The theatre upon which the author of the Dabistán begins history from the remotest times, is Persia, without limitation of its extent, probably including Chaldæa. From thence he passes to India, he says little of any other country; nothing at all of Egypt. The delta of this most fertile land, as an alluvial formation of the great river Nile, was necessarily posterior to the existence of inland regions; still its claims to antiquity are very high and not unsupported, to a certain extent, by the best written testimonies and architectural monuments. If I here refer in a cursory manner to its eras,* it is to strengthen what was above remarked concerning the general belief of the great age of the world. The ancient religion of Egypt, although connected and conformable in many points with other Asiatic religions, is never alluded to by the author of the Dabistán, probably because in his time the Egyptians had lost even the memory of their ancient history, which very little attracted the curiosity of their masters, the Muhammedans, except perhaps by the medium of the Bible of the Jews, often quoted in their Koran.*

I cannot here omit briefly noticing the various opinions of several learned men concerning the com­parative antiquity of the Magi, the Egyptian priests, and the Hindu philosophers. Aristotle* believed the Magi more ancient than the Egyptians; Diodo­rus of Sicily* believed the Hindus to have never sent nor received colonies, and invented every art and science; Lucian, Philostratus*, and Eusebius* granted anteriority in philosophy to the Hindus over the Egyptians. In our times the learned abbé Mignot established in three Memoirs*, that the Hin­dus owed nothing to the Egyptians, and traced the true communications of the former with several nations of Asia and Europe. But sir W. Jones declared in 1785*, as not ill-grounded, the opinion that Ethiopia and Hindostan were peopled or colo­nized by the same extraordinary race, or that the Ethiopians of Meroe were the same people as the Hindus. His opinion was reproduced under different forms by Rennel, Wilford, Forbes, Carwithen, among the English, and adopted by L. Langles among the French. I need not dwell upon this opinion, as the grounds upon which it rested are now considered as entirely destroyed. Sir W. Jones himself seems to have abandoned it in 1789,* as the Dabistán appeared to him to furnish an unexceptionable evi­dence, that the Iranian monarchy must have been the oldest in the world, although, he added, it will remain dubious to which of the three stocks, Hindu, Arabian, or Tartar, the first kings of Iran belonged; or whether they sprang from a fourth race, distinct from any of the others; He further states, that no country but Persia seems likely to have sent forth colonies to all the kingdoms of Asia, and that the three races (Indians, Arabs, Tartars) migrated from Iran as from their common country, “the true cen­tre of population, of knowledge, of languages, and of arts; which, instead of travelling westward only, as it has been fancifully supposed, or east­ward, as might with equal reason have been asserted, were expanded in all directions to all the regions of the world, in which the Hindu race had settled under various denominations.”

The second chapter of the Dabistán describes, in twelve sections, the religious systems and customs of the Hindus. It is a detailed account, given by a Persian who, as traveller and resident in India during about thirty years, had the best opportuni­ties to collect right information; he shows himself acquainted with the canonical books of this nation; he quotes their Puránas, and other works less known.*

The Hindus are, among all nations, most particularly distinguished by a decided turn for meta­physics, which even tinctured the radicals of their language; they have labored more than others to solve, exhaust, comprehend, what is insolvible, inexhaustible, incomprehensible. To give a general notion of their metaphysical theology, I do not say to render it intelligible, would require an exten­sive treatise. We will now give a few characteristic and leading features of their systems as indicated in the Dabistán.

Some of their theological philosophers made incredible efforts to steer clear of anthropomorphism in their conceptions of the Divinity: their Brahm, in the neuter gender, has no symbol, nor image, nor temple; they generally profess the great principle of emanation of all existences from a common but unknown source. God is the producer of the beginning and end, exhibiting himself in the mirror of pure space. Creation is held to have proceeded from pure space and time. Other Hindu philosophers establish: 1. a primary, subtile, universal substance, undergoing modification through its own energy. This they call Mula Prakritti, “rudimental nature,” no production but the root of all, involving, 2. seven principles, which are productions and productive (that is, intellect, egotism, and five subtile elements); from these seven proceed: 3. sixteen productions (to wit, eleven organs and five gross elements); to these just mentioned twenty-four (namely, Nature, seven principles and sixteen productions); add, 4. the soul, which is neither a production, nor productive, and you have the twenty-five physical and metaphysical cate­gories of the Sankhya philosophy.* This strikes us as a very specious methodical arrangement of an abstruse matter, which is not thereby in any degree rendered more intelligible.

We seem to understand something more when, as in the Vedenta philosophy, it is said of the truly-existing Being (God):* “that he has exhibited the world and the heavens in the field of existence, but has nothing like an odor of being, nor taken a color of reality; and this manifestation is called Máya that is, ‘the Magic of God,’ because the universe is his playful deceit, and he is the bestower of imitative existence, himself the unity of reality. With this pure substance, like an imitative actor, he passes every moment into another form. He, manifesting his being and unity in three persons, separate from each other, formed the universe. The connexion of the spirits with the holy Being is like the connexion of the billows with the ocean, or that of sparks with fire.” This is pure idealism; but man will spon­taneously break through the shadowy illusion, and grasp at some reality; the trinity of the Hindus became creation, preservation, and destruction (or reno­vation), the history of nature before their eyes.

I shall here remark, without attempting to explain, the striking contrast in the religion of the same nation between the most subtile metaphysic theology and the grossest idolatry. In the latter, the symbolical representation prevails; it is known, that in its immoderate use they have entirely aban­doned the normal proportions of the human form, and by the multiplication of members banished all fitness and beauty. Their plastic and graphic typi­fication of an all-mighty, all-bestowing, and all-resum­ing God, with its three, four, five heads, so many and more arms, is repulsive; in their poetry he frightens us with innumerable mouths, eyes, breasts, arms, and legs, grinding between his teeth the generations of men, who precipitate themselves into his mouth like rivers into the ocean, or flies into fire.*

The psychology of the Hindus is not less abstruse than the rest of their metaphysics. We have already mentioned the soul among the twenty-five catego­ries as neither a production nor productive. The Indian philosophers distinguish spirit and soul, that is, a rational soul and a mere sensitive prin­ciple. The first is supposed enveloped with a subtile, shadowy form of the most delicate material ether. Some hold the soul to be incased in three sheaths, the intellectual, the mental, and the organic or vital sheath.* According to different views the vital spirit is Máya herself, or an emanation of Máyá, in any case the illusive manifestation of the uni­verse.

This ingenuous conception seems to have taken deep and complete possession of the Hindus; it dominates in their most subtile abstractions, and embodies itself in a thousand forms to their vivid and luxuriant imagination. The Saktians, a sect wedded to sensual materialism, represent Máyá as a Saktí or energy of Siva; she is “the mother of the universe;” “non-entity finds no access to this creator, the garment of perishableness does not sit right upon the body of this fascinating empress; the dust of nothingness does not move round the circle of her dominion; the real beings and the accidental creatures of the nether world are equally enamoured and intoxicated with desire before her.” Above the six circles, into which the Hindus divide the human body, is “the window of life, and the passage of the soul, which is the top and middle of the head, and in that place is the flower of the back of one thousand leaves: this is the residence of the glorious divinity, that is, of the world-deceiving queen, and in this beautiful site reposes her origin. With the splendor of one hundred thousand world-illuminating suns, she wears, at the time of rising, manifold odoriferous herbs and various flowers upon her head, and around her neck: her resplendent body is penetrated with perfumes of divers precious ingredients, such as musk, safran, sandal, and amber, and bedecked with magnificent garments; in this man­ner, she is to be represented.”* Thus we see the poetical imagination of the Hindus, playing, as it were, with abstruseness, materializing what is spiritual, and spiritualizing what is material.

Characteristic of and peculiar to the Hindus, are their conceptions relative to the states of the embodied soul, which are chiefly three: “waking, dream­ing , and profound sleep.”* In these three condi­tions the soul is imprisoned, but it may, by virtue and sanctity, break the net of illusion, that is, acquire the consciousness of the illusion which capti­vates it, and know that, even when awake, man is dreaming: this is the triumph of his perfection.

Such, and other notions, in their development and application, form a system of metaphysics, in which excess and abuse of refined speculations lose themselves in obscurity, contradiction, and absur­dity.

Among the Indian sectaries appear the Charvak, who, rejecting the popular religion, follow their own system of philosophic opinions.

Of Buddha and the Buddhists, we are disappointed to find so little in the Dabistán, except the important information that Vichnu, in order to destroy the demons and evil genii, the agents of night, assumed the avatár of Buddha when ten years only of the Dwaparyug remained, that is, 3112 years before Christ. In the section on the tenets held by the followers of Buddha, these religionists are called Jatis or Yatis, a great number of whom are corn-traders and get their livelihood as servants; they are divided in several classes, and do not believe the incarnations of the deity; as to the rest, they have tenets and customs in common with other Indian sects, only distin­guishing themselves by a great aversion to Brah­mans, and an extreme care of not hurting animal life.

In the whole account, which the Dabistán gives of the various sects and doctrines of the Hindus, we can but remark a frequent confusion of Indian with Muhammedan notions and stories. Indeed, this work having been written in India at a time when, after a sojourn of more than seven centuries, about twenty millions of Muselmans appeared, as it were, lost in the midst of one hundred millions of Hindus, we cannot wonder that a mutual assimila­tion in opinions and customs took place among individuals of both religions. A remarkable instance of it presents itself in the person of Kabir, renowned in his time for sanctity. After his death, both the Hindus and Muhammedans claimed his corpse for funeral honors; monuments erected to him by each party exist in our days, with the proverbial pre­cept which originated from this event:

“Live so as to be claimed after death to be burnt by Hindus, and to be buried by Muslims.”

The Indian Yogis, Sanyásis, and Vairagis are per­petually confounded with Muhammedan Durvishes, and Sufis, of whom hereafter.

We do not fail to meet with many traces of the ancient Persian astrolatry and pyrolatry among the Indians. Mohsan mentions the Surya-makhan (Sau­ras), “worshippers of the sun,” and periphrases, as addressed to that luminary, a Sanscrit prayer, which seems to be one of those called gayátri, the holiest verses of the Vedas, kept as mysterious by the Brahmans, and pronounced with the deepest sense of concentrated devotion. In our days, more than one gayátri has been made known.* We can­not doubt that (according to the poet)* —

“That vast source of liquid light, the ethereal sun, which perpetually laves heaven with ever-renewed brightness.”

was, from the remotest times, the object of adora­tion in India. The Dabistán mentions also the Chandra-bakhtra, “worshippers of the moon.” Even in our days we find the veneration for the sun, the planets, and fire, openly practised by the Hindus. The worshippers of the latter elements called Sagníkas, are very numerous at Benares;* they keep many agni-hotras, “burnt-offerings,” continually blazing; they kindle, with two pieces of sacred wood, called sámi, a fire, never extinguished during their lives, for the performance of solemn sacrifices, their nuptial ceremonies, the obsequies of departed ancestors, and their own funeral pile. There are besides particular worshippers of the wind, water, earth, and the three kingdoms of nature. The latter are called Tripujas, “trinitari­ans.” We find also Manushya-bhakta, “worship­pers of mankind,” who recognise the being of God in man, and believe nothing to be more per­fect than mankind; like Channing, a famous American preacher of our days. In short, the worship of personified nature, in its utmost extent, is most evident in what we know of the Vedas, and never ceased to be the general religion of the Hindus.

Not without interest will be read in the Dabistán the account of Nanak,* the founder of the Sikh reli­gion and domination. He is there represented as having been, in a former age, Janaka, sovereign of Mithila, and father of Sitá, the wife of Rama. The revolution effected by Nanak, in the middle of the sixteenth century, proves that the Hindus are not quite so unchangeable in religion and customs as is generally believed. It is however to be remarked, that the Panj-ab, the country of the Sikhs, was always considered by the Brahmans as the seat of heterodoxy (probably Buddhism), and blamed for irregularity of manners. Mohsan's account will be found to add confirmation and a few particulars to that given of Nanak, from the best sources—the generals sir John Malcolm, and John Briggs.

What will appear most valuable in this work is the description of various usages, some of which have never been described elsewhere. The most ancient customs are brought to recollection. Thus, we find stated, on the authority of Maha bharat, that widows could formerly take other husbands— married women, with the consent of their hus­bands, maintain intercourse with other men—several individuals, of the same race and religion, espouse one wife among them;—in ancient times there existed no such practice as appropriation of husband and wife; every woman being allowed to cohabit with whomsoever she liked; conjugal fidelity was only in later times made a duty. Much of what he describes may be seen, even in our days, in India, where all the degrees of civilisation which the Hin­dus ever attained, from the lowest to the highest, occur here and there within a small compass of country. So constant are they in good and bad! The whole of antiquity is still living in India, and Herodotus stands confirmed in what appeared most incredible in his narrative by the testimonies of Moh­san Fáni, the reverend abbe Dubois,* Ward, and others. The Persian author intersperses his account with anecdotes which characterise in the most lively manner individuals, sects, and tribes. If now and then we must avert our eyes from disgusting scenes of human degradation, more frequently we admire man, even in his errors, for the power and command of the mental over the physical part of his nature. The naked Yogi, who inflicts the most cruel tortures upon himself, wants but a better motive for being justly extolled as a hero of forti­tude; death appears to him an habitual companion, into whose arms he sinks without fear; overpow­ered by malady, he buries himself alive.

We may be astonished at the number of unbe­lievers among the Hindus of whom we read, and at the licentiousness of their opinions, expressed with a strength which we should think carried to excess.* We perceive also that, in contradiction to common belief, in the midst of the seventeenth century, when the Dabistán was composed (1645 A. D.) a numerous class of Indians assumed the name of Muselmans, but it must be remarked, that the Hindus neither endeavor to make, nor easily admit, proselytes: because their religion depends much less upon creed, in which they are latitudinarians, than upon the fixed customs of their castes, the character of which, being derived from birth, cannot be transferred to strangers.* We shall see hereafter in what manner Hindus and Muhammedans may be confounded with each other.

So much of India being known in our days, we have the facility of trying the veracity and correct­ness of the Dabistán concerning this country. Its account will be found, I dare say, rather incomplete in the small compass in which so extensive a subject was inclosed, but not inaccurate in the greatest part of its various statements. Sir W. Jones* bears Moh­san Fani the testimony, “that his information con­cerning the Hindus is wonderfully correct.” Let us compare the account given by him with all that has been published about India by the best instructed Europeans before the foundation of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and we shall regret that the Dabistán was brought into notice so late. Whatever it be, the particular views of a Persian, through a medium of education, religion, and custom, so dif­ferent from that through which we consider India, can but interest us by their novelty, and by them­selves add something to our information about the character of Asiatics.