THE DABISTÁN,

OR

SCHOOL OF MANNERS.

Madame Veuve Dondey-Dupré,
Printer to the Asiatic Societies of London, Paris, and Calcutta,
46, rue St-Louis, Paris.

THE

DABISTÁN,

OR

SCHOOL OF MANNERS,

TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL PERSIAN,

WITH NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS,

BY

DAVID SHEA,

OF THE ORIENTAL DEPARTMENT IN THE HONORABLE EAST INDIA COMPANY’S COLLEGE;

AND

ANTHONY TROYER,

MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETIES OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND, OF CALCUTTA AND PARIS, AND OF THE ETHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF PARIS;

EDITED, WITH A PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE, BY THE LATTER.

VOLUME I.

PARIS:

PRINTED FOR THE ORIENTAL TRANSLATION FUND OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.

SOLD BY
BENJAMIN DUPRAT, BOOKSELLER TO THE BIBLIOTHÈQUE ROYALE,
7, RUE DU CLOITRE SAINT-BENOIT.
AND ALLEN AND CO., LEADENHALD-STREET, LONDON.

1843.

TO

The Memory

OF

THE RIGHT HONORABLE

THE EARL OF MUNSTER,

Etc., etc., etc.

CONTENTS

Of the Preliminary Discourse.

CONTENTS

Of the Dabistán (vol. I.)

PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE.

PART I.

INTRODUCTION.

§ I.—How the Dabistan first became known—its author—the sources of his information.

It is generally known that sir William Jones was the first who drew the attention of Orientalists to the Dabistán. This happened five years after the beginning of a new era in Oriental literature, the foundation of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta by that illustrious man. It may not appear inopportune here to revive the grateful remembrance of one who acquired the uncontested merit of not only exciting in Asia and Europe a new ardor for Oriental studies, but also of directing them to their great objects—MAN and NATURE; and of endeavoring, by word and deed, to render the attainment of languages conducive to the required knowledge equally easy and attractive.

Having, very early in life, gained an European reputation as a scholar and elegant writer, sir William Jones embarked[1] for the Indian shores with vast projects, embracing, with the extension of science, the general improvement of mankind.[2] Four months after his arrival in Calcutta,[3] he addressed as the first president of the Asiatic Society, a small but select assembly, in which he found minds responsive to his own noble sentiments. A rapid sketch of the first labors of their incomparable leader, may not be irrelevant to our immediate subject.

In his second anniversary discourse,[4] he proposed a general plan for investigating Asiatic learning, history, and institutions. In his third discourse, he traced the line of investigation, which he faithfully followed, as long as he lived in India, in his annual public speeches: he determined to exhibit the prominent features of the five principal nations of Asia—the Indians, Arabs, Tartars, Persians, and Chinese. After having treated in the two following years of the Arabs and Tartars, he considered in his sixth discourse[5] the Persians, and declared that he had been induced by his earliest investigations to believe, and by his latest to conclude, that three primitive races of men must have migrated originally from a central country, and that this country was Iran, commonly called Persia. Examining with particular care the traces of the most ancient languages and religions which had prevailed in this country, he rejoiced at “a fortunate discovery, for which,” he said, “he was first indebted to Mir Muhammed Hussain, one of the most intelligent Muselmans in India, and which has at once dissipated the cloud, and cast a gleam of light on the primeval history of Iran and of the human race, of which he had long despaired, and which could hardly have dawned from any other quarter;” this was, he declared, “the rare and interesting tract on twelve different religions, entitled the Dabistan.”[6]

Sir William Jones read the Dabistán for the first time in 1787. I cannot refrain from subjoining here the opinion upon this work, which he communicated in a private letter, dated June, 1787, to J. Shore, esq. (afterwards lord Teignmouth); he says: “The greatest part of it would be very interesting to a curious reader, but some of it cannot be translated. It contains more recondite learning, more entertaining history, more beautiful specimens of poetry, more ingenuity and wit, more indecency and blasphemy, than I ever saw collected in a single volume;[7] the two last are not of the author’s, but are introduced in the chapters on the heretics and infidels of India.[8] On the whole, it is the most amusing and instructive book I ever read in Persian.”[9]

We may suppose it was upon the recommendation of sir William Jones, that Francis Gladwin, one of the most distinguished members of the new Society, translated the first chapter of The Dabistán, or “School of Manners,” which title has been preserved from due regard to the meritorious Orientalist, who first published the translation of a part of this work. The whole of it was printed in the year 1809, in Calcutta, and translations of some parts of it were published in The Asiatic Researches.[10] It is only at present, more than half a century after the first public notice of it by sir W. Jones, that the version of the whole work appears, under the auspices and at the expense of the Oriental Translation Committee of Great Britain and Ireland.

Who was the author of the Dabistán?—Sir William Jones thought it was composed by a Muhammedan traveller, a native of Kachmir, named Mohsan, but distinguished by the assumed surname of Fání, “the Perishable.”

Gladwin[11] calls him Shaikh Muhammed Mohsin, and says that, besides the Dabistán, he has left behind him a collection of poems, among which there is a moral essay, entitled Masdur ul asas, “the source of signs;” he was of the philosophic sect of Súfis, and patronised by the imperial prince Dara Shikoh, whom he survived; among his disciples in philosophy is reckoned Muhammed Tahir, surnamed Ghawri, whose poems are much admired in Hindostan. Mohsan’s death is placed in the year of the Hejira 1081 (A. D. 1670).

William Erskine,[12] in search of the true author of the Dabistán, discovered no other account of Mohsan Fání than that contained in the Gul-i-Râana, “charming rose,” of Lachmi Narayán, who flourished in Hyderabad about the end of the 18th or the beginning of the 19th century. This author informs us, under the article of Mohsan Fání, that “Mohsán, a native of Kachmir, was a learned man and a respectable poet; a scholar of Mulla Yakub, Súfi of Kachmir; and that, after completing his studies, he repaired to Delhi, to the court of the emperor Shah Jehan, by whom, in consequence of his great reputation and high acquirements, he was appointed Sadder, ‘chief judge,’ of Allahabad; that there he became a disciple of Shaikh Mohib ulla, an eminent doctor of that city, who wrote the treatise entitled Teswich, ‘the golden Mean.’ Mohsan Fání enjoyed this honorable office till Shah Jehân subdued Balkh; at which time Nazer Muhammed Khan, the Wali, ‘prince,’ of Balkh, having effected his escape, all his property was plundered. It happened that in his library there was found a copy of Mohsan’s Diwán, or ‘poetical Collection,’ which contained an ode in praise of the (fugitive) Wáli. This gave such offence to the emperor, that the Sadder was disgraced and lost his office, but was generously allowed a pension. He retired (as Lachmi informs us) to his native country, where he passed the rest of his days without any public employment, happy and respected. His house was frequented by the most distinguished men of Kachmir, and among the rest by the governors of the province. He had lectures at his house, being accustomed to read to his audience the writings of certain authors of eminence, on which he delivered moral and philosophical comments. Several scholars of note, among whom were Taher Ghawri (before mentioned) and Haji Aslem Salem, issued from his school.” He died on the before mentioned date. “It is to be observed that Lachmi does not mention the Dabistán as a production of Mohsan Fání, though, had he written it, it must have been his most remarkable work.”

Erskine goes on to recapitulate some particulars mentioned in the Dabistán of the author’s life, and concludes that it seems very improbable that Mohsan Fání and the author of the Dabistán were the same person. In this conclusion, and upon the same grounds, he coincides with the learned Vans Kennedy.[13]

Erskine further quotes,[14] from a manuscript copy of the Dabistán which he saw in the possession of Mulla Firuz, in Bombay, the following marginal note annexed to the close of chapter XIV.: “In the city of Daurse, a king of the Parsis, of the race of the imperial Anushirván, the Shet Dawer Huryár, conversed with Amír Zulfikar Ali-al-Husaini (on whom be the grace of God!), whose poetical name was Mobed Shah.” This Zulfikar Ali, whoever he was, the Mulla supposes to be the author of the Dabistán. Erskine judiciously subjoins: “On so slight an authority, I would not willingly set up an unknown author as the compiler of that work; but it is to be remarked that many verses of Mobed’s are quoted in the Dabistán, and there is certainly reason to suspect that the poetical Mobed, whoever he may be, was the author of that compilation.”

“To this let it be added, that the author of the Dabistán; in his account of Mobed Serosh, says[15] that one Muhammed Mohsan, a man of learning, told him that he had heard Mobed Serosh give three hundred and sixty proofs of the existence of God. This at least makes Muhammed Mohsan, whoever he may be, a different person from the author of the Dabistán.”

I cannot omit adding the following notice annexed to the note quoted above: “Between the printed copy and Mulla Firuz’s manuscript before alluded to, a difference occurs in the very beginning of the work. After the poetical address to the Deity and the praise of the prophet, with which the Dabistán, like most other Muselman works, commences, the manuscript reads: ‘Mohsan Fani says,’ and two moral couplets succeed. In the printed copy, the words ‘Mohsan Fani says,’—which should occur between the last word of the first page and the first word of the second—are omitted. As no account of the author is given in the beginning of the book, as is usual with Muselman writers, Mulla Firuz conjectures that a careless or ignorant reader may have considered the words ‘Mohsan Fáni says’ as forming the commencement of the volume, and as containing the name of the author of the whole book; whereas they merely indicate the author of the couplets that follow, and would rather show that Mohsan Fani was not the writer of the Dabistán. This conjecture, I confess, appears to me at once extremely ingenious and very probable. A comparison of different manuscripts might throw more light on the question.”

Concerning the opinion last stated, I can but remark, that in a manuscript copy of the Dabistán, which I procured from the library of the king of Oude, and caused to be transcribed for me, the very same words: “Mohsan Fani says,” occur (as I have observed in vol. I. p. 6, note 3), preceding a rabaâ, or quatrain, which begins:

“The world is a book full of knowledge and of justice,” etc. etc.

These lines seem well chosen as an introduction to the text itself, which begins by a summary of the whole work, exhibiting the titles of the twelve chapters of which it is composed. As the two copies mentioned (the one found in Bombay, the other in Lucknow) contain the same words, they can hardly be taken for an accidental addition of a copyist. I found no remark upon this point in Mr. Shea’s translation, who had two manuscript copies to refer to. Whatever it be, it must still remain undecided, whether Mohsan Fani was there named only as the author of the next quatrain or of the whole book, although either hypothesis may not appear destitute of probability; nor can it be considered strange to admit that the name of Mohsan Fani was borne by more than one individual. I shall be permitted to continue calling the author of the Dabistán by the presumed name of Mohsan Fani.

Dropping this point, we shall now search for information upon his person, character, and knowledge in the work itself. Is he really a native of Kachmir, as here before stated?

Although in the course of his book he makes frequent mention of Kachmir, he never owns himself a native of that country. In one part of his narrative, he expressly alludes to another home. He begins the second chapter upon the religion of the Hindus (vol. II. p. 2) by these words: “As inconstant fortune had torn away the author from the shores of Persia, and made him the associate of the believers in transmigration and those who addressed their prayers to idols and images, and worshipped demons * * * *.” Now we know that Kachmir is considered as a very ancient seat, nay as the very cradle, of the doctrine of transmigration, and of Hinduism in general, with all its tenets, rites, and customs; and that from the remotest times to the present it was inhabited by numerous adherents of this faith; how could the author, if a native of Kachmir, accuse inconstant fortune for having made him elsewhere an associate of these very religionists with whom, from his birth, he must have been accustomed to live? The passage just quoted leaves scarce a doubt that the shores of Persia, from which he bewails having been torn, were really his native country.

When was he born?

He no where adduces the date of his birth; the earliest period of his life which he mentions, is the year of the Hejira 1028 (A. D. 1618):[16] in this year the Mobed Hushíar brought the author to Balik Nátha, a great adept in the Yoga, or ascetic devotion, to receive the blessing of that holy man, who pronounced these words over him: “This boy shall acquire the knowledge of God.” It is not stated in what place this happened. The next earliest date is five years later, 1033 of the Hejira (A. D. 1623).[17] He says that, in his infancy, he came with his friends and relations from Patna to the capital Akbar-abad, and was carried in the arms of the Mobed Hushíar to Chatur Vapah, a famous ascetic of those days. The pious man rejoiced at it, and bestowed his blessing on the future writer of the Dabistán; he taught him the mantra, “prayer,” of the sun, and appointed one of his disciples to remain with the boy until the age of manhood. We have here a positive statement: in the year 1623 A. D., he was “in his infancy,” and carried “in the arms of his protector.” Giving the widest extension to these expressions, we can hardly think him to have been either much older or younger than seven or eight years: not much older, for being in some way carried in the arms of the Mobed; nor much younger, having been taught a hymn to the sun, and he might have been a boy of three years when he received the first-mentioned blessing from Balik Natha. We may therefore suppose him to have been born about the year 1615 of our era, in the tenth year of the reign of the emperor Jehangir. We collect in his work fifty-three dates relative to himself between the year 1618 and 1653. From 1627 to 1643, we see him mostly in Kachmir and Lahore, travelling between these two places; in 1643, he was at the holy sepulchre, probably at Meshhad, which appears to be the furthermost town to the West which he reached; from 1634 to 1649, he dwelt in several towns of the Panjab and Guzerat; the next year he proceeded to Sikakul, the remotest town in the East which he says he has visited; there he fell sick, and sojourned during 1653, at which epoch, if the year of his birth be correctly inferred, he had attained his thirty-eighth year. We have no other date of his death than that before stated: if he died in 1670, it was in the eleventh year of the reign of Aurengzéb, or Alemgir. Mohsan Fani would therefore have passed his infancy, youth, and manhood mostly in India, under the reigns of the three emperors, Jehangír, Shah Jehan, and Aurengzeb.[18] It was the state of religion, prevailing in those days in Hindostan that he describes.

From his earliest age he appears to have led an active life, frequently changing his residence. Such a mode of life belongs to a travelling merchant or philosopher, and in our author both qualities might have been united, as is often the case in Asia. Mohsan Fani, during his travels, collected the diversified and curious materials for the Dabistán; he observed with his own eyes the manners and customs of different nations and sects. He says himself at the conclusion of his work: “After having much frequented the meetings of the followers of the five before-said religions,” Magians, Hindus, Jews, Nazareans, and Muselmans, “the author wished and undertook to write this book; and whatever in this work, treating of the religions of different countries, is stated concerning the creed of different sects, has been taken from their books, and for the account of the persons belonging to any particular sect, the author’s information was imparted to him by their adherents and sincere friends, and recorded literally, so that no trace of partiality nor aversion might be perceived: in short, the writer of these pages performed no more than the task of a translator.” This declaration, even to a severe critic, may appear satisfactory. Sir William Jones called him[19] a learned and accurate, a candid and ingenious author. A further appreciation of Mohsan Fani’s character is reserved for subsequent pages. We can, however, here state, that he sought the best means of information, and gives us what he had acquired not only from personal experience, which is always more or less confined; not only from oral instruction, which is too often imperfectly given and received; but also from an attentive perusal of the best works which he could procure upon the subject of his investigation. Of the latter authorities which the author produces, some are known in Europe, and we may judge of the degree of accuracy and intelligence with which he has made use of them. Of others, nothing at all, or merely the name, is known. This is generally the case with works relative to the old Persian religion, which is the subject of the first chapter, divided into fifteen sections.

The authorities which he adduces for this chapter are as follow:

1. The Amighistan (vol. I. pp. 15. 26. 42), without the name of its author.

2. The Desátir (vol. I. pp. 20. 21. 44. 65), an heaven-bestowed book.

3. The Darai Sekander (vol. I. pp. 34. 360), composed by Dáwir Háryar.

4. The Akhteristan, “region of the stars” (vol. I. pp. 35. 42).

5. The Jashen Sadah, “the festival of Sadah” (the 16th night of January) (vol. I. pp. 72. 112).

6. The Sárud-i-mastan, “song of the intoxicated” (vol. I. p. 76. vol. II. p. 136): this and the preceding work composed by Mobed Hushíar.

7. The Jam-i-Kai Khusro, “the cup of Kai Khusro,” a commentary upon the poems of Azar Kaivan, composed by Mobed Khod Jai (vol. I. pp. 76. 84. 119.)

8. The Sharistan-i-Danish wa Gulistan-i-binish, “the pavilion of knowledge and rose-garden of vision” (vol. I. p. 77. 89. 109), composed by Farzanah Bahram.

9. The Zerdusht Afshar (vol. I. p. 77), work of the Mobed Serosh, who composed also:

10. Nosh Daru, “sweet medicine” (vol. I. p. 114); and

11. The Sagangubin, “dog’s honey” (vol. I. p. 114).

12. The Bazm-gah-i-durvishan, “the banquetting-room of the durvishes” (vol. I. pp. 104. 108), without the name of the author.

13. The Arzhang Mani, “the gallery of Mani” (vol. I. p. 131).

14. The Tabrah-i-Mobedi, “the sacerdotal kettle-drum” (vol. I. p. 123), by Mobed Paristar.

15. The Dadistan Aursah (vol. I. p. 131).

16. The Amízesh-i-farhang (vol. I. p. 145), containing the institutes of the Abadiah durvishes.

17. The Míhín farush (vol. I. p. 244).

18. The Testament of Jamshid to Abtin (vol. I. p. 195), compiled by Farhang Dostúr.

19. Razabad, composed by Shídab.

20. The Sányál, a book of the Sipasians (vol. II. p. 136), containing an account of a particular sort of devotion.

21. The Rama zastan of Zardusht (vol. I. p. 369 and vol. II. p. 136).

22. Huz al Hayat (vol. II. p. 137), composed by Ambaret Kant.

23. The Samrad Nameh, by Kamkar (vol. I. p. 201).

Besides other writings of Zertusht, in great number, which the author has seen.

These works are most probably of a mystical nature, and belong to a particular sect, but may contain, however, some interesting traditions or facts of ancient history. Of the twenty-three books just enumerated, a part of the third only is known to us, namely, that of the Desátir.

[1] In April, 1783.

[2] He landed at Calcutta in September, 1783.

[3] In January, 1784.

[4] Delivered in February, 1785.

[5] In February, 1789.

[6] The works of sir William Jones, with the life of the author, by lord Teignmouth, in 13 vols. Vol. III. p. 110. 1807.

[7] I shall hereafter give some explanations upon this subject.

[8] There appears in the printed edition no positive ground for the opinion above expressed; we find, however, frequent repetitions of the same subject, such as are not likely to belong to the same author; we know, besides, that additions and interpolations are but too common in all Oriental manuscripts.

[9] The Persian text, with the translation of the first chapter, appeared in the two first numbers of the New Asiatic Miscellany. Calcutta, 1789. This English version was rendered into German by Dalberg, 1809.

[10] These translations are mentioned in the notes of the present version.

[11] New Asiatic Misc., p. 87.

[12] Transactions of the Literary Society of Bombay, vol. II. p. 374.

[13] Transactions of the Literary Society of Bombay, vol. II. pp. 243-244.

[14] Ibid., pp. 375-376.

[15] See the present Transl., vol. I. pp. 113-114. A mistake is here to be pointed out: at p. 114, l. 11, the name of [Kaivan] has been substituted for that of Mobed Serosh.

[16] See vol. II. p. 137.

[17] See vol. II. p. 145.

[18]

[19] The Works of sir W. Jones, vol. IV. pp. 16 and 105.

§ II.—Discussion on the Desatir.

This word was considered to be the Arabic plural of the original Persian word dostúr, signifying “a note-book, pillar, canon, model, learned man;” but, according to the Persian grammar, its plural would be dosturán, or dostúrha, and not desátir. From this Arabic form of the word an inference was drawn against the originality and antiquity of the Desátir; but this of itself is not sufficient, as will be shown.

Other readings of the title are Dastánir, in one passage,[20] and Wasátir[21] in two other places of Gladwin’s Persian text, and the last also in a passage of the printed edition.[22] The first is not easily accounted for, and is probably erroneous; but the second is found in the index of the printed edition,[23] under the letter و, vau, and explained: “the name of the book of Mahabad;” it cannot therefore be taken for a typographical error, and is the correct title of the book, as I now think, although I formerly[24] preferred reading Desátir. It is derivable from the Sansrcit root वाश् wás, “to sound, to call,” and therefore in the form of wasátis or wasâtir (the r and s being frequently substituted for the visarga) it signifies “speech, oracle, precept, command.” It is also in connection with the old Persian word wakshur, “a prophet.” Considering the frequent substitution in kindred languages of ba for va, and ba for bha, it may also be referred to the root भाष bhasha, “to speak,”[25] which, with the prepositions pari and sam, signifies “to explain, expound, discourse.” Hence we read in the Commentary of the Desátir the ancient Persian word basátir[26] (not to be found in modern Persian vocabularies), which is there interpreted by “speculations,” in the following passage: “the speculations (basátir) which I have written on the desátir.”

I shall nevertheless keep, in the ensuing Dissertation, the title Desátir, because it is generally adopted. Besides, in the Mahabádian text, the vau, و, frequently occurs for the Persian dál, د, thus we find وادن, wáden, for دادن, dáden, “to give;” and wárem, وارم, for dárem, دارم, “I have;” but I am aware that the two letters, so similar in their form, may be easily confounded with each other by the copyist or printer.

The extract from the Desátir contained in the Dabistán was thought worthy of the greatest attention by sir William Jones, as before mentioned; nay, appeared to him “an unexceptionable authority,” before a part of the Desátir itself was published in Bombay, in the year 1818, that is, twenty-four years after the death of that eminent man.

The author of the Dabistán mentions the Desátir as a work well known among the Sipasians, that is, the adherents of the most ancient religion of Persia. According to his statement, the emperor Akbar conversed frequently with the fire-adorers of Guzerat; he also called from Persia a follower of Zerdusht, named Ardeshir, and invited fire-worshippers from Kirman to his court, and received their religious books from that country; we may suppose the Desátir was among them. So much is positive, that it is quoted in the Sharistan chehar chemen, a work composed by a celebrated doctor who lived under the reigns of the emperors Akbar and Jehangír, and died A. D. 1624. The compiler of the Burhani Kati, a Persian Dictionary, to be compared to the Arabic Kamus, or “sea of language,” quotes and explains a great number of obsolete words and philosophic terms upon the authority of the Desátir: this evidently proves the great esteem in which this work was held. Let it be considered that a dictionary is not destined for the use of a sect merely, but of the whole nation that speaks the language, and this is the Persian, considered, even by the Arabs, as the second language in the world and in paradise.[27]

It is to be regretted that Mohsan Fani did not relate where and how he himself became acquainted with the Desátir. I see no sufficient ground for the supposition of Silvestre de Sacy[28] and an anonymous critic,[29] that the author of the Dabistán never saw the Desátir. So much is certain, that the account which he gives of the Mahabádian religion coincides in every material point with that which is contained in that part of the sacred book which was edited in Bombay by Mulla Firuz Bin-i-Kaus.[30]

This editor says in his preface (p. vi): “The Desátir is known to have existed for many years, and has frequently been referred to by Persian writers, though, as it was regarded as the sacred volume of a particular sect, it seems to have been guarded with that jealous care and that incommunicative spirit, that have particularly distinguished the religious sects of the East. We can only fairly expect, therefore, that the contents should be known to the followers of the sect.” Mulla Firuz employs here evidently the term sect with respect to the dominant religion of the Muhammedan conquerors, whose violent and powerful intolerance reduced the still faithful followers of the ancient national religion to undergo the fate of a persecuted sect. But we shall see that the doctrine of the Desátir is justly entitled to a much higher pretension than to be that of an obscure sect.

Whatever it be, Mulla Firuz possessed the only manuscript of the work then known in Bombay. It was purchased at Isfahan by his father Kaus, about the year 1778, from a bookseller, who sold it under the title of a Gueber book. Brought to Bombay, it attracted the particular attention of Mr. Duncan, then governor of Bombay, to such a degree, that he began an English translation of the work, which was interrupted by his return to England. The final completion of the version was owing to the great encouragement which sir John Malcolm gave Mulla Firuz in consequence of the high opinion which sir William Jones had publicly expressed of the Dabistán, the author of which drew his account of the ancient Persian dynasties and religions chiefly from the Desátir. There is an interval of one hundred and thirty-three years[31] between the composition of the Dabistán and the fortuitous purchase of the manuscript copy of the Desátir, by Kaus in Isfahan; as it would be assuming to much to suppose that the latter is the same from which Mohsan Fani drew his information, we can but admit that the agreement of both, in the most material points, affords a confirmation of each respective text.

The great Orientalist Silvestre de Sacy, on reviewing the Desátir,[32] says: “We are in a manner frightened by the multitude and gravity of the questions which we shall have to solve, or at least to discuss; for every thing is here a problem: What is the age of the book? Who is its author? Is it the work of several persons; or the divers parts of which it is composed, are they written by one and the same author, although attributed to different individuals, who succeeded each other at long intervals? The language in which it was written, was it, at any epoch, that of the inhabitants of Persia, or of any of the countries comprised in the empire of Iran? Or is it nothing but a factitious language, invented to support an imposture? At what epoch were made the Persian translation accompanying the original text, and the commentary joined to this translation? Who is the author of the one and the other? Are not this translation and this commentary themselves pseudonymous and apocryphal books; or may not the whole be the work of an impostor of the latter centuries? All these questions present themselves in a crowd to my mind; and if some of them appear to be easily answered, others offer more than common difficulties.”

Well may a person, even with far greater pretensions than mine can be, hesitate to attempt the discussion of a subject which frightened the illustrious Silvestre de Sacy; but as the Desátir is one of the principal sources from which the author of the Dabistán drew his account of the Persian religion and its divers sects—a considerable part of his work—I cannot dispense with presenting the subject in the state in which the discussions hitherto published, by very respectable critics, have left it. If I venture to offer a few remarks of my own upon it, it is only in the hope of provoking further elucidations by philologers who shall examine the Mahabadian text itself, and by arguments drawn from its fundamentals decide the important question—whether we shall have one language more or less to count among the relics of antiquity?

Instead of following the order in which the questions are stated above, I will begin by that which appears to me the most important, namely: “the language in which the Desátir is written, is it nothing but a factitious language invented to support an imposture?”

The forgery of a language, so bold an imposture, renders any other fraud probable; through a false medium no truth can be expected, nor even sought. But, in order to guard against the preconception of a forgery having taken place, a preconception the existence of which may, with too good a foundation, be apprehended, I shall first examine, as a general thesis, whether the invention of a language, by one individual or by a few individuals, is in itself probable and credible. I shall only adduce those principles which have received the sanction of great philologers, among whom it may be sufficient to name baron William Humboldt, and claim the reader’s indulgence, if, in endeavoring to be clear, I should not have sufficiently avoided trite observations.

Tracing languages up to their first origin, it has been found that they are derived from sounds expressive of feelings; these are preserved in the roots, from which, in the progressive development of the faculty of speech, verbs, nouns, and the whole language, are formed. In every speech, even in the most simple one, the individual feeling has a connection with the common nature of mankind; speech is not a work of reflection: it is an instinctive creation. The infallible presence of the word required on every occasion is certainly not a mere act of memory; no human memory would be capable of furnishing it, if man did not possess in himself instinctively the key, not only for the formation of words, but also for a continued process of association: upon this the whole system of human language is founded. By entering into the very substance of existing languages, it appears evident that they are intellectual creations, which do not at all pass from one individual to others, but can only emerge from the coexisting self-activity of all.

“— — That one the names of things contrived,

And that from him their knowledge all derived,

‘Tis fond to think.”[33]

As long as the language lives in the mouth of a nation, the words are a progressive production and reproduction of the faculty to form words. In this manner only can we explain, without having recourse to a supernatural cause, how millions of men can agree to use the same words for every object, the same locution for every feeling.

Language in general is the sensible exterior vestment of thought; it is the product of the intelligence, and the expression of the character of mankind; in particular it may be considered as the exterior manifestation of the genius of nations: their language is their genius, and their genius is their language. We see of what use the investigation of idioms may be in tracing the affinities of nations. History and geography must be taken as guides in the researches upon tongues; but these researches would be futile, if languages were the irregular product of hazard. No: profound feeling and immediate clearness of vivid intuition act with wonderful regularity, and follow an unerring analogy. The genesis of languages may be assimilated to that of works of genius—I mean, of that creative faculty which gives rules to an art. Thus is it the language which dictates the grammar. Moreover, the utmost perfection of which an idiom is susceptible is a line like that of beauty, which, once attained, can never be surpassed. This was the case with some ancient tongues. Since that time, mankind appear to have lost a faculty or a talent, inasmuch as they are no more actuated by that urgency of keen feeling which was the very principle of the high perfection of those languages.

Comparative philology, a new science, sprung up within the last thirty years, but already grown to an unforeseen perfection, has fixed the principles by which the affinities of languages may be known, even among the apparently irregular disparities which various circumstances and revolutions of the different nations have created. This would have been impossible, if there did not exist a fundamental philosophy of language, however concealed, and a certain consistency, even in the seemingly most irregular modification of dialect, for instance, in that of pronunciation. But, even the permutation of letters in different and the most rude dialects, has its rules, and follows, within its own compass, a spontaneous analogy, such as is indispensable for the easy and common practice of a society more or less numerous. Thus sounds, grammatical forms, and even graphical signs of language have been subjected to analysis and comparison; the significant radical letters have been distinguished from the merely accidental letters, and a distinction has been established between what is fundamental, and what is merely historical and accidental.

From these considerations I conclude:

First—That the forgery of a language is in itself highly improbable;

Secondly—That, if it had been attempted, comparative philology is perfectly capable of detecting it.

Taking a large historical view of this subject, we cannot suppress the following reflection: The formation of mighty and civilized states being admitted, even by our strictest chronologers, to have taken place at least twenty-five centuries before our era, it can but appear extraordinary, even after taking in account violent revolutions, that of so multitudinous and great existences, only such scanty documents should have come down to us. But, strange to say, whenever a testimony has escaped the destruction of time, instead of being greeted with a benevolent although discerning curiosity, the unexpected stranger is approached with mistrustful scrutiny, his voice is stifled with severe rebukes, his credentials discarded with scorn, and by a predetermined and stubborn condemnation, resuscitating antiquity is repelled into the tomb of oblivion.

I am aware that all dialectical arguments which have been or may be alleged against the probability of forging a language, would be of no avail against well-proved facts, that languages have been forged, and that works, written in them, exist. We may remember the example adduced by Richardson[34] of a language, as he said, “sufficiently original, copious, and regular to impose upon persons of very extensive learning,” forged by Psalmanazar. This was the assumed name of a an individual, whom the eminent Orientalist calls a Jew, but who, born in 1679, in Languedoc or in Provence, of Christian parents, received a Christian, nay theological education, as good as his first instructors, Franciscans, Jesuits, and Dominicans could bestow. This extraordinary person threw himself at a very early age into a career of adventures, in the course of which, at the age of seventeen years, he fell upon the wild project of passing for a native of the island of Formosa, first as one who had been converted to Christianity, then, as still a pagan, he let himself be baptized by a Scotch minister, by whom he was recommended to an English bishop; the latter, in his pious illusion, promoted at once the interests of the convertor, and the fraud of the neophyte.[35] This adventurer who was bold enough, while on the continent, to set about inventing a new character and language, a grammar, and a division of the year into twenty months, published in London, although not twenty years old, a translation of the catechism into his forged language of Formosa, and a history of the island with his own alphabetical writing, which read from right to left—a gross fiction the temporary success of which evinces the then prevailing ignorance in history, geography, and philology. But pious zeal and fanaticism had changed a scientific discussion into a religious quarrel, and for too long a time rendered vain the objections of a few truly learned and clear-sighted men; until the impostor, either incapable of supporting longer his pretensions or urged by his conscience, avowed the deception, and at last became a truly learned good and estimable man.[36] We see this example badly supports the cause of forged languages.

In 1805, M. Rousseau, since consul-general of France at Aleppo, found in a private library at Baghdad a dictionary of a language which is designated by the name of Baláibalan, interpreted “he who vivifies,” and written in Arabic characters called Neshki; it was explained in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. The unknown author of the dictionary composed it for the intelligence of mysterious and occult sciences, written in that language. The highly learned Silvestre de Sacy had scarce been informed of this discovery, when he sought and found in the Royal Library, at Paris, the same dictionary, and with his usual diligence and sagacity published a short but lucid Notice of it.[37] What he said therein was sufficient for giving an idea of the manner in which this language participates in the grammatical forms of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. Silvestre de Sacy, as well as M. Rousseau, have left it uncertain whether the language be dead or living; by whom and at what period it was formed, and what authors have made use of it. The former adds, that some works written in Baláibalan are likely to be found in the hands of the Súfis of Persia.

This language deserves perhaps a further examination. All that is positive in the just-adduced statement of the two great Orientalists may be said of any other language, which is not original but composed, as for instance the English or the Dutch, of more than one idiom. We can but admit that, at all times an association of men for a particular purpose, a school of art, science, and profession may have, has, and even must have, a particular phraseology. Any modification of ancient, or production of new, ideas, will create a modified or a new language; any powerful influence of particular circumstances will produce a similar effect; this is a spontaneous reproduction, and not the intentional forgery of a language.

Such a forgery, even if it could remain undetected, which it cannot in our times, would but furnish a curious proof of human ingenuity, to which no bounds can be assigned; but the true and sole object of a language could never be attained by it; because, never would a great number of independent men be disposed, nor could they be forced, to adopt the vocabulary, grammar, and locutions of a single man, and appropriate them to themselves for the perpetual expression of their inmost mind, and for the exchange of their mutual feelings and ideas.[38] To effect this, is a miracle ascribed to the Divinity, and with justice; being the evident result of the Heaven-bestowed faculty of speech, one of the perpetual miracles of the world.

Of this a prophet must avail himself who announces to the world the important intelligence of a heavenly revelation. The great purpose of his sacred mission implies the widest possible proclamation of his doctrine in a language generally intelligible, which a forged language never can be. If, as was surmised,[39] the Desátir be set up as a rival to the Koran, it must have been written in a national language for a nation; the Persians owned as theirs the Mahabadian religion, the identical one which history, although not under the same name, attributes to them in remote ages, as will result from an examination of the doctrine itself.

Considering the knowledge required, and the difficulties to be overcome in forging a language in such a manner as to impose, even for a time, upon the credulity of others, we shall conclude that nothing less than direct proof is requisite for establishing such a forgery as a real fact. Now, what arguments have been set forth for declaring the language of the Desátir to be nothing else than “an artificial idiom invented to support an imposture?”

Silvestre de Sacy says:[40] “It is difficult indeed, not to perceive that the multiplied relations which exist between the Asmáni, ‘heavenly,’ and Persian languages are the result of a systematic operation, and not the effect of hazard, nor that of time, which proceeds with less regularity in the alterations to which language is subjected.”

I must apologise for here interrupting this celebrated author, for the purpose of referring to what nobody better than himself has established as a peremptory condition of existence for any language, and what he certainly never meant to deny, but may perhaps here be supposed to forget—namely, that a language is not “the effect of hazard,” and although “not the result of systematic combination,” yet, as an instinctive creation, shows surprising regularity, and that an evident rule predominates in the alterations which time produces in languages.

Silvestre de Sacy proceeds: “The grammar of the Mahabadian language is evidently, for the whole etymological part, and even (which is singularly striking) in what concerns the anomalous verbs, traced from (calquée sur) the Persian grammar, and as to the radical words, if there be many of them the origin of which is unknown, there is also a great number of them in which the Persian root, more or less altered, may be recognised without any effort.”

Erskine examined, without the least communication with the French critic, the Mahabadian language, and says:[41] “In its grammar it approaches very nearly to the modern Persian, as well in the inflection of the nouns and verbs, as in its syntax.” Norris[42] takes the very same view of it.

These highly respectable critics published their judgment upon the Mahabadian language before the comparison of several languages with the Sanscrit and between each other had been made by able philologers, creators of the new science of comparative philology. According to the latter, the proofs of the real affinity of language, that is, the proofs that two languages belong to the same family, are to be principally and can be properly deduced, from their grammatical system. Thus, for instance, the forms of the Greek and Latin languages are in several parts nearly identical with the Sanscrit, the first bearing a greater resemblance in one respect, the latter in another; the Greek verbs in mi, the Latin declension of some nouns appear, to use the expression of the illustrious author, “traced from each other (calqués l’un sur l’autre).” These two languages seem to have divided between them the whole system of the ancient grammar, which is most perfectly preserved in the Sanscrit. This language itself is probably, with the two mentioned, derived from a more ancient language; we meet in them three sisters recognised by their striking likeness. This, although more or less weakened and even obliterated in some features, remains upon the whole still perceptible in a long series of their relations: I mean in all those languages which are distinguished by the name of Indo-germanic, to which the Persian belongs.

But, in deciding upon the affinity of languages, not only the grammatical forms are to be examined, but also the system of sounds is to be studied, and the words must be considered in their roots and derivations. The three critics mentioned agree that the language of the Desátir is very similar to the Persian or Deri, not only in grammar, but also in etymology; a great number of the verbal and nominal roots are the same in both. This similarity would, according to comparative philology, lead to the conclusion that either the one is derived from the other, or that both proceed from a common parent; but nothing hitherto here alleged can justify the supposition of invention, forgery, or fabrication of the so-called Mahabadian language.

We continue to quote the strictures of Silvestre de Sacy: “There is however a yet stronger proof of the systematic operation which produced the factitious idiom. This proof I derive from the perfect and constant identity which prevails between the Persian phraseology and that of the Mahabadian idiom. The one and the other are, whenever the translation does not degenerate into paraphrase or commentary, which frequently happens, traced from each other (calqués l’un sur l’autre) in such a manner that each phrase, in both, has always the same number of words, and these words are always arranged in the same order. For producing such a result, we must admit two idioms, the grammar of which should be perfectly alike, as weil with respect to the etymological part as to the syntax, and their respective dictionaries offering precisely the same number of words, whether nouns, verbs, or particles: which would suppose two nations, having precisely the same number of ideas, whether absolute or relative, and conceiving but the same kind and the same number of relations.”

If what we have already stated be not unfounded, the last quoted paragraph, which the author calls “a yet stronger proof of the systematic operations which produced the factitious idiom” must be acknowledged not to have the weight which he would attribute to it. If the Mahabadian and Persian be languages related to each other, “a perfect and constant identity of phraseology between them both,” if even so great as it is said to be, is not only possible, but may be fairly expected in the avowed translation of the Desátir into Persian. Such identity is most religiously aimed at in versions of a sacred text. Need I adduce modern examples of translations which, in point of phraseological conformity with their original, may vie with the Persian version of the Mahabadian text? The supposition that two nations have the same number of ideas, absolute or relative, is far from being absurd: it is really the fact with all nations who are upon the same level of civilisation; but the present question is of the writings of the same nation, which, possessing at all times a sort of government and religion fundamentally the same, might easily count an obsolete language of its own among the monuments of its antiquity.

On that account, we cannot see what the former arguments of the critic gain in strength by the addition: “that the perfect identity of conception falls in a very great part upon abstract and metaphysical ideas, in which such a coincidence is infinitely more difficult than when the question is only of objects and relations perceptible to the senses.”—A great similarity is remarked in all forms of thinking. Little chance of being contradicted can be incurred in saying, that the fundamental ideas of metaphysics are common to all mankind, and inherent in human reason. The encyclopedian contents of the Dabistán, concerning the opinions of so many nations, would furnish a new proof of it, were this generally acknowledged fact in need of any further support.

Silvestre de Sacy acknowledges that the Asmáni language contains a great number of radical words, the origin of which is not known. Erskine says:[43] “It is certainly singular that the language in which the Desátir is written, like that in which the Zend-Avesta is composed, is no where else to be met with. It is not derived from the Zend, the Pehlevi, the Sanscrit, Arabic, Turkish, Persian, or any other known language.” * * * * * * The basis of the language, and the great majority of words in it, belong to no known tongue. It is a mixture of Persian and Indian words. A few Arabic words occur.” Norris[44] also found that a great part of the language appears to have little resemblance to any other that was ever spoken. A judgment, so expressed, might induce an impartial mind to ascribe originality to at least a part of the Asmáni language; which would naturally render the other part less liable to suspicion, inasmuch as it would have been not less difficult to execute, but less easy to conceal, a partial than a total forgery. Nevertheless it so happens that the dissimilarity from any other, as well as the similarity to one particular idiom, are both equally turned against the genuineness of the language in question: where dissimilarity exists, there is absolute forgery—where similarity, an awkward disguise!

Erskine continues: “The Persian system it is unnecessary to particularise; but it is worthy of attention that, among the words of Indian origin, not only are many Sanscrit, which might happen in a work of a remote age, but several belong to the colloquial language of Hindustán: this is suspicious, and seems to mark a much more recent origin. Many words indeed occur in the Desátir that are common to the Sanscrit and to the vulgar Indian languages (the author quotes thirty-four of them); many others might be pointed out. But the most remarkable class of words is that which belongs to the pure Hindi; such I imagine are the word shet, ‘respectable,’ prefixed to the names of prophets and others (twenty-four are adduced). Whatever may be thought of the words of Persian descent, it is not probable that those from the Hindustaní are of a very remote age; they may perhaps be regarded as considerably posterior to the settlement of the Muselmans in India.”

Strongly supported by the opinion of respectable philologers, I do not hesitate to draw a quite contrary conclusion from the facts stated by Erskine. It should be remembered that, in the popular or vulgar dialects are often found remains of ancient tongues, namely, roots of words, locutions, nay rules of grammar which have become obsolete, or disappeared in the cultivated idioms derived from the same original language. It was not without reason that the illustrious William Humboldt recommended to the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland,[45] to examine, on behalf of general Oriental philology, the different provincial dialects of India. Even the gibberish of gypsies is not to be neglected for that purpose.[46]

Thus, if we are not greatly mistaken, the very arguments alleged to show that the Mahabadian language is an invention or forgery, lead rather to a contrary conclusion. Duly sensible of the great weight of authority which opposes the result of my inquiry, I sought an explanation of the severe judgment passed upon the Desátir, and venture to surmise that it was occasioned by the certainly extravagant claim to a heavenly origin and incredible antiquity which has been attached to this work. Such pretensions, taken in too serious a light, can but hurt a fixed, if not religious, belief. Every nation acknowledges but one heavenly book, and rejects every other. Hence arises a very natural, and even respectable pre-conception against all that appears without the limits traced by religion, or mere early habit and adopted system. Thus a severe censure is provoked. To annihilate at once the impertinent pretension to a divine origin, all that ingenuity can suggest is brought forward to prove the book to be a fraudulent forgery; to strip it of the awful dignity of antiquity, it must by any means be represented as the work of yesterday. But error is not fraud, and may be as ancient as mankind itself; because credulous, a man is not the forger of a document. If the Mahabadian language is not that primitive idiom from which the Sanscrit, the Zend, and other languages are derived, it does not follow that it is “a mere jargon, fabricated with no great address to support a religious or philosophical imposture;”[47] if it was not spoken in Iran long before the establishment of the Péshdadian monarchy, it does not follow “that it has at no time belonged to any tribe or nation on the face of the earth.”

However I may appear inclined in favor of the Desátir, I shall avoid incurring the blame of unfair concealment by adding to the names of the great critics above quoted, adverse to this work, the great one of William von Schlegel. I must avow it; the celebrated author declares the Desátir,[48] intimately connected with the Dabistán, to be “a forgery still more refined (than that of the Brahman who deceived Wilford),[49] and written in a pretended ancient language, but fabricated at pleasure.” As he, however, presents no arguments of his own, but only appeals in a note to the articles written by Silvestre de Sacy and Erskine, there is no occasion here for a further observation concerning this question. As to von Schlegel’s opinion upon the Dabistán, I reserve some remarks upon it for another place.

General arguments, opposed to general objections, may produce persuasion, but are not sufficient for establishing the positive truth concerning a subject in question. It is necessary to dive into the Mahabadian language itself for adequate proofs of its genuineness. I might have justly hesitated to undertake this task, but found it already most ably achieved by baron von Hammer,[50] in whom we do not know which we ought to admire most, his vast store of Oriental erudition, or the indefatigable activity, with which he diffuses, in an unceasing series of useful works, the various information derived not only from the study of the dead letter in books, but also from converse with the living spirit of the actual Eastern world. This sagacious reviewer of the Desátir, examining its language, finds proofs of its authenticity in the nature of its structure and the syllables of its formation, which, when compared to the modern pure Persian or Derí, have the same relation to it as the Gothic to the English; the old Persian and the old Germanic idioms exhibit in the progress of improvement such a wonderful concordance and analogy as can by no means be the result of an ingenious combination, nor that of a lucky accidental coincidence. Thus, the language of the Desátir has syllables of declension affixed to pronouns, which coincide with those of the Gothic and Low German, but are not recognisable in the modern form of the Persian pronouns. This is also the case with some forms of numerical and other words. The Mahabadian language contains also a good number of Germanic radicals which cannot be attributed to the well-known affinity of the German and the modern Persian, because they are no more to be found in the latter, but solely in the Desátir. This has besides many English, Greek, and Latin words, a series of which baron von Hammer exhibits, and—which ought to be duly noticed—a considerable number of Mahabadian words, belonging also to the languages enumerated, are sought in vain in any Persian dictionary of our days! Surely, an accidental coincidence of an invented factitious language, with Greek, Latin, and Germanic forms would be by far a greater and more inexplicable miracle, than the great regularity of this ancient sacred idiom of Persia, and its conformity with the modern Deri. It is nevertheless from the latter that the forgery is chiefly inferred.

Moreover, the acute philologer, analysing the Mahabadian language by itself, points out its essential elements and component parts, that is, syllables of derivation, formation, and inflexion. Thus he adduces as syllables of derivation certain vowels, or consonants preceded by certain vowels; he shows certain recurring terminations to be syllables of formation for substantives, adjectives, and verbs; he sets forth particular forms of verbs, and remarkable expressions. All this he supports by numerous examples taken from the text of the Desátir. Such a process enabled him to rectify in some places the Persian translation of the Mahabadian text.

I can but repeat that my only object here is to present the question in the same state that I found it; and am far from contesting, nay, readily admit, the possibility of arguments which may lead to a contrary conclusion. Until such are produced, although not presuming to decide, I may be permitted to believe that the language of the Desátir is no forgery; I may range myself on the side of the celebrated Orientalist mentioned, who, ten years after the date of his review of the Desátir (ten years which, with him, are a luminous path of ever-increasing knowledge), had not changed his opinion upon the language of the Desátir, and assigns to it[51] a place among the Asiatic dialects; according to him, as it is more nearly related to the new Persian than to the Zand and the Pehlevi, it may be considered as a new intermediate ring in the hermetic chain which connects the Germanic idioms with the old Asiatic languages; it is perhaps the most ancient dialect of the Deri,[52] spoken, if not in Fars, yet in the north-eastern countries of the Persian empire, to wit, in Sogd and Bamian. When it ceased to be spoken, like several other languages of by-gone ages, the Mahabádian was preserved perhaps in a single book, or fragment of a book, similar in its solitude to the Hebrew Bible, or the Persian Zend-Avesta.

At what epoch was the Desátir written?

The epoch assigned to it, according to different views, is the sixth[53] or the seventh[54] century of our era, even the later time of the Seljucides, who reigned from A. D. 1037 to 1193. The latter epoch is adopted as the earliest assignable, by Silvestre de Sacy, who alleges two reasons for his opinion: the one is his belief that the new Persian language, in which the Desátir was translated and commented by the fabricator of the original or Mahabadian text did not exist earlier; the second reason refers to some parts of the contents of the Desátir. I shall touch upon both these questions.

It is useless to discuss what can never be ascertained, who the author of the Desátir was. But this work would be unintelligible without the Persian translation and commentary. Silvestre de Sacy asks: “Are not this translation and this commentary, themselves pseudonymous and apocryphal books, and is not the whole, perhaps, the work of an impostor of the last century?” In answering this, I shall be guided by the baron von Hammer, who wrote his review of the Desátir before he had seen that of the Journal des Savans, but, after having perused the latter, declared that he had nothing to change in his opinion. Although the commentator, to whom the honor of being the inventor of the Mahabadian language is ascribed, follows in the main the ancient text word for word, and substitutes commonly a new for the obsolete form of the term, yet frequent instances occur (some of which baron von Hammer adduces) which prove that the interpreter did not clearly understand the old text, but in place of the true meaning gave his own arbitrary interpretation. The proper names even are not always the same. Besides—and this is most important—the doctrines contained in the Desátir and in the Commentary differ from each other. In the books of the first Mahabadian kings we find the fundamental ideas of the Oriental philosophy, such as it was before its migration from Asia to Europe; but in the commentary we perceive the development of the Aristotelian scholastic, such as it formed itself among the Asiatics, when they had, by means of translations, become acquainted with the Stagirite. We shall revert to this subject hereafter. Whatever it be—the discrepancies between the original text and the interpretation, as they would certainly have been avoided by the author of both, prove that they are the works of two different persons, probably with the interval of a few centuries between them.

The Persian translator and commentator is said to be the fifth Sassan, who lived in the time of the Persian king Khusro-Parviz, a contemporary of the Roman emperor Heraclius, and died only nine years before the destruction of the ancient Persian monarchy, or in the year 643 of our era. It must be presumed that the five Sassans, the first of whom was a contemporary of Alexander, 323 years before Christ, were not held to be immediate successors to each other, but only in the same line of descent; otherwise an interval of 946 years, from Alexander to Parviz, comprehending the reign of thirty-one Arsacides and twenty-two Sassanian princes, would be given to no more than five individuals, which absurdity ought not to be attributed to the commentary of the Desátir. In general, so common is it with Asiatics to deal with names of celebrity as if they were generic names, that it is very frequently impossible to be positive about the true author of a work. There appears in the present case nothing to prevent us from placing the translator and commentator of the Desátir (whether a Sassan or not) in the seventh century of our era.

The translation and commentary of the Desátir are written in what the best judges consider as very pure Persian, though ancient, without any mixture whatever of words of Arabic or Chaldean origin, and conformable to the grammatical system of modern Persian. But when was the latter formed?—As the opinion upon this epoch involves that upon the age of the composition itself, I shall be permitted to take a rather extensive historical view of this part of the question.

Setting aside the Mahabadian kings mentioned in the Desátir and Dabistán, we know that Gilshah, Hoshang, Jamshid (true Persian names) are proclaimed by all Orientalists as founders of the Persian empire and builders of renowned cities in very remote times. This empire comprised in its vast extent different nations, speaking three principal languages, the Zand, Pehlevi, and Parsi. Among these nations were the Persæ, “Persians,” properly and distinctively so called. We are informed by Herodotus[55] that there were different races of Persæ, of whom he enumerates eleven. Those who inhabited originally Fars, Farsistan, Persis,[56] a country double the extent of England, and gave their name to the whole empire, certainly spoke their own idiom, the Parsi or Farsi. A national language may vary in its forms, but never can be destroyed as long as any part of the nation exits; can we doubt that the Persians who, once the masters of Asia, although afterwards shorn of their power, never ceased to be independent and formidable, preserved their language to our days?

We may consider as remains of the oldest Persian language, the proper and other names of persons, places and things mentioned by the most ancient historians; now, a number of such words, which occur in the Hebrew Bible,[57] in Herodotus, and other Greek authors, are much better explained from modern Persian than from Zand and Pehlevi. In the Armenian language exist words common to the Persian, none common to the Pehlevi;[58] therefore, in very remote times Persian and not Pehlevi was the dominant idiom of the Iranian nations with whom the Armenians were in relation. More positive information is reserved for posterity, when the cuneiform inscriptions upon the monumental rocks and ruins, to be found in all directions within the greatest part of Asia, shall be deciphered by future philologers, not perhaps possessing greater talent, but better means of information from all-revealing time than those of our days, who have already successfully begun the great work—Grotefend, Rask, St. Martin, Burnouf, Lassen, etc.

Let us now take a hasty review of a few principal epochs of the Persian empire, with respect to language, beginning only from that nearest the time, in which Persia was seen and described by Herodotus, Ctesias, and Xenophon, not without reference to the then existing national historical records. Khosru (Cyrus) the Persian King, placed by the Occidentals in the seventh century before our era,[59] having wrested the sceptre from the hands of the Medes, who spoke Pehlevi, naturally produced the ascendancy of his national idiom. This did not sink under his immediate successors, Lohrasp and Gushtasp. Although under the reign of the latter, who received Zardusht at his court in the sixth century B. C.,[60] the Zand might have had great currency, yet it certainly declined after Gushtasp, as his grandson Bahman, the son of Isfendiar, favored the cultivation of the Parsi.[61] This language was perfected in Baktria (the original name of which country is Bákhter, “East,” an old Persian word) and in the neighboring Transoxiana; there the towns Bamian, the Thebes of the East, and Balkh, built by Lohrasp and sanctified by Gushtasp’s famous Pyræum, besides Merv and Bokhára, were great seats of Persian arts and sciences. The Parsi, thus refined, was dominant in all the royal residences, which changed according to seasons and circumstances; it was spoken at the court of the Second Dara (Darius Codomanus), and sounds in his own name and that of his daughters Sitára (Statira), “star,” and Roshana (Roxana), “splendor,” whom the unfortunate king resigned with his empire to Alexander.[62] This conqueror, intoxicated with power, endeavored to exterminate the Mobeds, the guardians of the national religion and science; he slew many, but dispersed only the majority. From the death of Alexander (323 B. C.) to the reign of Ardeshir Babegan (Artaxerxes), the founder of the Sassanian dynasty (200 A. D.), a period of more than five centuries is almost a blank in the Persian history; but when the last-mentioned king, the regenerator of the ancient Iranian monarchy, wishing to restore its laws and literature, convoked the Mobeds, he found forty thousand of them before the gate of the fire-temple of Barpa.[63] Ammianus Marcellinus, in the fourth century of our era attests, that the title of king was in Deri, “court-language,” yet the Pehlevi was spoken concurrently with it during the reigns of the first twelve Sassanian princes, until it was proscribed by a formal edict of the thirteenth of them, Bahram gor, in our fifth century. Nushirvan and Parviz, in the sixth century, were both celebrated for the protection which they granted to arts and sciences. We have on record a school of physic, poetry, rhetoric, dialectics, and abstract sciences, flourishing at Gandi sapor, a town in Khorasan: the Persian must have then been highly cultivated. We are now in the times of Muhammed; were they not Persian, those Tales, the charm of which, whether in the original or in the translation, was such, that the Arabian legislator, to counteract it, summoned up the power of his high-sounding heaven-inspired eloquence, and wrote a part of the Koran against them? If he himself had not named the Deri as the purest dialect of the Persian, what other language could we believe he admired for its extreme softness so much as to say, that the Almighty used it when he wished to address the angels in a tone of mildness and beneficence, whilst he reserved the Arabic for command?[64] Such a fact, or such a tradition, presupposes a refined, and therefore long-spoken language. After Muhammed’s death, his fanatic successors attempted to bury under the ruins of the Persian empire even the memory of its ancient religion and language—but they did not succeed: the sacred fire was saved and preserved beyond the Oxus; it was rekindled in Baktria, that ancient hearth of Persian splendor; there poetry and eloquence revived, but could not raise their voices until princes of Persian origin became lieutenants of the Mohammedan khalifs. It was under Nasr, son of Ahmed the Samanian, in the beginning of our tenth century, that Rudigi rose, the first celebrated new Persian poet, but he found, he did not create the language, more than Homer created Greek, Dante Italian, or Spenser English. A great author, in whom the genius of his nation is concentrated, does no more than aptly collect into a whole the idiom which exists every where in parts, and elicit its pre-existing resources. Thus under his pen the language can appear to spring up with all its beauties—as Minerva, equipped in armour, sprung forth from the head of Jupiter.

Such being the historical indications relative to the Persian language, we cannot participate in the doubts of Silvestre de Sacy, nor find Erskine[65] just in disdaining even to make a comment upon the credibility of the hypothesis “that the Persian language was completely formed in the age of the latter Sassanians.” It would be rather a matter of wonder that the Parsi, related to the most ancient and most cultivated language in the world, should not have been much sooner fitted for the harmonious lays of Ferdusi!—a matter of wonder indeed, that the Persians, who taught the Arabs so much of their religion—heaven and hell, should have remained behind them in the refinement of their idiom!—that they, who could scoff at the Tazis as eaters of lizards, should not have possessed, in the seventh century, a language to contend with that people, who themselves possessed celebrated poets long before Muhammed![66]

It is for ever regrettable that overpowering Muhammedism should have spoiled the original admirable simplicity of one of the softest languages in the world, by the intrusion of the sonorous but harsher words of Arabic, and imposed upon us the heavy tax of learning two languages for understanding one; but, as the translation of the Desátir is free from words of an Arabic or Chaldean origin, should we not fairly conclude, that it was executed before the Muhammedan conquest of Persia? So did Norris, and so Erskine—I can but think—would have done, if his judgment and penetration, usually so right and acute, had not been prepossessed by the idea of an imposture, which he had assumed as proved or self-evident, whilst this was the very point of contestation. Thus, “the very freedom from words of foreign growth, which the learned natives consider as a mark of authenticity, appeared to him the proof of an artificial and fabricated style.”

If even there are some Arabic words to be found in the text and the translation of the Desátir, this affords no fair inference that these works had not been composed before the Arabs conquered Persia, because those words might have come from Pehlevi, in which there is a mixture of Arabic, and there are also Persian words in the Koran; most naturally, as there subsisted from times immemorial relations between Persia and Arabia.

What I have said will, if I am not mistaken, sufficiently justify the conclusion, that the Persian idiom could in the seventh century have attained the regularity and form of the present Persian, such at least, as it appears in the Commentary of the Desátir, not without a very perceptible tincture of obsoleteness.

I need scarce remark that the title asmáni, “heavenly,” belongs exclusively to the superstitious admiration with which the Desátir is viewed. Nor are its fifteen books to be taken for sacred works of so many prophets who succeeded each other after such long intervals of time; yet nothing prevents us, as I hope to show, from believing some parts of them very ancient. Neither are these of the same antiquity. Thus, prophecies which are certainly interpolations made after the events, occur in them, not otherwise than in the Indian Puránas, the fundamental parts of which are nevertheless now admitted to be as ancient as the Vedas themselves. We find in the two last books of the Desátir are mentioned: the contest between the Abbasides and the descendants of Ali; the adoption of Muhammedism by almost the totality of Iran; inimical sects, and the power of the Turcomans superseding that of the Arabs; the latter parts must certainly have been composed after the taking of Bagdád by Hulogu in 1258 of our era. The fifteenth book of the Desátir is probably apocryphal.

As to the doctrine of the Desátir, Erskine says:[67] “I consider that the whole of the peculiar doctrines, ascribed to Mahabad and Hoshang, is borrowed from the mystical doctrines of the Persian Súfis, and from the ascetic tenets and practices of the Yogis and Sanyasis, of India who drew many of their opinions from the Vedanta-school.” But this involves the great historical question, concerning the origin of Súfism and the whole Indian philosophy, which is by some (not without foundation) believed to have been spread throughout a great part of Asia. It is quite gratuitous, I may say, to regard them “as having had no existence before the time of Azar Kaivan[68] and his disciples in the reigns of Akbar and Jehanguir, and as having been devised and reduced into form between 200 and 300 years ago in the school of Sipasi-philosophers.” Nor can I admit as better founded the following insinuations of the same ingenious critic: “Nor shall I inquire whether many of the acute metaphysical remarks that abound in the commentary and the general style of argument which it employs have not rather proceeded from the schoolmen of the West, than directly from the Oriental or Aristotelian philosophy.” To this may be answered: It is highly problematic, whether the translator of the Desátir ever knew any schoolman of the West, but it is certain that he, as an Asiatic and a Persian, knew the Oriental philosophy, the fundamentals of which were preserved in the first books of the Desátir, as we have already said; but the commentator could but participate in the modification, which the ancient doctrine had undergone in his age, after its return from the West to the East, in translations of Greek philosophical works into Asiatic languages. Thus, in the Desátir and its commentary—I borrow the words of baron von Hammer:—“We see already germinating the double seed of reason and light, from which sprung up the double tree of rational and ideal philosophy,”[69] which spread its ramifications over the whole world, and lives and flourishes even in our times.

The commentator was no ordinary man: living, as we may believe, in the first half of the seventh century, he possessed the sciences of his learned age; flourishing under the reign of king Khosru Parviz, who professed the ancient Persian religion in his letter to a Roman emperor of the East,[70] and tore to pieces Muhammed’s written invitation to adopt Islam[71]; in this yet unshaken state of national independence, the fifth Sassan preserved pure his creed and style from the influence of the Arabian prophet. The translator and commentator of the Desátir says of himself:[72] “I too have written a celebrated book under the name of Do giti, ‘the two worlds’, full of admirable wisdom, which I have derived from the most exalted intelligence, and in the eminent book of the famous prophet, the King of Kings, Jemshid, there is a great deal, concerning the unity which only distinguished Asceties (Hertasp) can comprehend, and on the subject of this transcendant knowledge I have also composed a great volume Pertú están, ‘the mansion of light,’ which I have adorned by evidence deduced from reason, and by texts from the Desátir and Avesta, so that the soul of every man may derive pleasure from it. And it is one of the books of the secrets of the great God.”

This is a most important declaration. The commentator considered the Desátir and the Avesta as sources of delight TO ALL MEN. And he was right. The doctrine of the former work now under consideration is found every where, not denied either by the ancients or moderns; it is the property of mankind. As such, “it does not belong to any particular tribe or nation:” in which point, although in quite another sense, we agree with Erskine, but we may dissent from the learned author, when he taxes it to be “a religious or philosophical imposture, which needed the support of a fabricated language.” After careful examination, I must conscientiously declare, I discover no imposture aimed at by any artifice; there was no secret to be concealed; nothing to be disguised; the Mahabadian religion is as open as its temple, the vault of heaven, and as clear as the lights, flaming in their ethereal attitudes; its book is a sort of catechism of Asiatic religion; its prayer a litany of Oriental devotion, in which any man may join his voice.

Thus have I endeavored, to the best of my power, to exhibit faithfully what has hitherto been alleged for and against the authenticity of the book, which is one of the principal authorities of the Dabistán. If the author of this latter work was, as the often-quoted ingenuous author supposes, “in strict intimacy with the sects of enthusiasts by whom the Desátir was venerated, and whose rule it was,” we may so much the more rely upon the truth of his account concerning such a religious association. If he professed the new religion, which the emperor Akbar had endeavored to found, as this was a revival of the ancient Persian religion, we may reasonably presume, that he would have searched, and brought to light writings concerning it which were concealed, neglected, or little known; he would have cautiously scrutinized the authenticity of the documents, and conscientiously respected the sacred sources of that faith, which, after a careful examination of all others, deserved his preference; nothing justifies the supposition, that he would forge any thing himself, or countenance, or not be able to detect, the forgery of others. However this be, Mohsan Fani’s character will be best known by the perusal of his work; after a rapid synopsis of its contents, to which I will now proceed, I shall be permitted to point out, as briefly as possible, some of the merits and defects conspicuous in his composition.

[20] See note, vol. I. p. 20.

[21] Ibid., p. 44.

[22] Calcutta edition, p. 30, line 6.

[23] See vol. I. p. 534.

[24] Ibid., p. 65.

[25] M. Eugène Burnouf, to whose most valuable judgment I had the pleasure to submit the question, prefers the derivation from bhásh, because this word in Zend would be wâsh, as the Zend w represents exactly the Sanscrit bh, which aspiration did not exist in the ancient idiom of Bactrian Asia. This sagacious philologer hinted at a comparison with the Persian usta, or awesta, upon which in a subsequent note.

[26] See the Persian text of the Dasátir, p. 377.

[27] Tableau de l’Empire ottoman, by M. d’Ohson, t. II. p. 70.

[28] Journal des Savans, février 1821, p. 74. The Persian passage which de Sacy quotes, and in which there is Destánir for Dasátir, is taken from the text published by Gladwin, and not from the printed Calcutta edition.

[29] See Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British India and its Dependencies, vol. VIII., from July to Dec. 1819, p. 357.

[30] The Desátir, or sacred writings of the ancient Persian prophets in the original tongue; with the ancient Persian version, and commentary of the fifth Sasan; published by Mulla Firuz Bin-i-Kaus. Bombay, 1818. Mulla Firuz is supposed to possess the only copy of the Desátir extant. He allowed sir John Malcolm to take a copy of it, which, by some accident, was lost by Doctor Leyden—(See Transact. of the Lit. Soc. of Bombay, pp. 342 and 349).

[31] Mohsan Fani marks the time of his composing the Dabistan (vol. II. p. 50) to be the year of the Hejira 1055 (A. D. 1645).

[32] See Journal des Savans, No. for January, 1821, p. 16.

[33] Lucretius, book V., Transl. of Dr. Creech:

“— — putare aliquem tum nomina distribuisse

Rebus, et inde homines didicisse vocabula prima

Desipere est.”

[34] Richardson’s Dictionary, preface, lxvii.

[35] This man, who never told his true name, was from the age of fifteen to seventeen a private teacher—then passed for an Irishman—went to Rome as a pilgrim with a habit stolen from before an altar where it was lying as a votive offering of another pilgrim—wandered about in Germany, Brabant, Flanders—indolent, abject, shameless, covered with vermin and sores—entered the military service of Holland, which he left to become waiter in a coffee-house in Aix-la-Chapelle—enlisted in the troops of the elector of Cologne. He acted all these parts, with those above-mentioned, before he was baptised under the name of George, by a Scotch clergyman, and, having learned English, passed over to England to be protected by Compton, the lord-bishop of London. At the expense of the latter, he studied at Oxford—became a preceptor—chaplain of a regiment—fell back into indolence, and lived upon alms.—(See A New and General Dictionary, London, 1798, vol. XII; and Vie de plusieurs Personnages célèbres des Temps anciens et modernes, par C. A. Walckenaer, membre de l’Institut, tome II. 1830.)

[36] This change took place in his thirty-second year—he learned Hebrew and became an honest man, esteemed by Samuel Johnson; he wrote eleven articles in a well-known work, the Universal History, and his own Life at the age of seventy-three years; the latter work was published after his death, which happened in his eighty-fourth year, in 1763.

[37] See Notices et Extraits des Manuscrits, vol. IX. pp. 365-396.

[38] I am here applying to the forger of a language what Lucretius, in continuation of his above quoted verses ([p. xxx]), urges against the belief that a single individual could ever have been the inventor of human speech.

[39] By Norris, Asiatic Journal, vol. IX., November, 1820, p. 430.

[40] Journal des Savans, February, 1821, pp. 69-70.

[41] See Transact. of the Lit. Soc. of Bombay, vol. II.: “On the Authenticity of the Desátir, with remarks on the Account of the Mahabadi Religion contained in the Dabistan,” by William Erskine, esq., p. 360.

[42] The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British India and its Dependencies, Novemb. 1820, p. 421 et seq.

[43] The work quoted, p. 360.

[44] The Asiatic Journal, November, 1820, p. 421 et seq.

[45] An Essay on the best means of ascertaining the affinities of Oriental languages, by baron W. Humboldt, in the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. II. part I. p. 213.

[46] Colonel Harriot on the Oriental Origin of the Gypsies. Ibid., 518.

[47] Erskine, loco cit., p. 372.

[48] See Réflexions sur l’Étude des Langues asiatiques, adressées à sir James Mackintosh. Bonn, 1832, pp. 51-52.

[49] See Asiatic Researches, vol. VIII. Lond. ed. 8. p. 254.

[50] See Heidelberger Jahrbücher der Literatar Vom Jänner te Juni 1823, N^os 6. 12. 13. 18. 20.

[51] See Journal asiatique, tome XII. juillet 1833, pp. 24-26.

[52] Ibidem, pp. 20-21. Deri was spoken on the other side of the Oxus, and at the foot of the Paropamisus in Balkh, Meru, in the Badakhshan, in Bokhara and Bamian. The Pehlevi was used in Media proper, in the towns of Rai, Hamadan, Ispahan, Nehawend, and Tabriz, the capital of Azar bíján.—Beside the Deri and Pehlevi, Persian dictionaries reckon five other dialects, altogether twelve dialects, of ancient and modern Persian.

[53] Tholuck. Sufismus, sive Theosophia Pantheistica, p. 111.

[54] Norris, Asiatic Journal, November, 1820, p. 430.

[55] Clio, lib. I.

[56] In the Bible it is called Paras, or Faras, and reckoned as extensive as Great and Little Armenia, or as Hungary, Transylvania, Slavonia, Croatia, and Dalmatia together.—(See Gatterer’s Weltgeschichte II^ter Theil, Seite 9.)

[57] In the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther.

[58] See Observations sur les Monumens historiques de l’ancienne Perse, par Étienne Quatremère. Journal des Savans, juin et juillet 1840, pp. 347-348.

[59] The Orientals place him in the tenth century B. C.

[60] According to Richardson (see the preface of his Dict., p. vi), the Farsi was peculiarly cultivated by the great and learned, above 1200 years before the Muhammedan era, i. e. above 600 years B. C., which epoch is commonly assigned to Gushtasp’s reign.

[61] See Hammer’s Schöne Redekünste Persiens, Seite 3 et seq.

[62] Strabo, who flourished in the beginning of the Christian era, and drew his information mostly from the historians of Alexander, refers probably to the time of the Macedonian conquest, when he says (xv. 2, § 8, fol. 724, edit. Cas.): that the Medians, Persians, Arians, Baktrians, and Sogdians spoke almost the same language. This probably was that of the then leading nation, the Persian.

[63] Hammer, loc. cit., p. 7.

[64] Works of sir W. Jones, vol. V. p. 426, Transactions of the Literary Society of Bombay, vol. II. p. 297.

[65] Loco cit., p. 363.

[66] See the preface to the most valuable work Le Divan d’Amro’lkais, par le baron Mac Guckin de Slane, Paris, 1837, pp. viii and ix. The learned author confirms that celebrated Arabian poems existed before the introduction of the Muhammedan religion, which, for a certain time, averted the Arabs from the cultivation of poetry and history. We shall here add (which would have been more appropriately placed in the note upon Amro’lKais, in vol. III p. 65, and will correct the same) that this poet (see loc. cit., p. xvi et seq.) flourished at an epoch anterior to Muhammed, and died probably before the birth of that extraordinary man.

[67] Loco citato, p. 372.

[68] See vol. I. pp. 87 et seq.

[69] Heidelberger Jahrbücher, loc. cit. Seite 313.

[70] The Dabistán (see Pers. text, Calcutta edit., p. 69, and English transl., vol. I. p. 145) quotes verses containing this profession, addressed by Khosru Parviz to a Roman emperor, whose name, however, is not mentioned. During the reign of this Persian king, two emperors ruled in the East, namely, Mauritius, whose daughter Parviz married, and Heraclius, by whom he was defeated towards the end of his life. I found it probable, but had no authority to assert (see vol. I. p. 145, [note 2]), that the above-stated profession was made to Mauritius; but those verses by themselves deserve attention, as they establish the adherence of Parviz to the religion of Hoshang, in contradiction to several historians, according to whom he adopted Christianity: this assertion seems founded upon his great attachment to the celebrated Mary, or Chirín, his Christian wife, and daughter of a Christian emperor, the said Mauritius.

[71] Muhammed, when informed of the ignominious reception which the Persian king gave to his letter and ambassador, said: “God will tear his empire, as he tore my letter, to pieces.”—(Herbelot.)

[72] The Desátir, p. 99.

PART II.

SYNOPSIS OF THE DYNASTIES, RELIGIONS, SECTS, AND PHILOSOPHIC OPINIONS, TREATED OF IN THE DABISTAN.

§ I.—THE FIRST RELIGION—THE DYNASTIES OF MAHABAD, ABAD AZAR, SHAI ABAD, SHAI GILIV, SHAI MAHBUL, AND YASAN.

Mohsan Fani exhibits the remarkable notions, dogmas, customs, and ceremonies of twelve religions, and their various sects, without giving more of their origin and genesis than the names of their founders. The very first principle of all religion is referred, by some, to a primitive Divine revelation; by others, to a natural propensity of the human mind to superstition. However this may be, history confirms the suggestions of psychology, that admiration was one of the principal sources of religious feelings; how should man not be struck with the glories of the sky? Therefore, the adoration of stars was one of the most ancient religions. It needed no prophet: it is “the poetry of heaven,” imprinted in eternal characters of fire upon the ethereal expanse. Prometheus, enumerating the benefits which he bestowed upon untutored barbarians, says:[73]

“— — — At random all their works

Till I instructed them to mark the stars,

Their rising, and, a harder science yet,

Their setting.”[74]

According to all traditions, astronomy was one of the first sciences cultivated by men.[75] The stars not only occasioned the institution, but also served to announce the regular return, of religious feasts; thus they became, as called by Plato, “the instruments of time,” men were at once induced and taught by religion to count months and years. Astronomy, in her feast-calendars, consecrated upon an altar the first fruits of her labors.

Upon the star-paved path of heaven man was conducted to the sanctuary of the supreme Being. In general, the first feeling of “the Divine (το θεῖον),” seizing the human mind with its own supernatural power, elevated it at once above the material concerns of the nether world; thus, sublime ideas of the Deity, the universe, and the immortality of the soul preceded the invention of many arts and sciences relative to the comforts of social life. This is confirmed by the account, contained in the Dabistán, of the most ancient religion of the Persians, which is founded upon transcendental ideas of the Divinity: “Except God himself, who can comprehend his origin? Entity, unity, identity are inseparable properties of this original essence, and are not adventitious to Him.” So the Desátir, with which the Dabistán generally so fully agrees, that we can scarce doubt that the author of the latter had the former before his eyes.

No sooner has man acquired the consciousness of mental freedom, than he endeavors to expand beyond himself the first vague feeling of the Divine; not satisfied to admire all exterior marvel, he desires to understand and to name its interior moving cause: this is something immaterial; it is a soul, such as acts in himself. Among the ancient Iranians, the “first creation of the existence-bestowing bounty” was the intellectual principle, called Azad Bahman, “the first intelligence;” he is also the first angel; from him other spirits or angels proceed. Every star, every heavenly sphere has its particular intelligence and spirit or angel. In the lower region, each of the four elements owns its particular guardian; vegetables, minerals, animals have their protecting angels; the conservative angel of mankind is Farun Faro Vakshur. It is not without reason, that this religion was called “the religion of light.” As the supreme Being

“Sow’d with stars the heav’n thick as the field.”[76]

So also he peopled the vast extent with the “sons of light, the empyreal host of angels,” who not only moved and governed the celestial orbs, but also descended into the elemental regions to direct, promote, and protect his creation. Not a drop of dew fell without an angel. The Hindus and Greeks animated universal nature; the Persians imparadized the whole creation by making it the abode of angels. Hence demonology in all its extent. But, “among the most resplendent, powerful, and glorious of the servants who are free from inferior bodies and matter, there is none God’s enemy or rival, or disobedient, or cast down, or annihilated.” This important passage of the Desátir[77] I shall have occasion to refer to hereafter.

Human souls are eternal and infinite; they come from above, and are spirits of the upper spheres. If distinguished for knowledge and sanctity, while on earth, they return above, are united with the sun, and become empyreal sovereigns; but if the proportion of their good works bore a closer affinity to any other star, they become lords of the place assigned to that star; their stations are in conformity with the degrees of their virtue; perfect men attain the beatific vision of the light of lights, and the cherubine hosts of the supreme Lord. Vice and depravity, on the contrary, separate souls from the primitive source of light, and chain them to the abode of the elements: they become evil spirits. The imperfectly good migrate from one body to another, until, by the efficacy of good words and actions, they are finally emancipated from matter, and gain a higher rank. The thoroughly-depraved descend from the human form to animal bodies, to vegetable, and even to mineral substances.

So far we see the well-known dogma of transmigration ingeniously combined with the Sidereal religion. Here is exhibited a singular system of heavenly dominion, maintained by every star, whether fixed or planetary, during periods of many thousand years. A fixed star begins the revolution, and reigns alone, the king of the cycle, during a millenium, after which, each of the fixed and planetary stars becomes its partner or prime-minister for a thousand years; the last of all is the moon, for a millenium. Then the sovereignty of the first king devolves to the star which was its first associate. This second king goes through the same course as the first, until this becomes for a thousand years his partner, and then his period is also past. The same is the course of all other stars. When the moon shall have been king, and all stars associated with it and its reign too past, then one great period shall be accomplished. The state of the revolving world recommences, the human beings, animals, vegetables, and minerals, which existed during the first cycle, are restored to their former language, acts, dispositions, species, and appearances; the world is renovated, that is to say, forms, similar to those which passed away, reappear. This system, copied from the Desátir,[78] expresses nothing else but the general vague idea of long heavenly revolutions, and periodical renovations of the same order of things in the nether world.

The Dabistán[79] adds a mode of computing as peculiar to the followers of the ancient faith: they call one revolution of the regent Saturn a day; thirty such days one month; twelve such months one year; a million of such years one fard; a million fard one vard; a million vard one mard; a million vard one jad; three thousand jads one vad; and two thousand vád one zád. To these I must subjoin salam, shamar, aspar, radah, aradah, raz, araz, biaraz, that is, eight members of a geometric progression, the first of which is 100,000, and the coefficient 100. But these years are revolutions, called farsals, of thirty common years each. There are besides farsals of Mars, Venus, Mercury, and the moon, a day of each being the time of their respective revolution.

I thought it necessary to repeat these extravagant numbers, because it is by them that the reigns of the first ancient dynasties are measured.[80] The first earthly ruler of the present cycle, who with his wife survived the great period to become the first ancestor of a new innumerable population, was Mahabada. This name seems of Sanscrit derivation.[81] In his reign we find traced the first ground-lines of all human societies; agriculture and the arts of life are invented; villages and cities organised; four classes of society established—priests, warriors, agriculturists, and tradesmen. The names of these classes are in the Dabistán much like those of the four Hindu castes, but the Desátir and the Shahnamah have other denominations, belonging to an ancient Persian dialect,[82] for these divisions, which originated in the indispensable wants of a rising society. This institution connects itself with the principles of social morality: men are bound to each other by the laws of justice and mutual kindness, which is extended even to all innoxious creatures. To Mahabad the Desátir was sent, a celestial code, and his faith was maintained through the whole series of his fourteen successors; the number of whom reminds us of the fourteen Indian Manus; they are said to have reigned six hundred and six trillions of years.

To the Mahabadians succeeded Abad Azar, who soon withdrew from government, and devoted himself to solitude and piety. After him, the hitherto fortunate state of society changed into war, confusion, and anarchy. His son, Jai Afram, was called to the throne, and restored peace and order in the world, giving his name to a new dynasty. After this, four other princely families are named, that of Shai Abad, Shai Giliv, Shai Mahbul, and Yasan.[83] I shall not count the many millions of years during which they ruled; all that is said of their reigns appears nothing but a repetition of the first; a period of peace, order, and happiness is followed by war, disorder, and misery, until a revolution renews the state of things. Such traditions of a progress and regress in virtue and happiness, and of repeated changes from one condition to another, are not destitute of general truth. The moral is not, more than the physical world, exempt from revolutions. These, although their date cannot be determined, have left behind them undeniable traces, and without a reference to them, we could not explain so much of the strangeness, incoherence, and heterogeneity in the history of men and nature.

Thus I have slightly sketched the principal features of the religion which prevailed among the first Persian dynasties; these, not mentioned in other historical books, are we know peculiar to the Desátir and Dabistán, which appeared to sir W. Jones an unexceptionable authority for believing the Iranian monarchy “the oldest in the world.” Upon this, W. Erskine remarked:[84] “Shall I be forgiven for saying, that the history of letters seems to me scarcely to afford an instance of a more perverted judgment on historical evidence?” Silvestre de Sacy[85] too “banishes among the most absurd fables the dynasties of the Mahabadians, and of their successors, which sir William Jones, and after him some other Orientalists, have too hastily adopted, and of which they would to-day blush, since their titles have been produced.” More recently, William von Schlegel[86] said: “It would be useless to conceal to the public that that learned man, endowed with talents so rare, was totally deficient in historical criticism:” This was inferred, because he had admitted, and used in some of his considerations, as genuine, a forgery of Wilford’s Pandit. Besides, “he received without diffidence, and even welcomed with enthusiasm, the traditions contained in the Dabistán, a modern Persian book, written with the intention to claim for Persia the pre-eminence over India with respect to the antiquity of religious revelations.”

As to “the intention” mentioned, I hope to be able to justify Mohsan Fani. With respect to the Mahabadian dynasties—the light recently acquired upon the ancient history of Persia, reflect rather favorably upon that part of sir William Jones’s opinion, that this country, in its wide extent, was once the original seat of many nations now settled in distant regions. So much, at least, may be considered as established: 1. that the limits of history are to be removed further back than those before fixed; 2. that in the earliest times primitive nations, related by language to each other, had their origin in the common elevated country of central Asia, and that the Iranians and Indians were once united before their migration into Iran and India.[87] This great fact presents itself, as it were, upon the border of a vast abyss of unknown times.

For these a measure was sought. Hence we meet with extravagant, but perpetually recurring chronological statements. The Mahabadian ages are neither better nor worse, as to accuracy, than the Indian yugs, the Chaldean,[88] or other periods. In order to reduce them to their true value, we must consider them as nothing else than expressions of the ideas which the ancients entertained of the antiquity of the world and human society, in which they cannot be easily refuted, and at least are not absurd. Such ideas originated, when man, curious after his past, had long ceased to be a listless barbarian; but the earliest civilisation is a late product of slow-working time, the memory of which could have been preserved only by monuments. The most ancient of these however are but recent in our historical knowledge, the limits of which are far from being those of antiquity. The duration of ante-historical empires, in printless but extensive spaces of times, escapes research and computation. As men, however, bear with impatience vague and loose ideas, the Persians, as well as other nations, determined the past by numbers formed from the multiplication of some astronomical periods known in early times, as has been observed:[89] this appears to me at once the whole truth and falsehood of those statements. In the utter impossibility to reconcile the discordant data of different nations, we must content ourselves to take up the general ideas and facts in which they all agree, whilst in the particulars they all differ. Thus, in laying down maps of countries little known, we are satisfied with tracing the general direction of some rivers and mountains, and abstain from topographical details.

[73]

Προμηθευς δεσμωτης,

— — — — ἄτης γνώμης τὸ πᾶν

Ἔπρασσον, ἔς τε δή σφιν ἀντολὰς ἐγὼ

Αστρων ἔδειξα, τάς τε δυσκρίτους δύσεις.

(v. 457-459).

[74] Transl. by Dr. Potter.

[75] Hyde, who did not know the Dabistán, says (p. 188): that a year, or calendar, of Median invention was introduced in Persia, before Jamshid, that is, according to Ferdusi’s not irrational chronology, earlier than 3429 before our era.

[76] Milton’s Paradise Lost, b. VII. v. 358.

[77] The book of Shet Shai Kiliv, v. 59. p. 56.

[78] Bombay edit. Engl. transl., pp. 19. 20.

[79] vol. I. p. 14. The Bombay Desátir does not mention the revolution of Saturn, and states differently the value of fard, mard, etc., etc.

[80] It is known that in India, and perhaps all over Asia, the number of ciphers not followed by a significative number, is indifferent, and indicates nothing else but magnitude. Thus the Hindus, to determine positively hundreds, thousands, etc., affix the required figure at the end: for instance, to determine 100 rupees to be given, they write 101.

[81] The word is perhaps a form of the Sanscrit Mahábodhi, “a great deified teacher.” In the Burhani Kati we find six significations attributed to the word Abad; these are: 1. cultivated; 2. praise and prayer; 3. exclamation of praise; 4. the name of the Kaba; 5. the name of the first Persian prophet; 6. good and beauteous.

[82] See vol. I. pp. [19-20].

[83] I have (see vol. I. p. 26, [note 1]) derived this name from the Sanscrit yas, “glory, honor.” In Burhan Katii it is interpreted by “what is convenient.”

[84] Loco cit., p. 342.

[85] Journ. des Savans, février 1821, p. 69.

[86] See Réflexions sur l’Étude des Langues orientales, loc. cit., p. 51.

[87] See the development of these ideas in Erdkunde von Carl Ritter, VIII^ter Theil; III^ter Buch, West-asien Seiten 105-109, with reference to E. Burnouf Comment. sur le Yacna, pp. 461, 563.

[88] We may be here permitted to call to mind the eras of the Chaldeans, who, according to Berosus, Epigenes, Diodorus of Sicily, Abydenus counted 490,000, 720,000, 473,000, 463,763 years. They are said to have exhibited, before Alexander’s conquest in Asia, historical annals for 150,000 years.

[89] See [p. lxvii].

§ II.—The Peshdadian, Kayanian, Ashkanian, and Sassanian Dynasties—their religious and political institutions.

After the four dynasties mentioned follows the Gilshanian, monarchy, founded by Gilshah, or Kayomers, “the king or form of earth.”[90] We are now upon well-known ground, and hear familiar names of four races: the Péshdadian, Kayanian, Ashkaniun, and Sassanian, to which, altogether, the Dabistán attributes a period of 6024 years, differing considerably from that of other Asiatic chronologers.[91]

Sir William Jones was right when he declared,[92] that “the annals of the Péshdadi (or Assyrian) race must be obscure and fabulous; those of the Kayání family, or the Medes and Persians, heroic and poetic:” annals gathered from oral traditions can be but such as the great Orientalist characterises those of the mentioned dynasties. But it was in his younger years, before he had enlarged his views upon the history of mankind, that he fixed the origin of the Persian monarchy so late as 890 years before our era;[93] afterwards, in India, he refuted his former notions, and ranged more freely in the expanded fields of antiquity. I shall add that Ferdusi places the beginning of Gilshah’s reign 3529 years before Christ, an epoch which receives synchronical confirmation from our daily-increasing knowledge of the antiquity of China, India, Assyria, Egypt, and other states.

The fundamental religion remains the same: a celestial volume called Payman-i-farhang, in perfect accord with the Mahabadian code, is transmitted to Kayomers. So the Dabistán: but, in the Desátir, the four books ascribed to the first four Mahabadian prophet-kings contain the purest deism, and although the foundation of astrolatry and demonolatry may be perceived in the cosmology of the first book, yet these did not form a positive worship, which develops itself in the seven planetary books of the seven subsequent Persian kings, to wit: Kayomers, Siamok, Hushang, Tahmúras, Jamshid, Feridun, and Menocheher. Under these monarchs, a particular worship was rendered to the seven planets, as to mediators between God and men; the description of the forms under which they have been adored, is not, to my knowledge, found in any other book but the Dabistán.

Superstition is certainly as ancient as human nature itself; it is impossible to fix the epoch at which particular opinions and practices originated, such as the eighty-four sitting-postures at prayer; the suppression of the breath for the abstraction of thought; the mystical and fantastical notions upon vision and revelation; and particularly the belief that a man may attain the faculty to quit and to reassume his body, or to consider it as a loose garment, which he may put off at pleasure for ascending to the world of light, and on his return be reunited with the material elements. All these matters are considered as very ancient.

We find in the Dabistán a curious account of Persian sects under different names, such as Abadians, Azur-Húshangians, Jamshaspians, Samradians, Khodaiyans, Radians, Shidrangians, Paikarians, Milanians, Alarians, Shidabians, Akshiyans. The founders of these sects are placed so far back as the reigns of Jamshid and Zohak. Individuals professing the particular creed of each of these sects were living in the time of the author of the Dabistán, who was personally acquainted with several of them, and imparts the information which he had himself received from their lips. He gives with particular care an account of the before-mentioned Azar Kaivan,[94] the chief of the later Abadíans and Azar-Hushangians. The doctrine of these sectaries contained peculiar notions about God’s nature and attributes, and the world; the latter was to some an illusion; God himself but an idea. To others, God was every thing, to be served alone without a mediator between him and mankind; the heavens and the stars were his companions. God was the sun—fire—air—water—earth; he was the essence of the elements: from every one of these divine principles the heavens, stars, and the whole world proceeded. These were some of the fundamental principles of their metaphysical religion.

Their morality appears to have consisted in the acknowledgment of all natural virtues; piety, justice, charity, sobriety; wine and strong drinks were forbidden; above all a tenderness towards all living creatures was recommended; and the severity against those who slew innoxious animals was carried to such an excess, than even sons punished their fathers with death, and fathers their sons, for the slaughter of a sheep or an elk.[95]

Their political constitution appears from the earliest time to have been that of an absolute monarchy: this is the curse attached to Asiatics. The king was to be of a noble descent, and bound to acknowledge the Farhang-Abad, “code of Abad.” All dignities, military and civil, were hereditary from father to son. The royal court and inner apartments appear to have been regulated in much the same manner as they are still in Asia; his cup-bearers and familiar servants, as well as those of his sons, and other nobles, were always females.

The interior administration of cities and villages is sufficiently detailed in the Dabistán. An active police was established, with numerous spies and secret reporters, for the security of government. We are glad to find in such early times hospitals for the relief of the suffering, and caravansaras for the convenience of travellers. Moreover, post-stations of horses and messengers were distributed for the rapid communication of news, from all sides of the vast empire, to the monarch.[96]

Not a little care was bestowed upon the discipline and continual exercise of numerous armies. The military chiefs were distinguished by the magnificent decorations of their persons, horses, and arms, in which they prided themselves. They were bound to treat their soldiers kindly, nay, obliged to produce certificates, from their subordinates, of having behaved well towards them. An order of battle was prescribed, in which they were to encounter the enemy; no plunder after victory was permitted; they never slew, nor treated with violence, a man who had thrown down his arms and asked for quarter.

History may well be referred to religion, which is an ancient intellectual monument, living in the human soul from generation to generation. I have hitherto marked two religious periods: the first, that of the Desátir, through the Mahabadian dynasty; the second, that of Paiman-í-Farhang, prevailing during the Pésh-dadi-race until the middle of the Kayanian reign; I now come to the third.

[90] The first word is pure Persian; the other may be derived from the Sanscrit kaya, “body, form,” and mrita, “earth.”

[91] See vol. I. p. 31, [note 1.]

[92] His Works, vol. III. the sixth Anniversary Discourse, p. 108.

[93] Ibid., vol. XII. p. 399.

[94] See [page 63.]

[95] See vol. I. pp. [181]. [184].

[96] Parasang, Farsang, even in our days a Persian word, is found and determined as a lineal measure of distances in Herodotus, lib. II. V. and VI.

§ III.—The Religion of Zardusht, or Zoroaster.

All religions are said to have deviated from their primitive simplicity and purity, as men advanced in knowledge and civilisation. This is true but in a restricted and distinctive sense, and may be explained, even without yielding to our habit of considering that which is more remote and less known as holier than that which is nearer and better examined. Thus, we may admit that the impressions made upon men in the first stage of expanding reason are stronger and more vivid, the less they are distracted by simultaneous and correlative associations; one great idea is enough to fill their whole mind, and admits of no rival, of no commixture with any thing else; curiosity, versatility, luxuriancy of intellect are not yet known; constancy is a necessity in a small compass of ideas. We have already touched[97] upon the powerful effect which the early perception of the Divine produced upon man: but he soon circumscribed what was too vast or his comprehension in a perceptible object—heaven, sun, fire, to which he offered his adoration; he wanted a visible type or image of the invisible Divinity; but, his means of formation being at first very confined, he contented himself with the most simple representation: he had a symbol, an idol in a grove or cavern, but not yet a Pantheon. Simplicity may be a mere restriction to one object or to few objects; purity, nothing else but homogeneity in good or bad, true or false; we shall not confound them with rationality, which may subsist with multiplicity and mixture. Thus, the adoration of one deified man, one great serpent, one huge stone, is by no means more rational than the worship of numerous generations of gods, the ingenious personification sof multiform nature, ever acknowledged as the genuine offspring of the happy marriage between intellect and imagination. In the absence of arts and riches, worship is rude and destitute of showy accessories. Afterwards, the development of the understanding widens the field of reasoning, the fertility of which may be attested more by the shoot of weeds than by the growth of fruits: error prevails over truth; the increase of manifold resources facilitates and prompts superfetation of exterior religion. Besides, the impressions, by which the first legislator attached his followers to his doctrine, are effaced by time; the first traditions, obscured, confused, and altered; faith is weakened, and an opening made for change in belief, practice, and morals. A change, merely as such, is considered as a corruption by the adherents of the old creed. Finally, revolutions, interior and exterior, deteriorate or destroy religion and civilisation.

These reflexions, with the explanation previously given as to the various notions of which the religions in Asia were composed, will clearly show that, in the course of ages, a reform of astrolatry, pyrolatry, and idolatry, the branches of Sabæism and Mezdaism, became desirable; and Zardusht, or Zoroaster, appeared.

In the notes placed at the bottom of the pages containing Mohsan Fani’s account of Zoroaster,[98] will be found some of the principal results of the investigations which have been made in Europe respecting this legislator. The name of Zoroaster was applied by some to the founder of Magism, or Sabæism; we know also, that he has been identified with many other prophets under different names, among whom is Abraham, called “the great Zardusht,” and Hom, of so extensive a celebrity, that his name is mentioned by Strabo as predecessor of Zoroaster. No wonder that the name of the latter occurs in more or less remote times. According to the Dabistán, he was born in Rai, a town in the province of Jebal, or Irak Ajem, the country of the ancient Parthians, and appeared as a reformer of religion, under the reign of Gushtasp, the fifth king of the Kayanian dynasty, by the Occidental historians generally identified with Darius Hystaspes. Although variously stated, this period is less subject to chronological difficulties than are many others; for, as Eastern and Western historians agree in the epoch of Alexander’s death (321 B. C.), we may from this, as from a fixed point, remount upwards to Gushtasp; we find, according to some Orientals, five reigns in 228 years,[99] and therefore that of the said king, beginning 549 years before our era, whilst, according to the Occidentals, there are ten reigns within 200 years, from Alexander’s conquest of Persia to Darius Hystaspes, whose reign commences in 521 A. D. The discrepancy of twenty-eight years is far from being unexampled, even in more known periods, and may in this case be most easily and plausibly adjusted.[100]