(_Under the Direction of_ Professor E. H. PALMER.)
Colonel Malleson certainly did well to claim permission to rewrite Sir
John Kaye's last volume (_History of the Indian Mutiny_, by Colonel
Malleson, Vol. I., London: W. H. Allen & Co.), and comparison of the two
may afford to the historian of the future valuable aid in interpreting
the volumes yet to come. A great part of the present must be held to be
the work of the virulent pamphleteer and violent partisan rather than of
the historian; and if the quotations of, and references to, the Red
Pamphlet indicate relations between Colonel Malleson and its author, the
publishers cannot be held to have exercised a wise discretion in their
choice.
The task of the reviewer of such a book is unusually heavy. Book for
book, almost chapter for chapter, it is intended to replace Sir John
Kaye's work, and the reviewer therefore needs to study the two
carefully, and to compare them minutely. Colonel Malleson, no doubt, had
access to Sir John Kaye's materials, but within a certain field seems to
have been unable to see the other side of any question. To arm, to leave
Sepoys armed, is simply to detain European troops to watch them; it is
nothing that to disarm them is to drive them, and all their connections,
wild with terror as sheep marked for the slaughter; yet he cannot be
ignorant of the cases in which a few bad men committed a regiment, and
how whole regiments "went" in terror of their masters' vengeful
distrust.[105] In saying, as he does so confidently, that by enrolling
the Calcutta Volunteers on their first offer, on 20th May, Lord Canning
would have set free half a European regiment, Colonel Malleson must have
been thinking of what the Volunteers might have been fit to do had they
been enrolled and drilled six months before,--provided they had been
willing to take the day-work of garrison duty, and to think more of the
State than of the house and furniture at Ballygunj: the real profit of
the enrolment was the confidence and cheerfulness organization gave to
the Europeans themselves. And--to take a more important instance--the
"Gagging Act" was an insolent expression of distrust of Englishmen, an
attempt to prevent their opinions reaching England _in print_. For
distrust of their discretion English editors had given cause enough, and
for influencing English opinion, as Indian newspapers may be said to be
unknown in England in their original sheets, a letter from the editor of
the _Friend of India_ to any English paper would have been as sure of
English readers, and of as much weight with them, as if it had been set
up in the damp printing-house at Serampore.
Colonel Malleson quotes from the "Red Pamphlet," as Sir John Kaye had
done before him, a smart description of "Panic Sunday." From Colonel
Cavanagh's report it seems pretty clear that the higher classes--the
"society"--of Calcutta were not among the refugees in the fort, and as
Secretaries to Government and Members of Council may be counted on the
fingers, it would be as well if the historian would name the fugitives
before death takes all who could answer the charge. We have had access
to the diary of a young civilian, then a guest of the Member of Council
who lived furthest from Government House, away in Alipore, beyond the
house of the Lieutenant-Governor and the great jail of Alipore and the
lines of the native regiment which was the great terror of Calcutta: on
that Sunday, host and guest went to the Cathedral twice as usual, and
after the evening service the guest returned home, while the host drove
to Calcutta to call on some cousins; as the cousins had driven to
Alipore, and the visitors at both houses waited a while those households
at least were afoot till a later hour than usual, and at last went to
bed as usual without closing an extra door.
The second chapter closes with an impassioned peroration, wherein the
removal of Mr. William Tayler from his post at Patna is likened to the
judicial murder of Lally, and the starvation of Dupleix. It is clear
enough, from Colonel Malleson's account, that Mr. Tayler liked to carry
out his own plans too well to risk interference by over-frankness to his
superiors. In the face of an enemy such concealment may be as
mischievous as disobedience, and Sir John Kaye reminds us that at an
earlier date confidence in Mr. Tayler's judgment had been shaken; and
his report of his message to his district officers, the report which
immediately preceded, and probably led to, his suspension, says nothing
of the clause which sets the treasure above anything save human life.
Under any circumstances Mr. Tayler's defence is not helped by sharp
censures on Mr. Money, or by blindness to the fact that the best
intelligence made a march to Patna seem more perilous than the far
longer one through a jungle country to Calcutta. Wise after the event,
indeed, we may see that Mr. Tayler's forecast was sounder than Mr.
Halliday's; but the Lieutenant-Governor, and Lord Canning too, could
only act on the circumstances known to them, and Mr. Tayler was replaced
by an officer of yet higher rank in the official hierarchy, and probably
forestalled renewed promotion by resigning the Service as soon as he
could get a pension. But why were not his services rewarded? asks
Colonel Malleson, ready with the hard word "intrigue." But who were the
sharers in the intrigue, and who was to profit by it? Men whom Lord
Canning sharply rebuked and degraded were yet recommended by him for
honour, and no courteous letter from Mr. Talbot can do away with the
fact that the Viceroy, writing when all heat of strife was over and all
facts known, yet did not obtain for Mr. Tayler any distinction.
On one point, however, we are bound to protest against Sir John Kaye's
harsh judgment: to him the arrest of the Wahabi leaders was a scandalous
breach of the usages of war. But they were unquestionably subjects of
the British Crown, and the question surely is--would they have resisted
arrest by ordinary process or not? If not, they had to thank Mr. Tayler
for courteous consideration in arresting them himself, and detaining
them in honourable captivity; in resisting they would have been guilty
of that rebellion against their sovereign in which there was too good
reason to believe them sharers.
On the many points whereon both authors are in substantial accord it
would be waste of space to touch, and we pass to the other important
episode in which Colonel Malleson traverses Sir John Kaye's judgment,
and here our verdict is with the later author: in treating of Durand's
conduct at Indore, Colonel Malleson seems to have risen above the region
of personal feeling, if not of personal knowledge; so that while his
full and vivid narrative shows plainly the difficulties, political and
strategical, of Durand's position and also of his retreat, he shows as
clearly that it is no simple case of Durand _versus_ Holkar, but one in
which each may be commended without loss of credit to the other.
So much space has been of necessity devoted to the chief points on which
the two authors are at variance, that none is left for the transactions
which Colonel Malleson's changed arrangement brings into the present
volume, though Kaye had intended for them a place in some later one. His
work in the new field makes us only the more regret that he did not
bring to his task the unbiassed mind of a man who had never known the
author of the Red Pamphlet or Mr. William Tayler. But we would, in a
concluding word, beg him to revise his Indian spelling; to a man who has
once felt the charm of a fancy rule the claims of established usage go
for nothing, but at all events he may be decently consistent; why does
Colonel Malleson double so many letters which in Urdu are single, and
why does he spell the name of the ancient and famous, if now obscure,
town of Jaunpore as though it were "the City of Life"?
Captain Low's _History of the Indian Navy_ (2 vols., London: Bentley &
Son) has long been reproachfully demanding notice; it is easy to say
something about such a work, not easy to treat it worthily. A man could
hardly put together 1100 pages of small type without recording many
noteworthy facts, but all matters of interest might have been packed in
much smaller compass, and so packed would have found more readers and a
more favourable verdict.
The two volumes trace the rise and fall of the Navy from its germ in the
"ten grabs and galivats" taken up for the defence of the factory and
shipping of Surat in 1615, through the period of its glory when its
ships bore the Company's flag alongside of the Royal Navy on many
hard-fought days, through its decline, when they carried mails or
transported troops with rare enjoyment of a brush, to its abolition in
our own time, when, less fortunate than its sister service, it fell a
victim to mutiny and disorders in which it had no share.
The first period in its history ends with the year 1759, when, with the
capture of Gheriah, and the destruction of Angria's power, piracy as a
business of State came to an end, and when the ruin of the Seedee, and
the substitution of the Company as High Admiral of the Mogul Empire,
placed the local Marine first among the maritime powers of India. Its
first serious service was in the operations which broke the power of the
Portuguese in the Gulf, and in 1622 reduced Ormuz from an emporium of
proverbial wealth and magnificence to its normal condition of a poor
barren island, and for many years the Portuguese found it as much
occupation as the pirates who might well have been its first concern. No
doubt the captains of well-armed India-men, whose crews were borrowed
for service on grabs and galivats, looked down on the latter as a sort
of coastguard, but the aid of such light craft was invaluable against
the shoals of small vessels which beset new-comers fore and aft, pouring
down crowds of well-armed men from their long overhanging prows. For in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the shores of the Indian Ocean
swarmed with pirates, kept down indeed by the Portuguese in the heyday
of their power, but making head again till, by the middle of the
seventeenth century, according to Italian travellers, they feared none
but Dutch and English, and these only for a pestilent practice of firing
the magazine rather than surrender. Yet to the Mogul governor of Surat
probably the pirate of home growth was less objectionable than the
intrusive trader; and indeed the Nuwab was not without excuse if he
regarded the European as a more powerful pirate, seeing that some
commanders took by force goods which the native owner would not sell,
others ransacked ships not said to belong to the Mogul's ports, the
mutinous crews of others became open pirates; and lastly, we find
Captain Kidd, and other heroes of the black flag, practising their
vocation in these seas. The native pirate, the European rival, and the
professional rover, kept the local marine pretty well employed, but it
is not always easy to distinguish between the services of this body and
the Company's armed trading ships.
Of more interest to the Mogul Government than foreign trade were the
vessels in which Mahomedan pilgrims of all ranks sailed to Arabian and
Persian shrines, and for their benefit it came to terms with the Seedee,
better known to us as the Hubshi of Jinjirah, the boldest of the
pirates, giving him a large allowance and high rank to secure his
convoy. The Company made more than one attempt to supplant him, and
indeed furnished ships to guard the Mocha-Jeddah fleet in 1698, but the
Seedee kept his office till 1759; in the general decay of the central
power he first neglected, then openly defied, the Governor of Surat, and
instead of protecting trade became its chief oppressor; till at last, in
1759, after much negotiation, the Nuwab induced the Bombay Government to
intervene, and as a reward obtained for the Company the Seedee's office.
What direct profit the Company derived from the appointment Captain Low
does not tell us; the omission can hardly be the consequence of the
lamented destruction of papers which followed the sale of the old India
House, for he records that in 1694 the Seedee's subsidy amounted to four
lacs, no doubt considerably bettered by presents, and in 1735 the money
allowance was but a lac and a half: the revenues of the districts and
customs assigned to the Company went to support the Surat squadron, but
the fees of office granted to the officer who was its deputy amounted,
to near a lac of rupees a year; it is well to remember that the holder's
gross pay was but Rs.1,000 a year, that the Governor of Bombay had but
some £500, and that till near the end of the century private trade was
allowed: no one, however, was permitted to enjoy this great prize for a
second year. Whatever were the profits to the Company, the Nuwab could
see that it did more for its wages than the Seedee, for in the next nine
years the Surat squadron destroyed near a hundred pirate vessels of the
Gulfs of Cutch and Cambay.
After another seventy years the Bombay Marine became in name what, as
the only local armed fleet, it had long been in fact--the Indian Navy.
Wherever round the basin of the Indian Ocean there had been fighting in
those years, the vessels of the Bombay Marine had borne the British flag
with honour, though the services of officers and crews, both afloat and
ashore, had been too sparingly recognised. And in those years was
commenced the series of surveys which are still the chief authorities
for the navigation of the Eastern seas, and have given the names of
Rennie, Moresby, Haines, and Taylor a permanent place in history. But
men who entered the Bombay Marine were still serving efficiently when
the Indian Navy was abolished, in the belief that ships of the Royal
Navy would carry on the police of the seas as efficiently, but at less
annual cost, and that other arrangements might be made for the business
of inland navigation and transport; the necessity for recurrent shore
surveys seems not to have been foreseen, though already a special
department has been created and placed under a retired officer of the
Indian Navy. It is impossible not to admit that, through its want of
influential friends, the Service was treated unjustly. The guarantee of
"Colonel Sykes's clause" has, through repeated agitation, been made so
effectual for officers of the Indian Army that men of forty have retired
as full colonels, because all their regimental seniors had joined the
Staff Corps, while the officers of the Indian Navy were forced to retire
without appeal on something like the pension of their rank. But they
must have felt a grim satisfaction in knowing that they had outlived the
piracy which had been the scourge of Western India and the first cause
of the creation of the force; their last serious service was in
administering a final pounding to their old enemies the Waghers, the
last survivors of the flourishing pirate communities of Kattyawar.
Besides surveys of the Eastern seas, European nations trading with India
are indebted to the Indian Navy for the opening up of the Overland
Route, and so, indirectly, for the construction of the Suez Canal.
Without steam, indeed, the Red Sea could never have become a highway of
commerce, while with its extended use that great canal could not for
ever be closed; but the _Hugh Lindsay_ of the Indian Navy, the first
steamer constructed in the East, which, after thirty years of service,
was still staunch enough for work as a tug at Kurachi, was the first
steamer to appear on its waters, making the voyage to and from Suez in
1830, under the command of Captain John Lindsay. The expense of the
voyage, however, was so great that, after seven trips, the Court bade
the Government of Bombay only repeat it in case of emergency, and it was
reserved for Lieutenant Waghorn, also of the Indian Navy, by sacrifice
of his private fortune and professional prospects and ten years'
unceasing labour, to prove that communication with India through the Red
Sea was not only a luxury of State, but a profitable commercial
enterprise. From his labours all have profited save himself and his
family, and the only public acknowledgment of his services is a bust in
the Canal Garden at Suez.
With some labour, caused by the want of an index, many notices of
interest might be quarried from Captain Low's pages. The early history
of Bombay, the antecedents of the rulers of Muscat and Zanzibar, the
settlement at Aden, the true story of Perim, the achievements of the
Sepoy Marines, who are now represented by two regular regiments of the
Bombay Army, all invite notice, but our space is exhausted. Yet we must
find room to mention the self-denial of Commodore Hayes, who, rather
than embroil the Company with China, released two junks captured in
running the blockade from Batavia with Dutch property, and so sacrificed
his large share of £600,000 lawful prize; and the gallantry of
Midshipman Denton, who, unable to board a proa, lashed her bowsprit to
the taffrail of his gunboat, and so continued his course, fighting her
all the time. And for contrast with the experience of the Bay of Bengal,
where we believe that the full pressure of a great cyclone has never
been recorded, as the anemometers have broken with a pressure of sixty
pounds, we may note that, in the cyclone of November, 1854, so famous at
Bombay, the pressure did not exceed thirty-five pounds to the square
foot: with such a storm as that which raged in Calcutta in October,
1864, the whole native town of Bombay would come down like a house of
cards. We are sorry not to have been able to notice Captain Low's
labours more favourably; particular points which we had noted for
objection we will pass over in silence.
* * * * *
Captain Richard Burton is _facile princeps_ of modern travellers. There
scarcely any part of the world which he has not visited, and wherever he
goes he seems to have the history, geography, and ethnology of the
country at his fingers' ends. His last important contribution to
geographical science is the account of his visit to the Land of Midian,
whither he went, commissioned by the ex-Khedive of Egypt, in search of
the gold mines of which the ancient Arab geographer and others speak.
The results of his expeditions are published in two works: _The
Gold-Mines of Midian and the Ruined Midianite Cities_ (London: C. Kegan
Paul & Co., 1878) and _The Land of Midian (Revisited)_, 2 vols., issued
by the same publishers during the present year. Having received an
invitation from the ex-Viceroy, Captain Burton proceeded to Cairo in
March, 1877, where an expedition was organized for the purpose of
exploring the auriferous region. The author's comparison of the Cairo of
the present time with the city as he knew it in his old pilgrim days,
and as it is described in Lane's "Modern Egyptians," forms, although
only incidental, a very interesting portion of the book. The chapter on
Suez also is a good specimen of Captain Burton's style, and contains at
once a topographical sketch, an archæological and historical
description, and a chatty and amusing account of the modern city, its
society, and surroundings. Midian, called nowadays by its inhabitants,
as by the mediæval Arabic geographers, _Arz Maydan_, the Land of Midian,
is that part of Arabia which occupies the east coast of the Gulf of
Akabah, and extends some two degrees further to the south. The borders
are somewhat difficult to ascertain, and it is probable that the ancient
Midianites, like some of the larger and more powerful Bedawin tribes of
the present day, wandered far and wide, and that their limits shrunk or
extended according to their numbers, or the resisting power of their
neighbours. The ancient history of the land is told by Captain Burton in
a most exhaustive manner, the Biblical accounts being supplemented by
copious references to Greek, Latin, Jewish, and Arabic writers of all
ages. The quantity of gold, silver, and other metals mentioned in
Numbers xxxi. 22, as being produced by Midian, was curiously borne out
by the results of the expedition. A lengthy and learned notice is also
given of the Nabathæans, whose former rock-cut capital, Petræa, is still
one of the marvels of Arabia; whose king, or ethnarch, Aretas (in
Arabic, El Hareth), is mentioned in the New Testament; and whose rule
embraced so large a portion of Syria and Arabia, and extended late into
Christian times.
The discovery that gold existed in Midian was in the first place due to
Haji Wali, familiar to the readers of Captain Burton's "Pilgrimage to
Mecca and Medina" as the companion of the author in the caravanserai at
Cairo while preparing for the journey to Hejjaz. The old Haji was once
returning from a visit to Mecca, when halting by the shore of the Gulf
of Akabah he scooped up a handful of granitic sand which sparkled in the
bed of the wady and took it with him to Alexandria. There he took his
specimen to an assayer, and, although the glitter which had attracted
him proved only to be produced by the presence of mica, his sand when
smelted in a crucible yielded a comparatively large portion of pure
gold. The information of the discovery was not received with
encouragement by the official to whom Haji Wali communicated it, and the
latter ceased to think more of the subject. The assayer, however, set
out for the new Eldorado and lost his life, probably murdered by the
Bedawin. Captain Barton believes that the secret of the gold has never
been really lost, and that the washing of sand has always been
clandestinely carried on. Be that as it may, Captain Burton, believing
the Haji's story, endeavoured to recommend his discovery to the notice
of the Egyptian authorities, who _pooh-pooh'd_ the whole thing, and
merely remarked that gold was becoming too common. For nearly a quarter
of a century Captain Burton kept the secret to himself, but at length he
again sought out his old friend Haji Wali, obtained from him more exact
information as to the locality, and carried him off with the expedition,
the means for organizing which Ismail Pasha furnished. The results of
the expedition, which was only a pioneer one, were sufficient to
corroborate all that the Haji had said, and to confirm Captain Burton's
own prognostications drawn from the ancient sources which his extensive
learning enabled him to consult. The adventures of the party fill the
remainder of the first of his two books and form extremely pleasant
reading.
The second of the two books contains somewhat less antiquarian research,
but more practical information than the first. It is a record of the
second expedition (also equipped at the expense of the Egyptian
Government by order of the ex-Khedive), and is full of pleasant
travel-talk and adventure. Setting out from Cairo in a sickly season and
under the most unfavourable circumstances--the resources of the country
being drained by distress at home and the Turkish-Russian war
abroad--they at length got under way once more for the desert, not
without encountering hair-breadth escapes from the bursting of some of
the tubes of the engine of their steamer. Once landed, the initial
difficulties of desert travel had to be encountered. "It had been
reported," says Captain Burton, "that I was the happy possessor of
£22,000, mostly to be spent in El-Muwaylah. The unsettled Arabs plunder
and slay; the settled Arabs slander and cheat." These, however, were
soon smoothed over by the commander's tact and firmness, the rival
claims of two tribes to act as escort were disposed of, and the work of
the expedition then began.
The first march, through Madyan proper (North Midian), occupied
fifty-four days. The country was essentially a mining district, and very
rich in mineral wealth, though, strange to say, it had not been much
worked by the ancients. The first expedition found free gold in the
basalt, but the researches of the second yielded none. The second march,
through South Midian, lasted eighteen days. Its principal object was to
ascertain the depth from east to west of the quartz formations, and to
explore the virgin region towards the east. Here, however, they were
stopped by the exactions and turbulent conduct of the Maazeh, who tried
to pick quarrels with their Huweitat guides, and made it impossible for
Captain Burton to proceed without such loss of time and other
inconveniences as must have sacrificed the other and more important
objects of the expedition. The last journey was through the southern
portion of Midian, and lasted twenty-four days. This part of the country
has been systematically worked in former times, and it is here that the
gold and silver mines are placed by the mediæval Arab geographers.
Throughout Midian, ruined towns, villages, mining stations, and smelting
furnaces were found, testifying to the former mining industry of the
country, and described by Captain Burton in his usual graphic and
careful style.
That Midian abounds in mineral wealth, and that gold and silver may be
found in plenty there, is clear both from the documentary evidence of
the author and from the testimony of the physical and geological
features of the country. The very first reconnaissance showed a
formation exactly reproducing "the conditions which Australia shows, and
which produced the huge 'welcome nugget' of Ballarat." The country also
closely resembles the known gold-working sites of Ancient Egypt, but
with _filons_ of larger size. Some of these "Ophirs of Egypt Proper"
yielded the treasury of Ramses the Great the enormous sum of £90,000,000
a year, as hieroglyphic inscriptions tell us. Herodotus, too, tells us
of the immense wealth in the precious metals possessed by some of the
Pharaohs. The modern Bedawins have legends of "gold pieces, square as
well as round, bearing, by way of inscription, 'prayers' to the Apostle
of Allah," which Captain Burton suspects to be "the Tibr, or 'pure
gold-dust,' washed from the sands and cast probably in rude moulds." The
close proximity to the sea and the facilities of the country for
transport, it being "prepared by Nature to receive a tramway," remove
half the difficulties of working.
That the specimens brought back by Captain Burton's expedition did not
actually yield a larger proportion of the precious metals is in all
probability due to the fact that they had no expert with them, and did
not, therefore, sufficiently seek for and select stone from the
auriferous rocks, but brought away much that the ancients had rejected,
or left as unworkable. He is, however, convinced, as the impartial
reader of his work must also be, that the gold land of Midian is still a
fine field for commercial enterprise, which would soon restore to it the
advantages which all ancient authorities declare that it once possessed.
* * * * *
"The Land of Midian" attracted another explorer besides Captain
Burton--namely, the late Dr. Beke, an account of whose labours has been
given to the world by his widow in a bulky volume on the subject. His
object was to discover the "true Mount Sinai," which he identified with
a certain Jebel Barguir, otherwise the "Mountain of Light," on the
Eastern shore of the Gulf of Akaba, and in which he fancied he saw the
"volcano," the existence of which he had previously conjectured in his
pamphlet, "Mount Sinai a Volcano." To make this theory accord with the
Scriptural account, he had not only to shift the scene of the Law-giving
from the Sinaitic Peninsula to the other side of the Gulf, but he was
obliged to find another Mizraim than Egypt, and boldly sacrificed
hieroglyphic, Biblical, and classic testimony, as well as that of
tradition, to his own hypothesis. In confirmation of his theory, he
found indications that the Mountain of Light was regarded as a holy
place, and discovered ancient inscriptions near the summit, of which he
brought copies home in triumph. Unfortunately, however, the name
_Barguir_ turns out to be his own corruption of _Bakir_, a well-known
Mohammedan name, and, in the present instance, that of the petty Arab
saint whose tomb gives the only sanctity the mountain may possess, while
the proper name of the mountain is Jebel el Yitm; the inscriptions are
only the ordinary Nabathæan _graffiti_ and Arab-tribe marks, which are
so common all over Arabia Petræa; and lastly, there is no volcano at
all. The volume is interesting, as it contains much topographical
information about a country the ancient history and future prospects of
which render it of the highest importance; but as a contribution to the
literature of the much-vexed question of the Exodus the late Dr. Beke's
work is absolutely useless. Whether the so-called Peninsula of Sinai is
really the scene of the early portion of that drama, the recent Egyptian
researches of Dr. Brugsch Bey have rendered very doubtful; but wherever
Mount Sinai has ultimately to be placed, it is not that discovered by
Dr. Beke.
* * * * *
As Mrs. Burton supplemented the "Unexplored Syria" of her husband and
the late C. F. Tyrwhitt Drake with her own more personal but none the
less interesting "Inner Life of Syria," so she has now embodied her own
impression of the various localities which she and Captain Burton have
visited during the last few years in a pleasant book entitled, _A. E.
I.: Arabia, Egypt, and India_ (London: W. Mullan & Son, 1879). Mrs.
Burton's pages are eminently readable, her powers of observation are
keen, and her descriptions always fresh and vivid. If the spots she
writes about have been often before depicted by pen and pencil, she yet
finds something new to say, and some interesting and little-known
historical incident to narrate, concerning them. The latter part of the
book, containing a history and description of the old Portuguese
settlement of Goa, and a minutely-detailed account of the life and works
of St. Francis Xavier, the Apostle of the Indies, will be new to most
readers and read with interest by all. The book is one which may be
taken up at any moment with the certainty of finding something to amuse,
instruct, or furnish food for earnest thought.
* * * * *
_Egypt to Palestine_, by S. C. Bartlett, though bearing the name and
address of a London publisher (Sampson Low, Marston, & Co.) on the
title-page, is evidently the production of an American firm, the name of
which, indeed, appears on some of the maps. The book is well got up, and
as a description of the localities, their antiquities and history, is
equal to the average of such publications. It is, however, entirely
composed of materials collected from the works of other authors, taken
often without acknowledgment, and is profusely illustrated by pictures
and maps copied from other works, the sources of which are never
acknowledged at all. The only passages at all original in the work are
those which describe Mr. Bartlett's own journey, the highest interest of
which consists in an occasional enumeration of the hymns he and his
companions sang to the Arabs (cf. p. 193), and which would have much the
same effect on the Tiyahah as the performances of the howling dervishes
have upon an American tourist.
* * * * *
Sir Lewis Pelly has published, in two handsome volumes, a literal
translation of the text of the _Miracle Play of Hasan and Husein_
(London: W. H. Allen & Co., 1879), as performed throughout India and
Persia during the month of Mohurram, by the Shiah Mohammedans. The
progress of Islam in its early days was so rapid that, in a short time,
it had overwhelmed Persia, Egypt, Syria, and a large portion of the rest
of the Byzantine Empire in its tide of conquest. The death of Mohammed
naturally brought forward rival claimants to the supreme authority, and
the dispute ultimately resolved itself into one between Ali, the cousin
and son-in-law of the Prophet, and representative of the Hashimi clan,
and Moawiyeh, the representative of the Ommayeh family, between whom and
the Hashimis an old feud existed, originating in their rival claims to
be the hereditary guardians of the Kaabeh Temple at Mecca. These two
parties offered an obvious rallying point for the two opposing factions
in El Islam, the conquered Persians and the conquering Arabs, the former
of whom resisted the traditional ceremonial law with which their Semitic
co-religionists would have trammelled them. The consequence was that the
Aryan faction rallied round Ali, and the Arabs round Moawiyeh. The
latter proved the stronger party, and were known as Sunnis, followers of
the Sunnah or traditional law, while the adherents of the former were
designated Shiahs or Sectarians, and thus originated the first great
schism in Mohammedanism. The struggles of Ali's party for supremacy, his
own murder, and the subsequent massacre of his sons, Hasan and Husein,
who lost their lives under circumstances of peculiar atrocity, are the
incidents on which the drama is founded, and the memory of which has
kept alive the rancorous ill-feeling between the two sects. In the play
itself the historical element is largely mixed with the marvellous and
legendary, and the dramatic unities are wholly neglected; but it
nevertheless exhibits enough of the real facts to give it an intense
living interest, while the antiquated language and strange incidents
that are introduced carry us back to the remotest times. An admirable
introduction contains a notice by Dr. Birdwood, C.S.I., of the origin
of the Shiah schism, and of the ceremonies with which the Mohurram
festival is celebrated throughout India and Persia; and Mr. A. N.
Wollaston, of the India Office, has both edited the text and illustrated
it with some concise and appropriate notes.
* * * * *
Dr. Charles Riew has just issued the first volume of his _Catalogue of
the Persian MSS. in the British Museum_ (London: 1879), containing
Christian and Mohammedan Theology, and the works on History and
Geography of which the Museum has a large and important collection.
Amongst these are the _Jámi ut tawárikh_, written in the seventh--eighth
centuries of the Hejra, and comprising the histories of all the
principal Turkish and Mongol dynasties; the _Táríkh i Rashídí_, a
history of the Khans of Mogolistan and of the Amirs of Kashgar; and the
_Zafar Namah_, the earliest authentic history of Timur, written by his
order in 1404 A.D. A brief but complete analysis of each manuscript is
given, enabling scholars to refer at once and without difficulty to any
portion of the histories without the labour of looking through an often
voluminous manuscript. The value of such a scholar-like production as
this Catalogue is cannot be over-estimated; it has, in fact, placed
within reach of the student of history most important and authentic
works, the very existence of which was unknown except to a few
Orientalists. The second volume is already complete in MS., and will be
shortly published. We shall look forward to it with great interest, as
the British Museum possesses a magnificent collection of Persian
poetical and other works.
* * * * *
A _Pahlavi Dictionary_, by Dastur Jamaspji Minocheherji Jamasp Asana, of
which the first two volumes have just appeared (London: Trübner and Co.,
1879), supplies a want long felt by students of the old Persian speech.
Pahlavi is the name applied to the old Persian tongue, and more
particularly to that phase of it which was spoken during the reigns of
the Sassanian kings. It is of great interest to the philologist,
inasmuch as it contains a large admixture of Semitic words, derived,
however, from a different source than the Arabic element in modern
Persian, and appears to be akin to the Assyrian. It is sometimes called
_Huzvaresh_, though this word seems to be more properly applied to a
particular method of reading, by which, when a Semitic word occurs in
the text, the priest _reads_ the Aryan equivalent, just as we in English
say "pounds, shillings, and pence" when we meet with the signs £ s. d.,
and _read_ "namely," though we write and print "videlicet" or "viz."
Dastur Jamaspji Asana interprets the word _Huzvaresh_ to mean the
"language of Assyria," a suggestion which, if correct, throws some light
on the origin of the language. The etymology of the word Pahlavi has
been the subject of much discussion, but the latest as well as the most
reasonable conjecture is that of Dr. Haug (followed by the author of
this Dictionary), that it is identical with _Parthva_, the Parthia of
the classical writers; that most warlike and important nation having
given its name to the language, just as the province of Pars has given
the name to the language of modern Iran. The great difficulty in
compiling such a dictionary as the present, apart from the
unsatisfactory nature of the available texts, is that the alphabet is so
very vague and confused. The language contains a very great number of
sounds which the alphabet, borrowed from the Semitic, is incapable of
expressing; the same letter, therefore, is often used for different
sounds, and combinations of the various letters again often express
simple sounds. This makes the arrangement very difficult, but the author
of this work has adopted the only safe method, that of arranging the
words according to the alphabetical order of the letters rather than in
order of sounds. A table, in which the various combinations of the
letters are explained, also much simplifies reference. The author has in
all cases followed the traditional reading and interpretation of words,
leaving to the more critical scholars of Europe the task of
investigating them from a scientific point of view.
* * * * *
Dr. Haug's _Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of the
Parsis_ (Trübner's Oriental Series, 1878) is another most important
contribution to comparative theology and philology. The nature of the
doctrines of Zoroaster and the rites and ceremonies of the Magians had
for centuries exercised the uninitiated. The earliest mention of them
occurs in the Prophet Jeremiah (xxxix. 3), who speaks of the _rab mag_
(chief of the Magi) as forming part of the retinue of Nebuchadnezzar at
his entry into Jerusalem; Ezekiel calls the Persian king Cyrus (who
professed the religion of the Magi) the "anointed of the Lord;" the New
Testament speaks of Magi from the East--translated "wise men" in our
version--as the first to pay homage to our Lord; and the old Persian
language has supplied, through the New Testament also, the name
Paradise, which is universally employed to represent heaven throughout
the civilized world. Herodotus also mentions them, and testifies to the
purity of their worship and their morals, and other Greek as well as
Latin writers have treated at more or less length on the subject of the
Magi. But these scattered and incomplete notices were all that scholars
had until Hyde, the celebrated Oxford scholar, in 1700, collected all
the ancient sources of information into a volume _Historia religionis
veterum Persarum eorumque Magorum_. The original texts of the Zend
Avesta, &c., however, of which some manuscripts had been brought to
Europe, were still sealed books, and the Parsi priests in India and
Persia strictly refrained from affording any information upon their
contents. At length, in 1754, Anquetil Duperron, an enterprising
Frenchman, undertook a journey to India with the express intention of
procuring manuscripts and learning the Zend language, in both of which
purposes he succeeded, and published ten years later the first known
translation of the Zend Avesta. His work was by many scholars, Sir
William Jones and Richardson, the Persian lexicographer, amongst the
number, regarded as worthless, Richardson maintaining that the texts
themselves were forgeries, while Sir William Jones endeavoured to prove
that Anquetil had been the victim of priestly fraud and deception.
Nearly a century later Eugene Burnouf, an eminent French Sanscrit
scholar, proved his countryman's work to be genuine, corrected many of
his faults, and placed the study on a sounder scientific basis. Others,
especially German and Scandinavian _savants_, followed in the same path,
forming, however, different schools of interpretation, until at last Dr.
Martin Haug brought order into the confusion, and succeeded in bringing
the study of Zend within the limits of exact philological science. The
foundation of all these studies must of course necessarily be the
traditional interpretation handed down by the Parsi priests, but this
would have been comparatively useless without the investigation of
European scholars. Many of the Avesta texts are furnished with Pahlavi
translations and comments, but the Pahlavi itself was but imperfectly
understood, and the whole subject was for a long time in hopeless
confusion; the reader may, however, take up Dr. Haug's Essays with the
full assurance that he has the most trustworthy account of the Parsis,
their Scriptures, history, and religious rites, that can be now
ascertained. Anything like a _résumé_ of such a work would be out of
place here, but we can cordially recommend it as, with all its recondite
erudition, a most readable book.
Mr. Bernard Quaritch, of Piccadilly, has published a romance in modern
Arabic, entitled, _The Autobiography of the Constantinople
Story-teller_, edited by Mr. J. Catafago, a well-known Arabic scholar,
and said to be the work of an Englishman, Colonel Rous. It is
principally as a curiosity of literature that it will be read, as it
does not narrate any very novel or original adventures, and the style is
very simple and unpretending. It, however, contains some clear and
concise descriptions of many localities in the East which are but little
known to the ordinary reader, and will be welcome to the student of
Arabic as an easy text-book of the language.
* * * * *
Professor James Sanua, late of Cairo, is an enthusiastic politician and
an original satirist. We have just received thirty numbers of an Arabic
comic paper, written, illustrated, and published by him in Paris, and
directed against the ex-Khedive of Egypt, whose misgovernment he
mercilessly exposes, and whose deposition it was his avowed object to
bring about. The editor, a native of Egypt, and a Copt by religion, was
for many years engaged in tuition in some of the highest families of
Cairo. Possessing a keen sense of humour and a great mastery over the
Arabic language, he used to pass his evenings in improvising a sort of
dramatic entertainment, in which he himself sustained all the
characters, and in which he satirized the social foibles of his
fellow-countrymen. The originality of his _séances_ soon attracted large
audiences, and amongst the visitors and admirers were the Khedive and
the princes of his family. The opportunity was too good to be lost, and
Professor Sanua passed from mere social topics, and administered sound
and severe castigations to his august visitor for his misgovernment and
oppression of the fellaheen. This boldness drew down upon him the
displeasure of Ismail Pasha, and Abu Naddára Zerka (the Father of Blue
Spectacles), as he was nicknamed, found it convenient to withdraw to
Paris, where he published his paper. It is written for the most part in
the vulgar Egyptian dialect, and contains articles upon, and
illustrations of, the principal events of the latter part of the reign
of the deposed prince. The pictures, which are rude, but full of force,
are explained in a French introduction, which is prefixed to the
collected thirty numbers, and form a very interesting and curious record
of modern Egyptian history.
* * * * *
A new paper, literary and political, has just been advertised at
Constantinople. It is to be written in the Arabic language, and edited
by M. G. Dellal, a native of Aleppo, and an accomplished Arabic scholar
and poet. Modern Arabic literature is exceedingly plentiful at the
present time, and Beyrout has long been a centre of activity. Sheikh
Nasyf el Yazji, who died some few years ago, gave a great impulse to the
study of Arabic by his "Majma' el Bahrain," a book in imitation of the
"Macamat" of Harírí, and containing in a small compass more information
on the Arabs of the classical period, their customs, histories,
proverbs, &c., than perhaps any other work. Dr. Butrus Bustani, of the
same town, earned for himself a lasting name by his Arabic lexicon,
"Muhít el Muhít," which has not only a native but a European reputation;
and the same eminent scholar has established a press, from which have
emanated many standard Arabic works, and numerous translations of
valuable European works on science and history. A magazine entitled _El
Jinán_, "The Garden of Paradise," is also published there fortnightly,
and contains, besides political articles and general news, a great deal
of interesting miscellaneous information. The last important publication
of the "Matba' al Maarif," or "Scientific Press," as it is called, is an
Encyclopædia in the Arabic language, on the plan of the European
Conversation-lexicons.