[1] In the year 1287 the council of Liege decreed that "all Beguinae
desiring to enjoy the Beguine privileges shall enter a Beguinage, and
we order that all who remain outside the Beguinage shall wear a dress
to distinguish them from the Beguinae."
BEHAIM (or BEHEM), MARTIN (1436?-1507), a navigator and geographer of
great pretensions, was born at Nuremberg, according to one tradition,
about 1436; according to Ghillany, as late as 1459. He was drawn to
Portugal by participation in Flanders trade, and acquired a scientific
reputation at the court of John II. As a pupil, real or supposed, of the
astronomer "Regiomontanus" (i.e. Johann Muller of Konigsberg in
Franconia) he became (c. 1480) a member of a council appointed by King
John for the furtherance of navigation. His alleged introduction of the
cross-staff into Portugal (an invention described by the Spanish Jew,
Levi ben Gerson, in the 14th century) is a matter of controversy; his
improvements in the astrolabe were perhaps limited to the introduction
of handy brass instruments in place of cumbrous wooden ones; it seems
likely that he helped to prepare better navigation tables than had yet
been known in the Peninsula. In 1484-1485 he claimed to have accompanied
Diogo Cao in his second expedition to West Africa, really undertaken in
1485-86, reaching Cabo Negro in 15 deg. 40' S. and Cabo Ledo still
farther on. It is now disputed whether Behaim's pretensions here deserve
any belief; and it is suggested that instead of sharing in this great
voyage of discovery, the Nuremberger only sailed to the nearer coasts of
Guinea, perhaps as far as the Bight of Benin, and possibly with Jose
Visinho the astronomer and with Joao Affonso d'Aveiro, in 1484-86.
Martin's later history, as traditionally recorded, was as follows. On
his return from his West African exploration to Lisbon he was knighted
by King John, who afterwards employed him in various capacities; but,
from the time of his marriage in 1486, he usually resided at Fayal in
the Azores, where his father-in-law, Jobst van Huerter, was governor of
a Flemish colony. On a visit to his native city in 1492, he constructed
his famous terrestrial globe, still preserved in Nuremberg, and often
reproduced, in which the influence of Ptolemy is strongly apparent, but
wherein some attempt is also made to incorporate the discoveries of the
later middle ages (Marco Polo, &c.). The antiquity of this globe and the
year of its execution, on the eve of the discovery of America, are
noteworthy; but as a scientific work it is unimportant, ranking far
below the _portolani_ charts of the 14th century. Its West Africa is
marvellously incorrect; the Cape Verde archipelago lies hundreds of
miles out of its proper place; and the Atlantic is filled with fabulous
islands. Blunders of 16 deg. are found in the localization of places the
author claims to have visited: contemporary maps, at least in regard to
continental features, seldom went wrong beyond 1 deg. It is generally
agreed that Behaim had no share in Transatlantic discovery; and though
Columbus and he were apparently in Portugal at the same time, no
connexion between the two has been established. He died at Lisbon in
1507.
See C.G. von Murr, _Diplomatische Geschichte des beruhmten Ritters
Behaim_ (1778); A. von Humboldt, _Kritische Untersuchungen_ (1836);
F.W. Ghillany, _Geschichte des Seefahrers Martin Behaim_ (1853); O.
Peschel, _Geschichte der Erdkunde_, 214-215, 226, 251, and _Zeitalter
der Entdeckungen_, esp. p. 90; Breusing, _Zur Geschichte der
Geographie_ (1869); Eugen Gelcich in the _Mittheilungen_ of the Vienna
Geographical Society, vol. xxxvi. pp. 100, &c.; E.G. Ravenstein,
_Martin de Bohemia_, (Lisbon, 1900), _Martin Behaim, His Life and His
Globe_ (London, 1909), and _Voyages of Diogo Cao and Bartholomeu
Dias_, 1482-1488, in _Geographical Journal_, Dec. 1900; see also
_Geog. Journal_, Aug. 1893, p. 175, Nov. 1901, p. 509; Jules Mees in
_Bull. Soc. Geog._, Antwerp, 1902, pp. 182-204; A. Ferreira de Serpa
in _Bull. Soc. Geog._, Lisbon, 1904, pp. 297-307. (C. R. B.)
BEHAR, or BIHAR, a town of British India, in the Patna district of
Bengal, which gives its name to an old province, situated on the right
bank of the river Panchana. Pop. (1901) 45,063. There are still some
manufactures of silk and muslin, but trade has deserted Behar in favour
of Patna and other places more favourably situated on the river Ganges
and the railway, while the indigo industry has been ruined by the
synthetic products of the German chemist, and the English colony of
indigo planters has been scattered abroad.
The old province, stretching widely across the valley of the Ganges from
the frontier of Nepal to the hills of Chota Nagpur, corresponds to the
two administrative divisions of Patna and Bhagalpur, with a total area
of 44,197 sq. m. and a population of 24,241,305. It is the most densely
populated tract in India, and therefore always liable to famine; but it
is now well protected almost everywhere by railways. It is a country of
large landholders and formerly of indigo planters. The vernacular
language is not Bengali, but a dialect of Hindu; and the people likewise
resemble those of Upper India. The general aspect of the country is
flat, except in the district of Monghyr, where detached hills occur, and
in the south-east of the province, where the Rajmahal and Santal ranges
abut upon the plains.
Behar abounds in great rivers, such as the Ganges, with its tributaries,
the Ghagra, Gandak, Kusi, Mahananda and Sone. The Ganges enters the
province near the town of Buxar, flows eastward and, passing the towns
of Dinajpur, Patna, Monghyr and Colgong, leaves the province at
Rajmahal. It divides the province into two almost equal portions; north
of the river lie the districts of Saran, Champaran, Tirhoot, Purnea, and
part of Monghyr and Bhagalpur, and south of it are Shahabad, Patna,
Gaya, the Santal parganas, and the rest of Monghyr and Bhagalpur. The
Ganges and its northern tributaries are navigable by country boats of
large burden all the year round. The cultivation of opium is a
government monopoly, and no person is allowed to grow the poppy except
on account of government. The Behar Opium Agency has its headquarters at
the town of Patna. Annual engagements are entered into by the
cultivators, under a system of pecuniary advances, to sow a certain
quantity of land with poppy, and the whole produce in the form of opium
is delivered to government at a fixed rate.
Saltpetre is largely refined in Tirhoot, Saran and Champaran, and is
exported both by rail and river to Calcutta. The manufactures of less
importance are tussore-silk, paper, blankets, brass utensils, firearms,
carpets, coarse cutlery and hardware, leather, ornaments of gold and
silver, &c. Of minerals--lead, silver and copper exist in the Bhagalpur
division, but the mines are not worked. One coal-mine is worked in the
parganas. Before the construction of railways in India, the Ganges and
the Grand Trunk road afforded the sole means of communication from
Calcutta to the North-Western Provinces. But now the railroad is the
great highway which connects Upper India with Lower Bengal. The East
Indian railway runs throughout the length of the province. The climate
of Behar is very hot from the middle of March to the end of June, when
the rains set in, which continue till the end of September. The cold
season, from October to the first half of March, is the pleasantest time
of the year.
_History._--The province of Behar corresponds to the ancient kingdom of
Magadha, which comprised the country now included in the districts of
Patna, Gaya and Shahabad, south of the Ganges. The origin of this
kingdom, famous alike in the political and religious history of India,
is lost in the mists of antiquity; and though the Brahmanical _Puranas_
give lists of its rulers extending back to remote ages before the
Christian era, the first authentic dynasty is that of the Saisunaga,
founded by Sisunaga (c. 600 B.C.), whose capital was at Rajagaha
(Rajgir) in the hills near Gaya; and the first king of this dynasty of
whom anything is known was Bimbisara (c. 528 B.C.), who by conquests and
matrimonial alliances laid the foundations of the greatness of the
kingdom. It was in the reign of Bimbisara that Vardhamana Mahavira, the
founder of Jainism, and Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, preached in
Magadha, and Buddhist missionaries issued thence to the conversion of
China, Ceylon, Tibet and Tatary. Even to this day Behar, where there are
extensive remains of Buddhist buildings, remains a sacred spot in the
eyes of the Chinese and other Buddhist nations.
Bimbisara was murdered by his son Ajatasatru, who succeeded him, and
whose bloodthirsty policy reduced the whole country between the
Himalayas and the Ganges under the suzerainty of Magadha. According to
tradition, it was his grandson, Udaya, who founded the city of
Pataliputra (Patna) on the Ganges, which under the Maurya dynasty became
the capital not only of Magadha but of India. The remaining history of
the dynasty is obscure; according to Mr Vincent Smith, its last
representative was Mahanandin (417 B.C.), after whose death the throne
was usurped, under obscure circumstances, by Mahapadma Nanda, a man of
low caste (_Early Hist. of India_, p. 36). It was a son of this usurper
who was reigning at the time of the invasion of Alexander the Great; and
the conqueror, when his advance was arrested at the Hyphasis (326 B.C.),
meditating an attack on Pataliputra (the Palimbothra of the Greeks), was
informed that the king of Magadha could oppose him with a force of
20,000 cavalry, 200,000 infantry, 2000 chariots, and 3000 or 4000
elephants. The Nanda dynasty seems to have survived only for two
generations, when (321 B.C.) Chandragupta Maurya, the founder of the
great Maurya dynasty, seized the throne. This dynasty, of which the
history belongs to that of India (q.v.), occupied the throne for 137
years. After the death of the great Buddhist king, Asoka (c. 231), the
Maurya empire began to break up, and it was finally destroyed about
fifty years later when Pushyamitra Sunga murdered the Maurya king
Brihadratha and founded the Sunga dynasty. Descendants of Asoka
continued, however, to subsist in Magadha as subordinate rajas for many
centuries; and as late as the 8th century A.D. petty Maurya dynasties
are mentioned as ruling in Konkan. The reign of Pushyamitra, who held
his own against Menander and succeeded in establishing his claim to be
lord paramount of northern India, is mainly remarkable as marking the
beginning of the Brahmanical reaction and the decline of Buddhism;
according to certain Buddhist writers the king, besides reviving Hindu
rites, indulged in a savage persecution of the monks. The Sunga dynasty,
which lasted 112 years, was succeeded by the Kanva dynasty, which after
45 years was overthrown (c. 27 B.C.) by the Andhras or Satavahanas. In
A.D. 236 the Andhras were overthrown, and, after a confused and obscure
period of about a century, Chandragupta I. established his power at
Pataliputra (A.D. 320) and founded the famous Gupta empire (see GUPTA),
which survived till it was overthrown by the Ephthalites (q.v.), or
White Huns, at the close of the 5th century. In Magadha itself the
Guptas continued to rule as tributary princes for some centuries longer.
About the middle of the 8th century Magadha was conquered by Gopala, who
had made himself master in Bengal, and founded the imperial dynasty
known as the Palas of Bengal. They were zealous Buddhists, and under
their rule Magadha became once more an active centre of Buddhist
influence. Gopala himself built a great monastery at Udandapura, or
Otantapuri, which has been identified by Sir Alexander Cunningham with
the city of Behar, where the later Pala kings established their capital.
Under Mahipala (c. 1026), the ninth of his line, and his successor
Nayapala, missionaries from Magadha succeeded in firmly re-establishing
Buddhism in Tibet.
In the 11th century the Pala empire, which, according to the Tibetan
historian Taranath, extended in the 9th century from the Bay of Bengal
to Delhi and Jalandhar (Jullundur) in the north and the Vindhyan range
in the south, was partly dismembered by the rise of the "Sena" dynasty
in Bengal; and at the close of the 12th century both Palas and Senas
were swept away by the Mahommedan conquerors, the city of Behar itself
being captured by the Turki free-lance Mahommed-i-Bakhtyar Khilji in
1193, by surprise, with a party of 200 horsemen. "It was discovered,"
says a contemporary Arab historian, "that the whole of that fortress and
city was a college, and in the Hindi tongue they call a college Bihar."
Most of the monks were massacred in the first heat of the assault; those
who survived fled to Tibet, Nepal and the south. Buddhism in Magadha
never recovered from this blow; it lingered in obscurity for a while and
then vanished.
Behar now came under the rule of the Mahommedan governors of Bengal.
About 1330 the southern part was annexed to Delhi, while north Behar
remained for some time longer subject to Bengal. In 1397 the whole of
Behar became part of the kingdom of Jaunpur; but a hundred years later
it was annexed by the Delhi emperors, by whom--save for a short
period--it continued to be held. The capital of the province was
established under the Moguls at the city of Behar, which gave its name
to the province. From the middle of the 14th to the middle of the 16th
century a large part of Behar was ruled by a line of Brahman tributary
kings; and in the 15th century another Hindu dynasty ruled in Champaran
and Gorakhpur. Behar came into the possession of the East India Company
with the acquisition of the Diwani in 1765, when the province was united
with Bengal. In 1857 two zemindars, Umar Singh and Kumar Singh, rebelled
against the British government, and for some months held the ruinous
fort of Rohtas against the British.
See _Imperial Gazetteer of India_ (Oxford, 1908), _s.v._ "Bihar" and
"Bengal"; V.A. Smith, _Early History of India_ (2nd ed., Oxford,
1908).
BEHA UD-DIN [ABU-L-MAHASIN YUSUF IBN RAFI' IBN SHADDAD BEHA UD DIN]
(1145-1234), Arabian writer and statesman, was born in Mosul and early
became famous for his knowledge of the Koran and of jurisprudence.
Before the age of thirty he became teacher in the great college at
Bagdad known as the Nizamiyya, and soon after became professor at Mosul.
In 1187, after making the pilgrimage to Mecca, he visited Damascus.
Saladin, who was at the time besieging Kaukab (a few miles south of
Tiberias), sent for him and became his friend. Beha ud-Din observed that
the whole soul of the monarch was engrossed by the war which he was then
engaged in waging against the enemies of the faith, and saw that the
only mode of acquiring his favour was by urging him to its vigorous
prosecution. With this view he composed a treatise on _The Laws and
Discipline of Sacred War_, which he presented to Saladin, who received
it with peculiar favour. From this time he remained constantly attached
to the person of the sultan, and was employed on various embassies and
in departments of the civil government. He was appointed judge of the
army and judge of Jerusalem. After Saladin's death Beha-ud-Din remained
the friend of his son Malik uz-Zahir, who appointed him judge of Aleppo.
Here he employed some of his wealth in the foundation of colleges. When
Malik uz-Zahir died, his son Malik ul-'Aziz was a minor, and Beha ud-Din
had the chief power in the regency. This power he used largely for the
patronage of learning. After the abdication of Malik ul-'Aziz, he fell
from favour and lived in retirement until his death in 1234. Beha
ud-Din's chief work is his _Life of Saladin_ (published at Leiden with
Latin translation by A. Schultens in 1732 and 1755). An English
translation was published by the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society,
London, 1897.
For list of other extant works see C. Brockelmann, _Geschichte der
arabischen Litteratur_ (Weimar, 1898), vol. i. pp. 316 f.
(G. W. T.)
BEHA UD-DIN ZUHAIR (ABU-L FADL ZUHAIR IBN MAHOMMED AL-MUHALLABI)
(1186-1258), Arabian poet, was born at or near Mecca, and became
celebrated as the best writer of prose and verse and the best
calligraphist of his time. He entered the service of Malik us-Salih Najm
ud-Din in Mesopotamia, and was with him at Damascus until he was
betrayed and imprisoned. Beha ud-Din then retired to Nablus (Shechem)
where he remained until Najm ud-Din escaped and obtained possession of
Egypt, whither he accompanied him in 1240. There he remained as the
sultan's confidential secretary until his death, due to an epidemic, in
1258. His poetry consists mostly of panegyric and brilliant occasional
verse distinguished for its elegance. It has been published with English
metrical translation by E.H. Palmer (2 vols., Cambridge, 1877).
His life was written by his contemporary Ibn Khallikan (see M'G. de
Slane's trans. of his _Biographical Dictionary_, vol. i. pp. 542-545).
(G. W. T.)
BEHBAHAN, a walled town of Persia in the province of Fars, pleasantly
situated in the midst of a highly cultivated plain, 128 m. W.N.W. of
Shiraz and 3 m. from the left bank of the river Tab, here called
Kurdistan river. It is the capital of the Kuhgilu-Behbahan sub-province
of Fars and has a population of about 10,000. The walls are about 3 m.
in circumference and a Narinj Kalah (citadel) stands in the south-east
corner. At a short distance north-west of the city are the ruins of
Arrajan, the old capital of the province.
BEHEADING, a mode of executing capital punishment (q.v.). It was in use
among the Greeks and Romans, and the former, as Xenophon says at the end
of the second book of the _Anabasis_, regarded it as a most honourable
form of death. So did the Romans, by whom it was known as _decollatio_
or _capitis amputatio_. The head was laid on a block placed in a pit dug
for the purpose,--in the case of a military offender, outside the
intrenchments, in civil cases outside the city walls, near the _porta
decumana_. Before execution the criminal was tied to a stake and whipped
with rods. In earlier years an axe was used; afterwards a sword, which
was considered a more honourable instrument of death, and was used in
the case of citizens (_Dig._ 48, 19, 28). It was with a sword that
Cicero's head was struck off by a common soldier. The beheading of John
the Baptist proves that the tetrarch Herod had adopted from his suzerain
the Roman mode of execution. Suetonius (_Calig. c_. 32) states that
Caligula kept a soldier, an artist in beheading, who in his presence
decapitated prisoners fetched indiscriminately for that purpose from the
gaols.
Beheading is said to have been introduced into England from Normandy by
William the Conqueror. The first person to suffer was Waltheof, earl of
Northumberland, in 1076. An ancient MS. relating to the earls of Chester
states that the serjeants or bailiffs of the earls had power to behead
any malefactor or thief, and gives an account of the presenting of
several heads of felons at the castle of Chester by the earl's
serjeant. It appears that the custom also attached to the barony of
Malpas. In a roll of 3 Edward II., beheading is called the "custom of
Cheshire" (Lysons' _Cheshire_, p. 299, from Harl. MS. 2009 fol. 34b).
The liberty of Hardwick, in Yorkshire, was granted the privilege of
beheading thieves. (See GUILLOTINE.)
But with the exceptions above stated beheading was usually reserved as
the mode of executing offenders of high rank. From the 15th century
onward the victims of the axe include some of the highest personages in
the kingdom: Archbishop Scrope (1405); duke of Buckingham (1483);
Catherine Howard (1542); earl of Surrey (1547); duke of Somerset (1552);
duke of Northumberland (1553); Lady Jane Grey (1554), Lord Guildford
Dudley (1554); Mary queen of Scots (1587); earl of Essex (1601); Sir
Walter Raleigh (1618); earl of Strafford (1641); Charles I. (1649); Lord
William Russell (1683); duke of Monmouth (1685); earl of Derwentwater
(1716); earl of Kenmure (1716); earl of Kilmarnock and Lord Balmerino
(1746); and the list closes with Simon, Lord Lovat, who (9th of April
1747) was the last person beheaded in England. The execution of Anne
Boleyn was carried out not with the axe, but with a sword, and by a
French headsman specially brought over from Calais. In 1644 Archbishop
Laud was condemned to be hanged, and the only favour granted him, and
that reluctantly, was that his sentence should be changed to beheading.
In the case of the 4th Earl Ferrers (1760) his petition to be beheaded
was refused and he was hanged.
Executions by beheading usually took place on Tower Hill, London, where
the scaffold stood permanently during the 15th and 16th centuries. In
the case of certain state prisoners, e.g. Anne Boleyn and Lady Jane
Grey, the sentence was carried out within the Tower on the green by St
Peter's chapel.
Beheading was only a part of the common-law method of punishing male
traitors, which was ferocious in the extreme. According to Walcot's case
(1696), 1 _Eng. Rep._ 89, the proper sentence was "quod ... ibidem super
bigam (herdillum) ponatur et abinde usque ad furcas de [Tyburn]
trahatur, et ibidem per collum suspendatur et vivus ad terram
prosternatur et quod secreta membra ejus amputentur, et interiora sua
intra ventrem suum capiantur et in ignem ponantur et ibidem _ipso
vivente_ comburantur, et quod caput ejus amputetur, quodque corpus ejus
in quatuor partes dividatur et illo ponantur ubi dominus rex eas
assignare voluit." There is a tradition that Harrison the regicide after
being disembowelled rose and boxed the ears of the executioner.
In Townley's case (18 Howell, _State Trials_, 350, 351) there is a
ghastly account of the mode of executing the sentence; and in that case
the executioner cut the traitor's throat. In the case of the Cato Street
conspiracy (1820, 33 Howell, _State Trials_, 1566), after the traitors
had been hanged as directed by the act of 1814, their heads were cut off
by a man in a mask whose dexterity led to the belief that he was a
surgeon.
Female traitors were until 1790 liable to be drawn to execution and
burnt alive. In that year hanging was substituted for burning.
In 1814 so much of the sentence as related to disembowelling and burning
the bowels was abolished and the king was empowered by royal warrant to
substitute decapitation for hanging, which was made by that act the
ordinary mode of executing traitors. But it was not till 1870 that the
portions of the sentence as to drawing and quartering were abolished
(Forfeiture Act 1870).
The more barbarous features of the execution were remitted in the case
of traitors of high rank, and the offender was simply decapitated.
The block usually employed is believed to have been a low one such as
would be used for beheading a corpse. C.H. Firth and S.R. Gardiner
incline to the view that such a block was the one used at Charles I.'s
execution. The more general custom, however, seems to have been to have
a high block over which the victim knelt. Such is the form of that
preserved in the armoury of the Tower of London. This is undoubtedly the
block upon which Lord Lovat suffered, but, in spite of several axe-cuts
on it, probably not one in early use. The axe which stands beside it was
used to behead him and the other Jacobite lords, but no certainty exists
as to its having been previously employed. On the ground floor of the
King's House, at the Tower, is preserved the processional axe which
figured in the journeys of state prisoners to and from their trials, the
edge turned from them as they went, but almost invariably turned towards
them as they returned to the Tower. The axe's head is peculiar in form,
1 ft. 8 in. high by 10 in. wide, and is fastened into a wooden handle 5
ft. 4 in. long. The handle is ornamented by four rows of burnished brass
nails.
In Scotland they did not behead with the axe, nor with the sword, as
under the Roman law, and formerly in Holland and France, but with the
maiden (q.v.).
Capital punishment is executed by beheading in France, and in Belgium by
means of the guillotine.
In Germany the instrument used varies in different states: in the old
provinces of Prussia the axe, in Saxony and Rhenish Prussia the
guillotine. Until 1851 executions were public. They now take place
within a prison in the presence of certain specified officials.
Beheading is also the mode of executing capital punishment in Denmark
and Sweden. The axe is used. In Sweden the execution takes place on the
order of the king within a prison in the presence of certain specified
officials and, if desired, of twelve representatives of the commune
within which the prison is situate (Code 1864, s. 2, Royal Ordinance
1877).
In the Chinese empire decapitation is the usual mode of execution. By an
imperial edict (24th of April 1905) certain attendant barbarities have
been suppressed: viz. slicing, cutting up the body, and exhibiting the
head to public view (32 Clunet, 1175).
BEHEMOTH (the intensive plural of the Hebrew _b'hemah_, a beast), the
animal mentioned in the book of Job (ch. xl. 15), probably the
hippopotamus, which in ancient times was found in Egypt below the
cataracts of Syene. The word may be used in Job as typical of the
primeval king of land animals, as leviathan of the water animals. The
modern use expresses the idea of a very large and strong animal.
BEHISTUN, or BISITUN, now pronounced _Bisutum_, a little village at the
foot of a precipitous rock, 1700 ft. high, in the centre of the Zagros
range in Persia on the right bank of the Samas-Ab, the principal
tributary of the Kerkha (Choaspes). The original form of the name,
Bagistana, "place of the gods" or "of God" has been preserved by the
Greek authors Stephanus of Byzantium, and Diodorus (ii. 13), the latter
of whom says that the place was sacred to Zeus, i.e. Ahuramazda
(Ormuzd). At its foot passes the great road which leads from Babylonia
(Bagdad) to the highlands of Media (Ecbatana, Hamadan). On the steep
face of the rock, some 500 ft. above the plain, Darius I., king of
Persia, had engraved a great cuneiform inscription (11 or 12 ft. high),
which recounts the way in which, after the death of Cambyses, he killed
the usurper Gaumata (in Justin Gometes, the pseudo-Smerdis), defeated
the numerous rebels, and restored the kingdom of the Achaemenidae. Above
the inscription the picture of the king himself is graven, with a bow in
his hand, putting his left foot on the body of Gaumata. Nine rebel
chiefs are led before him, their hands bound behind them, and a rope
round their necks: the ninth is Skunka, the chief of the Scythians
(Sacae) whom he defeated. Behind the king stand his bow-bearer and his
lance-bearer; in the air appears the figure of the great god Ahuramazda,
whose protection led him to victory.[1] The inscriptions are composed in
the three languages which are written with cuneiform signs, and were
used in all official inscriptions of the Achaemenian kings: the chief
place is of course given to the Persian language (in four columns); the
three Susian (Elamitic) columns lie to the left, and the Babylonian text
is on a slanting boulder above them; a part of the Babylonian has been
destroyed by a torrent, which has made its way over it. In former times
the second language has often been called Scythian, Turanian or Median;
but we now know from numerous inscriptions of Susa that it is the
language of Elam which was spoken in Susa, the capital of the Persian
empire.
In 1835 the difficult and almost inaccessible cliff was first climbed by
Sir Henry Rawlinson, who copied and deciphered the inscriptions
(1835-1845), and thus completed the reading of the old cuneiform text
and laid the foundation of the science of Assyriology. Diodorus ii. 13
(cf. xvii. 110), probably following a later author who wrote the history
of Alexander's campaigns, mentions the sculptures and inscriptions, but
attributes them to Semiramis. At the foot of the rock are the remainders
of some other sculptures (quite destroyed), the fragments of a Greek
inscription of the Parthian prince Gotarzes (A.D. 40; text in
Dittenberger, _Orientis graeci inscr. selectae_, no. 431), and of an
Arabic inscription.
See Sir Henry Rawlinson in the _Journ. R. Geog. Soc._ ix., 1839; _J.R.
Asiatic Soc._ x. 1866, xiv., 1853, xv., 1855; _Archaeologia_, xxxiv.,
1852; Sir R. Ker Porter, _Travels_, ii. 149 ff.; Flandin and Coste,
_Voyage en Perse_, i. pl. 16; and the modern editions of the
inscriptions, the best of which, up to the end of the 19th century,
were: Weissbach and Bang, _Die altpersischen Keilinschriften_ (1893);
Weissbach, _Die Achaemenideninschriften zweiter Art_ (1890); Bezold,
_Die (babylonischen) Achaemenideninschriften_ (1882). A description of
the locality, with comments on the present state of the inscriptions
and doubtful passages of the Persian text, was given by Dr A.V.
Williams Jackson in the _Journal of the American Oriental Society_,
xxiv., 1903, and in his _Persia, Past and Present_ (1906). Dr Jackson
in 1903 climbed to the ledge of the rock and was able to collate the
lower part of the four large Persian columns; he thus convinced
himself that Foy's conjecture of _arstam_ ("righteousness") for
Rawlinson's _abistam_ or _abastam_ was correct. A later investigation
was carried out in 1904 on the instructions of the British Museum
Trustees by Messrs. L.W. King and R.C. Thompson, who published their
results in 1907 under the title, _The Inscription of Darius the Great
at Behistun_, including a full illustrated account of the sculptures
and the inscription, and a complete collation of the text.
(Ed. M.)