fcience, and the high price of the productions thus fplendidly adorned, we shall prefent our readers with an extract from the concluding portion of the first chapter of this work.

"When employed in tranfcribing the works of their favourite poets, romances, or narratives of heroick atchievements, the Perfian fcribes exhibit fuch minute neatnefs of execution, fuch tafte in the combination of letters, a variety of fancy fo fplendid in the difpofition of the ornamental parts, that a volume containing the productions of any celebrated author, written by a capital artift in his best manner, and furnished with miniatures and illuminations of adequate brilliancy, brings, even in the Eaft, a price which will appear extravagant to an European, acquainted only with the current value of printed books.

"In a very ingenious work, lately tranflated from the Perfian, we learn that a few manufcripts, written in a beautiful hand, conftituted no inconfiderable part of a moft magnificent offering from a conquered prince to the triumphant monarch Nadir Shah; and a fingle volume, brought from India by an English gentleman fome years ago, was purchased at the exorbitant rate of one thoufand rupees. It is not, however, always found, that the moft highly ornamented manuscripts are written with the greatest accuracy, or that they present the moft authentic readings: yet we can hardly fuppofe that much pains would be taken to render beautiful, that which is known to be eminently defective. The moft ancient manufcripts, I believe, or those written nearest the time of the original authors, will be found in general the moft correct; because, from the inattention of the tranfcribers already mentioned, each fuccceding copyift adds errors of his own to thofe of his predeceffors. So that the lateft tranfcript will be an aggregate of all their faults, unless written with peculiar care, and collated with many other copies of the fame work.

"On the fubject of thofe fplendid decorations and brilliant paintings, which fo much enhance the value of Perlian manufcripts, Î shall offer in another place fome obfervations; in the prefent eflay my defign is merely to affift the learner, by a few remarks on the combinations of letters used in the Talik hand, and explanations of its moft obvious difficulties and irregularities. And, before I prefent the reader with any fpecimens of Perfian writing, I fhall make fome obfervations, feparately, on the letters of the alphabet, in the ufual order; marking their principal deviations from the regular Nikhi hand, and the different combinations and contractions incidental to them." P. 8.

It will scarcely be expected by our readers, that in the brief, but fair fummary, which it is equally our wifh and our duty to give of Mr. Oufeley's expenfive, and to the student in Afiatic literature, important undertaking, we thould defcend to the minutia of criticifm, which would require types not readily obtained, and accuracy of inveftigation into matters, net immediately within our fphere, for which we have little lei

I

fure

fure or opportunity. In paffing, however, over the remaining chapters, we fhall note fuch paffages as are more generally interefting to the scholar and the hiftorian, and leave to thofe who are more immediately concerned in Graphic excelience, the grammatical and fyllabic difquifitions into which Mr. O. fo extensively enters. In the first place, the author having occafion to mention the great intermixture of Chaldaic words with the Pehlavi, or ancient language of Perfia, page 106, feems inclined to impute it to the conqueft of Babylon by Cyrus, but we argue, on the contrary, that conquerors do not, in general, adopt the language of the conquered people, and that this circumftance originates rather in the Persians or Elamites, having at first spoken that language when they, together with the other Noachida, tenanted the vaft plain of Shinar, whence they emigrated to their place of fettlement on the more eastern regions of the great range of Taurus. Bifhop Walton in the prolegomena, to his polyglot Bible, and Bochart, throughout his Phaleg, forcibly corroborate this opinion. Indeed what is more probable than that mankind, fprung, as all eastern traditions allow, from one grand stock, fhould once have spoken a language common to all? In the fecond place, we cannot agree with our author in his affertion, (ibid.) that the Perfians first learned the rite of magical incantation from the yanquifhed Babylonians, becaufe, in every age, the Perfians were grofsly addited to the Sabian fuperftition, and the very word magie is derived from a Perfian radical, fignifying meditation, which gave name to the fect of the Magi. The fact is, we believe, that the Perfian Magi, and the Chaldaic Seers belonged to the fame original aftronomical School, erected upon the ruins of the true religion, when the powers and influences which proceed only from the fountain of all beings, were attributed by idolatrous man to the hoft of heaven; and the rifing and fetting of the constellations gave birth to the midnight fpell, and the bloody, myfterious worship offered to dæmons, in the polluted caverns of Media and India. Mr. Oufeley feems fond of the fcience of antiqui ties, and has shown himself in various parts of this book an adept in them; but he does not mount high enough in the annals of time, and in the page of hiftory. One giaring proof of our affertion may be found in p. 4c1, where he feems to contend that Bactria and Bactros, ancient claffical names, might be derived from Bokhara, which is the modern capital of Sogdiana, but of which the ancients knew not the found, for the city was not in existence; though that of Balkh, the real Bactria, and refidence of Darius Hyftafpes, the Archima

gus,

gus, and his master Zeratufht, might have been familiar to them *.

The notes, however, and obfervations interfperfed through this work, evince great proficiency in oriental science, and much acquaintance with eastern fentiments and manners. The remarks of the author, on the four paradifaical rivers of Asia, are pertinent and interefting: the pathetic exclamation of the poet Jami, on the banks of a river watering the valley of Babylon, is judiciously compared with the beginning of the beautiful elegy of the captive Jews in Pfalm 137, and we think it very probable that the Mahometan poet had the Hebrew bard in his mind when he wrote it. As this portion of the work is of a more general nature, and exhibits a fair specimen of the author's abilities and depth of research, we fhall extract a page or two from it, not, however, troubling the reader with the notes which are mostly occupied by verbal criticifm.

Among his other titles, the Perfian Emperor ftyled himself, "Lord of the four Rivers of Paradife, which an ingenious traveller, (Sir Thomas Herbert, p. 225) explains by Euphrates, Tigris, Araxes, and Indus;" although in another place, (p. 243) he acknowledges his uncertainty, whether these were the ftreams that watered that happy garden; that the Euphrates and Tigris, were the principal rivers of the terrestrial Paradife, is allowed by all writers. The Jihoon, or Oxus, as we have juft feen, is fuppofed by fome to have its fource there, but as to the river Shihoon, as written in the fpecimen, I must confefs my ignorance. I cannot affirm that it means the Araxes, which rifes in Armenia, to the weft of the Cafpian Sea; and I fhould rather imagine that the points over the firit letters were fuperfluous, and that it fignifies the Sihoon, or ancient Jaxartes, between which, and the lower part of the courfes of the Jihoon, or Okus, lies that country called Tranfoxania formerly, and by the modern Afiatics, Mawer'-ul Neher, "The Land beyond the River."

"But fo little has been done on the geography of thofe countries, and fo ignorant are we ftill of the exact fituation of the rivers which we fpeak of, that a moft learned writer takes particular occafion to remark the peculiar obfcurity which yet hangs about them; and even the celebrated Orientalift, M. D'Herbelôt, only tells us, that perhaps (" peut-être") the Shihoon," is only another name for that river, which the "Ancients called Jaxartes, and the Arabs write Sihoon."

"Of the river Tigris, fo celebrated by the Greek and Latin writers, the ancient name is no longer used, and it is now called Dejleh;

*See Jones's Short Defcription of Afia, p. 5, to which may be added, the evidence of Greaves, in the Epocha Celebriores, the Nubian Geographer, D'Anville, and Herbelot's authorities under that article,

the

the etymology of the former is traced to the Perfian word Terr an arrow, which the river, from its velocity, was faid to refemble. To this word the Greeks (according to their ufual cuftom of adapting to their own idiom, all foreign, or as they ftyled them barbarous, words) added the common termination of the nominative cafe is, and the interpolation of the Greek gamma may be accounted for by the probable gutturality of pronunciation with which the Perfians uttered the letter R.

"The rapidity of this river's courfe is alluded to by Sadi, in an elegy which has been published with a Latin tranflation." The fame of my verfes," fays the prophetic poet, "fhall spread over the world with greater impetuofity than the current of the Tigris;" and the river Dejleh is celebrated in a particular chapter of a molt excellent geographical poem by Khacanì.

"The ancient Medes as well as Perfians (according to Pliny) called an arrow Tigris, and a learned commentator on Plutarch contends that this is properly a Medic, not a Perfian word; but the two nations are confounded by moft authors, on account of their vicinity. Yet, though all ancient writers agree, that the name, whether Medic or Perfian, was impofed as expreffive of the rapidity of this river's current, we find one traveller who calls them all in queftion, and afferts, that its ftream is less swift, even than that of the Euphrates. "On the banks of the Dejleh, 66 am I fallen," (fays the plaintive poet Jami) unfriended, and remote from any habitation, whilst a torrent of tears, like that of the rapid ftream, flows from my eyes." This river, from its conflux with the Euphrates, may be faid to water the plains of Babylon, and I could never read the above-mentioned pallage, in the original Perfian, without recollecting the beautiful beginning of that fine Hebrew pfalm or elegy, compofed in a fimilar forlorn fituation, and expreffive of the fame feelings.

"From the original Chaldaic name The Greeks have formed their corrupt Evgarns; for it is vain to feek the etymology of this word in a Greek compound. The Perfians and Arabians ftill call the river by its ancient Hebrew name, which they write, as in the engraved fpecimen Fràt.

"The celebrated current of the Euphrates, was divided, according to the Arabian geographer, whom Bochart follows, into five channels or branches, one of which led to Cufa in Chaldea; and on the banks of another, was feated the "Golden Babylon," once the proud mistress of the eastern world, being the capital of the Affyrian monarchy, which comprehended Syria, Mefopotamia, Chaldea, Perfia; in fhort, except India, all the great nations of western Afia. "On the banks of thofe celebrated ftreams, the ban Neheroth Babel, or "Rivers of Babylon," of the royal Pfalmift, the perfecuted Jews hung up their ufelefs harps, nor would gratify "those who had led them captive into the ftrange land with melody, or with a fong." Those banks were fo thickly planted with willow trees, as the learned Bochart informs us, that the country of Babylon was thence ftyled The Vale of Willows," and on thofe trees were fufpended the neglected and unftrung lyres of the captive He brews." P. 101.

What

What our author afterwards obferves concerning the com pilers of the Septuagint making Pifon to be the river Ganges, and Gihon the Nile; and the uncertainty, after all the labours of various commentators to fix them, of the limits of the Terreftrial Paradife, is deferving of notice; for, undoubtedly, both the Ganges and the Nile have ever been confidered as facred rivers, and poffibly that circumftance may have arisen not fo much from the fuperftitious veneration of the natives for water, the primary element, as from ancient traditions concerning the fanctity of thofe ftreams. In the very ancient Sanferit treatifes of geography, the boundaries of that Paradife are extremely enlarged, for Cafi or Benares, on the banks of the Ganges, is included in it; and, in the fame treatifes, Egypt and the Nile are conftantly confidered as belonging to Alia rather than to Africa. In truth, it is evident from those writings that the largest and fineft countries of the Greater Asia were embraced by the oriental Paradife; and had mankind remained in their primitive innocence, and the human fpecies multiplied in any proportion with their increafe after the fall, it was neceflary that its limits fhould be thus extended: at leaf, there is no abfurdity nor impiety in the fuppofition that they were; for the identity of the Phrath, or Forat and Euphrates, and that of the Hiddekel and Tigris, are alone precifely afcertained. The Pifon is, indeed, faid to have compaffed the whole land of Havilah; but Mofes, it fhould be obferved, makes mention of two Havilahs, the one defcended from Cufh, the other from Jocktan; and the name may as well be applied to the latter, whofe pofterity were planted eastward, as to the more western people who tenanted Arabia Felix. The Gihon, again, of which name no traces remain in thofe eastern regions where, with any propriety, it can be looked for as a stream of paradife, is faid to compass, or run through (as fome commentators have it) the whole land of Ethiopia, which is generally confidered as having reference to Ethiopia in Afia, by which, though certainly with great latitude, is faid to be meant Chuzeftan, or the province of Cufh. The Hebrew appeliative, Cufh, however, which the Septuagint, in conformity with the notion explained above, have tranflated Ethiopia, is the very name applied by the Indians to Egypt itfelf, through the middle of which the Nile runs, that country being denominated, in their dialect, Cufhadweepa, the continent of Cufh. The Septuagint probably followed, in their verfion of the paffage, fome ancient Egyptian record of facred geography in the public library of Alexandria, that magnificent monument of the ardent love of fcience, cherifhed by the illuftrious race of the Ptolemies.

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