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,* and Wasátir* in two other places of Glad­win's Persian text, and the last also in a passage of the printed edition.* The first is not easily accounted for, and is probably erroneous; but the second is found in the index of the printed edition,* under the letter <Arabic> 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* pre­ferred reading Desátir. It is derivable from the Sansrcit root <Arabic> 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 <Arabic> bha­sha , “to speak,”* 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* (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, <Arabic> frequently occurs for the Persian dál, <Arabic>, thus we find <Arabic>, wáden, for <Arabic>, dáden, “to give;” and wárem, <Arabic>, for dárem, <Arabic>, “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.*

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* and an anony­mous critic,* 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.*

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* 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,* 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.”*

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* 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.* 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.* 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.* 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.* 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,* 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:* “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 radicaI 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:* “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* takes the very same view of it.

These highly respectable crities 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:* “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* 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,* 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.*

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;”* 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 crities above quoted, adverse to this work, the great one of William von Schlegel. I must avow it; the celebrated author declares the Desátir,* inti­mately connected with the Dabistán, to be “a forgery still more refined (than that of the Brahman who deceived Wilford),* 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,* 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* 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,* 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* or the seventh* 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* that there were different races of Persæ, of whom he enumerates eleven. Those who inhabited originally Fars, Farsistan, Persis,* 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,* 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;* 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,* 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.,* 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.* 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.* 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.* 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?* 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 Muhammedan 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* 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!* 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 aud 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:* “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* 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,”* 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,* and tore to pieces Muhammed's written invitation to adopt Islam*; 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:* “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.