[483] We read in “Turner’s Embassy to Tibet,” that, at a religious ceremony, a priest played a sort of flute made of the bone of a man’s leg.—(French Transl., p. 61.)
The last four notes have been obligingly furnished to me by M. Foucaud, professor of the Tibetan language in Paris.
CHAPTER IV.
From the book the Dabistán, a short account of the religion of the Yahuds, contained in two sections.
Section the first, the information received from the tongue of Mohammed Sâíd Sarmed.
Section the second, upon the translation of the page of Adam, which is the beginning of the book of Moses (the Pentateuch).
Section the First.—The author of this book never happened to have intercourse with learned and distinguished men among the Yahuds; and he set no value upon what he found in the books of foreigners about their religion: because envy is a corrosion and a fire, which attacks the enemy. But in the year of the Hejira 1057 (A. D. 1647), when I came to Hyder abad, I contracted friendship with Mohammed Sâid Sarmed, who was originally from a family of learned Yahuds, of a class whom they call Rabánián (Rabbins); after an investigation into the faith of the Rabbins and the perusal of the Mosaic books, he became a Muselman; he read the scientific works of the wise men of Iran, such as Mulla Sader, and Mír Abu-’l Kásem, of Kazer sak, and many others: at last, for the sake of commerce, he undertook by sea the voyage to Hindustan. When he arrived in the town Tata,[484] he fell in love with a Hindu boy, called Abhi Chand, and, abandoning all other things, like a Sanyási, naked as he came from his mother, he sat down before the door of his beloved. The father of the object of his love, after having found by investigation the purity of the attachment manifested for his son, admitted Sarmed into his house, and the young man too met him with an equal affection, so that he could no more separate from him, and he read the book of Moses, the psalms of David, and other books with Sarmed. The following verses are the composition of this young Hindu:
“I submit to Moses’ law; I am of thy religion, and the guardian of thy way: