entertainment was clofed by a fyllabub, which the Englijh hs^^ taught the Mufelmans to make for themik

OF HINZTTAN, OR JOHAKKA. SJ

We received no anfwer from Salim ; nor, indeed, cxpeded one ; fince we took for grantecf that he could not but approve our intention of vifiting his lather ; and we went on (hore before fun-rife, in full expe<%ation of a pleafant excurfion to Domoni: but we were happily difappointed. The fervants, it the prince's door, told us coolly, that their mailer was in* difpofed, and, as they believed, aflecp ; that he had given them no orders concerning his palanquins, and that they durft not difturb him. Alwi foon came to pay us his compliments, and was followed by his cldeft (on, Ahmed^ with whom we walked to the gar- dens of the two princes SaTim and Hanidullah : the fituation was naturally good, but wild and defolate ; and, in Salim^s garden, which we entered through a tniferable hovel, we faw a convenient bathing place, well-built with ftone, but then in great diforder, and a (hed, by way of fummer-houfe, like that under which we dined at the Governor's, but fmaller and lefs neat. On the ground there lay a kind of cradle^ about fix feet long, and a little more thaq one foot in )3readth, made of cords twifted in a fort of clumfy jiet-work, with a long thick bambu fixed to each fide of it : this, we heard with furprize, was a royal pa- lanquin,, and one of the vehicles in which we were , intended to have been rocked on mens (boulders over the mountains. I had much converfation with Ahmed^ whom I found intelligent and communica- tive : he told me that feveral of his countrymen com- pofed fongs and tunes ; that he was himfelf a paflion- ate lover of poetry and mufic ; and that, if we would dine at his houfe, he would play and fing to us. We declined his invitation to dmner, as we had made a conditional promife, it ever we pafled a day at Mat^ famudo^ to eat our curry with Bana Gihuy an honeft man, of whom we purchafed eggs and vegetables, and to whpm fome Engli/hnien had given the title of Lordj jsrbi^h |»ade hini extremely vain : we could therefor

Q4 V

88 REMARKS ON THE ISLAKD '

t

make Sayyad Ahmed otA:^ a morning vifit. He fuiig a hymn dt two in Arabic^ and accompanied his drawl« ing, though pathetic, pialmody with a kind of man- doline, which he touched with an awkward quill : the inftrument was very imperfeft, but fecmed to give him delight. The names of the firings were writtca on it in AraVtan or Indian figures, fimple and com- pounded ; but I could not think them worth copying* He gave Captain WiUiamfony who wifhed to prcfcnt^ fome literary curiofities to the library at Dublin^ a fmall roll containing a hymn in Arabic letters, but in the language o( Mombaza^ which was mixed. with Arabic, but it hardly deferved examination, (ince the ftudy of languages has little intrinfic value, and ia only ufeful as the inflrument of real knowledge, which- we can fcarce expedt from the poets of the Mozam^ , hique. Ahmed would, I believe, have heard our Eurt ropean airs (F always except French melody j with rap- ture, for his favourite tune was a common Irijh jig^ with which he feemed wonderfully affedted.

On our return to the beach I thought of vifit ing old Alwi^ according to my promife, and prince Salim^ whofe charader I had not then difcovered : 1 refolved for that purpofe to flay on fliorc alone, our dinner with Gibu having been fixed at an early hour. AIwi inowed me his manufcripts, which chiefly related to the ceremonies and ordinances of his own religion ; and one of them, which I had formerly feen in £u^ ropCy was a colledion of fublime and elegant hymns in praife of Mohammed, with explanatory notes in the margin. I requefted him to read one of them after the mariner of the Arabs ; and he chanted it in a flr^n by no means unpleafing ; but I am perfuaded that he underflood it very imperfeftly. The roorn^ whiclj was open to theftreet, was prefently crowded with vi- fitors, mofl of whom were Mupisy or Expounders of the Law'y and Alw^ defirous perhaps to difplay

I

OF HINZ-UAN, OR jOtf ANNA. 8^^

Vis zeal before them at the expence of go6d breed- ' ing, dir-f'ftod my attention to a paflage in a commcn-' taiyon the Koran, v^'h':ch. I found levelled at the Chri/iians. The ccmmentator, having relied with' fome additions (but on the whole not inaccurately)' the circumftancefe of the. temptation, puts this fpeech into the mouth of the tempter : *' Though I am un- *.' able to delude thee, yet I will miflead, by thy means, more human creatures than thou wilt fct " right," ^ Nor was this menace vain (fays the Mohammedanvinitv)y * for the inhabitants of a region *' many thoufand leagues in extent, are ftill fb deluded

* by the Devil, that they impioufly call Ifa the fbn of

* GodI Heaven prefeirve us,' he adds, * from blaf-

* phcmilig Chri/ttans as well as blafpheming Je^Oos! — ^ Although a religious difpute with thofe obftinate zea- lots would have been unreafonable and fruitlefs, yet they dcferved, I thought, a flight rfeprehenfion, as the attack feemed to he concerted among them. * The

* commentator,* faid 1, ' was much to blamfe for paflSng

* fb indifcriminate and hafty a cenfure: th^ title', which

* gave your legiflator and gives you fuch offence, wa* *ohen applied m JvJea (by a bold figure agreeable

* to the Hebrew idiom, though unufual in Arabic)

* to angels y to holy men^ and even xo dll niankmdy whd

* are commanded to call God their Father;- zhd in

* this large fenfe the apoflle, to thfe Romam, call*

* tht ^ledl the children of God, and thfe Mefftnh thd ^firft-horn among many brethren ; but' the words only ^ begot teti ate appITed tranfcendently and incompa-' ^ rably to him alone* j and, as for me who believes

* the fcriptures, which you alfo profefs to believe,'

* though you afFert without proof that we have al-

* ttrtd them, I cannot refufe hiixi an appellatibn,

* though far futpaffing our reafoii, by which he is

^&oin«Tiii« a9# See i John iii. i. IIrBarrow>«3i, 132,^51,

fg/O REMARKS ON THE ISLAND

• diftinguiftied in the Gofpcl; and the believers lA:

• Muhanuned^ who exprefsly name him the Meffiah^

• and pronounce him to have been born of a virgin,

• which alone might fully juftify the phrafc con*

• demned by this author, are themfelves condemn*

• able tor cavilling at words, when they cannot ob»

• jedl to the fubftance of our faith confiftently with

• their own/ Th&^t^ltHans had^«otiiiflg to fay ia itplyj and the converfation was changed.

I was aftoniflied at the queftions which AIwi ptit to me concerning the late peace and the independence^ of jimerica; the feveral powers and refourccs of Britain^ France^ S^pain^ and Holland -y the charader and fuppofed vie»vs of the Emperor; the com[>ara« dve flrength of the Ruffian^ Imperial, and Oihmaik armi^; and their refpedive modes of bringing their forces toaftion. I anfwered him without relcrvc, cxv cept on the ftate of our poffeflions in India ; nor were my anfwers loft, for I obferved, that all the company were varioufly affeded by them, gener^ljr with amazement, often with concern, efpecially when I defcribed to them the great force and adml mble difcipline of the Aujlr'ian army, and the ftiipir prejudices of tlie Turks ^ whom nothing can induce f abandon their old Tartarian habits ; and expofed t' weakhefs of their empire in Africa^ and even in t more diftant provinces of Afta. In return, he ga me clear but general information concerning the vernment and commerce of his ifland : ** His c f* try,*' he {aid, ** was poor, and produced few ai ** of trade ; but if they could get money, which f* now preferred ^0 play-things j^ thefe were his w ** they might eafily,*' he added, *' procure fc 4< commodities, and excliange them advantaf ** with their neighbours in the iflands and ^ continent. Thus with a little money," f; * ^' we purchase n^uiket^^ powder^ balls; c

OF HINZ'UAN, OK JOHANKA. $1

^ knives, clothes, raw cotton, and other articles *' brought fron^ Bombay ^ and with thefe we trade to ^* Madagafcar for the natural produc e of the country *-*l3r dollars^ with which the French buy cattle^ *• honey, butter, and fo forth, in that ifland. With ^* gold, which we receive from your (hips, we can ^* procure elephants teeth from the natives of Afo- *• zambiqtte, who barter them alfo for ammunition ** and bars of iron ; and the Portugueze in that f* country give us cloths of* various kinds in cx- *^ change for our commodities ; thefe cloth? we diC- ** pofe of lucratively in the three neighbouring iflands, *^ whence we bring rice, cattle, a kind of bread-fruit, ** which grows in Comara^ and Jlaves^ which we buy ** alfo at other places to which we trade; aad we ** carry on this traffic in our own veffels.'*

Here I could not help expreffing my abhorrence of iS^tivJlave- trade, and aflted him by what law they claimed a property in rational beings, fince our Cre- ator had given our fpecies a dominion, to be mode- rately exercifed, over the beafts of the field and the fowls of the air, but none to man over 7nan. •* By no f^ law,** anfwered he, *^ unlefs neceffity be a law. f* There are nations in Madagafcar and in Africa^ ^* who know neither God nor his prophet, nor Mofes^ ^* nor David, nor the Mejfiah : thofe nations are in ** perpetual war and take many captives, whom, if ?* they could not fell, they would certainly kill, In- *^ dividuals among them are in extreme poverty, ^^ and have numbei s of children, who, if they can- ?* not be difpofed of, muft perifli through hunger, ^* together with their miferable parents. By purchaf* ♦• ing thefe wretches we preferve their lives, and, ^'perhaps, (hofe of many others whom our money ^* relieves. The fum of the argument is this : If we <* buy them, they will live; it they become valuable f* fervants, they will live Comfortably ; but, if* they {{ are not fold, they muft die mif«abiy.'' ^ Therq

92 .REMARKS OK THE ISLAND

maybe/ faid I, * fuch cafes ; but you fdllacioiifly di^asir a general conclufion from a few patticular inftancc5^ pud this is the very fallacy which^ on a .thoiiianc^ other occadons, deludes mankind. It is not to b^ doubted that a conflaht and gainful traffic in hu-x^ man creatures foments war, in which captives ar^ always made, and keeps ,up that pierpetual enmity which' you pretend to be the caufe. of a praftice in itfclf reprehenfible, while in truth it is its effe6i. The fame traffic encourages lazinefs in fome parents^ who might in general fupport their families by pro* * per.induftry, and feduces others to C.ifle their na* tural feelings. At moft, your redemption of tbofe unhappy children can amount only to a peifonal contraft implied between you, for gratitude and rea-* fonable fervice on their part, for kindnefj.and humanity on yours ; but can you think your part performed by difpofing of them againft their V^Hls, with as much indifference aa if you were felling cattle, efpecially as they might become readers of the Koran J and pillars of your faith ?' " The law,** faid \\t^ ** forbids our felling them^ when they are. bof lievers in the Prophet ; and little children only arft fold; nor they often, or by.all mailers." * Ypuj- who believe in Muhammedy faid .1, * are bduAd^ by the fpirit and letter of his lavi^, to take, pains that they, ajfo may believe in him y and if you nci gleft fo important a duty for foixiid gain,, I do not fee how you can hope for profperity in this worldj or. for happinefs in the next/ My old firiehd and the Muftis alfented, and muttered a few prayers; but probably forgot my preaching before niany niitttites had.palfed. . ' ^

So much time had flipped away in thjs convciia* tion, that I could make but a fliort Vifit to Prijoce SaJimi and my view, in vifiting him was to fix tbt time of out journey to Domom as early as pofCWe on . the next: morning* His appearance. ^^% oiore iavagft .

OF HINZITAN, OF JOHANKA. ^J

ihan ever ; and I found him in a difpofition to C€>m« plain bitterly againft the Englijh. No acknow* ledgment, he faid, had been made for the kind attentions of himfelf and the chief men of his country to the officers and people of the Brilliant^ though a whole year had elapfed (ince the wreck, 1 really wondered at Ae forgetfulnels, to which alone iuch a negleA could be imputed, and aflured hint that I would exprefs my opinion both in Bengal and in letters to England. *^ We have little,'* laid he, *^ to hope from letters ; for, when we have been paid " with them inftead of money, and have (hewn ** them on board your (hips, we have commonly " been treated with difdain, and often with impreca- *^ tions.*' I aflured him, that either tho(e letters mull have been written coldly and by very obfcure perfbns, or (hown to very ill-bred men, of whom there were too many in all nations ; but that a few inftances of rudenels ought not to give him a general prejudixre againft our national charader. ** But you,'* laid he, " kre a wealthy nation, and we are indigent, *' yet, though all our groves of cocoa-trees, our ^* fruits, and our cattle, are ever at your fervice, you ** always try to make hard bargains with us for what " you chufe to difpofe of; and frequently will neither ** fell nor give thofe things which we principally • ** want.'* * To form/ faid I, * a juft opinion of

* Engli/hmeriy you muft vifit us in our own ifland, ^ or at leaft India , here we are ft rangers and travel- ^lers: many of us have no defion to trade in any

* country, and none of us think of trading in

* Hmztian, where we ftop only for refreftiment. ^ Tjbc clothes, arms, or inftruments, which you

* may want, are commonly necefTary or convenient

* to us i but, if Sayyad Alwi or his fens were to be

* ftrangers in our country, you would have no rea- *'fon to boaft of fuperior hofpitality,' He then Ihowed me, a fccond time, a part of an old j[ilk vcft, with the ftar of the Order of the- Thiftk,- and beg-

94 HEMARK^ ON THE I9LAN0

ged me to explain the motto ; exprelling a with the order might be conferred on him by the Ki England^ in return for his good offices to the En J reprefented to him the impoffibiliiy of his I gratified, and took occafion to fay, that there more true dignity in their own native titles thfl thofe of prince^ auh^ and /or^/,* which had been given them, but had no conformity to their mai or the conftitution of their government*

This converfation not being agreeable to eitherc I changed it, by deliring that the palanquins bearers might be ready next morning as ear poffible. He anfwered, that his palanquins at our fervice for nothing, but that we tnufl him ten dollars for each fet of bearers; it was the dated price, and that Mr. Hayings paid it when he went to vifit the king. This, learned afterwards, was falie; but, at all evf knew that he would keep the dollars himfelf , a nothing to the bearers, who deferved them and whom he would compel to leave their c and toil for his profit. Can you imagine, plied, " that we would employ four-and-twer *\ to bear us fo far on their ftioulders without •* ing them amply ? But fince they are free he had aflured me) ^/ and not your flaves, w " them in proportion to their diligence and j •* viour; and it becomes neither your digni *' to make a previous bargain.'* I Ihowed I gant copy of the Korarty which I deftined foi and dcfcribed the reft of my prefentj br alked, " if that was all ?*' Had he been V of dry dollars would have given him i than the fineft or holieft manufcript, Fij converfing on a variety of (ubjeds, utter telligence or principle, I took my leave, ai more ; but promifed to let him know foi iber we (homld .maka our intended excur

OF HIVZUAVr, OR JORAKHA. p|

We dined in tolerable comfort, and had occafloot . In the courfe of the day, to obferve the manners of the natives in the middle rank, who are called Banasi ftll of whom have flaves conflantly at work for them* We vifited the mother of Camhotnadi^ who feemed in H flation but little raifed above indigence ; and her hufband, who was a mariner, bartered an Arabic treattfe on aflronomy and navigation, which he had read^ for a fea-compafs, of which he well knew the Aife.

In the morning I had converfeu with two very old Arabs of Yemeni who had brought fome articles of trade to Hmxuan ; and in the afternoon I met another, who had come from Majkat (where at that time there was a civil war) to purchafe, if he could, an hundred Aand of arms. * I told them all that I loved their na«» tion; and they returned my compliment with great, Warmth, efpecially the two old men,- who were neay^ fourfcore, and reminded me of Zohair and Hareih.

So bad an accoufat had been given me of the road over' the mountains, that I diffuaded my companions frpm thinking of the journey, to which the captain became rather difinclined ; but as 1 wilhed to be fully ac- quainted with a country which I might never lee again, I wrote the next day to Salim^ requefting him to lend me one palanquin,^ and to order a fufficient number of men. He fent me no written anfwer, which I afcribe rather to his incapacity than to rudenefs j but the Governor, with Alwi^mA two of his fons, came? on board in the evening, and faid that they had feefa my letter ; that all fhould be ready ; but that I could not pay lefs for the men than ten dollars. 1 faid I would pay more, but it (hould be to the men them* felves, according to their behaviour. They return-^ od fomewhat diiTatisfied, after I bad played at chiefs

96 .REMARKS ON THE ISLAND

with JlhvPs younger fon, in whofe manner and ad<^ drefs there was fomething remarkably pleafing.

Before fun-ri{e, on the 2d of jiuguft^ I went alone

on ' (hore, with a fmall ba/ket of fuch provifions as I

might want in the coiirfe of the day, and with fome

cufliions to make the prince's palanquin at leafl a toIer«>

able vehicle ; but the prince was refolved to receive

the dollars to which his men were entitled ; and he

knew that, as I was eager for the journey, he could

prefcribe his own terms. Old Al'voi met me on the

beach, and hrougat excufes from 8al'nn^ who he (aid

was indifpofed. He conducted me to his houfe, and

feemed rather deCrous of perfuading me to abandon

my defign of vifiting the king ; but I aflured him

that, if the prince would not fupply me with proper

attendants, 1 would walk to Domoni with my own fer-

vants and a guide. Shaikh Salimj he faid, was

miferably avaricious, and that he was afliamed of a

kinfman with fuch a difpofition; but that he was

Bo lefs obftinate than covetous; and that, without

ten dollars paid in hand, it would be impoflSble to

procure bearers. I then gave him three guineas,

which he carried, or pretended to carry to Saliiu ; but

returned without the change, alleging that he h%d no

filver, and promifing to give me on my return the

few dollars that remained. In about an hour the ridi*

culous vehicle was brought by nine fturdy blacks, who

could not Ipeak a word of Arabicy fb that I exp6£i:ed

po information concerning the country through

which I was to travel; but Alwi affifted me in a point

of the utmoft confequence. * You cannot go,* faid

Re, ^ without an interpreter, for the king fpeaks only

* the language of this ifland ; but I have a fervant, < whofe name is Tumuniy a fenfible and worthy man, ^ who underftands Englijhy and is much efteemed

* by the king; he is known and valued all QVdr

DP HIKZUAK9 OR JOHANNA. 97

^ JJmxuan. This man (hall attend you ; and you ^ will fooa be fenfible of bis worth/

Tumuni defifted to carry my bafket ; and we fet out with a profpedt of fine weaijher, but fome hours later than i had intended* I walked by the gardens of the two princes, to the fkirts of the town, and came tQ ^ little village confiding of feveral very neat huts, made , chiefly with the leaves of the cocoa-tree j but the. road a liale. farther was fo flony, that I fat in the palanquin, and was borne with perfed fafety over fome rocki. I' then defired my guide to aflure the men that I would pay them liberally ; but the poor pea- &nts, who had bdsn brought from their farms on the hills, were not perfedtly acquainted with the ufe of money, and treated my promife with indifierence.

About five miles from Matfamuda lies the town of fVani, where Shaikh Abdullah^ who has already been mentioned, ufually refides : I faw it at a didance, and it Teemed to be ^reeably fituated. When 1 had pafled the rocky part of the rood, I came io b, ftonjr beach, where the fea appeared to have lod fome ground, fince there was a fine fand to the kft, and beyond it a beautiful bay, which refembled that of Weymouth f and feemed equally convenient for bath* ing ; but it did not appear, to me that the ftones over which I was carried had been recently covered with water« Here 1 faw .the frigate, and, taking leave of it for two days, turned from the coad into a fine country very neatly cultivated, and conlifling partly of hillocks exquifitely green, partly of plains, which were then in a gaudy drefs of rich yellow bloffoms. My guide informed me they were plantations of a kind of vetch, which was eaten by the nacives- Cot- t^^:and farms were interfperfed all over this gay champaign, and the. wbole Icene was delightful : but jtwa9;faon changed for beamies of a difiercnt-kind*

VoL.IL H

^8 REMARKS ON THE ISLAVP

We defcended into a cool valley, through which ran a rivulet of perfectly clear water ; and there, find- ing my vehicle uneafy, though from the laughter and merriment of my bearers I concluded them to be quite at their eafe, I bade them fet me down^ and walked before them all the reft of the way. Moun- tains, clothed with fine trees and flowcring-ihrubty prelented themfelves on our afcent from the vale; ud Vfe proceeded for half an hour through pleaiant wood- walks, where 1 regretted the impoffibility of loi- tering a while to examine the variety of new bloflbms, which fucceeded one another at every ftep, and the virtues, as well as names, of which ieemed familiar to Tumt0ii At length we defcended into a valley of greater extent than the former : a river or large wintery torrent ran through it, and fell down a . ftom declivity at the end of it, where it feemed to be loix among rocks. Cattle were grazing on the banks of the river, and the huts of their owners appeared on the hills: a more agreeable fpot I had not before f en even in Swi/ferland ox Merioneth/hire \ but it was followed by an aflcmblage of natural beauties, which I hardly cxpedted to find in a little illand twelve de- grees to the Ibuth of the Line, 1 was not fufficiently pkafcd with my folitary journey to difcover charms which had no adual exiftence, and the firft effe£L of the contraft between St. Jago and Hinzuan had ceafed; but, without any difpofition to give the landfcape a high colouring, I nay truly fay, what I thought at the time, that the whole country which next prefented itfelf, as far furpafled Ermmon^illej or Blenheim^ or any other imitations of nature, which I had feen in France or England^ as the finefl bay fiv- pafles an anificial piece of water. Two very high mountains, covered to the fummit with the richeft verdure, were at fome diftance on my right hand, and feparated from me by meadows divcrmied with cottages and herds, or by vallies refounding witb tor«

OF HtKZtJAN^ OR JOHAKKA* M

rents and waterfalls ; on my left was the fea^ to which there were beautiful openings from the hiUsfind woQds; and the road was a fmooth path naturally winding through a forefl of fpicy (hrubs, fruit-trees, and palms* Rome high trees were fpangled with white blcdToms, tquol in fragrance to orange-flowers : my guide cal-* led them Monongos ; but the day was declining fo fad, diat it was impoiiible to examine them: the variet^ of fruits, flowers, and birds, of which I had a tran* fient view in this magnificent garden, would have Supplied a naturalift with amuiment for a month; but I faw no remarkable infed, and no reptile of any kind. The woodland was diverfified by a few plea- fant glades, and new profpedts were continually opened : at length a noble view of the fea burft upon me unexpededly ; and, having pafled a hill or two^ we Came to the beach, beyond which wer^ ieveral liiUs and cottages. We turned from the (hore ; and^ on the next eminence, I faw the town of Domatti at a little diflance below us. I was met by a number of Datives, a few of whom fpoke Arabic ; and thinking it a convenient place for repofe, I fent my guide to apprize the king of my intended vifit. He returned an half an hour with a polite meflage; and I walked idto the town, which (eemed large and populous. A ^great crowd accompanied me ; and I was conduced ito a houfe built on the fame plan with the beft boulei -M Matfamudo. In the middle of the court^yard flood a large Monongo-tree^ which perfumed the air; the apartment on the left was empty ; and in that on the right iat the king on a ibfaor bench, covertd with ^an ordinary carpet. He rofe when I enttredf and .^fafping my hands, placed me near him on the right i .but as he could fpeak only the language of Hmswanf I had recourfe to my friend Tumum^ than whom a rea* diet or more accurate interpreter could not have been found, I prefented the king with a very hand* Ibait Mian drcis of blue filk wsih goldea floweri|

Ha

tpO REMARKS ON THE ISLAND

which bad been worn only once at a mafquerade, and- ^ with a beautiful copy of the Koritn:, from which t read a few verfes to him. He took them with great complacency, and faid, he wi(hed I had come by fea^ that he might have loaded one of my boats with firuit, and with fome of his finefl cattle. He had. (een tne, he faid, on board the frigate, where he had been, according to his cudom, in difguifcy and had heard of me from his fon Shaikh Ham-t duliah. I gave him an account of my journey, and . extolled the beai^ties of his country : he put many queflions concerning rr.ine, and profefled great regard for our nation. '* But I hear/' faid he, " that you are *• a magiftrate, and confequently profefs peace : why '^ are you. armed with a broad fword V* * I was a f man^' 1 faid, ^ before I was a magiftrate ; and, if it ^ fhould ever happen that law could not proted: ? me, I muft protedt my(elf.' He feemed about iixty years old, had a very cheerful countenance^ and gt^t appearamte of good-nature mixed with a certain .dighitj', which diftinguifiied him from the crowd of miffifters and officers who attended him. Our con- verlation was interrupted by notice, that it was thfc time of evening-prayers ; and, when he rofe, he (aid /* this houfe is yours, and I will vifit you in it, after ^*you have taken fome refrefhment." Soon aftep, his fer vants brought a roaft fowl, a rice-pudding, and fonie other didjes, wirh papayas and very good pome- granates; my own ba/foet fiipplied the reft o( tWf fupper. The room was hung with old red cloth, aiid decorated wiih pieces of porcelain and feftoona. )o£ •jB>7g-/j)A":bottle^ ; the lamps were placed oathe ground •'hi large. fca* (hells; and. the bed*place was a recets, .concealed' by a chintz hanging, oppofite to the fbfiiy on which we. had been licting. Though it was' nbt^ place that invited repofe, and the gnats wese inez- -preflibly troubleibme, yet the fatigue of. the/dayt pro* cured me Veiy comtonable fluml^. I mA widral

or HIKZUAK9 Olt JOBAKITA. lot

by the return of the king and his train ; fome of whom Were Arabs j for I heard one of them fay huwa-raUd^ otj he isjleefing. There was immediate filence, and I pafled iLe night with little difturbance, except from the unwelcome fongs of the mofquito^. In the morning all was eaually filent and folitary ; the hoiife appeared to be delerted ; and I began to bonder what had become of Tunmni: he came at length with con* cem on his countenance, and told me that the bearers had run away in the night; but that the king, who wifhed to fee me in another of his houfes, would furoly me with bearers^ if he could not prevail on me CO ftay till a boat could be fent for. I went imme-^ diacely to the king, whom I found fitting on a raifed (bfii in a large room, the walls 6f which were adorned with (entences from the Koran^ in Tery legible cha- raAers : about fifty of his fubjeds were feated on the ground in a femicircle before him ; and my inter* preter to his place in the midfl: of them. The good old king laughed heartily, when he heard the adven* mre of the night, and faid, " you will Aow be my ^* gueft for a week, I hope ; but, ferioufly, if yoti V muft return foon, I will fend into the country for •• (bme peafants to carry you.*' He then apologized for the behaviour of Snaikh Salinij which he had heArd from Tummii, who told me afterwards that he was much difpleafed with it^ and would not fail to ezprefs his difpleafure. He concluded with a long harangue on the advantage which the EngUJh mighc derive from fending a (hip every year from Bombay to trade with his fubjeAs, and on the wonderful cheap* nefs of their commodities, efpecially of their cowries* Ridiculous as this idea might (eem, it (howed an en- largement of mind, a defire of promoting the intereffc of his people, and a fcnfe of the benefits arifinj fifom trade, which. could hardly have been expeftct fh»n a petty African chief; and whicb^ if he had

K3

tot IttiMAltRS OH tHE iSLAKi>

been fovereigti of Yemeri^ tnighi haVe been expatlded into rational projeds proportioned • to the extent of his dominions. 1 anfwered, tbkt I was imperfedtly acquainted with the commerce of India -, but that I ^ould report the fubftance of his converfation^ and would ever bear teftimony of his noble zeal for the good of his country, and to the mildnefs with which he governed it. As I had no inclination to pafsafecond night in the ifland, 1 requefted leave to return without waiting for bearers : he feemed viery fincere in prefling me to lengthen my vifit^ but had too m\jch Arabian politenefs to be impor- tunate. We therefore parted ; and at the requeft of Tumi^j who aiTured me that little time would be loft in fhowing attention to one of the wor- ihieft men in-Hinztiany I jmade a vifit to the iGo^ vernor of the town, whofe name was Mufekka: his manners were very pleafing, and he (bowed me feme letters from the officers of the Brilliimi^ which appeared to flow Warm from the heart, and contained the flrongeft eloge of his courtefy and liberality. He infiiled on filling my baiket with fome of the fineft pomegranates I had eVer feen ; and 1 left the town, imprelTed with a very favourable opinion of the king and his governor.. When I reafcended the hill, attended by many of the na- tives, one of them told me in Arabic^ that I . was going to receive the higheft mark of diftiniftion rfiat it was in the king's power to (how me; and he had fcarce ended, when I heard the report of a fingle gun : $haikh Ahmed had '(aluted me with the whole of his ordnance. 1 waved my hat, and faid Allah Acher: the people (houted, and I continued my journey, not without fear of inconve* nience from exceffive beat, and the fatigue of climb- ing rocks. The walk, however, was not on the whole unpleafant : I fometimes refled in the vallmir and forded all the rivulets^ which refrelhed me with

OF HiNZUAKf OR JOHAMKA,.' lQi$^

dieir coolnefs^ and fupplied me with exquifite water to mix with the juice of my potnegranates, and occafion^ ally with brandy. We. were overtaken by fooie pea- &nts» who came from the hills by a nearer way, and brought the king's prefent of a cow with her calf, and a (he-gpat with two kids : they had apparently been feleded for their beauty, and were brought fafe to Bengah The profpefts, which had fo greatly de- lighted me the preceding day, had not loft their charms» though they wanted the recommendation of novelty ; but. I muft confefs, that the mod delightful objeft in that day's walk, of near ten miles, was the Black Erigate» which I difcerned at funfec from a rock near the princess gardens. Clofe to the town I was CQ^.by a native, who, perceiving me to be weary, openeij n very fine cocoa-nut, which afK)rded a delici- ous draught : he informed me, that one of his coun* tiymen had beeA punilhed that afternoon for a theft on biCMUxl the Crocodile ^ and added, that, in his opi- nion^ the punifliment was no lefs juft than the offence was difgraceful to his country. The offeigider, as I afterward! learned, was a youth of good fiimily, who had married a daughtei of old JUwi^ but, being left alone ibr a moment in the cabin, and feeing a pair of blue Morocco flippers, could not refift the tempta^ QQD, concealed them fo ill under his gown, that he was decefted with the mainer. This proves, that no principle of honour is inftilled by education into the gentry of this ifland : even Alm^ when he had obierved that, ^ in the month of Ramadan^ it was ** not lawful to paint with Jtmna^ or to tell ties ;*' and when I a&ed, whether both were lawful all thi reft of • the year, anfwered, that *' lies were innocent, if no '^^ man was injured by them." 'tumumtoo}^ his leave, as well iatisfied as myfelf with our excurfion. I told him, before his maficer, that I transferred alfo to him the dollars, which were due to me out of the three guineas i andthata if ever they Ihould part, 1 would

xi 4

IC4 RBMARKS OK THE ISLARD

be very glad to receive him into my fervice lA in^« Mr. Roberts^ the mailer of the (hip, had pafled the day with Sayyad Ahmedy and had learned from him a few curious circumftances concerning the govcm^ ment of Hinzuan ; which he found to be a monarchy limited by ariftocracy. The king, he was told, had no power of making war by his own aifthority ; but, if the ailembly of nobles, who were from time to time convened by him, refolved on a war with any pf the neighbouring iilands, they defrayed the chaises of it by voluntary contributions ; in return for which they claimed as their own all the booty and captives that might be taken. The hope of gain or the waht of (laves is ufually the real motives for fuch enter- prizes, and oflenfible preteltts are eaiily found. At that very time he underftood they meditated a war, be^ caufe they wanted hands for the foUox^ng harvcft^ Their fleet cOnfiftcd of fixteen or feventeen fmaU' Vcf- fels, which they manned with about two tboufahd'iwt hundred illanders^ armed with mufkets and cjatlafles^ or with bows and arrows. Near two years had'elapfed before they had poflefled themfelves of -two towns in Mayatay which they flill kept and garrifbncdi " ■ The ordinary expences of the gm'ernment were "defrayed by a tax from two hundred villages ; bXiC-t^e thij^ principal towns were exempt from all -{axe^^'excqx that they paid annually to the chief Mttffi a fiiotieth part of the value of all their moveable property ; and from that payment neither the king nor the* noUes claimed an exemption* The kingly authority, by the principles of their conftitution, was conlidercd cleftivc, though the line of fucceffion had not been altered fince thefirft cle<f^io'n of a fultan. He was informed that a wandering jirah^ X^ho had fettled in the ifland, had, by his intrepidity in feveral wars, acquired the rank ot a chieftain, and afterwards of a king with limited powers ; and that he was the grandfather of Shaikh Aimed. 1 had been ailured that Queea

CP ttlNZUAK, OR jOHAltllA* lOg

ffiUmsk' was his grandmother i and, that he was th^jf^fft king; but it muft be remarked, that the woitds pdd ^od jeddah in ^Arabic are ufed for a male and female an€eJior indefinitely : and without a cor^ re£)^ pedigree of AhmeS% family, which I expeded toiprocura, but was difappointed, it would fcarce be poflible to afcertain the time when his forefather ob« uuned the higheft rank in the government. In the ydkr i ooo, Captain John Davis^ who has written an ac- count of his voyage, found Mqyata governed by ^ king, and jinfiiame^ or Hinzuany by a queen, who fbowed him great marks of friendChip. He anchored befote the town of Demos (docs he mean Domom ?) which was as large, he fays, as Plymouth ; and he concludes, from the ruins around it, that it had once been a place of flrength and grandeur. I can only fry, that I obferved no fuch ruins. Fifteen years after. Captain Peyton and >Siy Thomas Roe touched at the Coffiara idands ; and, from their feveral accounts, it appears that an old fultanefs at that time reiided in Binzuan, but had a dominion paramount over all the ifles, three of her fons governing MohiJa in her name* If this be true, Sohaili and the fucceflbrs of Halimah muft have lofl their influence over the other iflands ; and, by renewing their dormant claim as it fuitaf their convenience, they may always be furilifhed with a-ptetence for hoflilities* Five generations of eldeft -Tons would account for an hundred and feventy of the years which have elapfed fince Davis zxA Pey^ ten found Hinzuan ruled by a fultanefs; and Ahmed was of fuch an age, that his reign may be reckoned <^ual to a generation. It is probable, on the whole, that Halimah was the widow of the firfl Arabian king, and that her mofque has been continued in repair by his defendants ; fo that we may reafonably fuppofe two centuries to have pafTed fince a fingle Arab had the courage and addrcfs to eftablifh in chat beautiful ifland a form of government, which.

Io6 REMARKS OW THE ISLAND

though bad enough in itfelf, appears to have been ad«r miniflered with advantage to the original inhabirants# We have lately heard of civil commotions in Hm* xuariy which, we may venture to pronounce, were noc excited by any cruelty or violence of Ahmed^ IhiC were probably occ^fioncd by the infolence of an oli* garchy naturally hoftile to king and people. That the mountains in the Comara iilands contain difu* monds, and the precious metals, which are ftudioufly concealed by the policy of the feveral governments^ may be true, though I have no reafon to believe it» and ha,ve only. heard it afferted without evidence; but I hope that neither an expedlation of fuch trea*. fures, nor of any other advantage, will ever induce an European power to violate the firfl: principles of Juilice by afluming the fovereignty of Hinzamts which cannot anfwer a better pqrpofe than that df fupplying our fleets with {eafonable refre(hment } and, although the natives have an interefl in receivir^ us with apparent cordiality, yet, if we wilh their attachment to be unfeigned and their dealings juft^ we muft fet them an example of ftridt honefty in tbe performance of our engagements. In truth, our nation IS not cordially loved by the inhabitants of Hinzuan, who, as it commonly happens, form a genend opinion from a few inftances of violence or breiach of faith. — Not many years ago, an Eutopeatty who had been hofpirably received and liberally fupported. at Matfamudoy behaved rudely to a young married woman, who, being of low degree, was .walking veiled through a ftreet in the evening. Her hufband ran to protect her, and refented the rudenefs, pror- bably with menaces, poflibly with aftual force ; and the European is faid to have given him a mortal ivound with a knife or bayonet, which he brought, after the Icuffle, from his lodging. This foul mur»- der, which the law of nature would have juftifie<J the magiftratc in puniftiing with death, was reported

i>r RiKZVAK^ OR jonhv^jfL. 107

tothektngy who told the ^vernor (and I ufe the tcry wofds of jilwi) that " it would be wifer to hufli k Vkp^-'^jihvi mentioned a cifil cafe of his own, which ought not to be concealed. When he was on the cooft of Africa^ in the dominions of a very favagp prince, a fmall European veflel was wrecked; and the prince not only feized all that could be faved from the wreck, but claimed the captain and the crew as his flaTCSt and treated them with ferocious infolence. Ahm aflured me, that, when he heard of the acct«- dent^ he haftened to the prince, fell proftrate befoie him, and by tears and importunity prevailed on him 10 give the Europeans their liberty; that he fupported them at his own ex pence, enabled them to build ano« ther veflel^ in which they failed to Hinzuan, and de«- parted thence for Europe or Truiia. He (howed me the Captain's promiflbry notes for fums, which to an African trader muft be a coniiderable objedt, but wiiich arc no price for liberty, fafety, and, perhaps, life, which his good though difinterefted offices had procured, 1 lan^ented that, in my fituation, it was wholly out of my power to affift Alwi in obtaining juftice ; but he urged me to deliver an Arabic letter from him, indofing the notes, to the Governor Ge- neral, who, as he faid, knew him well : and I com- plied with his requeft. Since it is poffible that a fubftantial defence may be made by the perfon thus accufed of injuftice, I will not name either him or the veflel which he had commanded ; but, if he be living, and if this paper (hould fall into his hands, he may be induced to refleA how highly it imports our national honour, that a people whom we call favige, but who adminifter to our convenience, may have no juft caufe to reproach us with a violation of pur contrads.

•

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i «

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I

VI.

ON THE BAY A, OR INDIAN GROSS-BEAK.

BY AT'HAR ATI KHAN OF DEHLI.

THE little bird, called Baya in Hindis Berhera in Sanfcrity Babut in the dialeft of Bengal^ Cibu in Perfian^ and Tenawwit in Arabic, from his remark- ably pendent neft, is rather larger than a fparrovv, with yellow-brown plumage, a yellowifli head and feet, a light coloured breaft, and a conic beak, very thick in proportion to his body. The bird is exceed- ingly common: in Htndufian : he is aftonifliingly (ehfi- ble, faithtul, and docile, never voluntarily deferting the

J>lace.where Jiis young were hatched, nowife averfe, ike* moit- other birds, to the fociety of mankind, and eafily taught to perch on the hand of his maftcr. In a ftate of nature he' generally builds his neft on the Jbigheft tree that he can find, elpecially on the Pal- piyra, or on the fndian fig-tree ; and he prefers that which happens to overhang a well or a nvulet : he mabss it of grafs, which he weaves like cloth, and &apei like a large bottle, fufpending it fimily on the bfaiiches, but fo as to rock with the wind ; and plac- ing it with its entrance downwards, to ftcure it from birds of preJ^ Hi« neft ufually conjGfl:s of two or three chambers; and it is the popular belief that he lights them with fire-flies, which he catches alive at night and confi:nes with moift clay, or with cow- 4ung« That fuch flies are often found in his neft, where pieces of cow-dung are alfo ftruck, is indubit- able ; but, as their light could be of little ufe to him, it (eems probable that he only feeds on them. He may be taught with cafe to fetch a piece of paper.

[ no ]

or iny fmall thing that his mafter points out to bira*^ It is an atteftecl fad, that, if a ring be dropped into a deep well, and a fignal given to him, he will fly down with amazing celerity, catch the ring before it touches the water, and bring it up to his mafter with apparent exultation ; and it is confidently afferted, that, if a houfe or any other place be fhown to hint once or twice, he will carry a note thither immediately, on a proper fignal being made. Ohe inltance of his docility I can myfelf mention with confidence, having often been an eye-witnefs of it : The young Hindu* women at Banares and in other places, wear very thin plates of gold, called ticas^ ilightly fixed, by way of ornament, between their eye-brows ; and, when they pafs through the ftreets, it is not uncommon for the youthful libertines^ .who amufe themfelves with train- jng BayaSj to give them a (ign, which they under* iland, and fend them to pluck the pieces of gold from the foreheads of their miftrefTes, which thej bring in triumph to the lovers.-— The Baya feeds naturally on grafshoppers and other infers, but wiM fubfi{l» when tame, on pulfe macerated in water* His flcQi is warm and drying, of eafy digeftion, and recommended, in medical books, as a folveot of Hone in the bladder or kidneys ; but of that vmue there is no fufiicient proof. The female lays many beautiful eggs, refembling large pearls : the white of them, when they are boiled, is tranfparent^ and the flavour of them is exquifitely delicate. When many Bayas are aflembled on a high tree» they make % lively din, but it is rather chirping than iingingi their want of mufical talents is, however, amply fuppled by their wonderful fagacity, in which they are not excelled by any featlicred inhabitants of tbt iofeft*

- * • «

Vll.

ON THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE HINDUS.

WRITTEN IN JANUARY, I788,

BY THE PRESIDENT.

THE great antiquity of thq Hindus is believed fo firmly by themlelves, and has been the fubjedt of fo much converiatioh among Europeans^ that a (hort view of their Chronological Syftem, which has not yet been exhibited from certain authorities, may be accept- able to tbofe who feek truth without partiality to re« ceived opinions, and without regarding any confequen* ces that may refult from their mquiries. The confc- quences, indeed, of truth cannot but be de(ireable» and no reafonable man will apprehend any danger to focieiy from a general diffufion of its light ; but we muft not fufFer ourfelves to be dazzled by a falfe glare, nor miftake enigmas and allegories for hiftori- cal verity. Attached to no fyftem, and as much dilpofed to rejed the Mofaic hiftory, if it be proved erroneous, as to believe it, if it be confirmed by {bund redbning from indubitable evidence, I pro- pofe to lay before you a concife account of Indian Chronolo^, extrafted Ifrom Sanfcri^ books, or col- leiSEed firom converfation with Pandits^ and to fub- join a few remarks on their fydem, without attempt- ing to decide a queftion, which I ihall venture tQ ftart, ^* Whether it is not in fad the fartie with our ^<own, but embelliflied and obfcured by the fency '''of their poets and the riddles of their aftro« !!! fiomers ?"

112 ON THE CHRONOLOGY

One of the moft curious books in Sanfcrit^ and one of I lie oldeft after the Vedasj is a traft on r^ii- gious afid civit duties^ taken, as it is believed, from the oral inftruftions of Menu^ fon of Brahma^ to jbc firft inhabitants of the earth. An exceeding wcD- tollated copy of this moft interefling law-trad ii now before me ; and I begin my differtation with a few couplets from the firft chapter of it : ** The fun ** caufes the divifion of day and night, which are •* of two forts, thofe of men and thofc of the •* Gods; the day, for the labour of ^//creatures in *• their feveral employments : the night for their ** flumber. A month is a day and night of the ** patriarchs; and it is divided into two parts; the " bright half is their dsLy for laborious exertions; the ** dark half, their night for fleep, A year is a day <^ and night of the Gods ; and that is alfo divided " into two halves; the day is, when the (un.moycs *^ toward the north ; the night, when it moves to- ^' ward the (ouch. Learn now the duration of a ^^ night and day of Brahma with that of the ages •* re^dively» and in order. Four thousand yean *• of the Gfhis they call the Crita (or Satya) age; ^' and its limits at the beginning and at the end ar$^ ** in like manner, as many hundreds. In the three *^ fiKceffive ages, together with their litoits at the ^ beginning and end of them, are thoufands and ** hundreds diminiflied by one. This aggregate of •• four ages, amounting to twelve thoufand divine <^ years, is called an age of the Gods; and a thou^ •^ (and fuch divine ages added together, muft be con? <' fidered as a day of Brahma : his night has al(b the •• fame duration. The before- mentioned age of tb4 •* Gods, or twelve thoufand of their years, hiuki? ** plied by fevcnty-one, form whaf is named hew ** below a Manwantara, There are alternat^.cxt^ *^ tions and dcftruftions of worlds thrpugh in.QUiper* *• able Mamvantaras: the Being fupreipejy, dcfit'* ^ able, performs all this again and again.''

OF THE HIKDUS. XIJ

Strch is the arrangement of infinite time, which the Hindus believe to have beeiTrevealcS from Hea- ven, and which they generally uoderftand in a literal fenfe : it feems to have intrinfic marks of being purely aftrononucal ; but I will not appropriate the obferva- tions of others, nor anticipate thofe in particular, which have been made by two or three of our mem- bers, an4 which they will, I hope^ communicate to the Society. A conjedture, however, of Mr. Pater/on has fo much ingenuity in it, that I cannot forbear men- tioniDg it here, elpccially as it feems to be confirmed hj one of the couplets juft cited : he fuppofes, that as a monih of mortals is a day and night of the

etriarchs, from the analogy of its bright and dark Ives, (b, by the fame analogy, a day and a night of mortals might have been coniidered by the ancient JBndus a$ a tnonth of the lower world ; and then a year of fuch months will confift only of twelve days and nights, and thirty fuch years will compofe a lunar year of mortals ; whence he furmifcs that the ^nr- million three hundred and twenty thoufand years, of which the four Indian ages are fuppofed to confift^ mean only years of twelve days ; and, in faft, that fum divided by thiriy^ is reduced to an hundred and forty 'four thoiifand: now a thoufa)id four hundred and forty years are one pada, a period in the Hindu af- tronomy ; and that fum multiplied by eighteen, amounts precifely to tweniy-five thoufand nine huu^ dred and ^twenty, the number of years in which the '^Xed Hiars appear to perform their long revolution eaftward. The laft mentioned fum is the produdt alfo of an hundred and forty-four ^ which, according to M. Bailly^ was an old Indian cycle, into an hundred 0nd eighty 9 o\ the T^r/^r/^w period, called P^an^ and of two thotifand eight hundred and eighty into nttie^ which is not one only of the lunar cycles, but confidered \pf xht Hindus ^L^ a myfterious number, and an emblem, pfDivini'-yi becaufc, if it be tnultiplied by anv other Yq*, JI, I

114 0^ THE CHROKOLOGY

whole number, the fum of the figures in the diffe- rent proiduAs remain always nine, as the Deity, who appears in many forms, continues One immutable eflence. The important period of twenty-jive thou* fond nine hundred and twenty years, is well known to arife from the multiplication of three hmdred and fixty into feventy-twoj the number of years in which a fixed ftar feem§ to move through a degree c^a great circle ; and, although M. Le Gentil afiures us that the modem Hhidus behcve a complete revolution of the ftars to be made in twenty-four thoiifand years^ orj^/)'-/owr feconds of a degree to be pafled in one year, yet we may have reafon to think that the old Indian aftronomers had made a more accurate calcu* lation, but concealed their knowledge from the peo- ple under the veil of fourteen MamvantaicuSy fsnjaUf^ one divine ages, compound cycles, and years of qSr ferent fbrits, from thofe of Brahnia to thofe of PataUp, or'Hie ihfema} regions. If we follow the analogy fiiggefted by Meniiy and fuppofe only a day and night to be called a year ^ we may divide the number . of years in a divine age by three hundred and Jixtjy and the quotient will be twelve thoiifand^ or the nuiti* ber of his divine years in one age : but, conjedtura apart, we need only compare the two periods 4320000 and 25920, and we (hall find, th^t among their com,- mon divifors, are 6, 9, 12, &c. 18, 36, 72, 144^ &c. ; which numbers with their feveral multiples^ efpecially in a decuple progreffion, conftitutc lomo of the moft celebrated periods of the Chaldean^ Greehj Tartars^ and even of the Indians^ We can-: not fail to obferve, that the number 432, which ap-^ pears to be the bafis of the Indian fyftem, is a 6otl!| part of 2592c, and, by continuing the comparilbn we might probably folve the whole enigma* In the preface to a Varanes Almanac, I find the following wild ftanza : ** A thoufand Great Ages are a day of « lirahna ; a thoufand fuch days are an Indian hou9

it

OF THE HINBIJS* IXj

^ of Vtjhnu ; fix hutidred thoufand fuch hours make a period of Rudra ; and a million of Rudrat (or /«;^ quadrillions five hundred and mnety-iwo '* thoufand trillions of lunar years) are but a fecofid " to the Supreme Being." The Hindu theologians deny the conclnfion of the ftanza to be orthodox i ^* ** TimC^ th^ Jay, **^ e:njis not at all with God\^ and }\ lEey ailvife aftrohomers^ to mind tHeir own bufinefs, without meddling with theology. The aftronomical verfe,