[120] Yezd, in central Persia, is the ancient Isatichæ of Ptolemy. It is celebrated on account of the fire-worship of Yezdan (or Ormuzd, as light), there practised, and as the last asylum of the adherents to Zoroaster’s religion, who fled before the Muhammedans. From thence the fire-worshippers sought a refuge in India, and settled in Diu, Bombay, and in the higher valleys of the Indus and the Ganges.
[123] For instance, the Utopia of Thomas Moore, the Oceana of Harrington, the Leviathan of Hobbes, etc., etc.
§ IV.—The Religion of the Hindus.
The theatre upon which the author of the Dabistán begins history from the remotest times, is Persia, without limitation of its extent, probably including Chaldæa. From thence he passes to India, he says little of any other country; nothing at all of Egypt. The delta of this most fertile land, as an alluvial formation of the great river Nile, was necessarily posterior to the existence of inland regions; still its claims to antiquity are very high and not unsupported, to a certain extent, by the best written testimonies and architectural monuments. If I here refer in a cursory manner to its eras,[124] it is to strengthen what was above remarked concerning the general belief of the great age of the world. The ancient religion of Egypt, although connected and conformable in many points with other Asiatic religions, is never alluded to by the author of the Dabistán, probably because in his time the Egyptians had lost even the memory of their ancient history, which very little attracted the curiosity of their masters, the Muhammedans, except perhaps by the medium of the Bible of the Jews, often quoted in their Koran.[125]
I cannot here omit briefly noticing the various opinions of several learned men concerning the comparative antiquity of the Magi, the Egyptian priests, and the Hindu philosophers. Aristotle[126] believed the Magi more ancient than the Egyptians; Diodorus of Sicily[127] believed the Hindus to have never sent nor received colonies, and invented every art and science; Lucian, Philostratus[128], and Eusebius[129] granted anteriority in philosophy to the Hindus over the Egyptians. In our times the learned abbé Mignot established in three Memoirs[130], that the Hindus owed nothing to the Egyptians, and traced the true communications of the former with several nations of Asia and Europe. But sir W. Jones declared in 1785[131], as not ill-grounded, the opinion that Ethiopia and Hindostan were peopled or colonized by the same extraordinary race, or that the Ethiopians of Meroe were the same people as the Hindus. His opinion was reproduced under different forms by Hennel, Wilford, Forbes, Carwithen, among the English, and adopted by L. Langles among the French. I need not dwell upon this opinion, as the grounds upon which it rested are now considered as entirely destroyed. Sir W. Jones himself seems to have abandoned it in 1789,[132] as the Dabistán appeared to him to furnish an unexceptionable evidence, that the Iranian monarchy must have been the oldest in the world, although, he added, it will remain dubious to which of the three stocks, Hindu, Arabian, or Tartar, the first kings of Iran belonged; or whether they sprang from a fourth race, distinct from any of the others; He further states, that no country but Persia seems likely to have sent forth colonies to all the kingdoms of Asia, and that the three races (Indians, Arabs, Tartars) migrated from Iran as from their common country, “the true centre of population, of knowledge, of languages, and of arts; which, instead of travelling westward only, as it has been fancifully supposed, or eastward, as might with equal reason have been asserted, were expanded in all directions to all the regions of the world, in which the Hindu race had settled under various denominations.”
The second chapter of the Dabistán describes, in twelve sections, the religious systems and customs of the Hindus. It is a detailed account, given by a Persian who, as traveller and resident in India during about thirty years, had the best opportunities to collect right information; he shows himself acquainted with the canonical books of this nation; he quotes their Puránas, and other works less known.[133]