From the countries best known in what is usually styled ancient
history, in other words from Greece and Rome, and the regions into
which the spirit of conquest led the people of Rome and Greece, it is
time we should turn to the East, and those remoter divisions of the
world, which to them were comparatively unknown.
With what has been called the religion of the Magi, of Egypt, Persia
and Chaldea, they were indeed superficially acquainted; but for a more
familiar and accurate knowledge of the East we are chiefly indebted to
certain events of modern history; to the conquests of the Saracens,
when they possessed themselves of the North of Africa, made themselves
masters of Spain, and threatened in their victorious career to subject
France to their standard; to the crusades; to the spirit of nautical
discovery which broke out in the close of the fifteenth century; and
more recently to the extensive conquests and mighty augmentation of
territory which have been realised by the English East India Company.
The religion of Persia was that of Zoroaster and the Magi. When
Ardshir, or Artaxerxes, the founder of the race of the Sassanides,
restored the throne of Persia in the year of Christ 226, he called
together an assembly of the Magi from all parts of his dominions, and
they are said to have met to the number of eighty thousand. [143]
These priests, from a remote antiquity, had to a great degree
preserved their popularity, and had remarkably adhered to their
ancient institutions.
They seem at all times to have laid claim to the power of suspending
the course of nature, and producing miraculous phenomena. But in so
numerous a body there must have been some whose pretensions were of a
more moderate nature, and others who displayed a loftier aspiration.
The more ambitious we find designated in their native language by the
name of _Jogees_, [144] of the same signification as the Latin
_juncti_.
Their notions of the Supreme Being are said to have been of the
highest and abstrusest character, as comprehending every possible
perfection of power, wisdom and goodness, as purely spiritual in his
essence, and incapable of the smallest variation and change, the same
yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Such as they apprehended him to be,
such the most perfect of their priests aspired to make themselves.
They were to put off all human weakness and frailty; and, in
proportion as they _assimilated_, or rather _became one_
with the Deity, they supposed themselves to partake of his attributes,
to become infinitely wise and powerful and good. Hence their claim to
suspend the course of nature, and to produce miraculous phenomena. For
this purpose it was necessary that they should abstract themselves
from every thing mortal, have no human passions or partialities, and
divest themselves as much as possible of all the wants and demands of
our material frame. Zoroaster appears indeed to have preferred
morality to devotion, to have condemned celibacy and fasting, and to
have pronounced, that "he who sows the ground with diligence and care,
acquires a greater stock of religious merit than he who should repeat
ten thousand prayers." But his followers at least did not abide by
this decision. They found it more practicable to secure to themselves
an elevated reputation by severe observances, rigid self-denial, and
the practice of the most inconceivable mortifications. This excited
wonder and reverence and a sort of worship from the bystander, which
industry and benevolence do not so assuredly secure. They therefore in
frequent instances lacerated their flesh, and submitted to incredible
hardships. They scourged themselves without mercy, wounded their
bodies with lancets and nails, [145] and condemned themselves to
remain for days and years unmoved in the most painful attitudes. It
was no unprecedented thing for them to take their station upon the top
of a high pillar; and some are said to have continued in this position,
without ever coming down from it, for thirty years. The more they
trampled under foot the universal instincts of our nature, and shewed
themselves superior to its infirmities, the nearer they approached to
the divine essence, and to the becoming one with the Omnipresent. They
were of consequence the more sinless and perfect; their will became
the will of the Deity, and they were in a sense invested with, and
became the mediums of the acts of, his power. The result of all this
is, that they who exercised the art of magic in its genuine and
unadulterated form, at all times applied it to purposes of goodness
and benevolence, and that their interference was uniformly the signal
of some unequivocal benefit, either to mankind in general, or to those
individuals of mankind who were best entitled to their aid. It was
theirs to succour virtue in distress, and to interpose the divine
assistance in cases that most loudly and unquestionably called for it.
Such, we are told, was the character of the pure and primitive magic,
as it was handed down from the founder of their religion. It was
called into action by the Jogees, men who, by an extraordinary merit
of whatever sort, had in a certain sense rendered themselves one with
the Deity. But the exercise of magical power was too tempting an
endowment, not in some cases to be liable to abuse. Even as we read of
the angels in heaven, that not all of them stood, and persevered in
their original sinlessness and integrity, so of the Jogees some,
partaking of the divine power, were also under the direction of a will
celestial and divine, while others, having derived, we must suppose, a
mighty and miraculous power from the gift of God, afterwards abused it
by applying it to capricious, or, as it should seem, to malignant
purposes. This appears to have been every where essential to the
history of magic. If those who were supposed to possess it in its
widest extent and most astonishing degree, had uniformly employed it
only in behalf of justice and virtue, they would indeed have been
regarded as benefactors, and been entitled to the reverence and love
of mankind. But the human mind is always prone to delight in the
terrible. No sooner did men entertain the idea of what was supernatural
and uncontrolable, than they began to fear it and to deprecate its
hostility. They apprehended they knew not what, of the dead returning
to life, of invisible beings armed with the power and intention of
executing mischief, and of human creatures endowed with the prerogative
of bringing down pestilence and slaughter, of dispensing wealth and
poverty, prosperity and calamity at their pleasure, of causing health
and life to waste away by insensible, but sure degrees, of producing
lingering torments, and death in its most fearful form. Accordingly it
appears that, as there were certain magicians who were as Gods
dispensing benefits to those who best deserved it, so there were
others, whose only principle of action was caprice, and against whose
malice no innocence and no degree of virtue would prove a defence. As
the former sort of magicians were styled _Jogees_, and were held
to be the deputies and instruments of infinite goodness, so the other
sort were named _Ku-Jogees_, that is, persons who possessing the
same species of ascendancy over the powers of nature, employed it only
in deeds of malice and wickedness.
In the mean time these magicians appear to have produced the wonderful
effects which drew to them the reverence of the vulgar, very frequently
by the intervention of certain beings of a nature superior to the
human, who should seem, though ordinarily invisible, to have had the
faculty of rendering themselves visible when they thought proper, and
assuming what shape they pleased. These are principally known by the
names of Peris, Dives, [146] and Gins, or Genii. Richardson, in the
preface to his Persian Dictionary, from which our account will
principally be taken, refers us to what he calls a romance, but from
which he, appears to derive the outline of his Persian mythology. In
this romance Kahraman, a mortal, is introduced in conversation with
Simurgh, a creature partaking of the nature of a bird and a griffon,
who reveals to him the secrets of the past history of the earth. She
tells him that she has lived to see the world seven times peopled with
inhabitants of so many different natures, and seven times depopulated,
the former inhabitants having been so often removed, and giving place
to their successors. The beings who occupied the earth previously to
man, were distinguished into the Peris and the Dives; and, when they
no longer possessed the earth in chief, they were, as it should seem,
still permitted, in an airy and unsubstantial form, and for the most
part invisibly, to interfere in the affairs of the human race. These
beings ruled the earth during seventy-two generations. The last
monarch, named Jan bin Jan, conducted himself so ill, that God sent
the angel Haris to chastise him. Haris however became intoxicated with
power, and employed his prerogative in the most reprehensible manner.
God therefore at length created Adam, the first of men, crowning him
with glory and honour, and giving him dominion over all other earthly
beings. He commanded the angels to obey him; but Haris refused, and
the Dives followed his example. The rebels were for the most part sent
to hell for their contumacy; but a part of the Dives, whose
disobedience had been less flagrant, were reserved, and allowed for a
certain term to walk the earth, and by their temptations to put the
virtue and constancy of man to trial. Henceforth the human race was
secretly surrounded by invisible beings of two species, the Peris, who
were friendly to man, and the Dives, who exercised their ingenuity in
involving them in error and guilt. The Peris were beautiful and
benevolent, but imperfect and offending beings; they are supposed to
have borne a considerable resemblance to the Fairies of the western
world. The Dives were hideous in form, and of a malignant disposition.
The Peris subsist wholly on perfumes, which the Dives, being of a
grosser nature, hold in abhorrence. This mythology is said to have
been unknown in Arabia till long after Mahomet: the only invisible
beings we read of in their early traditions are the Gins, which term,
though now used for the most part as synonimous with Dives, originally
signified nothing more than certain infernal fiends of stupendous
power, whose agency was hostile to man.
There was perpetual war between the Peris and the Dives, whose proper
habitation was Kaf, or Caucasus, a line of mountains which was
supposed to reach round the globe. In these wars the Peris generally
came off with the worst; and in that case they are represented in the
traditional tales of the East, as applying to some gallant and heroic
mortal to reinforce their exertions. The warriors who figure in these
narratives appear all to have been ancient Persian kings. Tahmuras,
one of the most celebrated of them, is spoken of as mounting upon
Simurgh, surrounded with talismans and enchanted armour, and furnished
with a sword the dint of which nothing could resist. He proceeds to
Kaf, or Ginnistan, and defeats Arzshank, the chief of the Dives, but
is defeated in turn by a more formidable competitor. The war appears
to be carried on for successive ages with alternate advantage and
disadvantage, till after the lapse of centuries Rustan kills Arzshank,
and finally reduces the Dives to a subject and tributary condition.
In all this there is a great resemblance to the fables of Scandinavia;
and the Northern and the Eastern world seem emulously to have
contributed their quota of chivalry and romance, of heroic achievements
and miraculous events, of monsters and dragons, of amulets and
enchantment, and all those incidents which most rouse the imagination,
and are calculated to instil into generous and enterprising youth a
courage the most undaunted and invincible.