Part II

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THE JEW, THE GYPSY

and

EL ISLAM

[Illustration: From the portrait by Lord Leighton F. Jenkins Imp. Paris

Richard F. Burton

[Arabic: الحج عبدالله: Al-Hajj 'abd Allah]]

The Jew, The Gypsy

and El Islam

By the late Captain

SIR RICHARD F. BURTON

K.C.M.G. F.R.G.S. ETC

Translator of

“The Thousand and One Nights,” and Author of “The

Book of the Sword,” “My Pilgrimage to Mecca,” etc.

Edited with a Preface and Brief Notes

by

W. H. WILKINS

London

Hutchinson & Co

Paternoster Row

1898

Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.

PREFACE

“Good wine needs no bush,” and a good book needs no preface, least

of all from any but the author’s pen. This is a rule more honoured

in the breach than the observance nowadays, when many a classic

appears weighed down and obscured by the unnecessary remarks and bulky

commentaries of some unimportant editor. For my part it will suffice to

give as briefly as possible the history of the MSS. now published for

the first time in this volume.

Sir Richard Burton was a voluminous writer. In addition to the

forty-eight works published during his life, there remained at his

death twenty MSS., some long and some short, in different stages

of completion. A few were ready for press; others were finished to

all intents and purposes, and only required final revision or a few

additions; some were in a state of preparation merely, and for that

reason may never see the light. Those in this volume belong to the

second category. That so many of Burton’s MSS. were unpublished at the

time of his death arose from his habit of working at several books at a

time. In his bedroom, which also served as his study, at Trieste were

some ten or twelve rough deal tables, and on each table were piled the

materials and notes of a different book in a more or less advanced

stage of completion. When he was tired of one, or when he came to a

standstill for lack of material, he would leave it for a time and work

at another. During the last few years of his life the great success

which attended his _Arabian Nights_ led him to turn his attention more

to that phase of his work, to the exclusion of books which had been in

preparation for years. Thus it came about that so many were unpublished

when he died.

As it is well known, he left his writings, published and unpublished,

to his widow, Lady Burton, absolutely, to do with as she thought

best. Lady Burton suppressed what she deemed advisable; the rest she

brought with her to England. She published her _Life of Sir Richard

Burton_, a new edition of his _Arabian Nights_, also _Catullus_ and _Il

Pentamerone_; and was arranging for the publication of others when she

died (March, 1896).

Her sister and executrix, Mrs. Fitzgerald (to whom I should like

to express my gratitude for the many facilities she has given me),

thought fit to entrust me with the work of editing and preparing for

publication the remaining MSS. In the exercise of the discretion she

was good enough to vest in me, I determined to bring out first the

three MSS. which make up this book.

The first part--_The Jew_--has a somewhat curious history. Burton

collected most of the materials for writing it from 1869 to 1871, when

he was Consul at Damascus. His intimate knowledge of Eastern races and

languages, and his sympathy with Oriental habits and lines of thought,

gave him exceptional facilities for ethnological studies of this kind.

Disguised as a native, and unknown to any living soul except his wife,

the British Consul mingled freely with the motley populations of

Damascus, and inspected every quarter of the city--Muslim, Christian,

and Jewish. His inquiries bore fruit in material, not only for this

general essay on the Jew, but for an Appendix dealing with the alleged

rite of Human Sacrifice among the Sephardím or Eastern Jews, and more

especially the mysterious murder of Padre Tomaso at Damascus in 1840.

There is little doubt that his inquiry into these subjects was one of

the reasons which aroused the hostility of the Damascus Jews against

him; and that hostility was a powerful factor, though by no means the

only one, in his recall by Lord Granville in 1871.

Burton, however, had collected a mass of material before he left

Damascus, and in 1873, the year after he had been appointed Consul at

Trieste, he began to put it into shape for publication. It was his

habit to collect for many years the material of a work, to mark, learn,

and inwardly digest it, and then write it in a few months. This plan he

pursued with _The Jew_, which, with the Appendix before mentioned, was

finished and ready for publication towards the end of 1874.

In 1875 he came home from Trieste on leave, and brought the book

with him, intending to publish it forthwith. But first he asked an

influential friend, who was highly placed in the official world,

to read the MS., and give him his opinion as to the expediency of

publishing it. That opinion was adverse, owing to the anti-Semitic

tendency of the book. Other friends also pointed out to Burton that, so

long as he remained in the service of the Government of a country where

the Jews enjoy unprecedented power and position, it would be unwise, to

say the least of it, for him to make enemies of them. These arguments

had weight with Burton, who was not as a rule influenced by anything

but his own will, and for once he deemed discretion the better quality,

and returned with his MS. to Trieste. There were other considerations

too. His wife had just brought out her _Inner Life of Syria_, which was

partly devoted to a defence of his action at Damascus in the matter of

the Jews. It had met with a very favourable reception. His friends were

also endeavouring to obtain for him a K.C.B. and the post of Tangier,

Morocco--the one thing he stayed in the Consular Service in the hope

of obtaining. So the time (1875) was not deemed a propitious one for

making enemies.

Burton put his MS. on the shelf, and waited for the promotion which

never came. It remained there until 1886, when Tangier, which was as

good as promised to Burton, was given by Lord Rosebery to Sir William

Kirby-Green. Then Burton took down the MS. on _The Jew_ again, and had

it recopied. But his wife, who was endeavouring to obtain permission

for him to retire on full pension, pointed out to him that since it had

waited so long it might as well wait until March, 1891, when, his term

of service being finished, they would retire from official life and be

free to publish what they liked. Moreover, they numbered many friends

among the wealthy Jews of Trieste, and had no wish to wound their

susceptibilities. Burton reluctantly agreed to this, but declared his

determination of publishing the book as soon as he had retired from the

Consular Service. Five months before the date of his retirement he died.

Lady Burton had _The Jew_ next on her list for publication at the time

of her death. In publishing it now, therefore, one is only carrying

out her wishes and those of her husband. But in the exercise of the

discretion given to me, I have thought it better to hold over for the

present the Appendix on the alleged rite of Human Sacrifice among the

Sephardím and the murder of Padre Tomaso. The only alternative was to

publish it in a mutilated form; and as I hold strongly that no one has

a right to mutilate the work of another writer, least of all of one

who is dead, I prefer to withhold it until a more convenient season.

I can do this with a clearer conscience, because the Appendix has no

direct bearing on the other part of the book, and because the chapters

on _The Jew_ which are retained are by far the more important. The

tone of even this portion is anti-Semitic; but I do not feel justified

in going contrary to the wishes of the author and suppressing an

interesting ethnological study merely to avoid the possibility of

hurting the susceptibilities of the Hebrew community. It has been

truly said, “Every nation gets the Jew it deserves,” and it may well

be that the superstitions and cruelties of the Eastern Jews have been

generated in them by long centuries of oppression and wrong. From these

superstitions and cruelties the enlightened and highly favoured Jews in

England naturally shrink with abhorrence and repudiation; but it does

not therefore follow they have no existence among their less fortunate

Eastern brethren.

_The Gypsy_ has a far less eventful history, though the materials for

its making were collected during a period of over thirty years, and

were gathered for the most part by personal research, in Asia mainly,

and also in Africa, South America, and Europe. Burton’s interest in

the Gypsies was lifelong; and when he was a lieutenant in the Bombay

Army and quartered in Sindh, he began his investigations concerning

the affinity between the Jats and the Gypsies. During his many travels

in different parts of the world, whenever he had the opportunity

he collected fresh materials with a view to putting them together

some day. In 1875 his controversy with Bataillard provoked him into

compiling his long-contemplated work on the Gypsies. Unfortunately

other interests intervened, and the work was never completed. It was

one of the many unfinished things Burton intended to complete when

he should have quitted the Consular Service. He hoped, for instance,

to make fuller inquiries concerning the Gypsies in France, Germany,

and other countries of Europe, and especially he intended to write

a chapter on the Gypsies in England on his return home. Even as it

stands, however, _The Gypsy_ is a valuable addition to ethnology; for

apart from Burton’s rare knowledge of strange peoples and tongues, his

connexion with the Gypsies lends to the subject a unique interest.

There is no doubt that he was affiliated to this strange people by

nature, if not by descent. To quote from the _Gypsy Lore Journal_[1]:

“Whether there may not be also a tinge of Arab, or perhaps of Gypsy

blood in Burton’s race, is a point which is perhaps open to question.

For the latter suspicion an excuse may be found in the incurable

restlessness which has beset him since his infancy, a restlessness

which has effectually prevented him from ever settling long in any one

place, and in the singular idiosyncrasy which his friends have often

remarked--the peculiarity of his eyes. ‘When it (the eye) looks at

you,’ said one who knows him well, ‘it looks through you, and then,

glazing over, seems to see something behind you. Richard Burton is

the only man (not a Gypsy) with that peculiarity, and he shares with

them the same horror of a corpse, death-bed scenes, and graveyards,

though caring little for his own life.’ When to this remarkable fact

be added the scarcely less interesting detail that ‘Burton’ is one

of the half-dozen distinctively Romany names, it is evident that the

suspicion of Sir Richard Burton having a drop of Gypsy blood in his

descent--crossed and commingled though it be with an English, Scottish,

French, and Irish strain--is not altogether unreasonable.”

On this subject Lady Burton also wrote:

“In the January number of the _Gypsy Lore Journal_ a passage is quoted

from ‘a short sketch of the career’ of my husband (a little black

pamphlet) which half suspects a remote drop of Gypsy blood in him.

There is no proof that this was ever the case; but there is no question

that he showed many of their peculiarities in appearance, disposition,

and speech--speaking Romany like themselves. Nor did we ever enter a

Gypsy camp without their claiming him: ‘What are you doing with a black

coat on?’ they would say; ‘why don’t you join us and be our King?’”[2]

Whether the affinity was one of blood or of nature does not greatly

matter; in either case it lends a special interest to Burton’s study of

the gypsy.

Of _El Islam; or, The Rank of Muhammadanism among the Religions of

the World_ there is little to be said. It is one of the oldest of the

Burton MSS.; and though it bears no date, from internal evidence I

judge it to have been written soon after his famous pilgrimage to Mecca

in 1853. It is, in fact, contemporary with his poem _The Kasîdah_,

though I know not why the poem was published and the essay withheld.

Probably Burton contemplated writing more fully on the subject.

Muhammadanism in its highest aspect always attracted him. So long

ago as 1848 we find him preparing for his Mecca pilgrimage, not only

by learning the Koran and practising rites and ceremonies, but by “a

sympathetic study of Sufi-ism, the Gnosticism of El Islam, which would

raise me high above the rank of a mere Muslim.”[3] Lady Burton writes:

“This stuck to him off and on all his life”; and, it may be added, gave

a colour to his writings. Since Burton wrote this essay (now published

for the first time) a change has taken place among thinking men in the

estimate of El Islam among the religions of the world. Writers like

Lane Poole, Isaac Taylor, and Bosworth Smith, to name no others, have

cleared away many misconceptions concerning the “Saving Faith,” and

have discussed its merits as a humanizing creed. But the testimony of

a man like Burton, who by personal observation studied thoroughly the

“inner life of the Muslim,” who absolutely lived the life of an Arab

pilgrim, and penetrated to the Holy of Holies, of necessity carries

peculiar weight.

I should like to say a few words concerning the author’s MSS. So many

conflicting rumours have appeared with reference to the late Sir

Richard Burton’s MSS., that it is well to state that these are here

reproduced practically as they left the author’s hands.[4] It has

been my endeavour to avoid over-editing, and to interfere as little

as possible with the original text. Hence editorial notes, always

in square brackets, are sparingly introduced. It has not been found

necessary to make any verbal changes of importance. But the case is

different with the spelling of proper names, which were left in such

a chaotic condition that a revision was found indispensable, so as

to reduce them to some measure of uniformity. The variants were so

many and the MS. so difficult to decipher, that I am fain to crave

indulgence for my performance of this somewhat troublesome task.

In conclusion, I will only add that it has been my endeavour to give a

full and accurate presentment of these hitherto unpublished MSS. There

are more to follow; but these form a good sample of the work of the

famous Oriental traveller in fields which he made peculiarly his own.

They are eminently characteristic of the man. They give glimpses of him

once more as a bold and original thinker, a profound student of men

and things, as a rare genius, if a wayward one, and as one of the most

remarkable personalities of our day and generation.

W. H. WILKINS.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] January, 1891.

[2] Lady Burton’s life of Her Husband, Vol. I., p. 252.

[3] Burton’s _Reminiscences_, written for Mr. Hitchman in 1888.

[4] In the case of the Appendix on Human Sacrifice among the Sephardím

or Eastern Jews and the murder of Padre Tomaso, I have (as before

stated) preferred to hold it over to publishing it in a mutilated form.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

PREFACE v

CONTENTS xvii

I. THE JEW

I. GENERAL OPINION OF THE JEW 3

II. OPINION OF THE JEW IN ENGLAND 20

III. THE JEW OF THE HOLY LAND AND HIS DESTINY 46

IV. THE JEW AND THE TALMUD 72

V. THE CONTINUITY OF TRADITION IN THE EAST 115

II. THE GYPSY

Part I. NOTES ON MODERN STUDIES OF “CHINGANOLOGY”

I. THE INDIAN AFFINITIES OF THE GYPSIES 136

II. THE CLAIMS AND PRETENSIONS OF M. PAUL BATAILLARD 144

III. A REVIEW OF M. PAUL BATAILLARD’S REVIEWS 157

§ 1. Preliminaries 157

§ 2. “Derniers Travaux, etc.” 172

§ 3. “Origines, etc.” 183

§ 4. “Notes et Questions, etc.,” “Sur le mot Zagaie, etc.” 197

Part II. TOPOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON THE GYPSIES AND THE JATS

IV. HISTORICAL SURVEY OF THE GYPSY IN EUROPE 202

V. THE GYPSY IN ASIA 211

§ 1. The Panjabi Jats 211

§ 2. The Jats of Belochistan 215

§ 3. The Gypsies of Persia 217

§ 4. The Gypsies of Syria 219

§ 5. The Gypsies of the Haurán, South-Eastern Syria 228

§ 6. The Gypsies of Damascus 231

VI. THE GYPSY IN AFRICA 233

§ 1. The Egyptian Ghajar or Ghagar 233

§ 2. The Gzane of Algeria and Morocco 258

§ 3. The Gypsies in Inner Africa 261

VII. THE GYPSY IN EUROPE 263

§ 1. The Gypsy in Hungary 263

§ 2. The Gypsies of Spain 269

VIII. THE GYPSY IN AMERICA 282

The Gypsies of the Brazil 282

III. EL ISLAM

OR

THE RANK OF MUHAMMADANISM AMONG THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD

EL ISLAM 289

INDEX 347

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

I. THE JEW

CHAPTER I

GENERAL OPINION OF THE JEW

The history of the Jew as well as his physiological aspect are subjects

which still remain to be considered and carefully to be worked out from

an Aryan point of view. We have of late years seen books in plenty

upon points of detail: let us particularize _The Physical History of

the Jewish Race_, by Dr. Josiah Clark Nott[5] (Charleston, 1850); _Le

Juif_, par le Chevalier Geargenot des Monceseaux (Paris: Henri Plon,

1871); and _Notices of the Jews and their Country by the Classic

Writers of Antiquity: being a Collection of Statements and Opinions

translated from the Works of Greek and Latin Heathen Authors previous

to A.D. 500_, by John Gill (London: Longmans, 1872). But in these, as

in other works, we find wanting a practical and personal familiarity

with the subject, nor can we be surprised at its absence. It is

generally assumed that at the present moment there are six millions

of Jews scattered over the face of the earth. Some have exaggerated

the total to nine millions and a half; but even the former figure is a

greater number, says M. Crémieux, than the nation could boast of at any

other period of its history, ancient or modern.[6] Throughout the world

also the race increases with such marvellous rapidity as a rule, which

admits of few exceptions, that philosophical inquirers are beginning

to ask whether this immense fecundity, taken in connexion with the

exceptionally healthy and vigorous physique of the race, its ubiquity

and its cosmopolitanism, does not point to a remarkable career in times

to come.

The ethnologist and the student of general history are urgently invited

to consider the annals and the physical and intellectual aspects of

the children of Israel, perhaps the most interesting subject that

can occupy their attention. The Jew, like the Gypsy, stands alone,

isolated by character, if not by blessing. Traditionally, or rather

according to its own tradition, the oldest family on earth, it is at

the same time that which possesses the most abundant vitality. Its

indestructible and irrepressible life-power enables this nation without

a country to maintain an undying nationality and to nourish a sentiment

of caste with a strength and a pertinacity unparalleled in the annals

of patriotism. The people that drove the Jews from Judæa, the empires

which effaced the kingdoms of Israel and Judah from the map of the

world, have utterly perished. The descendants of the conquering Romans

are undistinguishable from the rest of mankind. But, eighteen hundred

years after the Fall of Jerusalem, the dispersed Jewish people have a

distinct existence, are a power in every European capital, conduct the

financial operations of nations and governments, and are to be found

wherever civilization has extended and commerce has penetrated; in

fact, it has made all the world its home.

One obstacle to a matured and detailed ethnological study of the Jew

is the difficulty of becoming familiar with a people scattered over

the two hemispheres. Though the race is one, the two great factors

blood and climate have shown it to be anything but immutable, either in

physique or in character. Compare, for instance, the two extremes--the

Tatar-faced Karaïte of the Crimea with the Semitic features of Morocco,

the blond lovelocks of Aden and the fiery ringlets of Germany with the

greasy, black hair of Houndsditch. And as bodily form differs greatly,

there is perhaps a still greater distinction in mental characteristics:

we can hardly believe the peaceful and industrious Dutch Jew a brother

of the fanatic and ferocious Hebrew who haunts the rugged Highlands of

Safed in the Holy Land. Yet though these differences constitute almost

a series of sub-races, there is one essentially great quality which

cements and combines the whole house of Israel.

The vigour, the vital force, and the mental capacity of other peoples

are found to improve by intermixture; the more composite their

character, the greater their strength and energy. But for generation

after generation the Jews have preserved, in marriage at least, the

purity of their blood. In countries where they form but a small

percentage of the population the range of choice must necessarily be

very limited, and from the very beginning of his history the Jew, like

his half-brother the Arab, always married, or was expected to marry,

his first cousin. A well-known traveller of the present day has proved

that this can be done with impunity only by unmixed races of men, and

that the larger the amount of mixture in blood the greater will be the

amount of deformity in physique and morale to be expected from the

offspring. Consanguineous marriages are dangerous in England, and far

more dangerous, as De Hone has proved, in Massachusetts. Yet the kings

of Persia intermarried with their sisters, and the Samaritan branch of

the Jews is so closely connected that first cousins are almost sisters.

Physically and mentally the Jewish man and woman are equal in all

respects to their Gentile neighbours, and in some particulars are

superior to them. The women of the better class are strongly and

symmetrically shaped; and although their beauty of feature is not that

admired by the Christian eye, debility and deformity are exceptionally

rare. In grace of form and in charm of manner they are far superior

to their husbands and brothers, and indeed this everywhere appears to

be a sub-characteristic racial feature. They are nowhere remarkably

distinguished for chastity, and in some places, Morocco for instance,

their immorality is proverbial. Their grand physique does not age

like that of the natives of the strange countries which they colonize

and where Europeans readily degenerate, they preserve youth for ten

years longer than their rivals, they become mothers immediately after

puberty, and they bear children to a far later age. Their customs

allow them to limit the family, not by deleterious drugs and dangerous

operations, but by the simple process of prolonging the period of

lactation, and barrenness is rare amongst them as in the days when it

was looked upon as a curse. There is scarcely any part of the habitable

globe, from the Highlands of Abyssinia to the Lowlands of Jamaica,

in which the Jewish people cannot be acclimatized more readily and

more rapidly than the other races of Europe--also the result of blood

comparatively free from that intermixture which brings forward the

inherent defects of both parents.

The Jews also enjoy a comparative immunity from various forms of

disease which are the scourge of other races. Pulmonary and scrofulous

complaints are rare amongst them; leprosy and elephantiasis are almost

extinct; and despite their impurity in person and the exceptional

filth of their dwelling-places, they are less liable to be swept away

by cholera and plague than the natives of the countries which are

habitually ravaged by those epidemics. They seldom suffer from the

usual infectious results, even where the women are so unchaste that

honour seems as unknown to them as honesty to the men.

Physiologists have asked, How is this phenomenon to be accounted for?

Why is the duration of life greater among the Jews than among the

other races of Europe? Is it the result of superior organization or

of obedience to the ceremonial law? The researches of those who have

made these questions their special study supply but one satisfactory or

sufficient answer, and it may be summed up in six words--a prodigious

superiority of vital power. And all the laws attributed to the

theistic secularism of Moses were issued with one object--namely, that

of hardening and tempering the race to an extent which even Sparta

ignored. The ancient Jew was more than half a Bedawin, and not being an

equestrian race his annual journeys to and from Jerusalem were mostly

made on foot. His diet was carefully regulated, and his year was a

succession of fasts and feasts, as indeed it is now, but not to such an

extent as formerly. The results were simply the destruction of all the

weaklings and the survival of the fittest.

Thrice during the year, by order of the Torah (Deut. xvi. 16)--namely

(1) in the Passover, or feast of unleavened bread during the first

ecclesiastical and the seventh civil month; (2) at Pentecost, or

Shebaoth (weeks), the feast of the wheat harvest in the third or the

ninth month; and (3) at the Feast of Tabernacles, or the ingathering

of the harvest in the seventh or the first month--the Jew of old was

religiously commanded to appear before the Lord. He was bound to leave

his home, which might be distant a hundred and fifty miles, and travel

up to Jerusalem, where he led a camp life like his half-brothers in

the Desert. This semi-nomad life was combined with a quasi-ascetic

condition produced by the frequency and the severity of his fasts and

by the austerities attending upon making ready for the Sabbath, that is

to say, the preparations of Friday evening--some religious men even in

the present age suffer nothing to pass their lips for seven consecutive

days and nights.[7] This afflicting the soul, as it is called, served

to breed a race equally hard and hardy in frame and mind. It embodied

to perfection the idea of the sacrifice of personal will. Add to this

the barbarous and ferocious nature of their punishments, amongst

which stoning by the congregation is perhaps the most classical, and

the perpetual bloodshed in the Temple, which must have suggested a

butcher’s shambles.

Again, the history and traditions, the faith and practice of the Jew

ever placed before his eyes the absolute and immeasurable superiority

of his own caste, the “Peculiar People, the Kingdom of Priests, the

Holy Nation.” This exaltation justified the Hebrew in treating his

brother-men as heathens barely worthy of the title of human. “Lo,

the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the

nations”--an unfriendly separation and an estrangement between man and

man equally injurious to the welfare of Jew and Gentile. It grew a rank

crop of hideous crimes committed in the fair name of religion--what

nation but the Hebrew could exult over a Jephthah who “did with his

daughter according to his own,” that is, burnt her to death before the

Lord? At the same time it inculcated a rare humanity amongst its own

members unknown to all other peoples of antiquity: for instance, it

allowed the coward to retire from the field before battle, and, strange

to say, it inculcated the very highest of moral dogmas. In 250 B.C.

Sochæus, and after him the Pharisees, according to Josephus, taught

that God should be served, not for gain, but for love and gratitude:

hence his follower Sadík forbade the looking forward to futurity, even

as Moses had neglected the doctrine with studious care. Even in the

present age of the world such denegation of egotism would be a higher

law.

All these specialities in combination urged the Jews to dare and to do

everything against all who were not of their own blood. The inevitable

conclusion of such a policy was that eventually they came into

collision with all around them; that they failed in the unequal combat

with pagan Rome and early Christianity; that they lost the birthplace

of their nationality, and were scattered far and wide over the surface

of the earth. And what has happened once may happen again.

The Greeks of earlier days, who like the Hebrews had but one faith

and one tongue, also met periodically as a single family at Delphi,

the centre of their racial area. Thus that gifted people without any

inspiration effectually combined with grandeur in the worship of the

gods the law of harmony which should preside over human society. But

the Greeks were a sensuous and a joyous race, walking under the free

heavens in the glorious lights of poetry, of art, and of beauty, and

could not fail to realize the truth that society based upon reciprocal

benevolence means civilization and the highest stage of human

society--communion with the world.

* * * * *

Dr. Boudin, the eminent physiologist and medical writer, remarks

that the Jew is governed by statistical laws of birth, sickness, and

mortality completely different from those which rule the peoples

amongst whom he lives. This assertion is confirmed by the testimony of

history. During the Middle Ages, when the unclean capitals of Europe

and Asia were periodically devastated by the plague, the angel of death

passed by the houses of the oppressed and despised Jews, although they

were condemned by local regulations to occupy the worst quarters of the

cities. In speaking of the pestilence of A.D. 1345, Tschudi says that

it nowhere attacked the Jews. Frascator mentions that they completely

escaped the typhus epidemic in A.D. 1505; they were untouched by the

intermittent fevers which reigned in Rome in A.D. 1691; they were not

subject to the dysentery which was so fatal at Nimeguen in A.D. 1736;

and both in 1832 and 1849 it is stated upon excellent authority that

they enjoyed comparative exemption from the cholera in London, although

during the last-named year the city numbered nearly thirteen thousand

victims.[8]

Not less curious are the statistics showing the natural aptitude of

the Jewish people, at once so national in their sentiments and so

cosmopolitan in their tendencies, for universal acclimatization. The

Jew and the Christian will emigrate to a British or a French colony

from the same birthplace; and while, owing to the uncongenial climate,

the Christian settler with his family eventually dies out, the Jewish

settler increases and multiplies. In Algeria, for example, the French

colonies would become extinct in a very short process of time were it

not for the steady influx of immigrants, whereas the Jew takes deep

root and throws out vigorous branches.

With respect to the superior longevity of the Jews, German sources

supply some interesting particulars. Dr. W. C. de Neufville,[9] of

Frankfort, by the collection and collation of an immense mass of

statistics, has demonstrated the following facts:

1. One-fourth of Christian populations dies at the mean age of 6

years 11 months.

2. One-fourth of Jewish populations dies at the mean age of 28 years

3 months.

3. One-half of Christian populations dies at the mean age of 36

years 6 months.

4. One-half of Jewish populations dies at the mean age of 53 years 1

month.

5. Three-fourths of Christian populations die at the mean age of 59

years 10 months.

6. Three-fourths of Jewish populations die at the mean age of 71

years.

It is found that in Prussia the annual mortality among the Jews is 1·61

per cent, to 2·00 among the rest of the population. The annual rate

of increase with the former is 1·73 per cent.; with the latter only

1·36.[10] In Frankfort the mean duration of human life is 36 years 11

months among the Christian population, and 46 years 9 months among the

Jewish.

I will now quote at full length the favourable verdict usually offered

in the case of the Hebrews by the writers of Europe:

“If we trace the history of the Israelitish race from the destruction

of Jerusalem to the time at which the prevalence of a more enlightened

public opinion caused to be effaced from the Statute Books of European

nations the barbarous and cruel enactments against the Jews, adopted

in an epoch when bigotry, brutality, and persecution were rampant, we

shall be constrained to admit that there has been something little

less than miraculous in the preservation of this people from utter

extermination. Basnage[11] (_Histoire des Juifs_) calculates that

1,338,460 Jews perished by fire and sword, famine and sickness, at and

after the siege of the Holy City. Subsequently a host of unfortunate

exiles became the objects of bitter and unrelenting persecution,

fanaticism, and tyranny in every country throughout Christendom. During

the two years which preceded their final expulsion from Judæa, 580,000

Jews were slaughtered by the Romans; and the gradual dispersion of

the rest over the face of Europe was the prelude for the perpetration

upon them by ‘Christians’ of a series of atrocities almost unequalled

for merciless savagery. The functions they discharged in mediæval

society were, in reality, of the most valuable kind; but so dense

was the ignorance, and so inveterate were the prejudices of the age,

that towards the close of the thirteenth century upwards of 13,000

Israelites were banished from England in one day; just as two hundred

years later 500,000 were expelled from Spain, 150,000 from Portugal,

and an indefinite number were cast out of France. For a period of three

centuries successive sovereigns refused to accord permission to the

Jews to worship Almighty God within the English realm; nor was it until

the Protectorate of Cromwell that a synagogue was allowed to be erected

in London.

“In works of fiction, in the drama, and in daily life the name of

Jew has become a byword and a reproach, and an explanation of this

is to be sought for rather in the malignity of religious prejudice

than in the actual conduct of the people who have been visited with

so much opprobrium. Their virtues are their own, but their faults are

the fruit of eighteen centuries of outlawry and oppression. Under

such treatment archangels would have become depraved. In the history

of the whole world there is nothing which in any degree resembles

the systematic persecutions, the barbarous cruelties, the cowardly

insults, the debasing tyranny to which the Jewish race has been

exposed. That it was not degraded to the level of the African negroes,

or absolutely obliterated from the face of the earth, is only another

proof of its wonderful vitality and of the indestructible elasticity

of the national character.[12] In spite of all these centuries of

oppression and repression, its representatives are still found, not

merely among the monarchs of finance, but among the royalties and

aristocracies of genius. Every one must remember the passage in

_Coningsby_ in which Mr. Disraeli enumerates the illustrious Jews who

are occupying, or have occupied, the foremost rank in arts, letters,

statesmanship, and military science--Count Cantemir in Russia, Senor

Mendizelal in Spain, and Count Arnim in Prussia; Marshals Soult and

Massena, Professors Neander, Regius, Bearnary, and Wohl; the composers

Rossini, Mendelssohn, and Meyerbeer (not to mention Offenbach); Rachel

the actress; Pasta, Grisi, and Braham the vocalists, Spinoza the

philosopher, and Heine the poet; to which list he might have added the

names of some of the most distinguished of living French and English

celebrities.[13] And though we have forgotten Xapol and Gondomar,

Yahuda Halevi, and Aviabron, alias Solomon ben Gabriel, few of us

can ignore the Rothschilds and Goldsmids, the Ricardos, Rouhers, and

Torlonias, now become household words in Europe.

“That in all countries the Jews, on the other hand, should evince a

preference for sordid pursuits, and follow them with an eagerness and

tenacity worthy of employment in more generous and elevated callings,

must also be admitted. William Abbott, in his outspoken and earnest

but narrow-minded way, advanced this plea upon one occasion in the

House of Commons, in resistance to a motion to relieve all persons

professing the Jewish religion in England from the civil disabilities

under which they then laboured. He was replied to by Macaulay in a

speech as eloquent in terms as it was irresistible in logic.

“‘Such, sir,’ said he, ‘has in every age been the reasoning of bigots.

They never fail to plead, in justification of persecution, the vices

which persecution has engendered. England has been to the Jews less

than half a country, and we revile them because they do not feel for

England more than a half patriotism. We treat them as slaves, and

wonder that they do not regard us as brethren. We drive them to mean

occupations, and then reproach them for not embracing honourable

professions. We long forbade them to possess land, and we complain

that they chiefly occupy themselves in trade. We shut them out from

all the paths of ambition, and then we despise them for taking refuge

in avarice. During many ages we have in all our dealings with them

abused our immense superiority of force, and then we are disgusted

because they have recourse to that cunning which is the natural and

universal defence of the weak against the violence of the strong. But

were they always a mere money-changing, money-getting, money-hoarding

race? Nobody knows better than my honourable friend, the member for

the University of Oxford, that there is nothing in their national

character which unfits them for the highest duties of citizens. He

knows that in the infancy of civilization, when our island was as

savage as New Guinea, when letters and arts were still unknown to

Athens, when scarcely a thatched hut stood on what was afterwards the

site of Rome, this contemned people had their fenced cities and cedar

palaces, their splendid Temple, their fleets of merchant ships, their

schools of sacred learning, their great statesmen and soldiers, their

natural philosophers, their historians and poets. What nation ever

contended more manfully against overwhelming odds for its independence

and religion? And if, in the course of many centuries, the oppressed

descendants of warriors and sages have degenerated from the qualities

of their fathers--if while excluded from the blessings of law and

bound down under the yoke of slavery they have contracted some of

the vices of outlaws and slaves, shall we consider this a matter of

reproach to them? Shall we not rather consider it a matter of shame

and remorse to ourselves? Let us do justice to them. Let us open to

them every career in which ability and energy can be displayed. Till

we have done this, let us not presume to say that there is no genius

among the countrymen of Isaiah, no heroism amongst the descendants of

the Maccabees.’”

We have “done this,” and the results have stultified all this nicely

balanced rhetoric. And the following pages may suggest that our

European ancestors had other reasons for expelling the Jews than the

mere “bigotry” and “brutality” so unphilosophically ascribed to them by

Lord Macaulay. FOOTNOTES:

[5] [Dr. J. C. Nott, the well-known ethnologist.]

[6] The two great centres of Jewish population are, first, the northern

part of Africa between Morocco and Egypt, especially the Barbary

States, where they form the chief element of the town population, and

where a census is at present mere guesswork; they spread gradually

southwards, and since 1858 a trading colony has occupied Timbuctoo on

the Niger. The other families in Africa are the Falashas, or Black

Jews of Abyssinia, mere proselytes like those of Malabar, and a few

Europeans at the Cape of Good Hope. The second great centre is that

region of Europe which extends from the Lower Danube to the Baltic; and

here there are about four millions who occupy the middle class among

the Sclavonic nationalities, while in the whole of Western Europe there

are not a hundred and twenty thousand. Their descendants have followed

the path of European migrations to America, North and South, and to

Australia, where the large commercial towns enable them to multiply as

in the Old World, and much more rapidly than the Christian population.

The other outlying colonies are in Turkey, European as well as Asiatic,

although the Holy Land now contains but a small proportion of their

former numbers; in Yemen, especially at Sanaá and Aden, in Nejerán,

and other parts of Arabia; along the whole course of the Euphrates,

in Kurdistan, Persia, and India, especially in Malabar, where there

are white and black Jews; in China and in Cochin China, both colonies

being also found; and in the Turkoman countries. Here they inhabit the

four fortresses of Shahr-i-sabz, Kulab, Shamatan, and Urta Kurgan, with

about thirty small villages; they live in their own quarters, and,

except having to pay higher taxes, they are treated on an equal footing

with the other inhabitants.

[7] This terrible fast is called Ha-fraká. Old men have been known in

Syria and Palestine to endure it twice a year, in summer and in winter.

They sup on Saturday evening, and till the sunset of the next Saturday

they do not allow themselves to swallow even a drop of water or to

touch a pinch of snuff. The state of prostration towards the end of the

term is extreme, and the first thing done, when the time has passed, is

to place the patient in a warm bath. This is probably the severest fast

known to the world, unless it be rivalled by certain Hindu ascetics:

the Greek and Coptic Christians and the Muhammadans have nothing to

compare with it.

[8] This we gather from the reports of the General Board of Health on

the epidemic cholera. In 1832 only 4 deaths were recorded out of the

3,000 Portuguese Jews, and in 1849 amongst the 20,000 then inhabiting

London there were no more than 13, although the loss from cholera

amounted to 12,837. This gives a proportion of 0·6 per 1,000, whilst

the superintendent registrar assigns 1: 1,000 to Hampstead, 6: 1,000 to

Whitechapel, 7: 1,000 to the City of London, 19: 1,000 to Shoreditch,

and 29: 1,000 to Rotherhithe. [These figures are for the special

cholera year 1832. Since then the visitations have been much less

severe.]

[9] [The work referred to is _Lebensdauer und Todesursachen 22

verschiedener Stände_. Frankfort, 1855.]

[10] [These figures are for average years, and hence hold good now as

then.]

[11] [Author of the large history of the Jews in 5 vols. Rotterdam,

1707.]

[12] There is another parasitic race, also of pure blood, but

Indo-European, not Semitic, whose preservation appears almost as

“providential” as that of the Jews, and whose union is even more

exceptional because it is not bound either by revelation or indeed by

any form of faith--the Gypsy.

[13] Not to mention Wolff and Palgrave the travellers, and Monseigneur

Bauer, Père Hermann, and Père Marie de Ratisbonne, the converts.

CHAPTER II

OPINION OF THE JEW IN ENGLAND

Of all Europeans, the Englishman, who boasts of being a staunch friend

to the people “scattered and peeled,” and whose confident ignorance and

indiscriminate philanthropy are bestowed upon them equally with the

African negro, knows least of the customs and habits of his _protégés_,

and especially of those of Jews in foreign countries. The neglect of

things near to us must be the reason why we know so little of the inner

life of Jewry: there are, however, other concomitant causes.

In our native land the Hebrew lives protected, and honoured, in

fact, as one of ourselves. We visit him, we dine with him, and

we see him at all times and places, except perhaps at the Sunday

service. We should enjoy his society but for a certain coarseness of

manner, and especially an offensive familiarity, which seems almost

peculiar to him. We marvel at his talents, and we are struck by the

adaptability and by the universality of his genius. We admire his

patience, his steadfastness, and his courage, his military prowess,

and his successful career in every post and profession--Statesman and

Senior Wrangler, Poet and Literato, Jurist, Surgeon, and Physician,

Capitalist, Financier, and Merchant, Philosopher and Engineer, in fact

in everything that man can be. When we compare the Semitic Premier with

his Anglo-Saxon rival, it is much to the advantage of the former: while

jesting about the “Asian mystery,” we cannot but feel that there is

something in the Asiatic which we do not expect, which eludes our ken,

which goes beyond us.

Those familiar with the annals of old families in England are aware

of the extent to which they have been mixed with Jewish blood, even

from the days when religious prejudice is mistakenly represented to

have been most malign. Indeed, of late centuries our nation has never

prided itself, like the Portuguese and the Iberians generally, in

preserving its blood “pure and free from taint of Jew and Infidel.”

The cross perpetually reappears in outward form as well as in mental

quality. Here and there an old country house produces a scion which

to all appearance is more Jewish than the Jews themselves. A peculiar

characteristic of the blood is an extreme fondness for show, for

colour, for splendour and magnificence in general. The rich Jew must

display his wealth; like the Parsee, he makes and spends whilst

his rivals the Greek and the Armenian make and hoard. In certain

continental cities where he now reigns supreme he renders society

impossible to the Christian. The Messrs. G. Muir Mackenzie and O. P.

Irby--_The Turks, the Greeks, and the Slavons_ (London: Bell & Daldy,

1867)--will show how at Salonika[14] the French Consul Marquis de

---- could not join in any of the festivities. The dinner-table was

not respected unless it glistened with gold and silver plate borrowed

and lent for the occasion. His wife could not appear without a new

dress on every occasion, and therefore she stayed at home. A toilette

from Paris twice a week not only ministers to the womanly enjoyment

of the wearer, and to the sensuous pleasures of the beholders, but

also shows that the house is wealthy and that the firm has spare money

to throw away. It is, in fact, an advertisement of the most refined

description. Ladies meeting in parties of three and four over what our

grandmothers called “a dish of tea” must appear _décolletées_ and in

diamonds. The _rivière_ must disfigure the beautiful neck and bosom of

the bride. At the theatre those boxes are most valued where the light

falls strongest upon the precious stones, and where costly textures and

valuable laces stand out to the greatest advantage. And behind this

splendour of show lies cunning of a high order. The grand liveries are

used once a week upon Madame’s “day”; at other times the lackeys are

_en déshabille_. The costly carriage horses work till noon in carts and

drays transporting the _irritamenta malorum_ which support the equipage

of the afternoon. And so in everything. The Hebrew race is so marked in

its characteristics that it has ever been the theme of over-praise or

of undue blame, like those individuals concerning whom society cannot

be neutral; and of late years the transitions of public opinion which

usually moves slowly have been comically abrupt.

The Jew of popular English fiction is no longer _Moshesh_, a wretch who

believes in one God and in Shent-per-Shent as his profit, whose eyes,

unlike those of Banquo, are brimming full with “speculation.” The Fagin

of young Dickens only a quarter of a century ago has now become the

“gentle Jew Riah” of old Dickens, a being remarkable for resignation

and quiet dignity, a living reproach to the Christian heathenry that

dwells about him. The great feminine actresses of the world, we are

told by a charming authoress, are all Jewesses. _Tancred; or, the New

Crusade,_ to mention nothing of meaner note, teaches us to admire and

love the modern “Roses of Sharon,” those exquisite visions that are

read to rest by attendants with silver lamps, and who talk history,

philosophy, and theology with the warmth of womanly enthusiasm,

tempered by the pure belief of a bishop of the Church of England, the

learning of a German professor, and the grace of Madame Recamier.

Miriam has become, in fact, a pet heroine with novel writers and novel

readers, and thrice happy is the fascinating young Christian who, like

“that boy of Norcott’s,” despite his manifold Christian disabilities,

can win her hand and heart.

Of the middle and lower classes of Jews the Englishman only hears

that they are industrious, abstinent, and comparatively cleanly in

person; decent, hospitable, and as strict in keeping the Sabbath as

the strictest Sabbatarians could desire--perhaps, if he knew all, he

would not desire so much. He is told that they are wondrous charitable

in their dealings with those of the same faith, always provided that

some mite of a religious difference does not grow to mountain size. The

papers inform him how munificent and judicious is their distribution

of alms, how excellent are their arrangements for the support of their

paupers, who are never exposed to the horrors of the parish and the

poor-house, and who are maintained by their co-religionists, though

numbering in London at least 16·50 per cent. out of a total exceeding

thirty thousand souls.[15] And he everywhere reads of Charities,

public, private, and congregational; of Hospitals and Almshouses; of

Orphanages, Philanthropic Institutions; of Pensioners’ and Widows’

Homes; Friendly Societies; of Doles of Bread and Coal and Raiment;

of Lying-in Houses and Infant Asylums; of Burial Societies, male

and female; of arrangements for supplying godfathers and godmothers

managed by Benevolent Societies, Boards, Institutions, Committees,

and Consistories. Like their charities, the educational system may be

divided into three heads: Schools, public and private; Rabbinical and

Theological Institutions; and Literary and Scientific Associations.

He--the ordinary Englishman--may be dimly conscious that the Jew is

the one great exception to the general curse upon the sons of Adam,

and that he alone eats bread, not in the sweat of his own face, but

in the sweat of his neighbour’s face--like the German cuckoo, who

does not colonize, but establishes himself in the colonies of other

natives. He has perhaps been told that all the world over the Jew

spurns the honest toil of the peasant and the day labourer; that in

the new Jewry of Houndsditch and Petticoat Lane, in the Marais, in

the Ghetto, in the Juden Strasse, and in the Hárat el Yahúd (Jewish

quarters) of Mussulman cities, his sole business is _quocumque modo

rem--sordid gains_--especially by money-lending, and by usury, which

may not be practised upon a fellow Jew, but which, with the cleanest of

consciences, is applied to the ruin of the Gentile. He has heard that

where Saxon and Celt ply pick and pan, the Hebrew broker and pedlar

buy up their gains and grow rich where the working-men starve in the

midst of gold. He sees that the “Chosen People” will swarm over the

world from California to Australia, wherever greed of gain induces them

to travel. “To my mind,” says a popular writer, “there are few things

so admirable and wonderful in this life as the ‘getting on,’ as it is

vulgarly called, of the Hebrew race. For one of us who, by means of

infinite wriggling, panting, toiling, struggling, and hanging on by

his eyebrows, so to speak, to opportunity, ambitious to emerge from

obscurity, and ascend to the topmost round of the ladder, there seems

to be at least five hundred Caucasian Arabs who attain the desired

altitude; ay, and who manage to avoid turning giddy and toppling over.

Most Jews seem to rise, and the instances of a few going ‘to the

utter bad,’ as the phrase runs, seem equally as rare. How often your

successful Nazarene comes to grief! At the moment you think him Lord

of All he is Master of Nothing.... Jews appear to keep what they have

gotten; and, what is better, to get more, and keep _that_ too. They

are not much given, I fancy, to experience the pangs of remorse; and

I cannot well imagine a mad Jew. It must be something awful. On the

whole, looking at the vast number of Christians I have known who from

splendour have subsided into beggary, and the vast number of Hebrews

I have watched advancing, not from mendicity--a Jew never begs, save

from one of his own tribe, and then I suppose the transaction is more

of the nature of a friendly loan, to be repaid with interest when

brighter days arrive--but from extreme indigence to wealth and station,

I incline to the opinion that Gentiles have a natural alacrity in

sinking--look how heavy I can be--but that the Chosen People have as

natural a tendency towards buoyancy. That young man with the banner

in Mr. Longfellow’s ballad was, depend upon it, an Israelite of the

Israelites; only I think the poet was wrong, as poets generally are, in

his climax. The young man was not frozen to death. He made an immense

fortune at the top of Mont Blanc by selling ‘Excelsior’ penny ices.”

The secret of this “getting on” is known to every expert. The Jewish

boy begins from his earliest days with changing a few sovereigns,

and he pursues the path of lucre till the tomb opens to receive him.

He is utterly single-minded in this point; he has but one idea, and

therefore he must succeed. Who does not remember the retort of the

Jewish capitalist to the Christian statesman who, impertinently enough,

advised him to teach his children something beyond mere trade? “My

first wish,” answered the Hebrew, “is to see my boys become good men of

business; beyond that--nothing!”

The average Englishman cannot help observing with Cobbett, and

despite Lord Macaulay, that the callings which the lower orders of

Jews especially prefer are those held mean or dishonourable by other

men, such as demoralizing usury, receiving stolen goods, buying up

old clothes, keeping gambling-houses and betting-cribs, dealing in a

literature calculated to pervert the mind of youth; combining, as a

person--afterwards sent to Newgate--lately did, the trade of a cosmetic

artist with the calling of a procuress, and supplying the agapemonæ

of the world,[16] while occasionally producing a sharp jockey or a

hard-hitting prize-fighter. He is not ignorant of their prodigious

trickery, of their immense and abnormal powers of lying--the “trifle

tongue,” as they picturesquely call it--and their subtle art of winning

their object by roundabout ways. He cannot mistake their physical

cowardice, but he remembers that the Jewish officers, once so numerous

in the French army, were as brave as their Christian brethren; and

again he recognizes the fact that lying and cowardice long continue to

be the effects of oppression. He smiles at their intense love of public

amusements, and their excessive fondness for display, evinced by tawdry

finery and mosaic gold.

Knowing this, however, he supposes himself to know the worst. He has

heard little of the excessive optimism of the Jew, the [Greek: παντα

καλα λιαν: panta kala lian], so strongly opposed to Christianity, the

“religion of sorrow.” He knows nothing of the immense passions and

pugnacity, the eagerness and tenacity of Lutheran rancour displayed

against all who differ from some minutiæ of oral law. He ignores

the over-weening, narrow-minded pride of caste which makes the Jew

“destined by God to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation”--as

one of their own race, Rabbi Ascher (initiator of youth), even now

repeats.[17] He cannot realize the fact that the ferocity and terrible

destructiveness which characterize the Jew and his literature, from

the days of the Prophets to those of the Talmudists, are present in

his civilized neighbour, whom he considers to be one of the best of

men--a sleeping lion, it is true, but ready to awake upon the first

occasion. And he is ignorant of the Eastern Jews’ love of mysticism

and symbolism, their various horrible and disgusting superstitions,

and their devotion to magical charms and occult arts which lead to a

variety of abominations.

This ignorance produces weak outbursts of lamentations that the Hebrews

“still cling with obstinate persistence to a hopeless hope,” Hence we

read in the pages of a modern traveller--_The Rob Roy on the Jordan_,

p. 274, by J. MacGregor, M.A. (London: Murray, 1869): “Here, as well

as some twenty years ago, I heard men in Palestine call their fellows

‘Jew’ as the lowest of all possible words of abuse. When we recollect

that the Jews, in this very land of their own, were once the choice

people of the world; that now through the whole earth, among the

richest, the bravest, the cleverest, the fairest, the best at music

and song, at poetry and painting, at art and science and literature,

at education, philanthropy, statesmanship, war, commerce, and finance,

in every sphere of life are Jews,--we may well remember the word of

prophecy which told us long ago that the name of Jew would be a ‘byword

and a reproach,’ even in the Jews’ own land.” It is true that, even

in the Portuguese colonies, where the Jew is comparatively unknown,

his name is worse than at Jerusalem, Bagdad, and Damascus; whilst

“Judear”--to play the Jew--signifies the being capable of any villainy.

But how long will prophecy prove true? In the coast towns of Morocco, a

few years have sufficed to raise the Hebrew from the lowest of stations

to equality with, and even superiority over, his Mussulman cousin. The

Jew may ere long make the Gentile a “byword and a reproach.”

But the English world never hears the fact that the Jew of Africa,

of Arabia, of Kurdistan, of Persia, and of Western Asia generally,

is still the Jew “cunning and fierce” of the thirteenth and the

fourteenth centuries in Europe; that he is the Jew of the Talmud,

of Shammai, and of Rabbi Shalomon Jarchi, not of the Pentateuch, of

Hillel, and of Gamaliel; that he sympathizes, not with those staunch

old conservatives and rationalists, the Sadducees, now gone for ever,

nor with Ezra and the Priests, the Levites and the Nethiním--men of

the Great Synagogue--nor with the ascetic Essenes, prototypes of

Christian monkery; but with the Pharisees, the Separatists, and the

Puritans of his faith, with the Captains, the Fanatics, the Zealots,

the Sicarii, the Swordsmen and the Brigands of John of Giscala, of

Eleazar son of Ananias, and of those who worked all the civil horrors

of our first century. Some distant or adventurous journey of Sir Moses

Montefiore[18] or other philanthropists, duly published with packed

and partial comments in the papers of Europe, reveals to the lazy

comprehension of the man of refinement that the Hebrew in many parts

of the semi-civilized world is still the object of suspicion, fear,

and abhorrence. He attributes the persecutions, the _avarice_, or the

massacre to the pleasures of plunder, to the barbarous bigotry, and to

the cruel fanaticism of bloodthirsty and cruel races, who still look

upon the present with the eyes of the past, and who have seized an

opportunity to glut their lust of spoil or to wreak an obsolete revenge

because some eighteen centuries and three-quarters ago “an aristocratic

and unpopular high priest, whom the people afterwards rose upon and

murdered, had for political reasons crucified our Lord,” or because in

A.D. 729[19] a heroic Jewess of Khaibar poisoned a shoulder of lamb

with the object of trying by a crucial test whether Muhammad was the

Prophet of Allah, or merely the Sheikh of Arab pillagers, the worthy

_confrère_ of Músailamah the Liar.

We do not waste time upon thought or inquiry whether the persecution,

the _avarice_, or the massacre may not be the direct result of some

intolerable wrong, of some horrible suspicion which has gradually

assumed the form of certainty, and which calls for the supreme judgment

of the sword; we do not reason that the cause which from ancient times

has confined the Jew to Ghettos and to certain quarters in all great

continental cities resulted, not only from his naturally preferring

the society of his co-religionists, but also from the fact that his

Christian neighbours found it advisable to consult by such means their

own safety and that of their families. The disappearance of children

was talked of at Rome and in all the capitals of Italy even throughout

the early part of the present century, when constitutional rule and the

new police were unknown, as freely and frequently as at Salonika, at

Smyrna, and in all the cities of the Levant during the year of grace

1873.

Again, we hardly reflect that, as intolerance begets intolerance and

injury breeds injury, a trampled and degraded race will ever turn

when it can upon the oppressor, and that the revenge of the weak,

the slavish, and the cowardly will be the more certain, ruthless,

and terrible because it has a long score of insults and injuries to

reckon up. In the country towns of modern Persia, as in Turkey, the

Jew is popularly believed to make away with children. The Muhammadan

boy, meeting a Hebrew in the streets, will pluck his grey beard,

taunt him with the _Bú-e-Shimít_--the rank odour which is everywhere

supposed to characterize the race--tread upon his toes, and spit upon

his Jewish gabardine. In Turkey there are still places where he would

be expelled the Bazar with sticks and stones; others where every

outrage of language would be levelled against him, including Al Yahúd

Músairáj[20]--the Jew smells of the lamp--alluding to his free culinary

use of sesamum oil. A Jew passing through the square of the Holy

Sepulchre at Jerusalem would infallibly be mobbed on all occasions,

and on certain fêtes would be torn to pieces; and the list of dangers

and insults which he incurs both from Muslims and Christians might be

indefinitely prolonged.

Can we wonder then if the persecutor, man or boy, disappear, should

opportunity offer such tempting punishment for their barbarous

fanaticism? And will not this supposition explain the Arabic proverb,

“Sup with the Jews and sleep at the Christians’,” and the fact that

every mother teaches her boy from earliest youth to avoid the Jewish

quarter, binding him by all manner of oaths? Finally, is it surprising

that amongst an ignorant and superstitious race of outcasts such

random acts and outbreaks of vengeance, pure and simple, should by

human perversity pass, after the course of ages, into a semi-religious

rite, and be justified by men whose persecution has frenzied them as

a protest and a memorial before the throne of the Most High against

the insults and injuries meted out by the Gentile to the children of

Abraham?

Shakespeare may not have drawn Shylock from a real character, but his

genius has embodied in the most lifelike form the Jew’s vengefulness

and the causes that nourished it. How many cities of the world there

are where he might hear these words: “Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not

a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed

with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same

diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same

winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?

if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and

if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

Moreover, in the course of our reading, we Englishmen meet with nothing

which points to the existence of cruel murders and similar horrors in

any branch of the Hebrew race. Popular books like _The British Jew_

(Rev. John Mills. London: Hurlston & Stoneman, 1854), for instance,

are mostly written in the apologetic tone; they are advocates and

missionaries, not describers. They enumerate the duties and ceremonies

of the “strict, enlightened Israelite”--a powerful majority amongst

the thirty-five to forty thousand that have colonized the British

Islands--modified and transformed by the civilization of their

surroundings. They studiously avoid that part of the subject which

would be most interesting to the ethnologist, the various irregular

practices of the people, because they would not “crowd their pages

with the superstitions of the ignorant”; and they probably have not

defined to themselves the darker shades which the religious teaching

of later centuries has diffused over the Jewish mind, and which linger

even among the most advanced of modern communities. The well-known

volume of Dr. Alexander McCaul, _The Old Paths; or, a Comparison of

the Principles and Doctrines of Modern Judaism with the Religion of

Moses and the Prophets_ (London: Hubbard & Son, 1854), which has

been translated into almost every European language, reveals but

little, while professing to reveal much. It is written in a purely

apologetic spirit; and as it attacked the Talmud, but spared the Jew,

who, however, systematically destroys every copy, it has lost for the

general reader all its significance. The celebrated article upon the

Talmud first published in the _Quarterly Review_ (October, 1867),

and afterwards owned to by the late M. Emanuel Deutsch, who began by

denying the authorship, greatly surprised the _poco-curanti_ of Great

Britain. It was a triumph of special pleading. It studiously ignored

the fact that the Talmudic writers who flourished in the third and the

sixth centuries of our era had evidently consulted the writings of the

“School of Galilee,”[21] especially of the New Testament, apocryphal as

well as canonical. It artfully opened to the admiring eye of ignorance

a noble garden of time-honoured experience, a goodly parterre of racial

and social piety and benevolence, a paradise of religious wisdom, from

which a few transplanted shoots would suffice to enrich and adorn a

wilderness of rugged and neglected fields. It concealed with equal

skill the sinks and drains, the shallows and quagmires which everywhere

underlie the fair and flowery surface; and it withdrew attention from

the dark corners rank with poisonous weeds and overrun with trees

bearing deadly fruit. Such art of manipulation would readily pick

the Sermon on the Mount from the pages of the erotic poets of “the

East,” perhaps the most materialistic and the most corrupt which the

literature of the world has produced.

What then can the average Englishman, thus instructed, know about

the Hebrew at home? how much of the Hebrew abroad, especially in

Asia, in Africa, and even in Europe? How is he fully to comprehend

the reason why the name of Jew is still a byword and a reproach? or

why the scrupulous British official--the late Consul Brant, C.B.,

the historical Consul of Erzerum, who revived the trade of ancient

Trebizond--who never allowed himself to use profane language, applied

to Christians and Muslims the word “Jew” as the most insulting term

that can be levelled at man?

The following article appeared in the _Saturday Review_[22] as a

comment upon a “recent outbreak of Rumanian fanaticism against the Jews

at Ismail,” and explains at once the isolation and the great material

success of the children of Israel all the world over. I quote it _in

extenso_ as it shows the general opinion of educated Englishmen and

the unreality and shallowness of the treatment which views the world

through glasses of British home-make:

“There is no real difference between the Rumanian Jews and the Jews

of Galicia or Bohemia; nor can they in their turn be separated from

the Jews of Germany, of France, or of England. The dirty, greasy

usurers of Rumania are the humble brethren of the financiers of

London and Frankfort, and that the Jews are a great power in Europe

is incontestable. What are, it may be asked, the secrets of their

power? They are religion, the capacity for making money, and internal

union. A ceremonial, and therefore an exclusive religion, a religion

that binds together its members by rites that seem strange to the

rest of the world, has a strong hold upon those who are within the

fold. They are like the tenants of a beleaguered fort cut off from

the rest of mankind, and obliged to protect themselves and help each

other. But religion is not enough to raise a race into eminence. The

Jews and the Parsees are eminent, not only because they circumcise

their sons, or light fires on the tops of their houses, but because

they make money. The money they have gives them consequence; but it is

not only the money itself that does this; it is the qualities that go

to making money which raise them--the patience, the good sense, the

capacity for holding on when others are frightened, the daring to make

a stroke when the risk is sufficient to appal. And the Jews are not

only religious and rich; they are bound together by intimate ties. The

inner world of Judaism is that of a democracy. The millionaire never

dreams of despising, or failing to aid, his poorest and most degraded

brother. The kindness of Jews for Jews is unfailing, spontaneous, and

unaffected. The shabbiest hat-buyer or orange-seller of Houndsditch is

as sure of having the means provided for him of keeping the sacred

feast of the Passover as if he lived in a Piccadilly mansion. To

the eyes of the Jews even the most degraded of Jews do not seem so

degraded as they do in the eyes of the outer world. The poorest have

perhaps possessions which redeem them in the eyes of their brethren;

and many of the lowest, greasiest, and most unattractive Hebrews who

walk about the streets in search of old clothes or skins are known by

their co-religionists to be able to repeat by rote portions of the

sacred volumes by the hour at a time. To all these permanent causes of

Jewish eminence there must, however, be added one that has had only

time to develop itself since extreme bigotry has died away, and since

in Western Europe the Jews have been treated, first with contemptuous

toleration, then with cold respect, and, finally, when they are very,

very rich, with servile adoration.

“These people--so exclusive, so intensely national, so intimately

linked together--have shown the most astonishing aptitude for

identifying themselves with the several countries in which they have

cast their fortunes. An English Jew is an Englishman, admires English

habits and English education, makes an excellent magistrate, plays to

perfection the part of a squire, and even exercises discreetly the

power which, with its inexhaustible oddity, the English law gives him,

while it denies it to the members of the largest Christian sect, and

presents incumbents to livings so as to please the most fastidious

bishops. The French Jews were stout friends of France during the

war--served as volunteers in the defence of Paris, and opened their

purses to the national wants, and their houses to the suffering French.

The German Jews were as stout Germans in their turn; and in war, as

in peace, they are always ready to show themselves Germans as well as

Jews. It is the combination of the qualities of both nations that is

now raising the foremost of the German Jews to their high rank in the

world of wealth. In that world, to be a German is to be a trader whom

it is very hard to rival, to be a Jew is to be an operator whom it

is impossible to beat; but to be a German Jew is to be a prince and

captain among the people.

“In this way the Jews have managed to overcome much of the antipathy

which would naturally attach to men of an alien race and an alien

religion. The English Jew is not seen to be standing aloof from

England and Englishmen. But it is impossible there should not be some

sort of social barrier between the Jew and the Christian. They cannot

intermarry except for special political or other cogent reasons, and

it necessarily chills the kindness and intimacy of family intercourse

when all the young people know that friendship can never grow into

anything else. In order to overcome this obstacle many wealthy Jews

have chosen to abjure their religion and enrol their households in

the Christian communion. But the more high-minded and high-spirited

among them shrink from doing this, and accept, and even glory in, the

position into which they were born. Fortunately for himself and for

England, a kind friend determined the religion of Mr. Disraeli before

he was old enough to judge for himself, and in his maturer years he

has been able conscientiously to adopt what he terms the doctrines of

the School of Galilee. If they are not decoyed into Christianity by

their social aspirations, Jews are unassailable, for the most part, by

the force of either persecution or argument; and although there are

some conversions to be attributed to Christian reasoning or Christian

gold, they are probably counterbalanced by the accessions to Judaism

of Christian women who marry Jewish husbands. The Jews therefore

lead, and must lead, on the whole a family life marked by something

of reserve and isolation. But the disadvantages they have thus to

endure are not without their compensative advantages. Their family life

by being secluded has gained in warmth and dignity.[23] In very few

families is there so much thoughtfulness, consideration, parental and

fraternal affection, reverence for age, and care for the young as in

Jewish families. The women too have been ennobled, not degraded, by

being thrown on themselves and on their families for their sphere of

thought and action. They are almost always thoroughly instructed in

business, and capable of taking a part in great affairs; for it has

been the custom of their race to consider the wife the helpmate--the

sharer in every transaction that establishes the position or enhances

the comfort of the family. Leisure, activity of mind, and the desire

to hand on the torch of instruction from the women of one generation

to those of another, inspire Jewesses with a zeal for education, a

love of refinement, and a sympathy with art. Homes of the best type

are of course to be taken as the standard when it is inquired what are

the characteristics of a race as seen at its best; and European family

life has few things equal to show to the family life of the highest

type of Jews. Their isolation, again, makes most of the men liberal

and free from the prejudices of class, just as their connexion with

their dispersed brethren relieves them from the pressure of insular

narrowness. But, as Mr. Bright remarks, religious bigotry is slow to

die away altogether; and even in educated English society there are few

Christians who do not think themselves entitled to approach a Jew with

a sense of secret superiority. If a Jew is ostentatious or obtrudes his

wealth, if his women are loaded with jewellery, if he talks the slang

of the sporting world in order to show what a fine creature he is,

society is as right to put him down as to put down any Christian like

him. But the philanthropists who invited Mr. Bright to attend their

meeting may be profitably invited to search their own hearts, and ask

themselves whether they are quite free from that feeling that the best

Jew is never the equal of the worst Christian, which is at the root of

the Rumanian riots,[24] and which certainly is entirely out of keeping

with the tenets and teaching of the School of Galilee.”

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Here out of sixty thousand souls the Jews number forty thousand,

but to prevent taxation they have arranged with the Turkish authorities

never to exceed eleven thousand five hundred. [Since this was written

(1873) the whole population of Salonika has increased rapidly, and now

(1897) numbers 150,000, of whom about 60,000 are Jews, 30,000 Turks,

30,000 Serbs, 15,000 Greeks, and 4,000 Zinzers.]

[15] No religious census has lately been taken in England and Wales;

the above therefore is only a conjecture. In 1853 the Jews of Great

Britain were set down at 30,000; of these 25,000 were resident in

London, and 5,000 elsewhere. The yearly deaths were 560, which at the

average rate of mortality would give a maximum of 25,000. Of this

total, 5,000 belonged to the upper or educated class, 8,000 to the

middle orders, and 12,000 represented the lower ranks. [In 1890 the

Jews of Great Britain and Ireland were estimated at over 93,000, of

whom 67,500 were resident in London. It may be of interest to add that

in 1896 the entire Jewish population was calculated at 6,505,000,

thus distributed over the globe: Europe 5,500,000; Asia 260,000;

Africa 430,000; America 300,000; Australia 15,000. See A. H. Keane,

_Population, Races, and Languages of the World_, in the _Church

Missionary Atlas_, New (eighth) edition. London, 1896.]

[16] At this moment there is a traffic far fouler and more terrible

than any Coolie-hunting in African slave-export--extending from Lemberg

to India and China.

[17] The essential superiority of the Jew over Nakhrím, or strangers,

is carefully kept up by the Gavním, or luminaries, of the Jewish Law.

During the preparations for Sabbath one of the prayers is: “Blessed

art Thou, O Lord, who hast made distinction between things sacred and

profane, between light and darkness, between Israel and other nations.”

On the New Year’s Day (Rosh ha-Shanah) the housemaster says at supper:

“Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who didst select us from all other people,

and exalt us above all other nations, and sanctify us with Thy

commandments, ... for Thou didst select us, and sanctify us from all

other people.... Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the Sanctifier of Israel,”

etc. At the Passover they repeat the same, adding, “Blessed art Thou,

O Lord, the Sanctifier of Israel and the times.” During the Feast of

Pentecost they pray, “Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hast selected us

above all other people, and exalted us above all other nations, and

sanctified us with Thy commandments.... Our Lord is exalted--He is the

first and the last, He desired and chose us, and delivered to us the

Law.”

Such are a few of the passages which are still approved of by learned

and reverend Jews, “the stars of the evening twilight of their race.”

These pretensions are evidently misplaced at the end of the nineteenth

century. Their effects are remarkable upon the feeble brains of certain

Christians, who, in conversation and missionary matters, have been

thrown much in Jewish society, and who end by thoroughly believing all

these absurd claims. A Gentile writes about them: “In addressing the

posterity of the Patriarchs on such a theme [incredulity], well may I

avail myself of the words held sacred by their fellow-citizens, not

of their race, while I repeat the assertion that a Hebrew infidel--an

infidel amongst the ‘Israelites, to whom appertained the adoption,

and the glory, and the covenants,’ and to whom were committed the

oracles of God’--the only open eye of the world when all the rest of

mankind had darkness for their portion, or the light of dreams--is

indeed a frightful, a portentous phenomenon!” Yet such as they are they

number hundreds of thousands, and the spread of absolute infidelity is

enormously on the increase.

[18] The journey of this eminent philanthropist to Alexandria in

1840 was a very remarkable one, all things considered. In 1855 he

again visited “the East,” with the especial object of ameliorating

the condition of his co-religionists in the Holy Land; and it is a

favourite subject to conjecture how much, or how little, of the true

state of things he was allowed to know. He certainly learned nothing

from his Damascus host, the late Ishak Haim Farkhi, a Jew under French

protection. Nor is it believed that he gained much knowledge of the

true state of affairs at Jerusalem. For instance, the almshouses built

outside the city under his trusteeship are occupied by the friends of

the Scribes and those who pay court to them, not by the destitute for

whom they were intended. When the venerable philanthropist paid his

last visit, a collection of the poorest and the most miserable of the

community was hurriedly installed there, and after his departure was as

summarily ejected. The public has not forgotten his trip to Morocco,

which, however, if matters progress as they do now, may eventually be

regretted by his _protégés_.

[19] [I have retained 729, the date given by Burton, although Muhammad

died in 732 from the effects of the experiment.]

[20] Upon the _sanguineo-oleaginous expression_ of the Jews and the

consequent pendency of the epiglottis, see “A Cause of Diminished

Longevity among the Jews,” by Sir Duncan Gibb, Bart, M.A., M.D., LL.D.,

Article 10, _Journal of Anthropology_, No. 1, July, 1870, pp. 94-97. It

exactly describes many of the Jews of Syria and Palestine.

[21] This is a complete misnomer applied to Christianity, which it

confuses with the Rabbinical Schools of Tiberias and Safed.

[22] [The year would be 1873.]

[23] The Jewish family is still in England what it is all over the

East, the chief defence of the individual against society. Hence the

strong affections between relations. And for the same reason Jews are

excellent parents--it can hardly be otherwise when the son is expected

to liberate his father and mother from Sheol.

[24] This is a very small fibre of a very pretty root.

CHAPTER III

THE JEW OF THE HOLY LAND AND HIS DESTINY

In dealing with the Jews of the Holy Land, it is well to remember that

the two great branches of the Hebrew race are the Sephardím and the

Ashkenazím. They are both equally orthodox, and may intermarry when

they please. It is advisable to offer a few words concerning these

great branches first.

“Sepharad,” pronounced throughout “the East” _Safard_, a word occurring

only once in the Old Testament (“and the captivity of Jerusalem,

which is in Sepharad,” Obad. ver. 20), has been subjected to various

interpretations. Enough to say the majority of Jews following the

Targum Jonathan and the Peshito, or Syriac version, identify it with

Iberia, modern Spain and Portugal. The Sephardím claim descent from the

royal tribe of Judah, which, like the children of Benjamin, was the

last to disperse. It contains the usual three orders: (1) The Cohen (in

Arabic Káhin), the priest or Levite of the house of Aaron--a numerous

body, as the Cohens of England show. Though born an ecclesiastic, he

may now, since the rite of ordination has become extinct, pursue a

purely laical trade. Whenever a Jew slaughters an animal, the Cohen

claims the tongue, one side of the face, and one shoulder.[25] So in

the days of Josephus (_Antiquities of the Jews_, IV. iv. 4) the priest

took the maw, the cheek (or breast), and the right shoulder of the

sacrifice privately killed for a festival. (2) The Levite or descendant

of Levi, but not through the house of Aaron; like the Cohen, to whom he

should pay the tithe of his tithes, he must prove his genealogy, which

is often doubtful, and he is known by taking the name of Levi after his

own and before that of his birthplace--_e.g._ Simeon Levi Salonikli.

(3) “The circumcision” or Ammon Israelite.

Since the final destruction of the Temple there are no Gentile

Proselytes of the Covenant, that is, circumcised strangers admitted

to all the privileges of the children of Abraham; nor are there

Proselytes of the Gate, uncircumcised worshippers of Jehovah who keep

the moral law. The Ger, or stranger, may be received into the Church

under certain circumstances by purification and circumcision, which

latter, unlike the law of Muhammad, is absolutely necessary. Judaism,

however, like Hinduism and Guebrism, is essentially one of the old

congenital creeds; it never has been, it is not, and it never will be

a system of proselytizing. As regards the tribes, Judah and Levi are

everywhere known. Benjamin, Ephraim, and Half Manasseh are spoken of,

and tradition declares that Asher exists in Abyssinia with Karaïte

peculiarities. Finally, many Jews do not believe that the Ten Tribes

were ever lost. They say that, during the Great Captivity, when the

faith became all but extinct, they were mixed to such an extent that it

was afterwards impossible to separate them.

The Sephardím, or Southern Jews, are mostly the descendants of

Spanish and Portuguese ancestry, and throughout the Levant and the

North African coast they speak Spanish and read and write it in their

own character. Those of the Moroccan interior use Arabic. The dress

is Oriental, and in the Holy Land they still wear the black turban

ordained by the sumptuary laws of El Hakim (_circa_ A.D. 1000). In

physical appearance they are somewhat more prepossessing than the

Ashkenazím, who are outnumbering them in Syria and Palestine, and are

gradually ousting them. Officially they retain their position; the

Hakhám Bashí, or chief doctor, is the only Jewish official recognized

by the Turkish Government and representing the community in the

Majlis, or town council. In all matters which come before the tribunals

the Ashkenazím must be supported by the Hakhám Bashí, while the doctors

hear and decide all cases relating to the internal affairs of the

community. Many of the Sephardím are shopkeepers, trading chiefly

in stuffs and hardwares. There are many minor differences between

them and the Ashkenazím, such as the contents and the arrangement of

their ritual, the constitution of their meetings, the mode of reading

the service, their music, and even their cursive form of the square

Hebrew character. The Maghrabis, or Western Jews, chiefly living in

North-western Africa, rank elsewhere as Sephardím; at Jerusalem,

however, they are considered a separate sect, and have their own chief

doctor.

Thus the Sephardím are the Southern, opposed to the Northern Jews, or

Ashkenazím. These derive their name from Ashkenaz, son of Gomer, and

grandson of Japhet (Gen. x. 3), who is supposed to have peopled, in

ethnologic succession, Armenia (Jer. li. 27), Poland, Germany, and

Scandinavia--the latter according to some derives from him its name.

The Ashkenazím claim descent from Benjamin, and are generally supposed

not to have been present at the second building of the Temple by

Zorobabel (B.C. 520), as described in the Book of Ezra.

The Ashkenazím of the Holy Land are chiefly Germans, Poles,

Muscovites, and other Northerners. On January 26, 1849, an order from

the Russian Consulate-General of Beyrut obliged them either to return

home biennially in order to renew their passports or to give up their

nationality. They were then taken under the protecting wing of Great

Britain by the immense exertions of their co-religionists in the “City

of Refuge” (London) and of other Western powers. This step can hardly

be looked upon with satisfaction. Relying upon their new nationality,

they addict themselves openly to usury and to other transactions of a

doubtful and often of a dishonourable character. A determination to

protect the whole community from religious persecution, allowing the

Sultan to treat their commercial and civic affairs on the same footing

as all the rest of his subjects, would be much more just, and would

probably remedy not a few evils. In the year 1840 the Northern Jews

mustered few at Damascus, and even now they are not numerous; among

them may be mentioned old Abú Brahím, a well-known cicerone at Demitri

Cara’s Hotel, who usually passed for a Cohen.

The Ashkenazím speak a kind of Jew-German, garbled with Hebrew and

other foreign words. Their dress is a long robe like a dressing-gown,

and a low-crowned hat of felt or beaver; the lank love-lock hanging

down either cheek, and the eccentrically clipped fur caps, which,

despite the burning sun, they everywhere don for the Sabbath and

for feast-days, make their appearance not a little comical. In the

Holy Land they are mostly petty traders and craftsmen, supported in

part by the Hallorkah, or alms. Many Jews who have neither the time

nor the will to visit Jerusalem pay considerable sums for vicarious

prayers there offered by their co-religionists, and the contributions

are collected throughout Europe by appointed emissaries like the

begging friars of the Catholic world. This dole, distributed alike and

indiscriminately to all who occupy the four Holy Cities, brings many

idle and worthless persons together, and promotes early and improvident

marriages, every child being a source of additional increase. Some

steps should be taken to obviate the scandals of the Hallorkah. Much

vice, misery, and ill-feeling are engendered by the present system of

bounty, which leaves much behind when passing through the hands of

doctors responsible to no one for the money they receive. These men

live in comfort and even luxury; the terrorism, physical as well as

spiritual, with which they inspire their congregations, renders them

absolutely unassailable. Knowing that his doctor can excommunicate

him, and, what is more to the purpose, starve him and his family, not

a Jew dare object to, though he will loudly complain of, a system

of hypocrisy and peculation. And as a rule the almsgiving of the

Israelite, so exceptionally liberal throughout Western Europe, becomes

mean and niggardly throughout the Holy Land. In the absence of coin

sufficiently small, the wealthy Hebrews of Jerusalem have invented a

system of tin bits, which the mendicant must collect till sufficiently

numerous to be changed for currency. Whenever there is a famine in the

country, pauper Jews receive probably the least assistance from their

fellows dwelling within the same walls.

The Ashkenazím are divided into religious sects and social communities.

The former are three in number--_viz._ Parushím, Khasidím, and Khabad.

The Parushím, Pharisees or Separatists, follow the law as laid down

in the commentary of the late R. Gaon[26] of Wilna. They consider the

diligent study of the Talmud an essential for every religious Jew,

and they conduct their liturgy according to it, respecting, however,

the sense attached to various rites by the Cabalistic teachers. They

strictly observe the appointed times for prayer, but they do not

consider it necessary to dip the body in water before ablution. They

neglect the second pair of phylacteries prescribed by Rabbenu Tam.[27]

They do not hold it unlawful to slaughter animals for food with a knife

which is not very sharp, provided that the edge has no notches. They

regard a Passover cake as lawful, even though it be made of any kind

of wheat or flour.

The Khasidím (Cabalists), that most fanatical of Jewish sects, are here

for the most part unlearned. Their liturgy is according to Rambáni or

Maimonides (_Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon_), a Spaniard who flourished in the

twelfth century, and of whom it is said, “From Moses to Moses there

was none like Moses”; they interpret it, however, in the Cabalistic

sense. Their favourite book is the Holy Ri; they pray whenever they

feel bound to do so, no matter whether the prescribed time has passed

or not. Unlike the Parushím, they believe in certain Sadikím, or

righteous men, popularly called Gute Yaden (Juden), and regard them

with a superstitious veneration which borders upon worship, attributing

to them supernatural powers, and attaching some spiritual and symbolic

meanings to their most trivial and insignificant actions. Whilst

professing to be guided only by the Talmud, they in reality follow

the teaching of some chosen Guter Jude. The Khasidím are particular

in the observance of Jewish customs, especially such as relate to the

Sabbath. They shake themselves violently and cry aloud during prayers;

at other times they are much addicted to dancing, singing, and deep

drinking. They dip themselves in water before devotions, and use the

second pair of phylacteries. They deem it unlawful to slaughter animals

with a knife which is not very sharp, or to use any but a particular

kind of wheat for the Passover cakes. Much importance is attached by

this sect to works of charity; in this way they are guided by the Yad

ha-Khazakah, or “strong hand” of Maimonides, who assigns eight steps

or grades to the golden ladder of charity. The Parushím and Khasidím

combine in various proportions; for instance, in Tiberias all are

Khasidím except the doctor, who is a Parushi.

The Khabad, or third sect, suggests in name the Ebionites, or Jewish

Nazarenes, who hold the “great teacher of Nazareth” to be the Messiah,

but merely human; this sect, however, has apparently died out. The

modern Khabad have a liturgy arranged from their old Rabbi Zelmína.

They resemble the Khasidím, having their own Gute Juden, but they are

usually more learned and pious. They are given to hospitality and

charity, and attach much importance to visiting the sick. They dip

themselves before prayers, read and study much, and meet together on

Sabbath evenings to hear the Law expounded by their principal teacher.

They keep as a feast the 19th day of Kislef, the third civil and ninth

ecclesiastical month (about December); on that day R. Shalomon, the

founder of the sect, was liberated from prison.

The Ashkenazím are divided into social communities according to the

European district or city whence they came, and each section is

presided over by a scribe or a layman of respectability and good

standing. The chief communities of Parushím are the Wilna, Grainer,

Grodno, Minsk, Nassen, Warsaw, Zuolik, and German. Those of the

Khasidím are the Volhynian, the Hungaro-Austrian, and the Galician. The

Khabad are a community by themselves.

The Ashkenazím, who are wrongly represented to be considered pariahs

by the Sephardím, have brought from Northern climates a manliness

of bearing, a stoutness of spirit, and a physical hardness strongly

contrasting with the cowardly and effeminate, the despised and

despicable Sephardím “Jew of Israel’s land.” If spoken to fiercely,

they will reply in kind; if struck, they will return the blow; and

they do not fear to mount a horse, unlike their Southern brethren, who

prefer an ass, or at most an ambling pony, to the best of Arab blood.

They will travel by night over difficult and dangerous paths, whereas

their congeners tremble to quit the city walls; and they can endure

extremes of heat and cold, of hunger and thirst, which might be fatal

to any soft Syrian who would imitate them. The Ashkenazím of the Holy

Land are in a word “men”; the Sephardím are not. “The Spanish and

Portuguese Jews are of far higher and more intellectual type than the

English and German,” says Dr. Linsdale. Possibly; but in the matter

of manliness there is no comparison. And, as has been remarked, the

Ashkenazi is “eating up” the Sephardi wherever they meet.

Concerning the so-called unorthodox sects in the Holy Land a few brief

details may be given.

The Karaïtes (Caraïtes), translated “Readers,” that is “textualists,”

assign a literal sense to all Holy Writ, and reject every book

posterior to the Law and the Prophets; they are therefore considered

pestilent heretics. These Puritans, claiming descent from the Ten

Tribes who took no part in the Crucifixion, are scattered throughout

Arabia, with Bagdad for a centre; and they are most numerous in Russia

and Poland, where they could boast that for four centuries none of

their number had ever been found guilty of a serious crime. Henderson

the traveller numbers some four thousand of them in the Crimea with

their Cohens, or priests. At Pentecost, they read, we are told, as

Ha-phatorah, or conclusions of the day, Joel ii. 28-32, whereas other

Jews stop at ver. 27. There is still a large colony at Aden, where the

English authorities have found nothing to complain of them. Formerly

there were many at Damascus; now they have left it _en masse_: the

Protestant cemetery occupies part of their old burial-ground, whose

gravestones are distinguished from those of the Jews. In Syria they are

mostly confined to Jerusalem, where till lately they numbered seven

families (thirty-five souls). Their single, poor synagogue, a small

cellar-like chamber, which dates back, they say, for many centuries,

lies opposite the big new building of the orthodox. Its sole object of

attraction is one old manuscript of the Pentateuch, and the other Jews

so hate them that the stranger will not readily find his way to their

place of worship. In early 1872 they were reinforced by an emigration

from Bagdad numbering forty souls, who reported that many more were

on the way. These men all wore Bedawin dresses, which, however, they

changed for the usual Jewish garb when once settled in the city.

The Samaritans are now found only at Nablús, the classical Neapolis,

or new town. They claim descent from Ephraim and Manasseh, whilst

their Cohens are of course Levites; the orthodox opprobriously call

them Kúthím, or Babylonians, and despite physical evidence utterly

deny their Jewish consanguinity. All contact with them is defiling,

as though they were Gentiles. The total is now forty families, or

a hundred and thirty-five souls; they will not intermarry with any

but their own people; the birth of males, contrary to what might be

expected, outnumbers that of females in the proportion of eighty to

fifty-five, and consequently the “undying dogmatism” is threatened

with dying out. The little sect owes its fame in Europe to the three

well-known codices which every stranger hastens to inspect. According

to their Hakháms, whilst repeating the Talmud they study the Targum of

R. Levi. They keep their Passover by solar computation, not lunar, like

the Hebrews; for instance, in 1871 the former held the feast on May 3,

and the latter on April 5. Moreover, they still sacrifice and eat their

Paschal Lamb upon Mount Gerizim.

Jerusalem is sometimes visited by some of the “Black Jews” of

Malabar and Western India, concerning whom so much absurdity has

been written. The “White Jews” of India have a tradition according

to which their ancestors, numbering ten thousand souls, emigrated

Eastward about A.D. 70, and settled about Cranganore on the Malabar

coast. Here they remained till A.D. 1565, when they were driven into

the interior by the Portuguese. As no synagogue can be founded without

a minimum congregation of ten free and adult males, the white Jews

when necessary simply bought back their nine Hindu slaves, manumitted

them, circumcised and bathed them, and thus obtained their wishes. The

“Reformed British Jews,” mostly Ashkenazím, who date from the 7th of

Ellúl, A.M. 5601 (August 24, 1841), and whose prayer-book is edited by

their minister, the Rev. Mr. Marks, are hardly likely to make way in

“the East” with such ultra-Karaïte doctrine as “the sufficiency of the

Law of Moses for the guidance of Israel,” and with their opposition to

the divinity of the traditions contained in the Mishnah; and in the

Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds they would only be included in the

host

Of petulant, capricious sects,

The maggots of corrupted texts.

There is little to say concerning the physical peculiarities of

the Eastern Jew, who in all the salient points of form and feature

remarkably resembles his brother of Houndsditch and the Minories.

Here and there the lines are less curved, the profile is straight and

high, whilst there are a few local varieties like the fair hair and

olive-coloured eyes of Dalmatia. The highest type contains a certain

softness of expression, with that decisive cast of mouth and chin which

may be seen in the London policeman and in the backwoodsman of the

Far West. Although centuries of oppression have necessarily given to

the many that cringing, deprecating glance, that shifting look which

painfully suggests a tame beast expecting a blow, yet we still find

both amongst the Ashkenazím and the Sephardím red Jews and black Jews;

fierce-eyed, dark-browed, and hollow-cheeked, with piercing acuteness

of glance, and an almost reckless look of purpose. Greed and craft, and

even ferocity, are to be read in such faces, but rarely weakness, and

never imbecility; roughness, unculture, and coarseness are there, not

vulgarity, nor want of energy; and the Christian physiognomy by their

side looks commonplace when contrasted with those features so full of

concentration and vigorous meaning.

These are the same men as those who under happier auspices organize

such worldwide institutions as the Alliance Israëlite Universelle, with

its heart in Paris and its limbs extending far and wide on the earth,

whilst increasing organization proposes to extend them farther and

wider. Its object is simply to promote concerted action amongst the

Jews scattered about both hemispheres; to effect unity and community

in all matters interesting to the Jewish body politic; to forward the

interest of its friends, and to effect the ruin of its enemies. Thus

it will eventually absorb by taking under its charge such detached

institutions as the Khagal, or Communal Government of the Hebrews in

Russia. It is the fashion to praise the organization of the Jesuits,

the Freemasons, the Carbonari, the Mormons, and other bodies, who have

an esoteric system underlying the exoteric form. As far as my knowledge

goes, none can be compared with that of the Jews, because those are

local and partial, whereas these are all but universal.

Such men easily become the warriors of commerce, bringing to the battle

of interests, the campaign of life, all that boldness and resolution,

that persistence and heroism, that subtlety and unscrupulousness which

the Patriarchs and the Maccabees carried out into the personal conflict

of sword and spear. They become the great potentates of finance and

capital, who have agents and reporters in every chief centre of the

world; who know every project, what is to flourish and what is to

founder; what enterprise is to be effectual, and what is to fail. If a

seaport want a dock, a city require a bulwark, or a country demand a

railway or a loan, they are ever ready to furnish each and all. And as

a rule they are not unfair, they are not mean; indeed there is often

a certain generosity in their conditions. But they always bargain for

something besides money. They stipulate, for instance, that this man

should be allowed to participate in these profits, that another should

be excluded from those advantages; their interests are so various

and so widespread that they need political power everywhere, and as

they must have it so they will have it. One offence, one deadly sin,

never forgiven, never forgotten, is insubordination in the ranks,

however trifling. Let a secondary firm attempt to throw off the yoke

by launching out, for instance, into an enterprise unauthorized by the

Great House; straightway its credit is assailed, its acceptances are

dishonoured, its ruin is assured. Such are the arts which have enabled

the Jew to arrive at his present position. And he may confidently look

forward to the time when the whole financial system, not only of Europe

from one end to the other, but of the whole world, will be in the

hands of a few crafty capitalists, whose immense wealth shall, with a

few pulsations of the telegraph, unthrone dynasties and determine the

destinies of nations.

It remains now only to touch upon the future prospects of the Jewish

race. This important consideration is still subject to two widely

different opinions.

The first, which may be called the vapid utterance of the so-called

Liberal School, speaks as follows: “In this century we are battering

down the ponderous walls of prejudice which nations and sects have

erected in past times, for the separation of themselves from their

neighbours, or as a coign of vantage from which to hurl offensive

weapons at them. Roman Catholic and Jewish emancipation have been

conceded, though tardily, and we may fairly hope that in the next

generation our political, social, and commercial relations with

our fellow-men will be conducted without regard to their religious

belief or their ethnological origin.” The trifling objection to this

“harmonious and tolerant state of things” is that, though the Christian

may give up his faith and race, the Jew, however readily he may throw

overboard the former, will cling to the latter with greater tenacity,

as it will be the very root and main foundation of his power.

The second is the Judophobic or Roman Catholic view of the supremacy

of Jewish influence in the governments and the diplomacy of Europe.

It openly confesses its dread of Judaic encroachments, and it goes

the full length of declaring that, unless the course of events be

changed by some quasi-miraculous agency, the triumph of the Israelite

over Christian civilization is inevitable--in fact, that Judaism, the

oldest and exclusive form of the great Semitic faith, will at least

outlive, if it does not subdue and survive, Christianity, whose triumph

has been over an alien race of Aryans. “Gold,” it argues, “is the

master of the world, and the Jewish people are becoming masters of

the gold. By means of gold they can spread corruption far and wide,

and thus control the destinies of Europe and of the world.” For the

last quarter of a century the dominant Church in France seems to have

occupied itself in disseminating these ideas, and the number of books

published by the alarmists and replied to by Jewish authors is far from

inconsiderable. Witness the names of MM. Tousseuel, Bédarride, Th.

Halliz, Rev. P. Ratisbonne, and A. C. de Medelsheim, without specifying

the contributors to the _Union Israëlite_ and the _Archives Israëlites_

of Paris--a sufficient proof of the interest which this question has

excited, and of the ability with which it has been discussed in France.

But these are generalisms which require the specification of

particulars. Where, however, the field is so extensive, we must limit

ourselves to the most running survey of Europe and the Holy Land.

Throughout this continent the career of the Jew is at once thriving

and promising. The removal of Jewish disabilities in England and the

almost universal spread of constitutionalism throughout Europe have

told mightily in favour of the Jews. An essential condition of all

reform is that the reformer never can say, “Thus far will I go, and

no farther.” In sporting parlance, he took off the weight from a dark

horse, and the latter is everywhere winning in a canter. The father

kept a little shop in the Ghetto; the son has palaces and villas, buys

titles, crosses, and other graven images utterly unknown to the Mosaic

Law, and intermarries with the historic Christian families of the land.

The great, if not the only, danger is that in the outlying parts of

Europe, where men are not thoroughly tamed, and where the sword is

still familiar to the hand, the Jew advances far too fast; nor is it

easy to see how his career can be arrested before it hurries him over

the precipice. At this moment Hungary is a case in point. The Magnate,

profuse in hospitality, delighting in display, careless of expenditure,

and contemptuous of economy, sees all his rich estates, with their

flocks and herds, their crops and mines, passing out of his own hands,

and contributing to swell the bottomless pocket of the Jewish usurer.

But the Magyar is a fiery race; and if this system of legal robbery be

allowed to pass a certain point, which, by-the-bye, is not far distant,

the Jews must prepare themselves for another disaster right worthy of

the Middle Ages. And they will have deserved it.

As regards the restoration of Israel to the Holy Land, that favourite

theme of prophecy and poetry, that day-dream of the Jew, at least

until he found a country and a home in the far happier regions beyond

his ancient seats, no supernatural gift is required to point out the

natural course of events. Though the recovery of Jerusalem is the

subject of eternal supplication throughout the Jewish world, wealthy

and prosperous Jews openly declare that they take no personal interest

in the matter. The prayer, in fact, has become a mere formula.[28]

Still, with six millions of souls, which will presently become nine,

there can be no difficulty in finding volunteers like those who now

garrison the four Holy Cities--Jerusalem and Hebron, Tiberias and

Safed. A single million of souls would give the Israelite complete

command over the Land of Promise in the widest acceptation of the

term, and it will not be long before this number can be contributed.

The Jews might readily return to Judæa; but there is a lion in the

path. Russia cares little for Constantinople, which will fall to her

in the fulness of time when the fruit is ripe. But she will brook no

interference with the Holy Land, except for her own benefit. This

power, half European and half Asiatic, greatly indebted withal for her

success in life to the mixture which she despises, has the immense

advantage of a peculiar and homogeneous creed, in which she believes

with childish ardour and which she preaches with virile energy. To

her, conquest is not mere increase of area, of physical growth. It

is extending the field of proselytism, of religion; and this view

of national progress and of racial duty is at once her strength and

her weakness, her glory and her shame. She finds the headquarters

of Christianity necessary to the full development of her religious

superiority, and in the ever-increasing weakness of the Latin Church

she descries her best opportunity.

Thus, as modern travellers assure us, Russia is quietly absorbing the

Holy Places in Syria and Palestine. A bran-new Jerusalem of church,

convent, and hospice, which a few days’ work would convert into forts

and barracks, has lately risen outside the grey old walls and towers

of Jebus, concealing them from the ardent gaze of the pilgrim as he

tops the last hill leading to the Jaffa Gate. At Hebron the Muscovite

was not allowed to buy building-ground within the settlement; he bought

the oak which passes itself off for Abraham’s terebinth, and here again

will be a church, convent, and hospice. Jacob’s Well at Shechem has

shared the same fate, and even Tiberias is threatened with a fourth

church, convent, and hospice. The so-called Greeks,[29] whose Muscovite

sympathies are well known, were granted such boons as the monopoly of

Mount Tabor, whose classic and Saracenic ruins were ruthlessly pulled

down to build a cockney church and convent. This usurpation became so

intolerable, that in the summer of 1872 the Latin monks attacked the

intruders, seized _vi et armis_ a part of the mountain to which they

laid claim, and enclosed their conquest with a wall. On the other hand,

when the Latins proved an undoubted right to their ancestral chapel at

Kefr Kenna (Cana in Galilee), the Greeks were instructed to set up a

rival claim, and both were formally dismissed with the oyster shell,

the oyster having been pronounced Wukúf, or mosque endowment.

This Russian pre-emption of the Holy Land is a benefit to the Jew,

although the latter may not recognize it. But for this he would hasten

to fulfil the prophecy; he would buy up the country, as indeed he is

now doing at Jerusalem;[30] he would conquer the people by capital, and

he would once more form a nation.

But here the question obtrudes itself: “If Judaism should again

prevail--indeed its advocates say it shall prevail universally--how

long could it endure?”

Those who know the codes of the Talmud and of the Safed School, which

are still, despite certain petty struggles, the life-light of Judaism,

will have no trouble in replying. A people whose highest ideas of

religious existence are the superstitious sanctification of Sabbath,

the washing of hands, the blowing of ram’s horns, the saving rite of

circumcision, and the thousand external functions compensating for

moral delinquencies, with Abraham sitting at the gate of Hell to keep

it closed for Jews; a community which would declare marriage impossible

to some twelve millions of Gentiles, forbid them the Sabbath, and

sentence to death every “stranger” reading an Old Testament; which

would have all the Ger who are not idolaters without religion, whilst

forbidding those whom it calls “idolaters” (the Christians) to exercise

the commonest feelings of humanity; which would degrade and insult

one-half of humanity, the weaker sex, and which would sanction slavery,

and at the same time oppress and vilify its slaves by placing them

on a level with oxen and asses; a faith which, abounding in heathen

practices, would encourage the study of the Black Art, would loosen

every moral obligation, would grant dispensations to men’s oaths, and

would sanction the murder of the unlearned; a system of injustice,

whose Sanhedrins, at once heathenish and unlawful, have distinguished

themselves only for force and fraud, for superabundant self-conceit,

for cold-blooded cruelty, and for unrelenting enmity to all human

nature,--such conditions, it is evident, are not calculated to create

or to preserve national life. The civilized world would never endure

the presence of a creed which says to man, “Hate thy neighbour unless

he be one of ye,” or of a code written in blood, not in ink, which

visits the least infractions of the Rabbinical laws with exorcism and

excommunication, with stoning and flogging to death.[31] A year of such

spectacles would more than suffice to excite the wrath and revenge of

outraged humanity; the race, cruel, fierce, dogged, and desperate as

in the days of Titus and Hadrian, would defend itself to the last; the

result would be another siege and capture of Jerusalem, and the “Chosen

People” would once more lie prostrate in their blood and be stamped out

of the Holy Land.

Briefly, it is evident that nothing but Russian preponderance in Syria

and Palestine prevents its being reoccupied by its old intolerant

and persecuting owners,[32] and that to these the greatest possible

misfortune would be the granting of their daily, weekly, and yearly

prayer--

_Next year may we meet at Jerusalem._

FOOTNOTES:

[25] In consequence of the accident which occurred to Jacob (Gen.

xxxii.) his descendants still abstain from the hind-quarters of the few

beasts left to them by Leviticus xv.

[26] Gaon means a learned man: had he not some other name?

[27] [Rabbenu Tam was the most distinguished disciple of the renowned

R. Rashi (1040-1105 A.D.).]

[28] The formula, however, is still perpetually repeated. On the

Sabbaths preceding the new moons Jehovah is adjured to “gather the

dispersed, the united people of Israel from the four corners of the

earth.” The sunset devotions, the Yom ha-Kippur, or Great Day of

Atonement, concludes with, “Next year we shall be in Jerusalem.” At the

Passover feast before the fourth cup the Lord is blessed, and all say,

as they have been saying during the last eighteen centuries, “The year

that approaches we shall be in Jerusalem.” The burden of the Musaph

concluding the Sabbath services is that God may be pleased to return

His people from their dispersions, and restore them to the possession

of Jerusalem and the Temple.

[29] Not to be confounded with Hellenes. These Greeks are Syrian and

Christian peasants (felláhín), without a drop of Greek blood in their

veins, but belonging to the so-called Greek Church.

[30] In 1873 the population of the Holy City is generally laid down as:

Jews 9,500

Christians 5,300

Muslims 5,000

------

Total 19,800

[Owing to the recent immigration especially of Russian Jews, and to the

opening of the railway to the coast of Jaffa, these figures have been

more than quadrupled. In 1896 the whole population was estimated at

over 80,000, of whom nearly 40,000 were Jews, 25,000 Christians of all

denominations, and 15,000 Muhammadans, chiefly Turks and Arabs.]

[31] It has been well remarked that no Hebrew citizen was ever

condemned to exile. If guilty, he was punished, but not made an outcast

and infamous, forced to sin by dwelling beyond the holy soil of their

own land in the impure and accursed rest of earth.

[32] It is interesting to read what the inspired Jew Spinoza wrote upon

the Jews: “The rite of circumcision, I am fain to persuade myself,

is of such moment in this matter (_i.e._ of isolating nations) that

it alone, methinks, were enough to preserve this people distinct for

ever; indeed, unless the fundamentals of their religion bring upon

them effeminacy of mind and character, I am inclined to believe that,

with the opportunity afforded, since human affairs are notoriously

changeable, they may again recover their empire, and God elect them to

Himself anew.... To conclude, were any one disposed to maintain that

the Jews, for the cause assigned, or for any other cause whatsoever,

had been especially chosen by God to all eternity, I should not gainsay

him, provided he allowed that this choice was most in respect of

nothing but empire and personal advantages (in which only one nation

can be distinguished from another), for as regards understanding

and true virtue no nation is more remarkable than another, and so

cannot on such grounds be looked on as elected by God” (_Tractatus

Theologico-Politicus_, chap. iii.).

It is instructive to compare with the sage’s text two commentaries

of his editions. One of them assures us that, no longer persecuted

by Pope and Kaiser or Christian community, “with no mark of civic

distinction denied the Jews, they will soon become absorbed into the

larger Christian communities, surrounded by whom they now dwell in all

the countries of Europe; they will finally disappear, and leave only

historical records of their existence.” At present, however, Judaism

bids fair to rise above and to survive Christianity. In B. Auerbach’s

_Leben Spinozas_ we are told that the immediate cause which to Spinoza

suggested this “curious persuasion” (the restoration of the Jews) may

have been this, that a certain Sabbathai Zewi,[33] who had lately

appeared in Greece, caused such a commotion amongst his co-religionists

as at one time to make their regeneration and reconstitution into a

sovereignty appear not impossible.

[33] [Better known under the popular form Cevi.]

CHAPTER IV

THE JEW AND THE TALMUD

The present chapter contains many an assertion which will make the

expert Talmudist smile. It will, however, serve one most useful

purpose--namely, to show what the Christians and Muslims of the East

hold to be the belief of the Hebrew race and the practices of men

dwelling within the same walls as themselves. That this hostility to

the Eastern Jews is no mere unreasoning prejudice, but is founded in

some sort on fact, the following brief survey of the Rabbinical and

Talmudic writings will show. A people which has such a vindictive Oral

Law is sure to excite the spirit of retaliation, for obviously the Law

exists not merely in letter, but in the spirit.

In a notorious trial in Damascus within living memory, which roused

the anti-Jewish feeling in that city and indeed throughout Syria to

a frenzy, certain learned doctors brought into court as evidence a

number of manuscripts and printed books. It was remarked that the texts

were full of lacunæ. This was explained by the fact that they are

so written, since Europe began to read the Rabbinical and Talmudic

writings, for the purpose of concealing what might excite odium.

The divines supply the omissions by inserting them in writing, or

preferably by committing them to memory. Thus they suppress offensive

sectarian words, such as Goi (plural Goyím), the wicked, the forgetful

of God--that is to say, Gentiles in general, including Christians and

Muslims; Miním, or Karaïte Jews; Kuthim, Samaritans; Nakhrím, strangers

or infidels, corresponding with the Arabic Káfirin, or the Turkish

Giaour; and Ndoyyím, or Mesúmedím, in Arabic Mahrúmín or Murtaddín, the

excommunicated. And it is evident that they had good reasons for this

prudence; the Seder Adarhout, for instance, enumerates with the object

of refuting them many foul crimes attributed to the Jews.

The most important and pregnant tenet of modern Jewish belief is that

the Ger, or stranger, in fact all those who do not belong to their

religion, are brute beasts, having no more rights than the fauna of the

field. Thus in Lucio Ferraris (_Prompta Bibliotheca_, Vol. III., sub

lit. E and H, Order 4, Tract 8) we read: “Præcipitur omnibus Judæis ut

Christianes omnes loco brutorum habeant, nec aliter eos tractent quam

bruta animalia.” The argument from which this abominable belief is

derived appears to be as follows: “When Abraham was ordered to offer

up Isaac (Gen. xxii.), he saddled his ass, and took two of his young

men with him. But when he saw the place of sacrifice,[34] he said unto

his young men, ‘Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go

yonder and worship, and come again to you.’” The Talmud declares that

Abraham, who had seen God, asked his servants if they had likewise done

so; and on their replying in the negative, he said to them, “Abide

ye here with the ass,” meaning that they were animals like the ass.

But this is by no means contrary to Scripture doctrine; for instance,

Jeremiah (x. 8) calls the votaries of false religion “altogether

brutish and foolish.” Thus the Law and the Prophets belong exclusively

to the Jews; the Gentile reading or even buying a copy should be put to

death. All the books of other faiths must be burnt, even though they

contain the name of Jehovah; and if any but a Hebrew write the name of

God in a Bible which is not a Jewish manuscript, the volume must also

be burnt.

The Jew who does not keep the Sabbath (Saturday)[35] according to

Rabbinical Law must suffer excision, be stoned to death, or incur

the flogging of rebellion, that is, he must be “beaten until his soul

go out,” like all those who transgress affirmative commandments. Some

Rabbis hold that a Hebrew, hearing the sound of the trumpet, should

stand or sit in the same position until the evening of the Holy Day.

All manner of work is absolutely forbidden to the Jew: he is guilty

of capital crime if he carry a snuff-box or a pocket-handkerchief; he

may not light a fire to cook his meals, nor extinguish it to prevent

his house being burnt down. Until the days of the Maccabees he could

not defend his life against an enemy; and when Strabo informs us that

Pompey (B.C. 63) stormed Jerusalem “by waiting for the day of fast,

on which the Jews were in the habit of abstaining from all work,”

he evidently alludes to the Saturday. The modern Jew in Syria and

Palestine can walk only two thousand paces upon the Sabbath, except

when travelling through the dangerous desert.[36] He will not receive

money on that day, or transact any business, however profitable; it

is moreover the fashion to keep a grave face, and to speak as little

as possible. Yet he is not the strictest of Sabbatarians, and his

women rather enjoy being called upon between the services[37] in

order to display their dresses and jewellery. Of course there are

many “guiles,” technically so called, in order to elude restrictions

which savour of the degrading spirit peculiar to the Oral Law, which

is little more than the Rabbinical Criminal Code intended to raise and

provide for an aristocracy of savants. For instance, most wealthy

families, forgetting that he who hires a man to murder a third person

is really _the_ murderer, habitually keep Muslim servants, who can boil

coffee and serve pipes to Gentile friends. And the latter must by no

means join in honouring the day. According to the Talmud (chap, iv.,

Sanhedrin, of the fourth Mishnic Section, or order Seder Nezikin), the

Gentile sanctifying the Sabbath must be put to death without asking

questions, even as the Lord said to him, “Thou shalt not rest day nor

night.”[38]

The Oral Law is superior in dignity to all others.[39] In the _Prompta

Bibliotheca_ we find (p. 297, Order 4, Tract 4, Dist. 10): “Gravius

plectendos esse qui contradicunt verbis Scribarum quam verbis Mosaicæ

Legis, quibus qui contradixerit, morte moriatur.” And he must die

by the flogging of rebellion, a Rabbinical practice utterly unknown

to the Pentateuch, which ordered forty stripes, whereas in the New

Dispensation the offender must be flogged without intermission till he

expires. Thus the Scribes and Pharisees still sit in Moses’ seat. The

modern Jew follows the creed of Maimonides (twelfth century), which

contains thirteen fundamental articles, the last being the resurrection

of the dead. The ancient Jew obeyed the Twelve Commandments without

a word about the resurrection. The sojourning proselyte who would be

saved must become a Noahite, and obey the Seven Commandments assured to

the Noachidæ; the Hakhám Abú'l Afíya gave them as follows:

1. Thou shalt not worship planets, stars, or idols.

2. Thou shalt not fornicate nor commit adultery.

3. Thou shalt not slay (man).

4. Thou shalt not steal.[40]

5. Thou shalt not eat in the street the flesh of a lamb.

6. Thou shalt not castrate the sons of Abraham, mankind, or any

other animal.

7. Thou shalt not join the several races of animals.[41]

More correctly speaking, this code given to the Noachidæ, or

Noahites, commands them to abstain from the Seven Deadly Sins: (1)

idolatry; (2) irreverence to God; (3) homicide; (4) robbery, fraud,

and plunder--generally, not only of a co-religionist; (5) adultery;

(6) disobedience and misrule; and (7) eating part of an animal still

living, or the blood of the dead. The latter was added (Gen. ix. 4) to

the Six Sins forbidden to Adam--namely, idolatry, blasphemy, shedding

of blood, incest, robbery, and injustice.

But the sojourning proselyte[42] receives scant consolation, as he may

not be received when the Jubilee cannot be observed (Hilchoth Issure

Biah, xiv. 7, 8); and this ceased after Reuben, Gad, and half Manasseh

were led away captive, or in B.C. 884, according to common chronology.

Add to this 1,873, and we have 2,757 years since the last feast of the

kind, and we have twenty-seven centuries and a half since any Gentiles

were converted from the errors of idolatry to the religion of the sons

of Noah.

Those who transgress any of the Commandments transgress them all.[43]

The goods of Gentiles who have not conformed to the Noahite code,

that is to say, all now living, are lawful to the Hebrews. This right

was first conferred by Jehovah during the Exodus from Egypt, and it

was confirmed to the descendants of the wanderers by the Talmud (Baba

Masiaah, or Middle Gate, second of the fourth order, and Abodah Zarah,

eighth of the same).

Rabbinical religion is rampant in the kitchen. Blood first forbidden

to Noah (Gen. ix. 4), and afterwards to all the sons of Abraham (Lev.

iii. 17 and vi. 30)--because it was supposed to contain the vital

principle which it does not--must be drained out of the meat before

this can be eaten. The usual practice is by macerating it in water for

thirty minutes, and leaving it in salt for an hour. It is then taken

out and washed again, a peculiar wooden tub and sieve being used for

the purpose. In Morocco the Jews also pound the flesh till the fibre is

broken, and thus it becomes more tender and less able to be kept--this,

however, is a local practice unknown to the Jews elsewhere. The Talmud

declares that there are two kinds of blood pleasing to the Lord--_viz._

(1) that of the Paschal holocaust; (2) that of circumcision. In the

books of Moses we find that blood is used as a purifier. For instance,

the Lawgiver (Exod. xxiv. 6-8) took half of the blood drained from

victims and put it in basins, with which he sprinkled the people to

cleanse them from the abominations of the Egyptians, and the other half

he sprinkled upon the altar. Human blood is not used by us in its pure

state; nor can we[44] call it human, for the Gentiles are mere vermin,

and of their daughters it is said, “Cursed be he that lieth with any

beast.” It must also mostly undergo through manipulation a change of

essence.[45] Nor is it administered indiscriminately, but only to the

most zealous. On the eve of the Passover the chief Scribe attends the

oven, and mixes what he pleases with the cakes, which are then sent

round to the congregation.

A Jew abandoning the faith of Israel must die the death; also he

should be surely slain for all such breaches of the Law as committing

adultery. All who admit the doctrine of the Trinity, whether they be

Jewish perverts, Christians, Muslims, or Pagans; all Hebrews who have

violated the secrets of the Synagogue;[46] and all those especially

who speak against or who injure a co-religionist, have forfeited their

lives. In these days minor offenders are usually excommunicated;[47]

but those who have been informers or who proved themselves hostile to

Israel must be killed at all risks, either by the Jews themselves, or,

better still, through the local authorities. This is an invariable

rule.[48]

We read in the tract Sanhedrin (fourth of fourth order, p. 58) that

the Gentile who strikes a Jew has committed a capital offence; this

ordinance is as old as the sojourn of Moses in Egypt. He who strikes a

Jew strikes the Deity. The “sons of Noah” may be slain by the sentence

of a single Rabbi, or upon the testimony of a solitary witness,

although the latter be a relation. A descendant of the Hebrews who,

learning the true God in the days of Abraham, thereby separated

themselves from and exalted themselves above the rest of humanity,

may not be put to death but by the decision of twenty Rabbis and on

the testimony of two witnesses. A Gentile forfeits life if he cause a

pregnant Jewess or her fruit to perish; a Jew is not to be punished

capitally for such crime, but he must pay for the loss of the child (p.

57). The “son of Noah” who blasphemes the Holy Name, who has committed

adultery with or who has slain a co-religionist, ceases to merit death

by becoming a sojourning proselyte; but he must not be suffered to

escape if he has slain a Jew, or if he has committed adultery with a

Jewess (p. 71). The Jew must not contract friendship with Gentiles,

lest, an oath being necessary, he be compelled to swear by an idol (p.

63). He may not eat bread prepared by the heathen, for fear of undue

intimacy being the result. Market bread may be bought and eaten, but

on condition that it was made for sale, not for private use and then

sold--it is usual to burn a bit of such bread before using it. A Jew

may not eat victuals cooked by Gentiles, although vessels from a Jewish

house were used in the presence of Jews--this extends even to a roasted

egg.

The tract Abodah Zarah, before alluded to, asserts (p. 4) that all

the commandments kept by Jews[49] shall bear friendly and favourable

witness in heaven before all the assembled souls of men, and to the

confusion of every other faith. Hebrews dwelling out of the four Holy

Cities are as idol-worshippers, but without blame. A Jew going to a

Gentile marriage feast eats impure food, although the meats be cooked

by Jews and served by Jews in the presence of Jews; he even commits a

sin if he enters the house within thirty days of the coming ceremony

(p. 8). Gentiles should be prevented as much as possible purchasing

immovable property. It is not allowed to speak well of a Gentile, man

or woman, and it is a sin to make a present to them (p. 20), to greet

or to approach them; and the Jew becomes as ceremonially impure by

handling anything touched by them, by drinking out of the same cup,

or by sleeping under the same roof, as if eating with them. Hebrews

should never tether their beasts in places not belonging to them, at

least without locking them up, lest the heathen plunder or pollute

them. Gentiles preferred the Jews’ beasts to their own women, because

evil entered into Eve on the day when the serpent (demon) committed

adultery with her. A Jewess may not live amongst the heathen, because

possibly the latter do not hold adultery to be a sin; a Jew should

also beware for fear of their killing him, as they probably will do.

Israel was purified of every sin upon Mount Sinai; but the descendants

of the peoples not present there preserve their perversity (p. 22).

If a Hebrew wayfarer meet a Gentile armed with a sword (worn on the

left), he should pass on the other’s right side, and _vice versa_ if

the stranger has only a staff, so that the arm can be seized before the

weapon can be used; he must also name a distant place when asked his

journey’s end, in order that the Gentile may defer slaying him till too

late (p. 25).[50] The better to prevent all intimacy, the Jew must not

buy wine or vinegar from a Gentile, who also may perhaps have used it

in pagan rites. If a Christian, a Muslim, or an idolater touch a cup

containing wine, the Jewish owner must throw away the wine or sell it

to the heathen, and cleanse the cup. The same is the case with grapes.

The Law forbids the Israelites to marry the daughters of the Seven

Tribes that held the land before the conquest--namely, the Hittites,

Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.

This, say the writers of and commentators on the Talmud, arose from

the fact of these women being impure from their childhood upwards.

Others, however, whilst including all Gentiles in these Seven Tribes,

assert that the prohibition was not on account of any special impurity,

such women being vermin or brute beasts not subject to the normal

feminine infirmities. Thus the learned restrain their weaker brethren

who might suppose that an impure Gentile woman is pure to them, and who

might even extend it to the case of a Jewess. Hence again the deduction

that only the Hebrews are human beings (p. 35).[51]

Tract Arubim (second of the second order, Seder Moed, Of Appointed

Seasons) declares (p. 62) that if a Jew live under the same roof with

a Gentile who breaks the Sabbath (Saturday),[52] the former, lest he

be robbed, should drive out the latter by hiring the whole house. But

he may expel the heathen as he can or as he pleases; all tenements

inhabited by others than Jews are dens of beasts which cannot become

householders. The “son of Noah” who steals even a farthing should be

put to death--one of ten commandments given by God in His covenant with

Noah--and he cannot be pardoned unless he restore the stolen goods. But

God enjoined this restitution only upon Gentiles becoming Israelites

(_i.e._ sojourning proselytes); all other thieves must be instantly and

pitilessly slain.

In tract Ohaleth (second of the sixth order, called Seder Taharoth,

or Of Purification) we read (§ 6) that the graves of Gentiles cannot

be held impure because they are not tenanted by human beings, and

that when the law declares sitting upon tombs a cause of defilement

it alludes only to those of Jews. Chapter Baba Bathra (third tract of

the fourth order) declares (§ I, p. 10, also repeated in another part

of the same tract) that all alms given by Jews are acceptable to God,

whereas those of the Gentiles are so many sins because their objects

are ostentation and the preservation of their children. If, however,

the Jew declare that his alms-deeds are meant to save his family and

to win Paradise, still they are grateful to Jehovah--a privilege

allowed only to the children of Israel. In the same tract we are also

informed that Esau, the son of Isaac, sinned five times in one day,

by committing adultery with a heathen, by slaying his neighbour, by

profaning the name of his God, by insulting the resurrection of the

dead at the coming of the Messiah, and by degrading the rights of

primogeniture.[53] Rabbi Shalomon argues, from the fact of Ishmael

laughing when his brother Isaac was born, that Sarah concluded

therefrom, either that he held her to be an adulteress, or that she

saw him commit a murder; thus he draws the deduction that Ishmael had

broken the Seven Commandments, and that consequently his descendants

cannot bear witness against Jews (p. 16).

Tract Bechoroth (on Primogeniture, fourth of the fifth order, Seder

Kodashim, Of Holy Things) gives (i. 17) the formula of the Scribes’

prayers, and tells us that there are two things which hinder men from

keeping the law of God--the action of demons and dependence upon

Gentiles. The Lord explains to the angels that usury is permitted only

to the Hebrews, who, being ordered to give thanks after food, praise

their Creator even when they have eaten only an egg or an olive (p.

20). A Jew may not pray before a naked Gentile, though the latter be

in the category of a wild beast (p. 25). This tract relates that a

Jew, beaten by a Scribe when detected in adultery with an Egyptian

woman, complained to a Gentile ruler that the law had been taken into

private hands. The Scribe pleaded that he had surprised the criminal

with a she-ass, and called the prophet Elijah to bear witness. “Why

didst thou not slay him?” asked the magistrate. The reply was that,

since the children of Israel had been driven from their own country,

such a punishment could not be inflicted by them, but that the judge

could do as he pleased. When both left the court, the Jew charged the

Scribe with having called Elijah as a witness to a lie. “Wretch!”

exclaimed the learned man, “and are they not the same as she-asses?”

But as the Jew was about to return and report this explanation, the

Scribe slew him with his staff (i., p. 58). Hence it appears that this

tenet is a religious secret whose violation merits death. When a Jew

looks upon the grave of a brother Jew, he must say: “Blessed is He who

hath created us by law, who has promised to raise us again by law, and

who knoweth our number; blessed is He who revives the dead.” But if

the tomb be that of a Gentile, he must say: “Shame upon thy mother,

cursed be she that bare thee; for the end of the heathen shall be dry

and desolate as the soil of the desert” (p. 58). It also explains

earthquakes by the lamentations of the Lord, who bewails the miseries

of the Jews (p. 59). If a Jew find an object lost, we will say, by a

Muslim, he must not restore it, even though he knew the proprietor.

Also, if a Gentile make any mistake in accounting with the Jew, or

leave property in his house, the latter, when not in fear of the

authorities, must rob him. At all times, in fact, the Jew should spoil

the Gentile as much as possible. If one Jew injure another, though even

his personal enemy and the greatest villain in the world, especially

if such injury be to the advantage of a Gentile, the Jew shall surely

die (chap. 388 of the Khalehah Orah Haím Meshat, one of the most

accredited parts of the Oral Law). All those present are bound to put

the denouncer to death before he can do the deed; and if he has done

it, they must remove him from this world, every Israelite in the place

contributing to pay the assassin. The oath of a Gentile or a Samaritan

cannot be taken in evidence against a Jew. If a dispute occurs between

two Israelites, they must go before their own judge.[54] It is sinful

to have recourse to foreign tribunals, and all the decisions of the

latter, when adverse to Jews, must be quashed. Although the heathen

court pass sentence according to Hebrew Law, the plaintiff or denouncer

becomes impious, sacrilegious, and religiously excommunicated, whilst

the Rabbi is bound to make him lose his cause by every possible

contrivance, even by suborning false witnesses against him. And at

last due punishment must be dealt out. The latter is not a Biblical

command, but it results from the commentaries on the Talmuds. When

these works were written Muhammadanism did not exist; Muslims therefore

are now included amongst the Gentiles. They are not, however, like the

Christian idolaters.

In tract Keritoth (or Excision, the seventh of the fifth order,

Kodashim) the learned R. Moshe Meimunah, after describing a fight

between two bulls,[55] the one belonging to a Jew, the other to an

Egyptian, declares (p. 36) that, in case of a dispute between men of

these different races, the Hebrew, if in the right, should go to the

local authority and say, “See, such is the Law!” But he must not do so

if he prefer the Jewish tribunal. The Rabbi adds that no one should be

astonished at such a condition, for all who do not keep the revealed

commandments are not men, but beings whose sole purpose upon earth is

to serve men. Tract Muad Katon (Little Feast, eleventh of the second

order) forbids Jews to salute Gentiles unless in fear of them, and even

then never twice. When it was observed to the author that many Scribes

had so done, he replied that doubtless it was with some such mental

reservation as this, “I salute thee, A., son of B.,” meaning the Rabbi

who had taught the speaker to read the Scriptures (p. 62). El Ruzich,

in his commentaries on the Talmudic tract Abodah Zarah, speaking of

Hebrew accusers of Hebrews and eaters of flesh not ceremonially killed,

declares their death to be a necessity.

At this point it may be advisable to offer a short view of the two

Great Schools of the Holy Land which have influenced Jewish thought in

Christian times. These are, first, that of Tiberias, whence issued the

Talmud of Jerusalem, followed by the Talmud of Babylon; and, second,

the School of Safed, which rendered itself remarkable by the extreme

opinions of its commentaries and glossaries.[56]

We read in a Jewish writer (M. J. Cohen on the authority of the

Talmud, _Archives Israëlites_, 1841)[57]: “When after two hundred

years of energetic struggles against an empire which was fated to be

universal the Hebrew race found its political nationality in peril,

the first want felt was to lighten, as much as possible, the bonds

of personality, so as morally to preserve by identity of belief that

unity which dispersion was about to dissolve. And the plan which at

once suggested itself was to determine, by an invariable method, the

principles of the Mosaic Law, to develop their sense, and to fix their

interpretation.

“But in those times, if I may so speak, the lights of Israel were

eclipsed; ages had elapsed since the voices of the prophets had

delivered to this people the Oracles of God; and divine inspiration,

the heightening of the national faculties by supernatural means,

seemed to have returned to its home in heaven. Moreover, after the

destruction of Jerusalem and the expulsion of the Jews, all authority

had disappeared with national power, and, social organization no longer

existing, man could not magisterially impose his opinion upon others.

The only rational step in this state of things was to assemble all the

Israelites, or those who represented them, and to form a sovereign

synod.”

The Jewish Senate, Sanhedrin ([Greek: Συνεδριον: Synedrion]),[58] or

national council, was first transferred from the ruins of the Holy

City to Javneh, and after many removes to Saffúríah,[59] the Sephores

which in the days of Josephus was ever faithful to the Romans. Finally,

about the middle of the second century, during the reign of Antoninus

Pius (A.D. 138-161), it was transferred to Tiberias, another city

of Galilee. Rabbi Yahúda, universally known as ha-Kodesh, or the

saint, was the Nashi (Prince) of his nation and the President of the

Sanhedrin. He lived at Saffúríah, where there is a cave through which

the Roman Emperor, whose reign in history is almost a blank, used to

visit him from Tiberias; this tunnel is now blocked up. The modern Jews

residing in Galilee are not agreed whether the Great Rabbi died at

Saffúríah, or at Túrean, a neighbouring village, where two large caves

exist; but neither of them shows traces of a tomb. When this Prince of

Israel died, it was Friday evening, and the sun stood still whilst his

corpse was carried to its distant grave, lest even the body might break

the Sabbath.[60]

“The work of this Sanhedrin consisted in committing to paper that which

had before been entrusted to memory and had perpetuated itself by

tradition--the jurisprudence of the Jews, the various interpretations

of the Law by the principal doctors, and the rules of man’s duty; in

other words, all that was called the Oral Law. Thus the Synod began

by transgressing a principle of Israelitism, which until those days

had decreed that the supplementary code should never be written, and

hence indeed its vulgar name. In this point the Œcumenical Council

followed the example of Hadrian (A.D. 117-138), the adopted father

of Antoninus Pius, who also commanded the jurist Salvius Julianus to

draw up the _Edictum Perpetuum_, or fixed code, and the _Responsa

Prudentium_, which before his time formed an unwritten corps of

doctrine embodying legal decisions and precedents. The book, which

was compiled by R. Yahúda, with the adhesion of the Jewish majority,

received the name of Mishnah, ‘doubling,’ or repetition of the Law,

and its principles became obligatory upon all men.” The great work was

completed, according to some, about A.D. 119; David Ganz prefers A.D.

219, or a short time before the compiler’s death; whilst others contend

that R. Yahúda collected the principles of the code, and that the

nation accepted it by order of Gamaliel, his son, and successor in the

princely dignity of _Nashi_ and presidency of the Sanhedrin;[61] “and

others again make it of still later date. At all events, it is the most

ancient composition known to the Jews after the Law and the Prophets.”

By almost imperceptible degrees the notes and commentaries upon this

text grew to formidable proportions, and became a special science,

whose technical name, found in the Book of Chronicles (2 xiii. 22 and

xxiv. 27), is Midrash, from darash; in Arabic, dars, a lesson. Of the

innumerable methods of studying these Holy Writs, the three principal

are embodied in the Persian Paradís, the Arabic Firdaus, and the

Greek [Greek: Παραδεισος: Paradeisos], written Semitically without

vowels PRDS, and the mysterious letters were assumed mneumonically as

the initial of a technical word. Thus P (Peshat, the simple rendering

of words) recorded the elementary law of Talmudic exegesis, “No verse

of Scripture practically admits any sense but the literal sense,”[62]

although in a different or familiar signification it may be explained

in a host of ways. R (Remiz, the Arabic Ramz, a secret, intimation,

insinuation, or suggestion of meaning) illustrates certain letters

and signs apparently superfluous and explained only by tradition;

in a more general manner, it gave rise to a _memoria technica_ and

a stenography resembling the Roman _Notaricon_. Points and notes

were added to the margins of manuscripts, and thus was founded the

Massorah (tradition), or diplomatic conservation of the text, intended

to preserve its purity. D (Derush, illustration) was the familiar

application of historical, traditional, anecdotical, allegorical, and

prophetical sayings to the actual state of events; it was a sermon

aided by ethics, logic, poetry, parable, proverb, apologue, and the

vast mass of legendary lore known as the Hagadah (plural Hagadoth), as

opposed to the Halakah,[63] or dogmatic part--perhaps it was suggested

by the New Testament. Finally, the fourth and last, S (Sod, secret,

mystery), included the mystical and esoterical sciences of theosophy,

metaphysics, angelology, and a host of supernatural visions, brilliant

and fantastic. It borrowed with impartial hand from the magic of Egypt,

the myths of Hermes Trismegistos, the works of the Platonists and

Neo-Platonists, and the labours of the Christian Gnostics. Few were

initiated into “the Creation,” or “the Chariot,” as it was called,

alluding to the vision of Ezekiel; yet its attractions were such that

at last “Paradise” was confined to this special branch of esoteric

science, even as later in Gnosticism it came to signify the Spiritual

Christ.

Yet the Talmudic authors lay down the principle that their decisions

are in no wise absolute, but can always be modified by a power equal

to that which lay them down.[64] Their sole object was to fix the

sense and the rules of Written Law; for as Moïse de Coucy says in his

_S'mag, or Great Book of Precepts_: “If the interpretation of the Oral

Law had not been added to the Written Law, the whole code would have

been obscure and unintelligible, because Holy Writ is full of passages

which seem to oppose and contradict one another.” Rambáni Maimonides

of Cordova declares (Introduction to his _Guide_, Vol. I., p. 29):

“Thus we find continually written in the Talmud, ‘The beginning of the

chapter differs from the end’; and the explanation is given, ‘Because

the first part emanates from such-and-such a doctor, and the last from

another.’ Furthermore, we read, ‘Rabbi Yahúda the Holy approved the

opinion of that doctor in that case, and merely records the opinions

of this doctor in this case, without even naming him.’” The following

formulas are also frequent: “To whom belongs this anonymous assertion?”

R. “To A. B., the doctor!” and, “To whom belongs our paragraph of the

Mishnah?” R. “To such-and-such a person!”

To resume the history of the Talmud.

Some years after the publication of the Mishnah in the third century

(A.D. 230-270), R. Yochanan, who for eighty years had been President

of the Sanhedrin, undertook a commentary on the text like the Sharh,

which accompanies the Arabic Matu. Aided, it is said, by Rab and

Samuel, the disciples of Gamaliel, son of R. Yahúda, he produced about

A.D. 390 a book which, united with the Mishnayoth, received the title

Talmud (doctrine or learning) of Jerusalem, though written at Tiberias.

The product of the Schools of Palestine, it was composed in the West

Aramæan tongue; and it calls the Mishnic text by the simple name of

Halakah (rule), or dogmatic part. The School of Tiberias flourished

apparently in the days of St. Jerome, and passed into oblivion during

the fourth and early fifth centuries.

In A.D. 367 Askhi, President of the Babylonian Sanhedrin, whilst

teaching the Mishnah, annually commented upon two tracts of that work,

which, being concise, and as it were axiomatic, like all books that

announce legislative principles, required explanation of the author’s

exact intention. He was aided by the opinions of many doctors omitted

in the Mishnah, either those who died before R. Yahúda the Holy had

finished his labours, or the many who followed during the ensuing

years. In order that his learning might not be lost to the world,

he compiled and transcribed thirty-five tracts, and died A.D. 427.

His son Mar and Marimon his disciple continued the work, and after

seventy-three years appeared the Gemara, complement or conclusion. It

was written in the Eastern Aramæan tongue, and it corresponds with the

Hasheyah of Arabic standard works.

The Mishnah and the Gemara, now forming a single code, became known

to history as the Talmud Babli (of Babylon); and when _the_ Talmud is

mentioned, the second work, being the fuller and the more minute, is

always meant.[65] Presently the Talmudists separated into two great and

rival schools in ante-Christian times: that of Hillel,[66] remarkable

for his learning, his humility, and his charity, extending even so

far as to forbid usury (Tract Baba Metzin, folio 17^b); and that of

Shammai, inflexible in principles and often inclining to severity.

Both of these voluminous compositions are essentially a _corpus juris_,

to be compared with the _Edictum Perpetuum_ and _Responsa Prudentium_,

with the _Pandects_, the _Novellæ_,[67] and the _Institutes_. They

form an encyclopædia of Judæan Law, divine and human, national

and international, laical and ecclesiastic, civil and criminal; a

doctrinal, judicial, and sentential digest, dealing in exegesis and

hermeneutics; a huge compilation of what Muslim divines call Fatwá,

or decisions upon legal subjects; and a thesaurus of ceremonial

observances borrowed from the Oral Law and the traditions of the heads

of schools from Rabbi Gamaliel downwards.[68] Composed in the East,

that classic land of the supernatural, they abound in Hagadistic

matter, wild and picturesque legends sometimes inculcating moral

lessons, like the four nocturnal spectres Lilíth, Naama, Aguerith,

and Mahala,[69] at other times puerile tales of the great angels

Patspatsiah, Tashbach, Hadarniel, Enkatham, Pastam, Sandalphon,

Shamsiel, and Prasta. Its historical, topographical, ethnographical,

and geographical information must be received with the greatest

reserve, coming from authors of different ages and of several values.

For instance, the Gemara (Sanhedrin, vi. 2) informs us that our Lord,

having vainly endeavoured during forty days to find an advocate,

was sentenced, and on the 14th of Nisan was stoned and afterwards

hanged. It is a storehouse of curious allusions to the products of

various countries, the occupations of races, agriculture, gardening,

professions and trades, arts and sciences, connubial relations, manners

and customs, the interiors of houses, and even dress. It portrays the

cosmopolitanism and the luxury of Rome in her later days, thereby

filling up the somewhat meagre sketches of the post-classical school.

We find in the Mishnah allusions to the fish of Spain, the apples of

Crete, the cheese of Bithynia, the zythus,[70] lentils, and beans of

Egypt, the citrons of Greece, the wines of Italy, the beer of Media,

the garments of India and Pelusium, the shirts of Cilicia, and the

veils of Arabia.

“At five years of age,” says the Mishnah, “let the child begin to

study the Scriptures; let him continue so doing till the age of ten,

when he may begin to study the Mishnah; at the age of fifteen let him

begin the Gemara” (T. Aboth, chap. v.). This passage in the “vast work

or ocean of learning,” as some call it, could not but be distasteful

to Christianity. The tone adopted in speaking of the Almighty is

anthropomorphic and anthropocentric in the extreme.[71] God spends a

fourth part of the day in studying the Law. At every watch of the night

He sits and roars like a lion, saying, “Woe is Me that I have laid

desolate My house and burned My sanctuary, and sent My children into

captivity among the nations of the world” (Berachoth). He plays for

three hours every day with the leviathan. And bear in mind there are

far more objectionable representations than these in the writings of

the Rabbis. It revels more than any known faith in the degradation of

women; the Rabbinic court declares women “disqualified by the Law from

giving testimony”; the Talmud excludes them from the public worship

of God, and teaches that they are under no obligation to learn the

revealed will of their Creator,--peculiarly antipathetic doctrines to

those who believe in an Immaculate Virgin and in a St. Mary Magdalen.

Moreover, the large space given to cursing the Jew and the non-Jew, and

to the unhallowed practices of magic and necromancy, the summoning and

conversing with devils and spirits, the advocacy of astrology, charms,

and philters, served as a pretext for Pope and Inquisition to attack

it. In A.D. 553 Justinian proscribed it by Novella 146 as a “tissue of

puerilities, of fables, of iniquities, of insults, of imprecations, of

heresies, and of blasphemies”; it was destroyed by Gregory IX. in A.D.

1230; it was burnt in Paris by Innocent IV. (A.D. 1244); and it was

proscribed by Clement IV., by Honorius[72] IV., and by John XXII. The

first printed edition (Venice, 1520) saved it, and not until the third

had appeared (Basle, 1578) did it come under the eye of the censor.

In 1553 and 1555 Julius III. promulgated a proclamation against what

he called grotesquely the Talmud Gulnaroth; and this proceeding was

repeated by Paul IV. in 1559, by Pius V. in 1566, and by Clement VIII.

in 1592 and 1599.

A well-known anti-Talmudical writer remarked in 1836: “The promised

German translation of the Talmud, if ever completed, must without

any discussion overthrow Talmudism. Its exhibition in any European

language is the most fatal attack that can be made on its authority.”

This is utterly unphilosophical; the Book of Mormon, with all its

Americanisms and its internal evidences of futile forgery, confirmed

instead of destroying Mormonism. The Mishnah was translated into Latin

by Surenhusius (Amsterdam, three vols. 4^o) as early as 1698-1703, and

into German by the Chaplain J. J. Rabi (Onolzbach & Ansbach, first

to sixth part, 4^o) in 1760-1763. Without any knowledge of Hebrew

or Aramæan, those who read Latin, French and Italian, German and

English, will find in any great library--that of the British Museum

for instance--a translation of almost every part, and they may be

assured that the small remnant still untranslated contains nothing of

importance. The modern verdict is that the Talmuds are a “spotted orb,”

and that they contain two distinct elements--the sacred light in the

true interpretation of the word of God, and the purely human darkness

in its folly and infirmity. But it does not confirm the following

assertion of the _Initiation of Youth_ (Rabbi Ascher): “The Talmudical

writers enjoin upon us to treat Christians as our own brethren in every

social matter.”[73]

The second great Rabbinical School arose at Safed, also a city of

Galilee, and rising within sight of Tiberias. Benjamin of Tudela

(A.D. 1163) visited the tombs of Hillel and Shammai, “near Merún,

which is Maron,” supposed to be the Beth-maron of the Talmud; but he

says nothing about Jews being in Safed, then a fortress held by the

Templars. “The city set upon a hill” is also ignored by travellers

of the next three hundred years, and appears in history only about

the sixteenth century.[74] It then became the great centre of Jewish

learning--in fact, another Jerusalem. The children of Israel dwelt

there in great numbers, and had a vast Khan, a square lead-roofed

fortress, where many of them lived, and which contained a fine

synagogue. Besides the schools in which the sciences were taught,

they counted eighteen synagogues, distinguished by the names of the

several nations which possessed them, as the Portuguese, Spanish,

Italian, and others. The printing-press, of which there are remnants

at the north-eastern village Ein el Zeitún, issued many volumes, now

becoming exceedingly rare because so much in request amongst European

bibliophiles. The College (Madrásh) of the Rabbis still remains, a

two-arched hall, of which no part is ancient except the eastern side.

All the rest has been shaken down by earthquakes, which are supposed to

destroy the city as each Sabbatical year comes round. In the cemetery

below the settlement are the whitewashed graves of Joseph Caro, of

Shalomon Alkabez, and of other notables.

The peculiar ferocity of the Safed School resulted partly from the

domination of the sons of Ishmael, which, however mild, is everywhere

distasteful to the children of Israel.[75] If “Esau hateth Jacob

because of the blessing wherewith his father blessed him,” Jacob

returns the hate with at least equal heat, adding fear and contempt--he

would willingly, to use the words of Rashi, “blot out Esau and his

seed.” But doubtless the harshness and cruelty which distinguished

its doctors must be explained by the nature of the place and its

surroundings. Situated in the bleak and windswept, the stony and barren

highlands of Upper Galilee, shaken by earthquakes, and exposed to

terrible storms, Safed is one of the least amene sites in the whole

of Syria. The climate is ever in extremes, the water is hard and full

of constipating lime, the earth is cold and fruitless, and the people

are crafty and cruel as Simeon and Levi. After a few days’ residence,

strangers complain of sickness, cramps, and malaise, and their only

desire is to escape from the gloom and seclusion of this town upon the

hillside. Even the Muhammadans contrast the facile manners of their

own women at soft and low-lying Tiberias with the asperity and the

violence of those who inhabit the upland settlement. “Safad fasad”

(Safed ever giveth trouble) is the jingling saw of the neighbourhood,

and it contains abundant truth. The amount of intrigue and plotting

is excessive even in a Syrian settlement, the charges bandied about by

men against one another are atrocious--this doctor is a murderer, that

scribe is an adulterer, and the third is a swindler and a thief. If

the visitor were to believe half what he hears, he would find himself

in a den of brigands. That not a few of these charges are founded on

fact may be gathered from what travellers have printed concerning

certain sons of this Holy City, some of which are too revolting for

publication. The rich divines are accused of shamelessly embezzling

the Halúkah, large sums sent from Europe for the maintenance of the

community; and the poor are ready with complaints upon the most

trivial occasions--the breaking of a hen’s leg sends them on a hurried

official visit to their Vice-Consuls. It is not too much to say that

if Safed again produced a theological school, it would rival in its

narrow bigotry and peculiar ferocity that which disgraced the sixteenth

century.

The Talmud had spoken its last upon the interpretation of the Torah,

it had closed the discussions which arose from the sacred text, and

it had exhausted the traditional lore and the rules established by

the Rabbis of Palestine and Babylon till the fifth century after the

Christian era. Still, the Talmud itself required after the course of

ages to be interpreted, and this gave rise to a variety of mediæval

abridgments and to a vast series of glosses and commentaries. The more

modern Rabbis especially resolved that no uncertainty should rest upon

the Halakah, or doctrinal part of the work, and they strictly applied

themselves to codify the whole body of the Talmud.

To cite only the best-known names. We have to begin with Rabbi Ishaz

al Fasi, who first resumed the Talmud, and who had the boldness

to expel from the text everything not strictly bearing upon the

discussion. Then came the celebrated Maimonides of Cordova (A.D.

1150), whose Yad ha-Hazaka (Hand of Power) is a compendium of Talmudic

lore valued almost as highly as the original. He was followed by

Ascheri, a powerful dialectician, who knew how to conciliate with the

Talmudic argument the observations of the Tossaphists, or Glossarians,

represented before and after him by Rashi, Rabbenu Tam, Coucy, and a

host of others. His son succeeded him, and made a new attempt at a

codification, in which the opinions of Ascheri naturally occupied the

place of honour.

About this time rose the Safed School. The first and greatest

commentator was the Rabbi by some called Rabanu Jacob Be-Rab, an exile

from Spain, and subsequently Chief Rabbi of Fez and Safed, where, after

long teaching, he died in A.D. 1541. This Baal ha-Turim (Lord of the

Books), as he is called, wrote four works, which, being considered in

the light of “religious laws,” were known as the Diním. The first

of the Arbah Turim, Orach Chaüin (Urah ha-Yiim, the Way of Life),

treats of observances enjoined upon the Jews. The second is Joré Déah

(Yurah daah, the Teacher of Knowledge); it describes the ceremonious

observances of butchering, eating, making vows, circumcising, and so

forth. The third is Eben ha-Azar, the Stone of Assistance (to mankind).

And in the fourth, Hoshen Mishpat (Breastplate of Judgment), law, civil

and criminal, is discussed.

The School of this commentator was kept up by Moses of Trani in Apulia,

who lectured during fifty-four years to A.D. 1580, the year of his

death. The next name of repute was R. Joseph Karo, or Caro, a Jew of

Spanish descent, born at Constantinople, who died in A.D. 1575. He

was a voluminous writer. In the Shoulkhan Aroukh, a code of religion

adopted universally by the Israelites, he analyzed and resumed the

opinions of his predecessors. His _magnum opus_ is the Beth Yúsúf

(House of Joseph), in four folios, first printed at Venice, and

repeatedly republished; it consists of commentaries upon the four Diním

of Rabanu Jacob, on the Talmudic writings of the R. Ishaz al Fasi, and

on the labours of Rabbino Yakúb ben Rosh, not to be confounded with

Rashi the glossarian. The fourth great name is R. Shalomon Alkabez,

also of Constantinople, who wrote in A.D. 1529, and who was still

living in A.D. 1561. This theologian has left the worst name amongst

the Christians, whom he seems to have hated from his very heart. A

pupil and colleague of Caro and Alkabez was Moses of Cordova, the most

famous Cabalist since the days of Simeon ben Jochai; he died Chief

Rabbi of Safed in A.D. 1570. Moses Galanté, a native of Rome, was

somewhat later, dying in A.D. 1618. But the academy was not indebted

for its fame to strangers alone; Samuel Oseida and Moses Alsheikh, both

natives of Safed, contributed to its celebrity during the sixteenth

century. The latter died between A.D. 1592 and 1601.

Of the mediæval Rabbis and their successors generally, it may be

observed that the later the school the more prominent became its

bigotry and violence. This is easily explained. Anna Comnena[76]

describes the Crusades, which were guided by a giant and a goose, with

truly Eastern relish, as having left a “very admirable mound of bones,

high, deep, and broad.” But they left something more--a tradition which

presently enabled the Christians to recover power in the Holy Land,

and their abomination of the Jew inspired him with kindred sentiments.

Nor can we wonder that the later and more fanatical writings are

preferred by the Israelites to those of the earlier schools. Religious

exclusiveness and the ambition of being a peculiar people, set apart

from and raised above the rest of humanity, appeal to the heart of

every man through the sure channel of his passions. And thus in the

youngest faith of the world we find the same phenomenon as in one of

the most ancient--the Book of Doctrines and Covenants is read at Salt

Lake City whilst the Book of Mormon is neglected.

R. Jacob Be-Rab, in the second part of his Joré Déah (Yurah daah),

asserts that it is unlawful to draw a Gentile out of a well into which

he may have descended or fallen. He also declares that the scrupulous

Jewish physician who thoroughly conforms to Talmudic Law will not

attend a Gentile without honorarium, because this will be his sole

reward. He may do so gratuitously, if he wishes to study medicine by

that means; but he should usually kill such patients whilst pretending

to cure them. This, however, must be attempted only when there is no

chance of detection. R. Joseph Caro of Safed, one of the most pestilent

of that School, in his commentary upon the Way of Knowledge, enables

the doctor to do additional harm by calling Gentile fees Kashmad, that

is to say, the wages of sin--a term applied to the price of a woman’s

honour; and in speaking especially of Christians, he declares that if

the Jewish physician takes his fee without poisoning them it is as

the gift to the wicked woman. On the other hand, should the mediciner

be unwilling to be paid, he must absolutely poison his patient. He

also forbids the doctor who has not thoroughly studied the healing art

to attend one of his own faith, lest his ignorance cause death;[77]

but he may practise amongst all others, because if he kill them it is

lawful and no matter (commentary of Gittin, the sixth tract of the

third order). Others declare that the Hebrew physician must not treat

a stranger even for fees; but if he fear the Gentile, and the latter

know him to be a Jew, he may do so for money. Rubbi argues the question

by reference to the Gittin, in which it is related that R. Richmi bin

Askhi had prepared a dose for a stranger; he explains that the drug may

have been given by way of experiment, or for the purpose of study.

The Safed School continued its labours into the seventeenth century,

and Quasimus (writing about A.D. 1625) speaks of it [Safed] as

inhabited chiefly by Hebrews, who had their synagogues and schools, and

for whose sustenance contributions were made by the Jews in other parts

of the world. After that it gradually sank under the oppression of the

Muhammadans, who probably took the place by degrees.

FOOTNOTES:

[34] Mount Moriah (of appearance), afterwards the site of Solomon’s

Temple. Certain modern writers, especially Mr. Mills (_Nablous and the

Samaritans_), would identify Mount Gerizím of Shechem with Moriah; but

the most superficial consideration of the distance to be marched and

the time required proves the theory to be absurd.

[35] This institution has even distinguished the Jew from the other

civilized nations of antiquity, the Egyptians and Assyrians, the Hindus

and Guebres, the Greeks and Romans, who ignored it. By this part of

his cosmogony Moses evidently intended to inculcate the dignity of

labour and the hygienic necessity of rest. But the Rabbis and Doctors

exaggerate all things, and they have still, like the vulgar Hebrew, to

learn that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. The

Targum of Onkelos (Dr. Etheridge’s Translation. London: Longmans, 1862)

makes the Creator rest and be refreshed in all points like a wearied

human being. Dr. McCaul and a host of writers have enlarged upon the

vexatious, barbarous, and inhuman Sabbatical ordinances engrafted by

the Talmudists upon the Mosaic Law.

[36] Usually the Sabbatical journey is reckoned at one Mil (mile); but

it varies according to circumstances, the permitted extremes varying

between seven furlongs and two miles. Probably the ancient Jews had a

longer and a shorter measure, in the latter the pace being half of what

it was in the former; the longer mile, equal to 2,000 paces, = 5,000

feet = 1,666 yards, or 98[78] yards shorter than the English statute

measure, whilst the Roman was 142 yards less than ours.

[37] The Sabbath services throughout the world are four--namely, (1)

Prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings in the synagogue on Friday after

sunset; (2) Saturday morning prayers, rather later than usual that

men may take a longer rest; (3) Ha-phatorah, the conclusion after the

morning prayer, reading sections of the Law and the Prophets; and (4)

Ha-musaph, or the additional prayers, consisting of portions of the

Pentateuch referring to the sacrifices of the Mosaic Dispensation which

are now no longer lawful. The style of cantillation is complicated as

the reading of the Koran, and would be called a “neuma”[79] in the

mediæval music of the Christian Church. And the chant annotation, which

is shown in every Old Testament, offers a host of difficulties. As a

rule the services are the reverse of impressive. They are in a dead

language “not understanded of the people”; they are hurried over with

unseemly haste; and, as in most ceremonial faiths, the profuse outward

observances contrast strangely with the apparent absence of religious

feeling.

[38] “A Gentile who employs himself in the Law is guilty of death. He

is not to employ himself except in the seven commandments that belong

to the Gentiles. And thus a Gentile who keeps a Sabbath--though it be

on one of the weekdays--if he make it to himself as a Sabbath, he is

guilty of death.” And the measure of difference between Gentile and Jew

is that, whilst the former has seven commandments, the latter has six

hundred and thirteen.

[39] Thus the Rabbinical saying is: “Every one is bound to divide the

time of his study into three--one-third to be devoted to the Written

Law, one-third to Mishnah, and one-third to Gemara.” Thus he gives

one-half to the Old Testament, whilst double study is assigned to the

Oral Law. The latter, which has some tangible points of resemblance

with the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church and the Sunnat of

the Muhammadans, is the unwritten code received by Moses on Mount

Sinai and transmitted inviolate by word of mouth from generation to

generation. Until after the last destruction of Jerusalem it was never

committed to writing (see _A Manual of Judaism_, by Joshua Van Oven,

Esq., M.R.C.S.L. London, 1835). It is held uninspired by all save the

Jews, and one of its bitterest enemies was the Founder of Christianity,

who, when attacking tradition, never failed to uphold the Law. One

might smile at so prodigious an assumption as this legendary system

in the total absence of historic proof. But only a few years ago a

French Grand Rabbi published a learned work to prove that the facts

can be accounted for only supernaturally. Also Dr. Adler, Orthodox

Chief Rabbi of England, declared, in a sermon preached but a few years

ago, the Written and the Oral Laws to be equally divine, and compared

the reformers with the false mother in the judgment of Solomon. These

things make us regret the total disappearance of the Sadducee or

Rationalistic School.

[40] [The fourth, omitted by Burton, is, “Tu non ruberai” according to

the Hakhám.]

[41] Arubím, or mixtures, were forbidden by the Mosaic Law (Lev. xix.

19), and were greatly extended by the Oral Law, such as grafting,

sowing different kinds of seeds in the same soil, wearing a garment of

wool and linen mixed, and so forth. The subject is copiously treated in

the nine chapters of Kilaim (Heterogeneous, or Things not to be Mixed),

the fourth tract of the first order, Seder Zeraaim (the Order of Seeds).

[42] The subject of proselytizing amongst the ancient Jews is full

of difficulties, and the object seems mostly to have been the

discouragement of converts, with a fair scheme on paper. The Proselytes

of the Gate, generally called Gerim, or strangers (“the stranger that

is within thy gates”) and properly Noachidæ (sons of Noah), were only

half Israelites. The Proselytes of the Covenant or of Righteousness

were perfect Israelites. They are still admitted under protest--men by

circumcision and immersion in water, and women by the latter rite only.

It is a question how far baptism was used in ante-Christian times, and

possibly John the Baptist merely adopted the old rite for a new purpose.

[43] This again is Scriptural. “The doctrine of Moses is not that

obedience to one command will compensate for disobedience to another,

but that disobedience to one command will make obedience to others of

none effect.”

[44] [_Sic_ Burton. The Hebrew scribe is supposed to be speaking.]

[45] Here the scribe does not explain himself. What he refers to is the

supposed system of reducing the blood to ashes.

[46] “Heretics and informers and Epicureans, who have denied the Law

or the resurrection of the dead, ... all such go down to hell, and are

judged for ever” (Rosh ha-Shanah, or Head of the Year, eighth tract of

the second order).

[47] There are three forms of excommunication--(1) the Nachri, or

simple expulsion from the synagogue; (2) expulsion accompanied with

Anathema; and (3) the same with Maranatha. The latter is composed of

two Syriac words meaning “the Lord will come,” _i.e._ in judgment.

[48] Hence, it may be added, the exceeding care of the Jews to

propitiate all those having authority.

[49] A tenet which in the hands of the Arab has become a very poetical

vision. The Muhammadan’s good deeds in this life, his works in fact,

will meet him under the form of a beautiful woman, and will lead him

over the terrible bridge El Sirat to the Gates of Paradise.

[50] Dr. McCaul (_Old Paths_, No. 5) remarks upon these and other

precautions which are numerous in the Hilchoth Rotsíh: “What an

affecting picture does this present of the Jews under heathen

domination!” We should rather ask: “What conduct on the part of the

Jews must have led to this habitual treatment by those whom they

branded with the name of idolaters?”

[51] “It is unlawful to bake or to cook on a holy day, in order to feed

Gentiles or dogs; for it is said (Exod. xii. 16), ‘That only may be

done for you.’ ‘For you,’ and not for Gentiles; ‘for you,’ and not for

dogs” (Hilchoth Yom Tov., c. i. 10). Some Rabbis go so far as to make

the Am ha-erits (son of earth, _i.e._ people of the land like the Seven

Tribes), or unlearned Jew, an abomination, a beast, whose nostrils may

be split, but who is too worthless to be slain (see Dr. McCaul, _The

Old Paths_, pp. 6, 7).

[52] Nothing is more striking to the Hebraist, or to one who has lived

long among the Hebrews, than to hear unlearned Christians perpetually

using the word (Sabbath) which can mean only Saturday to signify Sunday.

[53] The Targum of Palestine says (chap. xxv.): “He had worshipped

with strange worship, he had shed innocent blood, he had gone into a

betrothed damsel, he had denied the life of the world to come (nowhere

taught in the Law), and he had despised his birthright.”

[54] The system of the Beth-din (house of judgment) is kept up even

in the British Islands. The Chief Rabbi is called Rab or Ab Beth-din,

and he nominates his two Dayaním, or associates. Its jurisdiction is

civil, social, and religious; but its powers extend only to levying

fines and to excommunicating recusants. In Damascus the jurisdiction is

much more extended. The building is in the street of the Scribe called

by courtesy Rabbi Yakúb Perez, and half the intrigues in the city are

here hatched. The well-known Khagal of the Russian Jews is a similar

institution, not recognized by the Government, but exerting immense and

injurious power over the people.

[55] Our modern versions which use the word “ox” in such places lead to

error. The Hebrews did not castrate their cattle, and similarly their

mules and their eunuchs were imported from Egypt and elsewhere. Nothing

of this is hinted at about the bull in the most popular modern books;

so, for instance, the article “Ox” in Smith’s _Concise Dictionary of

the Bible_. And here it may be noted that if a bull killed a slave

the owner of the former paid a fine of thirty shekels to the owner

(Josephus, _Ant. Jud._, IV. viii. 36); hence possibly the sum offered

to and accepted by Judas as the value of a bought servant.

[56] For the other great centres of learning, see _Jerusalem and

Tiberias; Sora and Cordova: A Survey of the Religious and Scholastic

Learning of the Jews. Designed as an Introduction to the Study of

Hebrew Literature_. By J. W. Longmans, M.A. (London: Longmans). It is

curious to see how neglected has been the Safed School, which is most

erroneously included in that of Tiberias.

[57] Most of these remarks are taken from the Introduction to the

_Traité des Berakhoth (Benedictions) du Talmud de Jérusalem et du

Talmud de Babylone, traduit pour la première fois en Français par

Moïse Schwab, attaché à la Bibliothèque Nationale_ (Paris: Imprimerie

Nationale, MDCCCLXXI.).

[58] The word clearly shows the immense effect of the Hellenic

Conquest. There were two forms of Sanhedrin--the Greater, numbering

seventy-one souls; and the Lesser, consisting of twenty-three. Both

were composed of the three orders Priests, Levites, and common

Israelites. The Greater Council claimed, and would again claim,

supreme jurisdiction over the king, the high priest, the prophets,

and the people, and “strangulation was the mode of execution for any

learned man who rebelled against their words” (Hilchoth Mamrun, i. 2).

Anti-Talmudic writers strongly object to this upstart aristocracy,

when Moses (Deut. xvii.) ordained a supreme council consisting of the

“Priests the Levites” (not the Priests _and_ the Levites), together

with the judge, or chief civil governor; the ecclesiastical element

remaining in the family of Aaron, whilst the magistracy fell to the

lot of Joshua. But when they assert, “It is quite absurd, and if

the subject were not so grave it would be ludicrous, to hear the

Rabbinists exclaiming that the Law of Moses is unchangeable, when they

themselves have changed all its main provisions and made an entirely

new religion,” the Jew may fairly retort that the Pauline modifications

extending to radical changes had the same effect upon Christianity.

[59] According to the system of Sir William Jones, this name would be

written Saffúriyeh, but not, as travellers generally do, Saffúreh or

Saffuriyyeh.

[60] The sun has often stood still in history; but how often did the

historian understand what the sun standing still really means? As

Spinoza remarked, “Not even in their dreams had they ever thought of

parhelia”; and one of his editors quotes the French drummer-boy in

Switzerland, “Nous sommes ici au bout du monde! Ici on touche le soleil

de la main!” In the twelfth century Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela found the

grave of Rabenu Hakkadosh (R. Yahúda) near “Suffurieh, the Tsippori of

antiquity,” and evidently never heard the legend, “They are buried in

the mountain, which also contains numerous other sepulchres.” In his

day Tiberias contained only fifty Jews.

[61] See Cérnach David, Editio princeps (Prague, 1592), fol. 43.

[62] Similarly the Mormons “pointedly condemn those who make the

contents of the Bible typical, metaphysical, or symbolical, ‘as if God

were not honest when He speaks with man, or uses words in any other

than their true acceptation,’ or could ‘palter in a double sense.’”

This return to Hebrew lines of thought is not a little curious, and

it may be remarked that every fresh branch put forth by the tree of

“Protestantism,” as it is called, invariably reverts more and more

to the old type. Indeed, whenever in these days we hear of a new

“religion” having been born into the world, we may determine, _à

priori_, that it is more Jewish than its predecessors. And traces of

the same operation may be found amongst the Hindu Sikhs and the Muslim

Babees.

[63] Hagadah, from Hagah, to declare or describe, to invent or imagine,

is applied to any illustration, historical or fabulous. Halakah, from

Halak, to walk, is a rule of conduct, anything prescriptive of the

peculiarities of Jewish life.

[64] See the Mishnah, fifth part, tract Edonyoth, i., §§ 5 _et seq._

This is a fair answer to the host of contradictions and the general

charge of inconsistency levelled by anti-Talmud writers against the

Oral Law, and it enables the modern Rabbi to make almost any assertion

that he pleases concerning disputed points. Thus one will find in the

Talmud that Christians should be put to death, the other that they

should be treated like brothers. This is certainly very convenient.

[65] It is still a disputed point whether the two Targums (versions or

translations of the Pentateuch) on the Pentateuch, attributed to the

proselyte Onkelos, or Ankelos, and to the Jew Jonathan bin Uzzul, were

written by contemporary students in the Rabbinical Schools of Jerusalem

within the half-century before Christ, or were worked out like the

Septuagint by the Babylonian Maturgemanin (interpreters) of the fourth

century. The later the date the better in order to account for such

Græcisms and Latinisms as Ardiphene (Rhodaphne, oleander), Polimarkin

([Greek: Πολεμαρχος: Polemarchos]), Sapuklatoría (Speculators), and

Oktaraia (Octariones, præfecti militares). In the Targum of Jerusalem

we read “a band of Saracens.”

[66] _Vie de Hillel_, par M. le Grand Rabbin Trínel (1867).

[67] [The _Novellæ_ or _Novel Constitutions_ were so called because

they were posterior in time to the _Institutes_ and other digests of

the Roman Emperors, especially Justinian.]

[68] Rabbi Gamaliel the Elder flourished about the end of the first

century. Some suppose that he added a nineteenth prayer to the Shamunah

Ashara, the “eighteen” composed by Ezra and the men of the Great

Congregation, and which is still used by the British and other Jews.

Others attribute it to Rabbi Samuel the Lesser, a disciple of Gamaliel,

whilst others make it of even more modern date.

[69] The derided myth has been amply vindicated by the Rev. John Mills

(_The British Jews_, p. 409) and by N. M. Schwab (Introduction, p.

xxviii). The latter writer would be valuable, if he could only be

impartial. Unfortunately he writes with all the animus of a Hebrew (pp.

xxxviii and xxxix), and not a few of the prejudices of a Frenchman (p.

xxvii). This is the more regrettable, as the reading public will be

wholly in his hands and he can make the Talmud say what he pleases.

[70] [It is the [Greek: ζυθος: zythos] or Egyptian beer mentioned by

Herodotus, ii. 77. Later the term was extended to the _cerevisia_ and

other beers of European nations; hence the obsolete word _zythepsary_

([Greek: ζυθος: zythos], and [Greek: εψω: epsô], to boil), a brewery.]

[71] Here, however, we can hardly find the Talmud alone guilty. Its

anthropopathisms are merely exaggerations of what is found in the books

of Moses when the Creator is subject to wrath, sorrow, repentance,

jealousy, and other human passions of the baser kind. In fact, it would

be difficult to detect in the Rabbinical ordinances anything which is

not built upon the Mosaic text; they have greatly added to the Law,

which, methinks, is their great sin in the eyes of Christians, and they

have in many cases carried it out to absurdity--_corruptio optimi fit

passima_.

[72] This Pope in A.D. 1286 wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury

directing him to have a care lest any one read a book from which all

evils flow. Pope Pius IV., when authorizing a new edition, expressly

stipulated that it should be published without the title of Talmud,

which appears to have been a kind of Shibboleth, “Si tamen prodierit

sine nomine Talmud, tolerari deberet.” Such was the terror which it

inspired in the ecclesiastical mind.

[73] An _ad captandum vulgus verdict_. It is thus modified by the next

sentence: “All the latter Gavním [luminaries of the Jewish Law] agree

that Christians are reckoned as our own brethren, and are not included

in the term Nakhrím [strangers].”

[74] Dr. Robinson, _Biblical Researches in Palestine_, iii. 331.

[75] After the second expulsion of the Templars, Sultan Bibars

repeopled Safed with a colony from Damascus, and local tradition

asserts that of these many were Kurds.

[76] [The Empress of Constantinople.]

[77] The treatment of the Jewish sick, even in these degenerate days,

is very scrupulous. When the patient is evidently moribund, not a drop

of medicine or even a drink of water must be given to him unless he ask

for it himself, lest such act hasten dissolution, and make the giver

guilty of having caused the death of a brother Hebrew.

[78] [_Sic_ Burton, but should be 94.]

[79] [The _neumes_, properly pneumes (Gr. [Greek: πνευμα: pneuma]),

_i.e._ the musical notations prevalent from the eighth to the twelfth

century, are supposed by some to represent the ancient _Nota Romana_,

though others hold them to be of Oriental origin.]

CHAPTER V

THE CONTINUITY OF TRADITION IN THE EAST

Obviously such cruel and vindictive teaching as that recounted in

the previous chapter must bear fruit in crime and atrocities. The

occurrence of such deeds explains much of what appears to have been the

mere results of superstition and greed of gain amongst semi-barbarous

peoples. From the earliest ages to these modern days, and not in one

place, but all the world over, the hatred of the Jew against the

non-Jew has been of the fiercest. Those who are so ready to admit and

deplore the mighty provocations which roused a spirit of retaliation

in the Rabbinical mind should equally make allowance for the natural

feelings of the unfortunate Gentiles and heathens when the “People of

the Synagogue” had their wicked will. In the fifth century the Hebrew

colony, which, flying from Syria and Palestine after the wars of Titus

and Hadrian, settled near Yathrib (Medina), was powerful enough to

murder the Viceroy of the Tobbaa, or Himyarite King, and to convert

to Judaism, Du-nawás (A.D. 480), one of the last of that dynasty. He

acquired the title “Lord of the Fiery Pit,” by burning alive, in a

trench filled with combustibles, thousands of the Christians of Nejerán

at the instigation of the Jews. In later times the “People of the

Synagogue” brought upon themselves a war of extermination by insulting

an Arab woman, and after the siege of Kheibar they attempted to poison

Muhammad. In A.D. 614 the Hebrews of Galilee, according to Eutychius,

joining the Persian army under Chosroes II., caused a great slaughter

of the Nazarenes. When the Holy City was captured, they bought at a

cheap rate those taken by the Persians, especially from the Greek

monastery of Mar Saba, for the sole purpose of butchering them. Even

in Abyssinia, when the Falashas, or black proselytes, established a

powerful kingdom, this quasi-Jewish race, under their King Gideon and

their Queen Judith, was a scourge to all the nations around. These

are but a few instances of the many which would fill a volume. It is

absurd to suppose with the “liberal” writers of the nineteenth century

that whole colonies have been expelled, driven away half naked, from

England and France, from Germany, Spain, Portugal, and other Christian

kingdoms; that communities were imprisoned in Ghettos, and subjected to

tumultuous and wholesale massacres; and that thousands of individual

Jews and Jewesses, old men and children, were roasted with dogs over

slow fires, were skinned alive, tortured, dismembered, and slain like

savage beasts for the mere frenzy and the ignorance of superstition,

for simply diabolical barbarity, and for clipping coin or for claiming

more than two shillings per week as interest on a loan of twenty

shillings.

We must seek for a solid cause underlying these horrible acts of

vengeance; we find ample motive in the fact that the Jew’s hand

was ever, like Ishmael’s, against every man but those belonging to

the Synagogue. His fierce passions and fiendish cunning, combined

with abnormal powers of intellect, with intense vitality, and with

a persistency of purpose which the world has rarely seen, and

whetted moreover by a keen thirst for blood engendered by defeat and

subjection, combined to make him the deadly enemy of all mankind,

whilst his unsocial and iniquitous Oral Law contributed to inflame

his wild lust of pelf, and to justify the crimes suggested by spite

and superstition. Because under the present enlightened Governments

of the West the Jews have lost much of their ancient rancour, and no

longer perpetrate the atrocities of the Dark Ages, Europe is determined

to believe that the race is, and ever has been, incapable of such

atrocities. The conclusion is by no means logical. We have seen them

even now repeated in the Holy Land, and presently we shall see that

they are still not unknown to Western Europe, Asia Minor, and Persia.

And what can we expect from a system which teaches men to believe and

to act as follows?[80] “A tradition of the Talmud says (Talmud, Book

Baba Kama, Chapter Haggozel) if an Israelite and a Gentile come before

thee to judgment, if thou canst absolve the Israelite according to the

Jewish Law, absolve him, and say, ‘This is our way of judging.’ But if

thou canst absolve him by Gentile Law, absolve him, and say, ‘This is

your way of judging.’ But if not, then they are to come upon him with

cunning frauds. R. Samuel says the error of a Gentile is also lawful.

For, behold, Samuel bought a piece of gold for four small coins, and

added one more (that he might go away the sooner, and not perceive

the fraud). Chahana bought a hundred and twenty casks of wine for the

price of a hundred; he said, ‘My trust is in thee.’ So far the Talmud.

From these and similar passages Jews infer that they may and ought to

deceive Christians and others who are not Jews. Thus also from other

passages they infer that they may and ought to kill Christians, of

which the following example is found in the book Mechilta: Exod. xiv.

7, _And he took six hundred chosen chariots, and all the chariots of

Egypt_. From whom did he take them? If you say from the Egyptians, is

it not said already, Exod. ix. 6, _And all the cattle of Egypt died_?

If you say Pharaoh, then there is a difficulty; for it is said already,

ix. 3, _Behold, the hand of the Lord shall be upon thy cattle_. But if

you say they were from the Israelites, it is said already, x. 26, _Our

cattle shall go with us_. From whom then were they? It is plain that

they must have been from those who feared the word of the Lord. Hence

we learn that those of the servants of Pharaoh who feared the word of

the Lord were a stumbling-block to Israel, and hence R. Simeon ben

Jochai says, ‘Slay thou the best amongst the Gentiles, and of the best

of serpents bruise the head.’[81] Thus far the Talmud; and by this they

mean to say, that as of serpents he especially is to be killed that is

the greatest and best of its kind, so Christians are to be dealt with

in the same way. For killing Christians and throwing their children

into pits, and even for killing them when they can do it secretly, they

derive an argument from that which is said in the book Abodah Zarah,

Chapter En Maamidin: ‘As to Gentiles and robbers, and those that tend

small cattle, they are neither to be helped out of a well nor to be

thrown into it. But heretics and informers and apostates are to be

thrown in, but not to be helped out.’ The commentary of Rashi says:

‘Heretics mean the priests of idols; informers mean calumniators who

betray the wealth of their brethren into the hands of the Gentiles.’

R. Shesheth says: ‘If there be a step in the pit, let him find an

excuse, and say, Lest an evil beast descend upon him.’ Rabba and R.

Joseph both say: ‘If there be a stone upon the mouth of the well, he

is to cover it, and say, I do it that the beasts may pass over it.’

R. Nachman says: ‘If there be a ladder in the well, he is to take it

away, and say, I wish to get down my son from the roof.’ Thus far the

Talmud. Thy prudence, O reader, may perceive that the Talmud, which so

perniciously teaches them to lie and to kill Christians, is not the law

of God, but the figment of the devil.”

We can hardly be surprised, after reading such atrocious doctrines,

at what history tells us concerning the Jews, their crimes, and their

condemnations. For instance:

In A.D. 419, according to Socrates (_Eccles. Hist._, Lib. VII., chap,

xvi.), some Jews of Inmestar, between Chalcis and Antioch, as a drunken

frolic, tied a Christian child[82] upon a cross and mocked it, and

that, hurried on in their wickedness, they afterwards scourged it until

it died.

In A.D. 560 a Jew was stoned for carrying away and profaning an image

of the Saviour. The same happened at Odessa in A.D. 1871, where the

Hebrews were charged with stealing the image of the “miraculous Madonna

of Kutperova.”

About A.D. 787 the Jews of Beyrut repeated the offence. The result was

the conversion of almost all their number, and the consecration of

their synagogue by the bishop.

A.D. 1010. Massacre of the Jews in France.

A.D. 1017. Certain Jews beheaded by order of Pope Benedict at Rome.

A.D. 1135. The Jews crucified a boy at Norwich. According to

the general report, they hired a Christian lad aged twelve as a

leather-sewer, and converted him into a Paschal offering; they placed

a bit in his mouth, and after a thousand outrages they crucified him,

and pierced his side in order to mock the Redeemer’s death. The corpse

was borne in a sack to be burned outside the town gates; but a surprise

caused the murderers to fly, leaving the remains hanging upon a tree.

A.D. 1166. The Jews at Ponthosa crucified a lad aged twelve.

A.D. 1185. For similar outrage upon a girl and others, King Philip

Augustus confiscated the goods of the Jews, and banished them from his

realms in the April of the following year.

A.D. 1189. The Jews were massacred at London and in other parts of

England.

A.D. 1190. The Jews were massacred at York.

A.D. 1250. The Jews of Saragossa nailed a child named Dominic to

the wall in the form of a cross, and then pierced his side with a

spear. During the same century those of Toledo also killed a Christian

youth. According to the _Cronica Serafica_ (della Vita di S. Francesco

d’Assisi, Opera del Padre Damiano Cornejo, 1721, Lib. I., chap, i.),

the Jews superstitiously used the blood of Christians in child-birth,

and sent it in a dried state to China and other places, where they had

synagogues, but where worshippers of Christ[83] are not to be found.

Hence the Jews were eventually expelled from Spain and Portugal.

A.D. 1255. “Jappen,” one of the chief Jews of Lincoln, and others of

his faith, kidnapped a lad eleven years old (August 27), beat him

with rods, cut off his nose and upper lip, broke some of his teeth,

and pierced his side. King Henry III. and his Parliament at Reading

condemned the murderers to be dragged to death at horses’ heels, and

gibbeted their carcases.

A.D. 1271. The Jews of Pforzheim murdered a girl seven years old.

A.D. 1287. The Jews of Wesel murdered a boy named Werner.

A.D. 1288. The Jews of Pacherat [?] (Würtzburg) murdered a Christian,

and extracted his blood “as it were with a winepress, and which they

are said to use as a medicine.” About the same time the Jews of Munich

murdered a Christian child.

A.D. 1290. A Jew was burnt in Paris for insulting a consecrated wafer.

In the same year, during the reign of Edward I., fifteen to sixteen

thousand Jews were banished from England; nor were they allowed to

return till the days of Cromwell, the first Liberal (A.D. 1660).

A.D. 1299. Many Jews were put to death for insulting a consecrated

wafer at Roettingen of Franconia.

A.D. 1303. The Jews of Thüringen murdered a child, and were slain in

numbers.

A.D. 1306. King Philip of France was induced by a multitude of

accusations, involving magic, sacrilege, and murder, to expel the Jews

from his country, to confiscate all their goods except what was wanted

for the journey, and to forbid their return under pain of death--all

were arrested on the same day, July 22.

A.D. 1330. The Jews of Gustow in Vandalia [Pomerania] insulted a Host.

A.D. 1348-1350. The Jews were accused of poisoning the wells and

rivers, and of causing the plague which then devastated Europe. Many

were slain and thousands were driven away from Germany, where the cry

of “Hep” was first raised. At length the Papal power was compelled to

defend their lives by threats of excommunicating their destroyers.

A.D. 1379. The Jews of Belgium insulted a consecrated Host.

A.D. 1399. The same was done by the Jews of Poland.

A.D. 1468. The Jews of Toledo in Spain crucified a Christian boy.

A.D. 1475. The Jews again insulted the Host, and were expelled the

territories of the Bishop of Passau.

A.D. 1492-1498. The Jews were expelled from Spain, in consequence of

popular clamour, by Isabel the Catholic. Many retired to Portugal,

where asylum was granted to them under the conditions, first, that each

should pay a certain sum of gold for admission, and, secondly, that if

found in Portugal after a certain day, they should either consent to

be baptized or be sold for slaves. At the expiration of the appointed

time many remained. “The King therefore gave orders to take away all

their children under fourteen years of age, to distribute them amongst

Christians, to send them to the newly discovered islands, and thus

to pluck up Judaism by the roots.” This expulsion, which has been

strongly commented upon by modern historians, is still fresh in the

memory of the Jews, and an Eastern Rabbi can hardly conceal the hatred

with which even in these days he regards a Spanish official.

A.D. 1495. The Jews of Trent, by means of one of their number, a

physician, decoyed to his house, whilst the Christians were at church,

it being Maunday Thursday, a boy two years and a half old, by name

Simeon, the son of a tanner. Before the Paschal festival commenced, the

principal Jews collected in a room near their synagogue. The child,

gagged with a kerchief, was extended in the form of a cross, and was

held down by his murderers. The blood, pouring from heavy gashes, was

collected in a basin, and when death drew near the victim was placed

upon his legs by the two men, and the others pierced his body with

sharp instruments, all vying in brutality and enjoying the torture.

The corpse having been found in the Etsch river, which flows through

the city, led to the detection of the crime; the murderers were put

to death, the synagogue was razed to the ground, and a church was

built over the place where the horrid deed was done. A sculpture was

put on the Bridge Tower in Frankfort-on-the-Maine, and a picture of

a “Christian Infant murdered by the Jews” was placed in one of the

galleries in the Hôtel de Ville. Of late years it has been removed,

in deference to the feelings of the Hebrew community, which, of late

years, has formed a large and important section of the commercial

population. This murder has been abundantly commented upon. Dr. John

Matthias Tiberinus, in Trent at the time, and Jacobus Philippus

Bergamensis, of the Order of the Hermits of St. Augustine, who was then

living at the neighbouring town of Bergamo, gave accounts of it; whilst

an engraving was produced in the _Chronicles_ of John Louis Gottfried,

edited by Matthæus Merianus. On the other hand, Pietro Mocenigo, the

Doge of Venice, and his Senate asserted: “Credimus certe rumorem ipsum

de puero necato commentum esse et artem; ad quem finem, viderint et

interpretentur alii.”

A.D. 1518. The Jews ill-treated consecrated Hosts and murdered

Christian children in the Electorate of Brandenburg.

A.D. 1669 (September 25). A child was barbarously slaughtered by

one Raphael Levi, and the cause was publicly tried at Metz. The

Nuremburg Chronicle produces, in the same year, three other cases of

kidnapping--one in England and two at Fiesole. Baronio (_Raccolta delle

Cause Celebri_, p. 288, etc.) supplies many similar instances of child

stealing and murder.

M. Tustet, a Lazarist priest, used to relate what he had heard when

living at Turin from the lady who nearly fell a victim to Jewish

superstition, even in the early part of the present century. A certain

Signor Antonio Gervalon, born at Castiglione d’Osta, and settled in

business at Turin, happened, when walking with his wife Giulietta

Bonnier, to enter the Jewish quarter. This Ghetto used to be closed at

night, as in Hamburg and Frankfort. Whilst he was talking business with

one of his Hebrew acquaintances, Madame Gervalon left him, and strolled

on a short way. Suddenly she was mobbed by a crowd of Jews, who hustled

her forwards, and at last forcibly thrust her into a _souterrain_

closed by a trap-door. She was stripped to the waist, and presently

visited by two Rabbis, who, after reading their books for about half

an hour, retired, saying, _Voi dovete morire_. The husband, after the

conversation ended, followed his wife, whom all the Ghetto folk denied

having seen; and thinking that perhaps she had gone home, he returned

there to seek her, but in vain. Thence he went to various houses, till

a relative said to him in jest, “Have a care! You know how the Jews

treat us Christians.” The words struck him. He hurriedly collected

a party of policemen, and whilst these searched the Ghetto he went

about shouting, “La mia moglie! La mia moglie” (My wife! my wife!).

Though half dead with fear, the lady at length screamed a reply, and

was saved. The affair was hushed up with money, which made the Jews as

powerful at Turin as they are at Aleppo and Damascus; but the tale was

long told by the children of Madame Gervalon. In this section of the

nineteenth century the subject has passed into the domain of politics,

and is no longer submitted to reason and judgment. The Italian Liberal

denies and derides the charges, whilst the Conservatives or Retrogrades

are almost ashamed to support them.

A.D. 1811. A Christian woman disappeared in the Jewish quarter of

Aleppo.[84]

A.D. 1821. The Jews sacrificed a man at Beyrut.

A.D. 1824. The Jews of Beyrut made away with Fatallah Sayegh, an

Aleppine Muhammadan.

A.D. 1829. The Jews of Hamah murdered a Muhammadan girl, and were

expelled the city.

A.D. 1834. The Jews of Tripoli were accused of murdering an Aleppine

Christian.

A.D. 1838. The Jews of Jerusalem attempted to murder a Muhammadan.

A.D. 1839. A flask of blood passed through the Custom-house of Beyrut.

A.D. 1840. The Jews murdered Padre Tomaso and Ibrahím Amárah at

Damascus. In the same year they made away with a Greek boy at Rhodes, a

Greek boy disappeared from Corfu, and an attempt was made to murder a

Muhammadan.

A.D. 1847. The Jews crucified a Christian boy in Mount Lebanon.

A.D. 1853. The Jews of Caiffa murdered the wife of an Algerine Jew.

A.D. 1865. The Jews of Safed put to death a Spanish Jewess.

Do not these things remind us of that “generation of vipers,” certain

of the Jews, who banded together and bound themselves by a curse,

saying that they would neither eat nor drink till they had killed Paul?

And was not the Apostle justified in asserting, “They please not God,

and are contrary to all men”?

How vain it is, in presence of all these horrors, to quote the

testimony of Grotius, who, speaking of the Jews since the Dispersion,

says: “Et tamen tanto tempore Judæi, nec ad falsorum deorum cultus

defluxerunt, nec de adulteriis accusantur”; and, “Apud Batavos Judæi

suspecti talium facinorum non sunt.” Yet these men excommunicated

Spinoza and attempted his life because he wrote the truth that was in

him. Granting, however, that the Jews of Holland were like the mild

and unoffending Karaïtes of the Crimea and Aden, it does not follow

that all the widely parted families of the house of Israel deserve an

equally favourable verdict. At any rate, sufficient has been advanced

in these pages to open the eyes of the student and the ethnographer; it

will stand on record “until Elijah.”

FOOTNOTES:

[80] The passage is from the Pugio Fidei (Part III., c. xxii., § 22) of

the learned Raymund Martin (A.D. 1284), quoted in a pamphlet, of which

more presently.

[81] This has passed into an Arabic proverb.

[82] The annals of the world are full of reports concerning children

being kidnapped, crowned with thorns, flogged, crucified, and pierced

with sharp instruments. Of course the child is chosen because it is

more easily mastered than a man.

[83] The Chronicles are right in believing that the Jew hates the

Christian more than he does the Muhammadan. “As to those Gentiles,

who, like the Ishmaelites, are not idolaters, their wine is unlawful

to drink, but is lawful for purpose of profit, as is taught by all the

Gaons; but Christians are idolaters, and their wine, even such as has

not been used as wine of libation, is unlawful even for purposes of

profit” (Hilchoth Maakhaloth Asuroth, c. xi. 7). “Statuimus,” says the

Talmud (Order I., Dissert. 4, quoted by Lucio Ferraris), “ut quilibet

Judæus ter in die omnem Christianorum gentem ac Deum precetur ut

confundat, interimatque ipsam cum regibus et principibus suis; atque

hoc maximè faciant sacerdotes Judæorum in synagoga ter quotidie orantes

in odium Jesu Nazareni.” This curse is not ordered against Muhammadans.

[84] This skeleton list is continued in order to show chronologically

the continuity of tradition concerning atrocities and sacrilege

practised by the Jews.

II. THE GYPSY

“A people proscribed by opinion, and doomed by the laws to opprobrium

and ignominy; a race which, driven from all liberal professions,

has been for ages, and still is, robbed of its right to hold landed

property; which, subjected to special and severe regulations, has

learned at once to obey and yet to preserve a manner of independence;

which, despite the contempt that it inspires and the hate that it

awakes and the prejudices wherewith it is received and judged, still

resists this contempt, this hatred, and finally all those causes which

ought to disunite, loosen, and annihilate the family, the race, the

nation;--such a people, I say, deserves the observer’s attention, if

only from the fact of its existence.”

JAUBERT DE PASSA.

TO THE READER

Of general works upon the subject of the Gypsies we have perhaps

enough, and more than enough; this objection, however, cannot be

urged against specialities, which still are highly desirable in every

department of “Chinganology.” I use the latter term in preference

to the French _Tsiganologie_, of which more presently, and the

“Romanology,” a term of dubious import, lately introduced into English.

I wish to place _in extenso_ before the public the following

conclusions which the study of some years has, it is hoped, justified

me in drawing with regard to the relation of the Gypsies and the Jats:

1. The mediæval Gypsies of Europe were the last wave of Aryan

emigration that flowed westward during the early fifteenth

century; and this wave was possibly preceded by more than one

similar exodus.

2. The mediæval Gypsies show family resemblances, physical and

moral, ethnological and linguistic, with the modern Jats, a

highly important race, which extends from the mouth of the Indus

to the head of the great Valley, thence ramifying over Turkistan

and the far North.

3. There are solid reasons for believing the Jats and the Jin-tchi

of Tatary to be the modern representatives of the classical Getæ

and the Goths of later days.

4. The language of both tribes (Jat and Gypsy) is of Indo-Persian

type, the Indian ingredient not being so much decomposed as in

the modern varieties of Prakrit. An absolute isolation of speech,

especial reasons for secrecy, and the fact of being oral and

never written have preserved its purity among the Gypsies; while

the Jats, in close contact with alien tongues, have made those

secular linguistic changes which are familiar even to English and

French.

5. The most ancient name of the race is _Chingáneh_, a term still

used in Persia and Turkey, and necessarily corrupted by the

Arabs, who have no _ch_, to _Jingáneh_.

6. Concerning the origin of the Gypsy article (_o--os_, _a--as_,

etc.), which is unknown to both Sanskrit and Prakrit, the suit

is still pending. Possibly it is original and peculiar to the

dialect; more probably it is an European and especially a Greek

innovation. Briefly, until we have grammatical and vocabularian

sketches of the Central Asian and the Turkoman-Gypsy tongues, we

are not in a position to draw conclusions.

I propose to discuss the Indian affinities of the Gypsies. I begin

with a detailed critique of the various reviews proceeding from the

prolific pen of M. Paul Bataillard, who claims the merit, such as it

is, of having first identified the Gypsies and the Jats. I end with

topographical notes on both tribes throughout their extension from the

Indus to Morocco and even to the Brazil.

Part I

NOTES ON MODERN STUDIES OF “CHINGANOLOGY”

CHAPTER I

THE INDIAN AFFINITIES OF THE GYPSIES

The following letter to the _Academy_ (March 27, 1875), which opened

the discussion between M. Paul Bataillard and its author, speaks for

itself[85]:

“In the _Academy_ of February 27, 1875, I had these words:

“‘Professor de Goeje, of Leyden, has printed some interesting

_Contributions to the History of the Gipsies_ (sic). He accepts the

view propounded by Pott,[86] as early as 1853, that the Gipsies are

closely related to the Indian Jatt (a name which the Arab historians

transform into Zott).... Dr. Trumpp[87] has already pointed out the

close resemblance between the European Gipsies and the Jatt of the

banks of the Indus.’

“I venture to hope that you will permit me to show the part taken by

myself in this question.[88] _Sindh and the Races that inhabit the

Valley of the Indus_ (London: Allen), my volume written between 1845

and 1849, and published in 1851, thus treats of the peoples of the

plains:

“‘The Jat, or as others write the word, Jath, Juth, or Jutt, was, in

the time of the Kalhorá dynasty, one of the ruling classes in Sindh.

It was probably for this reason that the author of the Tohfat el Kirám

(a well-known book of Sindhi Annals) made them of kindred origin with

the Belochis, who now repudiate such an idea with disdain. The Jat’s

account of his own descent gives to Ukayl, the companion of Muhammad,

the high honour of being his progenitor; but what class of Muslim

people, however vile, do not claim some equally high origin?

“As Játaki, the dialect peculiar to the people, proves, they (i.e.

_the Sindh division of this extensive race_) must have come from the

Panjáb, and the other districts Ubho or Báládasht, Jhang-Siyál,

Multán, and other regions dependent upon the great Country of the Five

Rivers. Driven by war or famine from their own lands, they migrated

southwards to Sebi (_Sibi_ or _Siwi, Upper Sindh_) and to the _hills_

around it. They are supposed to have entered Sindh a little before

the accession of the Kalhorá Princes, and shortly afterwards to have

risen to distinction by their superior courage and personal strength.

At present they have lost all that distinguished them, and of their

multitude of Jágírdárs, Zemindárs, and Sardárs now not a single

descendant possesses anything like wealth or rank. The principal

settlements are in the provinces of Kakrálo, Játi, Chediyo, Maniyár,

Phuláji, and Johí. [_Those of Umarkot speak, it is said, a different

dialect from the Indine Jats, and not a few migrating tribes graze

their herds on the great Delta._[89]] They are generally agriculturists

or breeders of camels, and appear to be a quiet, inoffensive race.

Throughout the eastern parts of Central Asia, the name Jat is

synonymous with thief and scoundrel.

“‘The Sindhi Jats have many different Kamus or clans, the principal

of which are the following: Babbur, Bháti, Jiskáni, Kalaru, Magási,

Mir-jat, Parhiyár, Sanjaráni, Siyál, and Solángi.’

“To this text were appended the following notes:

“Jat^u in the Sindhi dialect means: 1. A camel-driver or breeder. 2.

The name of a Beloch clan. Generally in the lower Indus Valley it is

written Jat^u, and pronounced Dyat^u. It has three significations: 1.

The name of a tribe, the Jats. 2. A Sindhi, as opposed to a Beloch;

it is in this sense an insulting expression, and so the Beloch and

Brahins of the hills call the Sindhi language Játhki. 3. A word of

insult, a ‘barbarian,’ as in the expression _do-dasto Jat^u_, ‘an

utter savage.’

“Lt. Wood’s work shows that the Jats are still found in the Panjáb and

all along the banks of the Indus.

“Under the name Jat no less than four races are comprised.

“I continued:

“‘It appears probable from the appearance and other peculiarities

of the race that the Jats are connected by consanguinity with that

peculiar race the Gypsies. Of 130 words used by the Gypsies in Syria,

no less than 104 belong to the Indo-Persian class of language. The

rest may be either the remains of the barbarous tongues spoken by

the aboriginal mountaineers who inhabited the tract between the

Indus and Eastern Persia, or the invention of a subsequent age, when

their dispersion among hostile tribes rendered a “thieves’ language”

necessary. The numerals are almost all pure Persian. There are two

words, “kuri” (a house) and “psih” (a cat), probably corrupted from

the Pushtu “kor” and “pishu.” Two other words are Sindhi “mánna” for

“máni,” bread, and “húi” for “hú,” he. As might be expected from a

tribe inhabiting Syria, Arabic and Turkish words occasionally occur,

but they form no part of the groundwork of the language.’

“It was my fortune to wander far and wide, during four years of

staff service, about the Valley of the Indus; and to make personal

acquaintance with many, if not all, its wild tribes. I saw much of the

Jats, lodged in their huts and tents, and studied the camel under their

tuition. They are the best ‘Vets.’ and breeders known to that part

of the Indian Empire. My kind friend, now no more, then Colonel, and

afterwards General, Walter Scott, of the Bombay Engineers, had a Jat in

his service; and the rough old man’s peculiarities afforded us abundant

diversion. Thus I was able to publish in 1849 the first known notice

of Játaki and its literature. The author of the famous ‘Dabistan’[90]

applies the term ‘Jat tongue’ to that in which Nánah Sháh, the Apostle

of the Sikhs, composed his Grauth[91] and other works. Throughout the

Panjáb _Jatki bút_ (‘Jat tongue’) is synonymous with the _Gunwár ki

boli_ or ‘peasants’ jargon’ of Hindustan.

“I wrote the word _J_á_t_aki with two italics. The first denotes the

peculiar Sindhi sound, a blending of _j_ and _t_; the second is the

familiar cerebral of Sanskrit and Prakrit, which survives to a certain

extent in our modern English tongue, though unknown to the Latin and

the Teutonic languages. The tribal name is _J_a_t_^u, with the short

terminal vowel which in Sindhi, as in Sanskrit, follows the consonant;

its plural, _J_a_t_á_n_, ends with a well-marked nasal.

“At that time I divided this rude race of semi-Bedawin into four great

tribes; namely:

“‘The Panjábí Jat, who is neither a Hindu nor a Hindi (Muslim). He

first appears in Indian history as a nomad, alternately shepherd,

robber, and temporary tiller of the ground. Many became Sikhs, and

did good service to Nánah Shah’s faith by their zealous opposition to

Muhammadan bigotry. As this was their sole occupation for many years,

they gradually grew more and more warlike, and at one time they were as

fighting a race as any in India. They have been identified by Colonel

Sleeman and others with the ancient Getæ and their descendants the

Goths.[92]

“‘The Jat or Dyat of the Hazárah country, Jhang-Siyál, Kach (Kutch)

Gandáva, and Sindh generally, where they may number two hundred and

fifty thousand out of a total population of one million. They are all

Muslims, and are supposed to have emigrated from the north during or

shortly after the Kalhorá accession; hence their dialect is commonly

called Belochki. In those days the Belochís were very little known to

Sindh, whose aristocracy, the Amírs, Jágírdárs, and opulent Zemindárs,

was either Sindhi or Jats. About Pesháwur “Jat” is still synonymous

with Zemindár or landed proprietor; at times, however, it is used as a

term of reproach.

“‘The third is a clan of Belochís, who spell their name with the

Arabo-Persian, not the Sindhi _j_. In the lower Indine Valley they hold

the province of Játi, and other parts to the south-east. The head of

the tribe is entitled _Malik_ (literally “King”), _e.g._ Malik Hammál

Jat.[93]

“‘The next is a wandering tribe, many of whom are partially settled

in Candahár, Herát, Meshhed, and other cities of the Persico-Afghan

frontier. They are found in Meckran; and they sometimes travel as

far as Maskat, Sindh, and even Central India. They are held to be

notorious thieves, occupying a low place in the scale of creation.

No good account of this tribe has as yet appeared; and the smallest

contributions upon the subject would be right thankfully received.’

“The fifth which must now be added is the _Jin-tchi_ of Central Asia.

These people are not, as Mr. Schuyler[94] seems to think, ‘Káfirs from

Káfiristan’; they are apparently true Jats--an idea once advanced by

Mr. Andrew Wilson of the Abode of Snow.[95]

“These tribes are looked upon as aborigines, which simply means that

their predecessors are unknown.[96]

“Such were the notices collected by me in manuscript some years before

1849. At that time the Orientalists of Europe were almost unanimous

in identifying the Gypsies with the _Nat’h_, a scattered Indian tribe

of itinerant tinkers and musicians, the ‘poor players’ of the great

Peninsula, utterly ignorant of horse-couping, cattle-breeding, and even

poultry-snatching. And the conviction still holds its ground; only

lately my erudite correspondent, Dr. J. Burnard Davis, reminded me of

it.

“Of course the humble linguistic labours of a perpetual explorer can

hardly be familiar to the professionally learned world; but I cherish

a hope that you will aid me in resurrecting my buried and forgotten

work.”

FOOTNOTES:

[85] In this reprint of the original letter the only changes are a few

verbal corrections and suppressions of the parts elsewhere enlarged

upon.

[86] The famous work _Die Zigeuner in Europa und Asien_, 2 vols. 8vo

(Halle, 1844-5). It was followed by two _Nachtrags_ (which I have not

seen). The first contains a Syro-Gypsy vocabulary; and the second,

notices of their manners and customs in Turkey and other countries. See

_Zeitschrift d. Deut. Morgen. Gesell._, III., pp. 321-325, of 1849; and

_Ibid._, Vol. VII., p. 393.

[87] Dr. Ernest Trumpp’s _Sindhi Grammar_. (Trübner, 1872.)

[88] The literati of Europe form a guild into which none but members

are admitted. At times their absolute disregard of _meum_ and _tuum_,

especially when they plunder an obscure name, is a fine study of trade

morality--or its reverse.

[89] These words were afterwards added to my MS. copy.

[90] The full title is Dabistán-i-Mazáhib, or School of Faiths (not “of

Manners”): there is a translation by David Shea and Anthony Troyer for

the Oriental Trans. Fund, 3 vols. 8vo (Paris, 1843).

[91] Adi Grauth: the Sacred Book of the Sikhs.

[92] Jornandes, “De Getarum sive Gothorum Origine et rebus Gestis.”

The learned Abbate Fortis (_Dalmatia_, I. 1, § 1) includes among the

Slav peoples the Scythians, Getæ or Goths, Slavini (Slovenes), Croats,

Avars, and Vandals. Our grandfathers derived the term “Goths” from

_Gog_ (and Magog).

[93] The account given by Mr. Hughes of the Jat in Belochistan will be

found in a future page (215).

[94] _Turkistan._ (Sampson Low & Co., 1876.)

[95] _Academy_, October 14, 1876.

[96] The letter here contains a sketch of _J_á_t_aki literature in

Sindh. I have also suppressed a paragraph noticing their migration and

tribal name; both these subjects will be discussed with more detail.

CHAPTER II

THE CLAIMS AND PRETENSIONS OF M. PAUL BATAILLARD

The following letter, which bears the author’s signature and the

date Paris, May 28, 1875,[97] was the result of my communication to

the _Academy_.[98] As I had objected to my thunder being stolen by

Professor Pott and De Goeje, so M. Paul Bataillard charges me with

having purloined his artillery:

“The _Academy_ of March 27 last published an interesting letter which

only came to my knowledge a few days ago. In this letter Mr. Richard

Burton, F.R.G.S., claims the priority in identifying the Gipsies or

Tsigans with the Jat of the banks of the Indus, whose name, he adds,

is pronounced Dyat. The question has lately been treated at length

(25 pages in 8vo, almost entirely consecrated to this subject) by

Professor J. de Goeje, of Leyden, who attributes the first idea of this

identification to Mr. Pott in 1853, as is stated in the _Academy_ of

February 27, in a short article mentioning this Dutch _Contribution to

the History of the Gipsies_.

“Mr. Burton, who has wandered far and wide in the Valley of the Indus,

and has much frequented the Jats, published in 1849 a grammar of the

Játaki dialect (41 pages), which contains an interesting classification

of this race, reproduced in his letter, and, in 1851, a volume upon

Sindh--_Sindh and the Races that inhabit the Valley of the Indus_--in

which he starts the theory of a probable relationship between the Jats

and the Gipsies, as proved in the extracts which he commences by giving

of this work.

“Allow me to claim a still earlier priority (dating from 1849), and to

begin by establishing exactly the share belonging to each.

“Professor Pott, in his great work, _Die Zigeuner_, Vol. I. (1844),

p. 62, had spoken of the tradition mentioned by Ferdoussy, by the

_Tarikh-Guzydeh_, and ‘by another ...’ that is to say, by the

_Modjmel-al-Tevarykh_, according to which Bahram-Gur, King of Persia,

had caused ten or twelve thousand musicians, designated in two at least

of these three texts under the name of _Luri_,[99] to come from India.

One or two other names, of which it is not necessary to speak, are

added to this one. (See pp. 41, 42 of my memoir, published in 1849, and

mentioned by-and-by.)

“Five years later, Professor Pott, coming back to the subject in his

article ‘Ueber die Zigeuner,’ published, as a second supplement to his

great work, in the _Zeitschrift der Deut. Morgenl. Gesellschaft_, Vol.

III., 1849, said (p. 326):

“Concerning the tradition of which I spoke, Vol. I., p. 62, of

the transmigration of Indian musicians into Persia, ordered by

Bahram-Gur, and set forth in the _Shahnameh_, a tradition which is

applied perhaps rightly to the Zigeuner, I owe to Fleischer a very

interesting notice, and wholly unknown to me hitherto, drawn from

_Hamza Ispahani_, Gottwaldt edition, 1834 (p. 40 of the translation

of Gottwaldt), according to which Bahram-Gur, for the pleasure of his

subjects, caused twelve thousand musicians, those designated by the

name of _Zuth_, to come from India. They are called _Luri_ in the

_Shahnameh_[100], which is a proof that Hamza did not simply copy this

fact. But Fleischer adds what follows relative to the name of _Zuth_,

which I have not yet met with anywhere, and which was a complete

enigma to me: ‘The _Kamûz_ says that the _Zotth_ are a race of men

of Indian origin, and that the true pronunciation of this word is

_Djatt_, but that the Arabs pronounce it _Zotth_.’ (See notes 3 and 4

at p. 43 of my memoir of 1849, concerning the rather free translation

of this passage of the _Kamûz_.) In the French and Arabic Dictionary,

by Ellious Bocthor, we find: ‘_Bohémien_, Arabe vagabond, Tchinghiané,

qui dit la bonne aventure, vole, etc., is called _Zotti_ at Damascus,

plural _Zotte_.’

“Nothing more. It is clear that, in the identification of the Djat of

India with the Tsigans, Professor Pott’s share is very small up to

the present. The great Indianist of Halle is rich enough in his own

learning to be content with what belongs to him, and the respect I

entertain for him and his kind feeling towards me form a sure guarantee

that he will not be offended at my setting forth my claim.

“I think I may say that it is I (thanks, it is true, to M. Reinaud)

who first treated the question. I had published, in 1844, in the

_Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes_, a rather long memoir upon the

_Apparition des Bohémiens en Europe_ (the _tirage à part_, which is

long ago exhausted, has 59 pages octavo). In 1849 I contributed to

the same collection a second paper upon the same subject, examining

especially Eastern Europe, and establishing for the first time that the

Gipsies were in this region at an epoch far anterior to the date (about

1417) of their appearance in the West. I may add, incidentally, that

nearly all those who have since spoken of the appearance of the Gipsies

in Europe have done little more than draw upon these two memoirs,

without always exactly saying what part belonged to me, so that I have

often had the annoyance of seeing such or such an author, Francisque

Michel more especially, mentioned afterwards in third-hand notices

as the original source of what I had written. Now my second memoir

(_Nouvelles Recherches sur l’Apparition des Bohémiens en Europe_, 48

pp. in the _tirage à part_, Paris, 1849: Franck, rue de Richelieu, 67)

ends with an ‘Additional Note’ of ten very compact pages, the principal

object of which is precisely to identify the Gipsies and the Indian

Djath.

“In this note, or appendix, I begin by collecting and giving, in

French, in order that they may be compared, the accounts that Professor

Pott had only pointed out, relating to the ten or twelve thousand

musicians that Bahram-Gur, King of Persia (420-440 of our era), had

sent for from India, that is to say, the tradition related by Ferdoussy

in the _Shahnameh_ (about 1000), by the _Modjmel-al-Tevarykh_ (about

1126), by the _Tarikh-Guzydeh_ (about 1329, for this last I have not

been able to give the text), and lastly, by Hamza Ispahani, the Arabian

author whom Professor Fleischer had just made known to Professor

Pott, and who is the oldest of all, since he belongs to the tenth

century, while Professor Pott supposed him to have been posterior to

Ferdoussy. It is to be remarked that Hamza mentions the descendants of

the twelve thousand musicians as still existing in Persia in his time

under the name of _Zuth_, and that Ferdoussy says the same of the ten

thousand _Luri_, whom he represents as vagabonds and thieves. But the

new and important point is the name of _Zuth_ given to them by the

Arabo-Persian author of the tenth century; and it is here, as I remark

in my work (p. 42 of the _tirage à part_), ‘that the real interest

commences.’

“I again find this name (p. 44) under the form of _Djatt_ and _Djatty_

in a fifth account of the same matter by the Persian Mirkhond

(fifteenth century); and, after having remarked that the same name is

given by the Kamûz under the form _Zotth_ as the Arabian equivalent of

_Djatt_, an Indian race, and that, according to Ellious Bocthor, it

serves precisely, under the form _Zott_, to designate the Gipsies at

Damascus, I start from thence to gather from the important _Mémoire,

etc., sur l’Inde_, by M. Reinaud, a few data upon the history of the

_Zath_ or _Djatt_ of India, and to establish, pp. 45-48, the probable

identity of this race and the Gipsies. I repeat that this is precisely

the essential object of my ‘Additional Note.’

“I am not an Orientalist, and besides, as I have not failed to mention,

this note of ten large pages was written when my memoir was already in

the press. But I had the kind assistance of the learned and lamented

M. Reinaud, to whose memory I am glad here to render my tribute of

gratitude.

“Also, the eminent scholar of Leipzig, the same who had first opened

the way for discovering the connexion between the Gipsies and the

Djatt, Professor Fleischer, in a general account embracing the

scientific publications of three years (the same _Zeitschrift_, Vol

IV., 1850, p. 452), has not disdained to mention my work in these terms:

“Bataillard, the author, etc., taking up the supplement to Pott,

published in our journal, III., pp. 321-335, has, with the aid of

Reinaud, shown the great probability of the opinion that the Zigeuner

descend from the _G’at_ or _G’et_, the most ancient inhabitants of the

north-west of India; and might not the name _Zigeuner_, _Zingani_,

_Zingari_, [Greek: Τζιγγανοι: Tzinganoi], etc., by the intermedium of

the form _Gitanos_, be derived from the name of this people?

“This last supposition of Professor Fleischer’s does not appear to

me admissible, for there is no doubt that _Gitanos_ is derived from

_Egipcianos_, as _Gipsies_ is from _Egyptians_.

“I come at last to Professor Pott’s article ‘Last Contributions

towards the Knowledge of the Gipsies and their Language,’ in the same

_Zeitschrift_ of 1853 (Vol. VII., pp. 389-399), mentioned in the

_Academy_, quoting Professor de Goeje, as the starting-point for the

identification of the Gipsy and the Jat. What do we find there upon

this subject? The following lines (p. 393):

“I am indebted to the obliging friendship of Professor Fleischer,

of Leipzig (see our _Zeitschrift_, III., p. 326), for an important

passage upon the Zuth of Hamza Ispahani, whose _Annals_ are anterior

to the _Shahnameh_, as M. Bataillard demonstrates in his _Nouvelles

Recherches_, p. 42. For the origin of the Gipsies we ought to consider

very attentively these _Zotth_, who, according to what Rödiger

communicates to me, are also confounded with the _Zengi_ (called also

_Aethiopes_, and whose name is even sometimes employed for _Zingari_:

see my _Zigeuner_, i., p. 45). In fact, the Zuth appear to be the same

as the Jats, or, according to the Turkish Kamûz, Tchatt, concerning

whom we find in Elliot, _Biogr. Index_, i. 270-27 (_sic_) (and

especially, _Ibid._ in Masson, _Journey to Kelat_, pp. 351-353), an

interesting article. See, moreover, Reinaud, _Mém. sur l’Inde_, 1849,

p. 273, note 3 upon the Dschats, which may also be compared with the

_Proverb. Arab._ of Freytag, Vol. II., p. 580 (communicated also by

Fleischer, to which I must add the further statement of Bataillard).

Above all, it would be very important for us to have some details

concerning their language.

“Thus the learned professor of Halle here contents himself with the

fresh mention of the passage in Hamza, for which he was indebted to

Fleischer, and with pointing out some fresh sources to be consulted

for the Zotth, Jats, etc., which had been made known to him by the

same savant, and refers besides to my ‘further statements (weitere

Auseinandersetzung)’; and, as he afterwards devotes a long page to the

analysis of the principal part of my _Nouvelles Recherches_, which he

had mentioned at full length (pp. 389-390), and which he quotes again

in several other places, one would think that he had done enough.

“This mention has none the less escaped, according to all appearances,

Professor de Goeje, of Leyden, who nevertheless was acquainted with

this passage of Pott (since he mentions it, p. 16, so as to induce the

belief that the learned professor of Halle was the first to establish

a connexion between the Zott or Djatt and the Tsigans), and who quotes

in several places my long articles in the _Revue Critique_ on ‘Les

derniers travaux relatifs aux Bohémiens dans l’Europe Orientale’ (of

which the _tirage à part_ forms an octavo volume of 80 pages, 1872),

but who says not a word of my work of 1849. This is an omission such

as the most conscientious savants sometimes make; and I do not intend

to address a reproach to the learned professor of Leyden, whose work

must besides have all the superiority belonging to a deep study made

twenty-five years later by a most competent Orientalist. But since the

question of priority upon this subject has been raised in your paper,

you will, I think, perceive, in perusing what I wrote in 1849, which

I send you with this letter, that I have a right not to be completely

forgotten, especially when it concerns an interesting point in the

history of the Gipsies upon which I have hitherto published only some

fragmentary works, but to the study of which I have devoted so many

years.

“My letter is already long: allow me, nevertheless, to add yet a few

more words. Although I have in my possession the work of Professor de

Goeje (the author has had the kindness to send it to me), I cannot say

that I am acquainted with it, because I cannot read Dutch, and have

not yet found an opportunity of having it translated, which I doubly

regret under the present circumstances. I think, however, that I may

say that the point treated by the professor of Leyden, and twenty-five

years ago by myself, although it be already sufficiently complex, is

only one side of the very much more complicated question of the origin

of the Gipsies, considered in all its bearings. I hope to be able

to show that the historical documents of Eastern Europe, of Western

Asia, and of Egypt itself furnish very important data, hitherto very

insufficiently considered, upon the question. I think I have also the

means of giving an explanation of the word _tsigan_, and of the other

names approaching to it, more certain and more interesting than those

proposed by Professor de Goeje and Mr. Burton.

“It is not the less interesting to examine any point of the very

complex question of the origin of the Gipsies, and especially one so

important as this appears to be of their connexion with the Jats or

Djatt. But this point itself has, so to speak, several faces. There

is the part belonging to erudition in the strict sense, and I think

that Professor de Goeje has treated it very ably; but there is the

ethnological, anthropological, and even the linguistic part of the

subject, which does not appear to me to be very far advanced up to

the present time. _It is this part that Mr. Burton has handled; and

as he has lived in the midst of the Jats, he was in some respects in

the best condition for throwing great light upon it; but, on the one

hand, he ought perhaps to have been better acquainted with the Gipsies,

and, on the other, it does not appear that the connexion between the

Gipsies and the Jats has occupied him much. He has perceived a probable

relation between these two tribes of men, and he has expressed it in

half a page; but this is not sufficient._[101] No doubt in occupying

himself specially with the Jats, in giving in 1849 a grammar of their

language (of which I cannot appreciate the value, but which did not

prevent Professor Pott, in 1853, from saying that we were wanting

in information respecting this idiom),[102] in collecting some very

summary data concerning their division into four tribes, and upon their

history and manners, he has furnished some materials, but materials

quite insufficient,[103] for a comparison, _which is still unmade,_

between this race and the Gipsies. He tells us, for example, that the

appearance and other peculiarities of this race authorize as probable

the supposition of a relationship between it and the Gipsies. But he

does not give us even the smallest information respecting the type

(appearance) of the Jats; and the other ‘peculiarities’ which he does

not explain, and which we are obliged to seek in scattered traits,

furnish such fugitive comparisons that one can conclude nothing from

them. In reality nearly every tribe in India (not to speak of certain

tribes in other countries) will furnish, when compared with the

Gipsies, quite as many, if not more, points of resemblance. Indeed this

is, more or less, the defect of nearly all the comparisons which have

been made between the Gipsies and such or such populations of India;

the authors of these comparisons are not sufficiently acquainted with

the Gipsies, and their study of the resemblances is not sufficiently

_specific_.

“The Jats must belong, I suppose so at least, to the Hamite

(Chamite), and more particularly to the Kuschite stratum of the

Hindoo populations,[104] and for my part I do not doubt that the

Gipsies, although their idiom is connected with the Aryan languages

of India, belong to this same branch of the human species.--I remark,

by the way, in the division made by Mr. Burton of the Jats into four

tribes, that one of the districts inhabited by the second is called

‘Kach (Kutch).’[105]--But this branch is widely spread in Asia and in

Africa. It would be necessary, in the Kuschite family, to remark the

particular traits which distinguish, on the one hand, the Jats, on

the other, the Gipsies, in all the very complex affinities allowed by

ethnography, and start thence to compare them. This is what remains

to be done in order to throw light upon _this part of one side_ of

the question of Gipsy origin. It is useless to say that, in following

out more particularly this comparison between the Gipsies and the

Jats, the other points of comparison that may be furnished by other

tribes, related or not to the Jats, such as that of the _Tchangar_,

for example, pointed out by Dr. Trumpp in the Panjab (_Mittheil.

der Anthrop. Gesellschaft in Wien_, T. II., 1872, p. 294, quoted by

Miklosich in his third memoir on the _Zigeuner_, 1873, p. 2), and

several others, which it would be too long to mention, must not be

neglected. But all this can only be well done in India, and by a person

who has specially studied the Gipsies of Europe, of Eastern Europe

especially, and, if possible, those of Western Asia and even of Egypt.

Unfortunately these conditions are very difficult to find.

“(_Signed_) PAUL BATAILLARD.”

FOOTNOTES:

[97] [This letter appeared in the Academy, June 5, 1875.]

[98] The notes appended to this letter are by me.

[99] It has still to be proved of what tribe these Luri are: all that

we can say is that they are the natives of modern Lúristán (Elymaïs).

[100] A valuable authority, but still a poem.

[101] The italics are mine. What does the author know about my

acquaintance with the Gypsies, especially the Burton Gypsies? The “half

a page” will be answered in another place.

[102] This means simply that Professor Pott never saw my paper printed

at Bombay.

[103] Evidently a premature statement: the author knew only my

communication to the _Academy_ (Chapter I.).

[104] Of this stupendous Kushite theory I have something to say in a

future page. (194)

[105] _Proh pudor!_ I said _Kach (Kutch)_ Gandáva; and here it is

confounded with Kach (Cutch) near Gujrát (Guzerát).

CHAPTER III

A REVIEW OF M. PAUL BATAILLARD’S REVIEWS

§ 1. _Preliminaries_

M. Paul Bataillard--ominous name!--who has thus offered me battle in

the _Academy_, is apparently an indefatigable _Tsiganologue_,[106] to

use his own compound; and he seems to have been studying Chinganology

since 1841. Of bookmaking on the Gypsy theme there is no apparent

end; even the mighty “Magician of the North” proposed, we are told,

adding his item to the heap. The reading public, indeed, seems to

hold these _Hamaxóbioi_ an ever virgin subject; and since the days of

“Gypsy Borrow’s” _Translation of St. Luke_ (1838),[107] _The Zincali,

The Bible in Spain_ (1841), and other popular works, it has ever lent

an ear to the charmer, charm he never so unwisely. A modern author was

not far wrong when he stated: “A great deal of what is called genius

has been expended upon the Gypsies, but wonderfully little common

sense.”[108]

And the subject has its peculiar charms. These “outlandish persons

calling themselves Egyptians or Gypsies”; these cosmopolites equally

at home in the snows of Siberia and in the swamps of Sennaar; these

Ishmaelites still dwelling in the presence of their brethren, at once

on the outskirts and in the very centres of civilized life; this

horde of barbarians scattered over the wide world, among us but not

of us; these nomads of a progressive age isolated by peculiarities of

physique, language, and social habits, of absolute materialism, and

of a single rule of conduct, “Self-will,” all distinctly pointing to

a common origin; this phenomenon of the glorious epoch which opened a

new thoroughfare to the “East Indies,” and which discovered the other

half of the globe, is still to many, nay, to most men, an inexplicable

ethnic mystery. Englanders mostly take the narrow nursery view of the

“Black Man”; at the highest they treat him picturesquely in connexion

with creels and cuddies, hammer and tongs, the tin-kettle and the

katúna or tilt-tent. Continental writers cast, as usual, a wider and

a more comprehensive glance. M. Perier, with French “nattiness,”

thus resumes the main points of interest in the singular strangers:

“_Une race extraordinaire, forte, belle, cosmopolite, errante, et

cependant (?) pure, curieuse par conséquent, à tant de titres._”

The Rumanians have deemed the theme worthy of poetry; witness the

heroic-comic-satyric “Tsiganida,” or Gypsy-Camp, of Leonaki Diancu.[109]

The “wondrous tale” of the old Gypsy gude-wife concerning the “Things

of Egypt” is more wonderful, observe, than aught told of Jewry.

Certain of the learned credulous, as we read in the _Evidences of

Christianity_ and other such works, essentially one-sided, point to

the dispersion and the cohesion of the self-styled “Chosen People” as

a manner of miracle, a standing witness to certain marvellous events

in its past annals. They ignore or forget the higher miracle of the

“tinklers.” Whilst the scattering abroad of the Israelites arose

naturally from the same causes which in the present day preserve their

union, the powerful principle of self-interest and wealth-seeking,

the deeply rooted prejudices, social and religious, fostered by a

theocratic faith and by a special and exclusive revelation, the

lively tradition of past glories and the promises of future grandeur

confirmed by the conviction of being a people holy and set apart, the

barbarous Romá[110] are held together only by the ties of speech[111]

and consanguinity, and by the merest outlines of a faith, such a

creed as caste, or rather the outcast, requires. Still the coherence

is continuous and complete; still, like the rod of Moses, this

ethnological marvel out-miracles the other, and every other, miracle.

Hardly less peculiar is the historical relation of the Jew and the

Gypsy. They have many points in common. Both have had their exodus, and

are dispersed over the world. Both have peculiarities of countenance

which distinguish them from the “Gentiles,” whom they hate, the Goyím

and the Busne. Both have their own languages and preserve their racial

names.[112] Similarity of conditions, however, which should breed

sympathy, as usual amongst men has borne only hatred. But the Jew was

wealthy, like his cousin the Morisco. Hence the horrible persecution

of the Israelites in Spain (A.D. 1348-98), when a prevailing pest was

attributed to their poisoning the water, and which endured till the

Hussites drew down upon themselves the earthly “anger of Heaven.”

During those dreadful years many of the Hebrews fled to the mountains,

the Alpujarras and the Sierras--Morena and de Toledo--and to the wild

banks of the Upper Ebro, the Guadiana, and the Tagus. Meanwhile the

Gypsies suffered under the conviction that they were Jews who, denying

their forefathers, represented themselves to be of Egyptian blood.

Presently, when the revenues of the Catholic kings, Henry III. and John

II., amounting to 26,550,000 reals (dollars) reduced to our present

value, fell under Henry IV. to 3,540,000, the plethoric money-bags

of the Israelites led to the establishment of Holy Office and its

inquisitorial tribunal (January, 1481). Finally, as if persecution and

death were not sufficient, a wholesale expulsion took place in March,

1492. These horrors are still, after the lapse of ages, fresh in the

Jewish mind. I have seen at Jerusalem a Khákhám (scribe) so moved

by the presence of a Spanish official, that the latter asked me in

astonishment how he had managed to offend his host.

But what could the Santa _Hermandad_ alias _La Bruja_ (the witch) find

to plunder and pillage in the tent of the Rom? During three centuries

of loose wild life, often stained by ferocious crime, and made bestial

by the Draconian laws of mediæval Christianity, the Gypsies had their

seasons of banishment, torture, and execution; but their poverty and

isolation saved them from the horrors of a deliberate and official

persecution. _Mas pobre que cuerpo de Gitano_ (Nothing poorer than a

Gypsy’s body) is still a proverb in Spain, where men also say, _Tan

ruin es el conde como los Gitanos_. All these barbarities ended in

Europe with the close of the eighteenth century, where the new Religion

of Humanity had been preached by the encyclopedists whose major

prophets were Voltaire and Rousseau, Diderot and D’Alembert.

No Disraeli has hitherto arisen to vindicate the nobility of these

“masterful beggars”; and to chronicle their triumphs in court and

camp, in arts and arms; to trace them in the genealogies of titled

houses, or to strip off the disguises assumed during the intolerant

times when the Jew was compelled to swear himself Gentile and the

Muslim a Christian. Yet the Gypsies have had their great men, whilst

their pure blood has leavened much dull clay and given fresh life to

many an effete noble vein. Witness the “King Zindl” or “Zindelo”; the

Dukes Michael and Andrew; Counts Ion (Juan) and Panuel (Manuel) of

Little Egypt; the Waywodes (Vaivodes) of Dacia; the noble cavalier

Pedro, and the chief, Tomas Pulgar, who in A.D. 1496 aided Bishop

Sigismund to beat off the Turk invader. Witness, again, the Hungarian

Hunyadis, the Russian Tolstoys, and the Scotch Melvilles, not to speak

of the Cassilis and the Contis under Louis XIV. Certain Gypsies became

soldiers of renown; and John Bunyan, one of the immortals of the earth,

is shrewdly suspected of Gypsy descent. Borrow mentions an archbishop

and “four dignified ecclesiastics”; while some of the most learned and

famed of the priesthood in Spain have been, according to a Gypsy, of

the Gypsies, or at least of Gypsy blood.

Such is the Gypsy summed up in a few lines.

These pages have no intention, I repeat, of treating the subject of the

Romá generally. My humbler task is confined to showing the affinities

between the Gypsies and the great Jat tribe, or rather nation, which

extends from the mouths of the Indus to the Steppes of Central Asia.

And my first objection must be to a question of precedence with M. Paul

Bataillard.

The _Tsiganologue_ claims, as has been seen, “a still earlier priority”

in the identification of Gypsy and Jat; and he proposes to “establish

exactly the share belonging to each of us.” This is the normal process

of the cabinet savant, who is ever appearing, like the _deus ex

machinâ_, to snatch from the explorer’s hand the meed of originality.

The former borrows from his books a dozen different theories; and when

one happens to be proved true by the labours of the man of action, he

straightway sets himself up as the “theoretical discoverer” of the

sources of the Nile, or of any other matter which engages popular

attention. But in the present case I deny that my rival has any claim

whatever. My personal acquaintance with the Jats began in 1845, and my

Grammar and Vocabulary were sent to the Royal Asiatic Society in 1848

before my departure from India. On the other hand, M. Paul Bataillard,

I understand, knew nothing of the Indine Jats when he wrote his first

paper _De l’apparition, etc._, in 1844. He honestly owns that he

is no Orientalist; and that he required the assistance of the late

M. Reinaud, who _was_ a scholar, to identify the _Zuth_ of _Hamza

Ispahani_ (tenth century), the _Luri_ musicians of the _Shahnameh_

(eleventh century), and the _Zoth_ or _Zutt_ of the _Kamûz_ dictionary

(fourteenth century) with the Zatt or Dyatt of India. This was in 1849.

His _exposé étendu_ was accepted by Professor Pott in the same year,

and appeared in the _Nachtrag_ before mentioned, which completed the

_grand travail--Die Zigeuner_. Such was the extent of my claimant’s

discovery. He had even to learn from Professor Fleischer, of Leipzig,

that “the Zigeuner descend from the _G’at_ or _G’et_, the most ancient

inhabitants of North-Western India,”[113] a second-hand opinion,

derived from “Gypsy Borrow,” Colonel Sleeman, and other Englishmen.

I need hardly say that Professor Pott, the distinguished member of

that heroic band which founded comparative philology, knew nothing

practically or personally about either the Gypsies or the Jats. And it

is evident that Professor de Goeje is in outer darkness when he speaks

of “the view _propounded by Pott_ as early as 1853.”

At that time, and indeed until I wrote to the _Academy_ in 1875, M.

Paul Bataillard evidently ignored “M. Burton”; and no blame be to him

for not knowing a paper published by a colonial society a quarter of a

century ago. But he also ignored far more important facts. He applies

the term _petite population Djatte_ to the great scattered nation

called Jat. He was of course not aware that this people preserve in

the Indine Delta, the “Salt Country” of the Sindhis, the purity of its

tongue, which, farther north, is corrupted by an admixture of Sindhi,

Belochki, and Panjabi. Nor could he be alive to the fact that many

points of similarity, anthropological and linguistic, connect the Gypsy

and the Jat. There are men who are personally averse to new things, and

the easy alternative is to depreciate their value. “He,” I am assured

by my rival claimant, “has perceived a probable relation between these

two tribes of men, and he has expressed it in half a page; but this is

not sufficient.”

Such an assertion, however, is more than sufficient for estimating and

appreciating the Bataillard system of treating a literary question.

For “half a page” read a dozen pages,[114] which might easily have

been extended to many a dozen. But I had hoped that the statement

of a traveller who had met the Gypsies at Oxford (Bagley Wood), in

England, and on the Continent, and the knowledge of their racial

characteristics, general amongst educated Englishmen, justified a

conciseness imperiously demanded whilst treating in one volume the

geography, history, and ethnology of a country nearly equalling

England in length. Again, when M. Bataillard assures his readers that

I have “not given even the smallest information respecting the type

(appearance) of the Jats,” he once more makes it evident that he should

have read me before pretending to write about me. I will quote my

description in full,[115] so that the public may judge between him and

me:

“We are now in the provinces inhabited by the Jats. Your [_i.e._ Mr.

John Bull’s] eye is scarcely grown critical enough in this short

time to see the tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee-like difference between

their personal appearance and that of their kinsmen the Scindians;

nor can I expect you as yet to distinguish a Jat wandh (village) from

a Scinde goth (village). You are certain to take some interest in a

race which appears to be the progenitor of the old witch in a red

cloak, whose hand, in return for the cunning nonsense to which her

tongue gave birth, you once crossed with silver; and of the wiry young

light-weight, whose game and sharp hitting you have, in happier days,

more than once condescended to admire.

“Our authors[116] probably err when they suppose the Jat to be the

original Hindu of Scinde converted to Islam. Native historians and

their own traditions concur in assigning to them a strange origin;

their language, to this day, a corrupt dialect of that spoken

throughout the Indine provinces of the Panjab, gives support and real

value to the otherwise doubtful testimony.[117] It is probable that,

compelled to emigrate from their own lands by one of the two main

causes that bring about such movements in the East, war or famine,

the Jats of Scinde travelled southward about the beginning of the

eighteenth century of our era.

“Under the quasi-ecclesiastical Kalhorá dynasty, when Scindians

composed the aristocracy as well as the commonalty of the country, the

Jats, in consequence of their superior strength, their courage, and

their clannish coalescence, speedily rose to high distinction. The

chiefs of tribes became nobles, officials, and ministers at court;

they provided for their families by obtaining grants of ground, feoffs

incidental to certain military services, and for their followers by

settling them as tenants on their broad lands. But the prosperity of

the race did not last long. They fell from their high estate when the

Belochis, better men than they, entered the country, and began to

appropriate it for themselves; by degrees, slow yet sure, they lost

all claims to rank, wealth, and office. They are now found scattered

throughout Scinde, generally preferring the south-eastern provinces,

where they earn a scanty subsistence by agriculture; or they roam over

the barren plains feeding their flocks upon the several oases; or they

occupy themselves in breeding, tending, training, and physicking the

camel. With the latter craft their name has become identified, a Jat

and a sarwan (camel-man) sounding synonymous in Scindian ears.

“The Jats in appearance are a swarthy and uncomely race, dirty in the

extreme, long, gaunt, bony, and rarely, if ever, in good condition.

Their beards are thin, and there is a curious (i.e. _Gypsy-like_)

expression in their eyes.[118] They dress like Scindians, preferring

blue to white clothes; but they are taller, larger, and more un-Indian

in appearance. Some few, but very few, of their women are, in early

youth, remarkable for soft and regular features; this charm, however,

soon yields to the complicated ugliness brought on by exposure to

the sun, by scanty living, and by the labour of baggage-cattle. In

Scinde the Jats of both sexes are possessed of the virtues especially

belonging to the oppressed and inoffensive Eastern cultivation; they

are necessarily frugal and laborious, peaceful, and remarkable for

morality in the limited sense of aversion to intrigue with members

of a strange Kaum.[119] I say in Scinde; this is by no means the

reputation of the race in the other parts of Central Asia, where they

have extended (_or whence possibly they came_).[120] The term ‘Jat’

is popularly applied to a low and servile creature, or to an impudent

villain; and despite of the Tohfat el Kiram,[121] a Beloch would

consider himself mortally affronted were you to confound his origin

with the caste which his ancestors deposed, and which he despises

for having allowed itself to be degraded. The Brahins, Afghans, and

Persians all have a bad word to say of them.”

Thus far M. Paul Bataillard has shown himself only the carpet-slippered

_littérateur de cabinet_, who laboriously borrows from others, and who

evidently expects his second-hand labours to _faire époque_.

But my rival claimant, let me hasten to own, has solid merits. His

theory that Gypsy emigrations are of ancient date, and probably of

high antiquity, deserves consideration. His later notices of the Jats

correct the vulgar error which made Taymur the Tatar cause the first

exodus of our “sorners.” He notes the especial hatred, possibly racial,

nourished by these Gentile vagrants against the other scattered nation,

the Jews. Other minor but still interesting matters of which he treats

are the history of the Gypsies especially with respect to their slavery

and serfdom--Crown captives, not chattels personal; their periodical

wanderings and visitings; their vestiges of faith; their vernacular and

humble literature; their private and tribal names suggesting those of

the modern Israelitic Synagogue; and their supplying the dancing-girls

of the nearer East, while in the lupanars of Europe a Gypsy girl is

unknown.

I now propose to run as rapidly as the subject permits through M. Paul

Bataillard’s four papers _seriatim_. The critique will not only notice

novelties, but will also attempt to correct what to a practical man

appears to want correction in connexion with the Gypsies.

§ 2. “_Derniers Travaux, etc._”

This paper treats chiefly of South-Eastern Europe, which has been

estimated to contain at least six hundred thousand of the Romá--a

number, by-the-bye, wholly inadequate. The author’s self-imposed limits

would be the western Slav frontier, a meridian drawn from the southern

bend of the Baltic to the Adriatic head. Topographically disposed, upon

a line trending from east to west, the review deals in its progress

with writers mostly modern; and it forms an excerptive rather than an

exhaustive or even a summary bibliography.

The first of the two component parts travels with the authorities who

treat of Russia, Poland and Lithuania, Germany, Bohemia, Hungary,

Transylvania, the Banat, the Rumanian Principalities, and Turkey, or

rather Constantinople. The lands about the Balkan Range, so unknown

not many years ago and now so much talked of, are justly considered

a second Gypsy _patria_, the “old home” being India. The review is

accompanied and followed by side-glances at those who treat of Finland

and Norway, of Persia and Basqueland, of Scotland and Holland, of

Sicily and Italy, which once owned an exceptional _castrum Giptiæ_.

This section ends with linguistic and ethnographic remarks borrowed

from many sources and specifying a considerable number of requisites.

In the second part the critic reviews M. Alexandre G. Paspati, D.M.,

a famous name in Gypsydom. This learned Greek physician--one of the

few children, by-the-bye, who escaped the “gentle and gallant” Turk

in the foul Chios massacre of 1822--was educated in America, and is

as highly distinguished for his Indian and Byzantine as for his Gypsy

studies. The _Étude, etc._, of 1870, which continued and completed his

elaborate memoirs (1857-1862), is the work of a scholar who knew the

Romá personally, not of a mere _littérateur_. The book teemed with

novelties. For instance, it suggested that the article (_o_ or _u_;

í and e), as unknown to the Asiatic Gypsy (?) as to the Sanskrit and

the Prakrit, had been borrowed by his European congener from the Greek

[Greek: ὁ: ho] and [Greek: ἡ: hê], thus suggesting long residence

in Hellas and familiarity with its people. Might it not, however,

have been a simple development of _íhá_ and _uha_, the demonstrative

pronouns in Játaki--_this_ and _that_ becoming _the_? But as all

Germanic, neo-Latinic, and Slav tongues have either produced or

borrowed an article, the same may have been the case with the Gypsy,

which comes from the same root.

M. Paspati satisfactorily proved that the wandering tribes of the Romá,

_e.g._ the wild Zapáris or Dyáparis (Szapary?),[122] have preserved in

Rumelia the _langue mère_ of their ancients, whereas the “domigence,”

the sedentary dwellers in cities and towns, have “falsified” the

tongue. The same is said by the Bedawin concerning the “Jumpers of

Walls,” the settled Arabs. This part of the subject leads to notices of

Gypsy tales and legends, in which, by the way, Gypsies rarely figure,

and to other productions of _la pauvre Muse tsigane_.

After some discursive matter, our critic passes from M. Paspati to M.

Bartalus, who has quoted from certain very rare tracts (_La Véritable

origine, etc._, A.D. 1798 and 1800) on the rise of the Gypsy nation.

The _Bohémiens_, it appears, are descendants of Cham or Ham, “which is

admissible”; and, like their brethren, they were damned by Noah. But,

on the destruction of the Plain cities, Sodom and Gomorrah, Adama and

Saboim--Segor being honourably excluded--Zoar and its inhabitants were

saved because they harboured one Lot. The lands, however, were assigned

to this “patriarch”; and the Hamites, being dispersed, became Gypsies.

Once more that myth of Noah!--for how much false anthropology is it

not responsible? Again, we do not fail to meet another old friend. The

wicked king of Egypt appears in a famous “Pharaoh Song,” whilst in

Iceland he gave his name to a cavalry of seals. The oath formula of the

Hungarian Gypsies prescribed by the courts was: “As King Pharaoh was

engulfed in the Red Sea, so may I be accursed and swallowed up by the

deepest abyss if I do not speak the truth! May no theft, no traffic,

nor any other business prosper with me! May my horse turn into an ass

at the next stroke of his hoof, and may I end my days on the scaffold

by the hands of the hangman!”[123]

The critic then passes to a second and a remarkable characteristic of

the Gypsy race, the musical, which is now becoming known throughout

Europe. At the Paris Exposition of 1878 the “nightingales of Koursk,”

a troop of forty Romá from Moscow, followed the Hungarian _Cziganes_,

and were equally admired. Even the celebrated Catalani appreciated the

Chingáneh girl of Moscow, “who performed with such originality and true

expression the characteristic melodies of the tribe”; and threw over

her shoulders a papal gift in the shape of a rich Cashmere shawl. Most

Englishmen now know that Mr. Bunn’s “Bohemian Girl,” thus unhappily

translated from _La Bohémienne_ of St. George, was a Romni girl. The

far-famed Abbé Liszt[124] attributed to these “tinklers” the chief

_rôle_ in treating the musical _épopée_; but this opinion of the great

master is opposed by the artistic M. Bartalus. I, however, incline to

Liszt’s view. Let me note that the popular Romani word for musician,

Lautar (plural Lautari), may either be the Persian Lútí,[125] or more

probably a deformed offspring of the Arabic El `Aúd[126], which gave

rise to our “lute.” Our critic holds that the Gypsy’s music, like

his tales and poetry, is his own; whilst the matter of the songs and

ballads is borrowed from Hungarians, Rumans, and even the unimaginative

Turk: he also points out that many of the legends are cosmopolitan.

When the Catalan Gypsy, met by the author in 1869 at St. Germain, told

him that the _état_ (Dharma or religious duty) of the Romni-chel, the

“sons of women” (_i.e._ their mothers), is to cheat their neighbours;

that they learned this whole duty of man from St. Peter, who as our

Lord’s servant habitually tricked and defrauded his Master; that _le

dieu Jesus_, who established all human conditions on the creation day,

had taught them, by example as well as precept, to beg and to vagabond

naked-footed; that his tribe were veritable Christians “who knew only

God and the Blessed Virgin”; and that all these things were written in

the “Book of the Wanderings of our Lord,”--we recognize the old, old

tale. The ancient Rom, like a host of other facetious barbarians, was

solemnly hoaxing a simple student, a credulous “civilizee.” Still the

joke has its ethnological value; it shows that the pseudo-Christian

saints of the Gypsy Evangel are thieves and “sorners.” Highly

characteristic also is the address to the Gypsy deity: “Good, happy

God of gold!” On the other hand, such laical legends of the Apostles

are current even amongst Christian peoples, from whom they may have

been kidnapped by the Romá. Witness the French peasant’s tale of Jesus

and St. Peter, the horseshoe and the cherries, which has for moral the

market value of thrift.

The supplementary article analyzes the scholarly work of M. Franz

Miklosich.[127] This erudite Slavist whose only reproach is that he

finds Slavism in every place, distributes the Gypsies into twelve

linguistic groups, to which he assigns an inadequate total of six

hundred thousand head. Amongst the highly conservative Romá of Northern

Russia he detects, besides Russian and Polish, Ruman and Magyar words,

expressions borrowed from the neo-Greek of the fourteenth and fifteenth

centuries. As these Hellenisms are also adopted by the Spanish Gypsies,

the natural deduction is that Greece generally formed an older home

long inhabited by the wanderers, who thence passed on _viâ_ Poland to

Russia. But this theory, if proved to be fact, would not invalidate

the general belief that some Gypsy tribes migrated through Egypt and

Morocco into Spain without crossing the Pyrenees. The Romá, being

“sturdy vagabonds,” rather than true nomads, would borrow from one

another during their frequent and regular meetings the terms wanting to

their scanty and barbarous speech. It appears rich enough in material

and sensuous expression, and the same is notably the case with the

wandering Arab and the Turkoman. M. Paspati[128] notices that “the

[Rumelian] wanderer has more than forty words for his tent and the

implements of his trade.” A “Thieves’ Latin” would not be required by

these bilinguals; but for the purposes of concealment and villainy they

would readily adopt strange vocables. Thus in the Scottish Lowlands

they make their English speech unintelligible by French and Gaelic,

Welsh and Irish insertions. As will appear, they have invented in

Egypt and Spain, and I believe there only, a regular _argot_. Such

irregularities prevent our attributing much importance to the general

remark that the Gypsy dialect does not return; _i.e._ that the Polish

Romá do not use Russian terms, nor the Turkish Romá Magyar words.

Finally, M. Miklosich puts to flight the “Tamerlane tenet” of popular

belief which would place the last Gypsy exodus after A.D. 1399. He

adduces documentary evidence, the well-known donation instruments of

A.M. 6894 (= A.D. 1386-87) issued by the Kings of Wallachia; noting

that during the fifteenth century, and even between 1832 and 1836, the

Principalities, which have still preserved the Jewish disabilities,

held the Gypsies to be a Slav race.

The _Derniers Travaux_ has the merit of bringing prominently forward

the “hypothesis of Hasse,” advanced in 1803 and presently forgotten.

It would explain the purity of the Gypsy tongue by the fact of these

tinklers being settled in Europe _ab antiquo_. It has often been

remarked that the farther we go eastward, and the nearer we approach

the cradle of the race, Sindh or Western India, the more completely

the language changes and degrades. This is to be expected. The Jats

living in close contact with other dialects would necessarily modify

their own after the fashion of their neighbours; such is the rule of

the world. The Romá have only two ties: one is of blood, the love of

“kith, kin, and consequence”; the other is of language which serves to

conceal his speech. During the dispersion of centuries the Gypsies,

surrounded by alien and hostile races, would religiously adhere to

the old tongue; and having a vital interest in preserving a secret

instrument, it would war against change. It is the more necessary to

insist upon this view, as our critic expects to find after a separation

of some four centuries the Jats or other tribes speaking pure old

Gypsy. The modern Gypsy may still represent the ancient Játaki. Hence

also the dialect of their ancestors is dying out amongst the sedentary

Romá. M. Paul Bataillard has carefully separated, and perhaps too

curiously, the historical arrival of the Gypsies in Western Europe and

their establishment in the south-eastern regions, Thrace, Dacia, etc.

An abuse of his theory makes him urge the identity of his _Tsigane_

with the mysterious Sicani who held Sicily before the Siculi. These and

other prehistoric identifications have not yet been generally adopted.

Had M. Paul Bataillard reflected a little more, he would not have

advocated, considering the extensive habitat of the Jats, the

insufficient theory of M. Ascoli--namely, that the Gypsies are Sindhis

who dwelt long in Hindustan; nor would M. Ascoli have omitted the

widely spoken Játaki from his list of neo-Indian tongues, which he

unduly reduces to seven. We should have been spared the “conviction”

that the Romá dwelt in Mesopotamia, which was only one station on

their way, Asia Minor and the Lower Danube being the general line of

Aryan emigration; that they are aborigines of Kabul, in fact primitive

Afghans, as supposed by another French _littérateur_, whose lively

imagination strips him of all authority; and, finally, that they

are “descendants of those ancient peoples of Bactriana and Arya,

successively conquered by Persians, Greeks, Indogetæ, and Afghans.”

A most trivial comparison is made between Segor, the biblical city,

and the Gypsy name Cingani (Singani). When Professor Pott and M. de

Saulcy find “relationship” and “close connexion” between Sanskrit and

_Romani-chíb_, they should have explained that the latter is a Prakrit

or vulgar tongue with an Aryan vocabulary reposing upon the ruins of a

Turanian base. The former, as its name shows, was a refined and city

language, never spoken, nor indeed understood, by the peoples of India

in general; in fact, a professor’s speech, like the present Romaic of

the Athenian _logiotátoi_.

The word _Berber_ (Barbar), again, applied to the Gypsies in Persia,

means, according to its root, a chatterer, patterer, or speaker

of unintelligible cant. It is the Sanskrit Varvvara, [Sanskrit:

वर्व्वर][129], a low fellow, a savage, the Barbaros of the Greeks and

Romans; the Be_r_be_r_, [Sindhi: بڙبڙ], or Berber, [Arabic: بربر], of

modern Hindustan; and the racial name of that great scattered people

the Barábarah, who stretch from the Nile Valley to North-Western

Africa. The lunar god, Raho, of the Norwegian Gypsies is a palpable

reminiscence and survival of the demon Ráhu. The Gházieh of Egypt are

_not_ “also called Beremikeh”;[130] the Barámikah are a substitute

of the Ghagar. The “Chungaló,” the “Jungaló,” and the “Zungaló” of

Paspati, signifying a non-Gypsy, is evidently Jangalí, wild or sylvan

(jungle) man, the popular title of Europeans, especially of Englishmen,

in India. Das also, the term applied by the Romá to their Bulgarian

and Wallachian neighbours, bears a suspicious resemblance to the Hindu

Dashya and Dasa, vulgarly Doss, a low caste or rather a no-caste man,

supposed to represent the original Turanian lords of the land.

Moreover, why assume with M. Paspati that [Greek: γ: g], [Greek:

θ: th], and [Greek: χ: ch] are “Greek importations into the Gypsy

tongue”? Of these letters two are Arabo-Persian: [Greek: χ: ch] is

= Khá, [Arabic: خ]; and [Greek: γ: g] is = Ghayn, [Arabic: غ]; the

gamma pronounced Ghámma in Romaic parlance when preceding the open

vowels, _á_ and _o_. The third generally corresponds with the Arabic

Sá, [Arabic: ص], pronounced in Persian and Hindi as a simple Sín

(_s_)[131]. The critic, however, should not have told us, “_Le_ [Greek:

θ: th] _répond assez bien au ‘th’ Anglais_.” Our sibilant has two

distinct sounds: one soft, as in _thy_, answering to the neo-Greek

[Greek: δ: d]; the other hard, as in _theme_, = [Greek: θ: th]. The

Gypsy Owa, Va (yes) bears a suspicious resemblance to the vulgar Arabic

Aywá, contracted from Ay w' Allah--aye by Allah! A man must have

absolutely no practical knowledge of the Rom or of his congener the

“mild Hindu” who can ask, “_Les esprits grossiers sont-ils donc plus

subtils que les nôtres_?” This is the mere _morgue_ and _outrecuidance_

of European ignorance. Let the author try the process of “finessing”

upon the first lad, Jat or Sindhi, who comes in his way, and he will

readily be made to understand my meaning. Finally, I venture to throw

out a hint that the “barbarous helot” may preserve the tribal name

Nath, [Sanskrit: नट][132], a mime. This caste, with which the Gypsies

used formerly to be identified,[133] certainly did not represent

the “wild aboriginal inhabitants of India”; they may have Dravidian

affinities, but they are certainly not of Turanian blood.

§ 3. “_Origines, etc._”

This paper was published in 1875, when M. Paul Bataillard had the

benefit of my letter to the _Academy_; and apparently its main object

is to prove that he preceded me in identifying the Gypsies with the

“Djatte” (Jats). It is divided into three parts, which are four. No.

1 contains the author’s reclamation and his notice of Professor de

Goeje; No. 2 works out more fully his own theory of Gypsy origin; No. 3

contains a “certain and definitive explanation of the word _Tsigane_”;

and No. 4, by way of colophon and endowment of research, thrusts

forward certain preachments upon the direction of future inquiries for

the benefit of us rude practical men.

Of No. 1, I have already treated, and content myself with

energetically objecting to the statement that all who have treated

about the peoples of the Indine Valley have imagined either a possible

or a probable _rapport_ between the Jats (not Juth) and the Gypsies. M.

Paul Bataillard again shows that in 1850, when my paper was published

in 1849, neither he nor Professor Fleischer knew aught concerning the

modern Sindhi Jats, a mere section of the race, save the corruption of

a name. They were ignorant of its extensive habitat scattered between

the Indus mouths and the Tatar Steppes. They had never learned that it

speaks its own peculiar dialect, which is like that of the Gypsies and

the Sindhi to a certain extent, Persico-Indian.

Part No. 2 becomes much more sensational. We find that our critic’s

ideas have grown, and that the antiquity of the Gypsies in

South-Eastern Europe extends deep into the misty regions of the past.

In 1872 he merely alluded to the high importance of the ethnic name

Sindho or Sinto (feminine Sindhi; plurals Sindhe and Sindhiyan),

“meaning the great.” Now he would identify them with the aborigines

of Lemnos, those “lords of Vulcan” the [Greek: Σιντιες: Sinties]--a

word generally understood to signify robbers ([Greek: σινομαι:

sinomai]). The connexion is brought about because Homer describes

these metal-workers as speaking a wild speech ([Greek: αγριοφωνοι:

agriophônoi]), and because Hellanicus of Lesbos derives them from

Thrace. Two independent authorities--the original hypothesist Dr.

Johannes Gottlieb Hasse in 1803, and M. Vivien de Saint-Martin in

1847--had suggested an idea which M. Paul Bataillard borrowed and

adopted. The _Tsigane_ represent, we are assured, not only the Sicani

of Sicily, but also the [Greek: Σιγυναι: Sigynai, Σιγυνοι: Sigynoi,

Σιγιννοι: Siginnoi], whom Herodotus places in the Caucasus, Asia Minor,

and Thrace. The broad gap of years is bridged over, in the teeth of M.

Paspati, by means of certain mediæval Byzantine heretics, the [Greek:

Αθιγγανοι: Athinganoi], Manichæans like the Albigenses, the Paulicians,

and especially the dwellers in Bosnia and its neighbourhood, also

called Athigarii, Atingarii, Anthingarii, and Atingani; and this only

because certain of the modern Greeks call their Gypsies Athinganoi

([Greek: Αθιγγανοι: Athinganoi]). Brosset[134] notices that in the

eleventh century, when King Bagrat visited Constantinople, he there

heard a marvellous and wholly incredible thing; namely, that a tribe of

the Samaritans descended from Simon Magus, and called _Atsinkan_, were

still infamous for their evil-doings and sorceries. And then we have

a silly story of how the monk St. George of Athos rendered all their

poisons of no account.

Moreover, we are told, _if_ the modern Tsigane represent the Sinties

and the Siginnoi, they must, _ergo_, stand in the same relationship to

certain mysterious tribes inhabiting the Caucasus and Western Asia,

Egypt, the Levantine Islands, and the Danubian basin. Thus we see the

origin of the Telchini, the Chalybes, and other “Cabiric peoples.” The

latter has the disadvantage of being purely Semitic, Kabír meaning “the

great” applied to the twelve _Dii majores_ of the Phœnicians who sent

forth Kadmos (El Kadín) = the old or the great.[135] But let that pass.

Our author proves his fact by showing that these races, like the modern

Romá, were makers of weapons, especially the assegai or javelin; whilst

the Cabiri and the Telchini were renowned for music and soothsaying.

And how not recognize the Troglodytic Sibyls of Asia Minor and Egypt,

of Greece, and especially Thrace, in the pure Gypsy, when [Greek:

Σιβυλλα: Sibylla] is only a form of [Greek: Σιβυνη: Sibynê] or [Greek:

Ζιβυνη: Zibynê], which naturally derives from [Greek: Σιγυνη: Sigynê],

[Greek: Σιγυννος: Sigynnos] = _Tsigane_? How not perceive that the

Egyptian prophetesses turned into black pigeons by Herodotus, and the

doves of Dodona, were not identical with the Romní?

This becomes a disease--_Tsigane_ on the brain; from which our

author evidently suffers in an acute form--so acute as to render his

imagination most lively. To the unimaginative ethnologist the “Sindhi”

are simply the Sindh tribes of Gypsies, so called from the Sindhu, that

mighty stream which gave to Europe a name for the Indian Peninsula.

Hence, indeed, some philologists would derive the Spanish word Zincale

(Zinkale), making it a compound of Sindh and Kálo (plural Kále, black)

= dark men of Sindh. Rejecting this treatment, we must consider it a

tribal name like Karáchi (= lower Sindhian), Helebi (Aleppine), Lúri

(from Lúristán), and many others into which the great Jat nation is

divided.

But whilst we reject particulars, we must beware how we treat the

general theory. Tradition and ethnological peculiarities, far stronger

than philological resemblances or coincidences, tend to prove that the

earliest metal-workers and weapon-makers were an Indine race whose

immigration long preceded the movement of the last ethnic wave, the

Gypsy of history. Herodotus notices a caste or corporation of ambulant

founders and metal-workers which came from Asia, possibly belonging

to the age called by M. de Mortillet _de la chaudronnerie_, when the

hammer took the place of simple fusion. Modern research has shown that

these prehistoric artisans affected Gypsy habits like the _caldereros_

(coppersmiths) of the Romá in later ages. They had no permanent abodes;

their _ateliers_ were not inside the towns, but _en plein champ_ near

inhabited centres; here they fashioned their new and recast their old

metal, bartering their works for furs, hides, amber, and other articles

of local _provenance_. Hence M. Émile Burnouf[136] assumes these

wandering workmen of the Bronze Age to have been a Gypsy race; while

the remarkable similarity, I may almost say the identity, of the alloy

suggests that it was the produce of a single people. We must, however,

be careful how we accept his derivation from Banca and Malacca of the

prehistoric tin required for bronze. It would first be supplied by the

Caucasus mines to a race of workmen migrating along the southern base

from the West to the East. The next source of supply, before passing to

Southern France, Spain, and the Cassiterides, would be North-Western

Arabia. The Book of Numbers[137] distinctly mentions the metal, placing

it between iron and lead, as part of the spoils taken by the children

of Israel from their cousins the Midianites (_circ._ B.C. 1450); and

the two Khedivial expeditions (A.D. 1877-78) have brought home proofs

that it may still be found there. Indeed, I have a suspicion that

the “broken” people of Western Arabia are descended from the ancient

Gypsies who may have worked the gold mines of Midian.

Part No. 3 corrects Professor de Goeje, M. Fagnan, and myself in our

several explanations of _Tsigane_. The exaggerated value attributed

by M. Paul Bataillard to his own “typical proof and the material

confirmation of all his system” seems to have hindered his revelation;

and he insists upon it naïvely as if it were proof of Holy Writ. Its

venerable “hypothetical origin” must be sought in the root CHINÁV,

meaning to thrust, throw, fight, cut, kill, write, and eject saliva. It

survives in the word Sagaie or Zagaie (our assegai): the latter, when

split in two, contains a first part similar to _sag_-itta, and a second

like _gais_ (_gœ_-sum), the heavy, barbed Gallic javelin; whilst the

whole resembles the Amazonian Sagaris, an axe.

In the name of the Prophet--figs! This dreamery is ushered in as usual

by a whole page of discursive matter. The debased Romaic [Greek:

κατζιβελος: katzibelos], a “maker of javelins,” used by a Byzantine

poet of the middle fourteenth century, is shown = Sigynos = _Tsigane_.

Kilinjirides, a Græcised form of the Turkish Kilij-ji, or sword-maker,

is the same word. Let me here note that the “pure Turkish term Kaldji,”

still used at Rhodes, is not the same as Kilij-ji; it is the bastard

compound Arabic and Turkish Kala'-jí, a tinsmith. Such are some of the

linguistic will-o’-the-wisps which have, I fear, habitually misled our

critic.

I must now consider the origin of the corrupted “typical term” Tsigane,

which M. Paul Bataillard has converted into a “generic name.” The

old and obsolete derivations of the _Zingaro_, which with various

modifications prevails throughout Europe, are the following.[138] Ciga

or Siga, the seaport of Mauretania Cæsariensis, or the Ciga or Cija

River mentioned by Lucan; the Magian Cineus; Zeugitania Regio (Zeugis);

Singara, the Mesopotamian city; Zigera, a Thracian settlement; the

Zinganes, a tribe inhabiting the Indus Delta (?); the Zigier Province

in Asia Minor; and “the bird _Cinclo_” (motacilla or wagtail), a

“vagrant bird which builds no nest,” and therefore gave rise to the

term Cinli or Cingary. Less absurd is the derivation from Singus, or

Cingus, the chief of a horde under “Tamerlane,” who employed these

men, not as combatants, but camp-followers and to export trains[139]

(A.D. 1401). Arabshah, the biographer of the great Tatar Amír, recounts

a contrivance by which in A.D. 1406 he rid his city (Samarkand) of

the rebellious Zingaros; and the account of this race shows a certain

correspondence with the Gypsies. Hence, probably, Borrow (_The

Zincali_) tells us that “the Eastern Gypsies are called Zingarri.” The

word is quite unknown to Turkey and Persia. In 1402 they accompanied

the Sultan Báyezíd on his invasion of Europe along the Danube, and

thus settled in Bulgaria and Old Servia.

What we know for certain is that the Gypsies have been known in Persia

from time immemorial as Chingáneh, [Persian: چِنگانه]. Professor de

Goeje writes the word Tsjengán (Chengán), and would explain it by the

Persian plural of Tsenj, a musician, a dancer. Is this word intended

for Chang, a harp, or for Zang, in Arabic Zanj, a Kálo, a “black man,”

as the Gypsy is still called in England? Chingáneh in Syria becomes

Jingáneh, the Semites having no _ch_; and the term now applies, not

to the Gypsies generally, but to a small and special tribe. The Greek

and Romaic [Greek: Ατζιγγανος: Atzinganos] and [Greek: Αθιγγανος:

Athinganos] corruptions of Chingáneh, are, as we have seen by Atsinkan,

as old at Constantinople as the eleventh century. In Turkish the word

is written as in Persian, but the pronunciation changes to Chingyáneh;

M. Paspati adopts Tchinghiané, the Turco-French corruption, with the

e = eh. Hence evidently the Hungarian Czigan (Czigany, Czigányok,

Czingaricus, etc.), and the Transylvanian Cingani, which appears in

writings of the fifteenth century; the former evidently engendered M.

Bataillard’s bastard _Tsigane_. The Poles turned Chingáneh into Cygan

(Cyganaeh, Cyganskiego, etc.), and the Russians into Zigan. Here we see

the Italian Ciano, Cingano, and Zingano, the older forms of Zingaro and

the Portuguese Cigano.

The Spanish Zincali is derived by Borrow from two Gypsy words meaning

“Kále” (the black men) of Zend (Sind or Ind), a theory perfectly

inadmissible. The Iberian Gitáno, now a term of opprobrium, is

probably a survival of the racial name, and not a corruption of the

older Egypciano, the Basque Egipcioac. The latter, evidently from

Aigyptos, Ægyptus, Egypt, an “Egyptian,” is itself a corruption of

Kupt, [Persian: کپط], in modern parlance a Copt. Hence the Turks also

call their vagrants Kupti or Gupti. Hence also [Greek: Γυφτος: Gyphtos]

in Romaic applies indifferently to a Gypsy or a blacksmith, and hence

finally our Gypsy, which should be pronounced with a hard _g_, and

written as by the older writers Gypsy. All four derive from a different

root, the Egyptian.

As regards the German Zigeuner and its older forms Secane and Suyginer

(fifteenth century), Professor de Goeje would derive it from Sjikâri

(Syikári), as he writes Shekári, a huntsman, much reminding us of

that diction which confounds “srimp” with “shrimp.” The word means a

wanderer, and seems to derive from the root that gave us _zig_-zag.

The Dutch call these Indians _Heiden af Egyptiër’s_; the French

_Égyptiens_, but preferably _Bohémiens_, showing what they believed to

be the last halting-place of the tribe before it passed on to Western

Europe. A curious irony of fate has connected in the Gallic mind the

old land of the Boii with all that is wild and unsettled, when its

sons are the stiffest and the most priggish of the Austro-German

_beamter_ class.

Not a few commentators on the Bible[140] have believed the Gypsies

to be that “mixed multitude” which has done so much for romantic

ethnology. This medley, the Hebrew’s _hasaphsuph_, corresponding with

the Arabic _Habash_ (Abyssinian), we are told “went up also with the

Jews out of Egypt.” The learned add that they marched eastward to

India, became veritable Aryans, retraced their steps to Misraim, the

two Egypts, upper and lower, and thence spread over Europe.

For the first set of words, _Tsigane_ included, I hold Chingáneh to be

the origin, owning at the same time my inability to determine the root

or history of the word. For the second, whose type is Gitano, I think

it probable that the wanderers may have modified their racial name

_Jat_ and its adjective _Jatáni_ into the semblance of _Egyptian_ at

the time when they represented themselves to be descendants of the old

Nile dwellers and to speak an Egyptian (Coptic) dialect. The Jugo-Slav

tongues abound in similar instances of conversion, vernacular and

significant terms being often applied to the older terms of conquered

or occupied countries. For instance, _Aurisina_, the Roman station

near Trieste, became _Nabresina_, from na-brek = ad montem.

Returning to M. Paul Bataillard, we find him declaring that the Gypsies

are generically Chamites (descendants of Ham!), and specifically

Kushites, “who lived long enough under the 'Aryas in the Indus region

to _lose their Kushite tongue_ and to adopt an Aryan dialect.” This

immense assertion, made perfunctorily, as it were, and without

acknowledgment of its source, is worthy of the eighteenth century

and its “mixed multitude” borrowed from the Book of Exodus. What the

learned Movers (_Geschichte d. Phœnicier_) said of the “Kushites”

was that, originally from India, they migrated in prehistoric days

westwards, allied themselves with the Semites, and became the peoples

speaking such Aryo-Semitic tongues as the Egyptian and Coptic,

Himyaritic and Ghíz. To believe that this also was the history of the

Gypsy movement is to hold that, whilst other “Kushites” changed their

physique and their morale, their eyes and hair, their cheekbones and

figures generally, the Gypsies have remained pure Indians without a

trace of other blood.

A word here upon this “Kushite” theory, which has been accepted by

men of the calibre of Heinrich Brugsch Bey. It appears to be simply a

labour-saving institution, in fact what algebraists call _supposer un

inconnu_, a pure assumption which spares the pains of working out the

origination of the so-called Aryo-Semitic races. These Kushites, who

were they? Where are they mentioned in history or legend as emigrants

from the plains of Hindustan to the north-eastern angle of Africa?

What traces have they left upon the long route across Western Asia

which connects the Indus with the Nile? How came it that, without

marking their exodus by a single vestige of civilization, they began

at once to hew the obelisks and build the pyramids in their new home,

the _chef-d’œuvres_ of artistic Egypt’s golden age? No answer to such

objections as these.

In Part No. 4, concluding the paper, M. Paul Bataillard attempts to

conciliate his “principal thesis” with the views of M. de Goeje. The

Leyden professor opines that the first colonies of Djatts (Jats) were

founded amongst the Persians and Arabs of the seventh century; and M.

Fagnan also speaks of inscriptions in Buddhist characters treating of

the Jats in the fourth and fifth centuries. The tribal name, corrupted

by Arabization, appears in the “Canal of the Zott” (Zutt) near Babylon,

and in the “Zott-land.” Families of “Zotts” were transplanted to Syrian

Bosra, Bostra, or Old Damascus during the earliest Muslim conquests in

the seventh century (_circ._ A.D. 670), not in the ninth (A.D. 855),

as our author had determined. About A.D. 710 “Zotts” and Indians were

transferred from the Indus to the Tigris (Khuzistán); and between

A.D. 714 and 720 a certain number were sent with their four thousand

buffaloes--“which make the lion fly (!)”--to colonize the Antioch

regions. Hence possibly the name of the large tribe which is known

in Egypt and elsewhere as “El H'aleb,” or “Helebi, the Aleppine.”

They waxed powerful enough in their new possessions to contend with

the Caliphat till A.D. 820-834, when they were subjugated, and some

twenty-seven thousand were transplanted to Bagdad. Thence they were

sent north-eastwards to Khánikin and westwards to Ayin-Zarba (?) in

Syria, a place subsequently (A.D. 855) captured by the Byzantines; and

finally the “Zott” and their belongings were carried off and dispersed

throughout the empire.

So far so good. But our critic appends a rider to Professor de Goeje’s

tale. He owns that this race, Zott or Jats, may have transformed itself

into Gypsies--not difficult, as they were Gypsies. But he contends that

they formed a feeble modern addition to his “Kushites,” to the race

which was represented _ab antiquo_ by the Sicani and Sinties _et hoc

genus omne_.

Further let me note _en passant_ the vulgar error now obsolete which,

confounding Hindi with the Urdú-Zabán or camp dialect,[141] made the

former a bastard modern tongue when its literature is as old as the

earliest English and French. And here we may note that, while the

_Romni-chíb_ is in point of vocabulary a sister of the Hindi, the

grammar of the noun with its survival of regular cases belongs to a

more remote age. It is partly Prakrit and partly Sindhi, a dialect

whose numerous harsh consonants make us suspect, despite Dr. Trumpp,

a non-Aryan element. Besides the prehistoric occupation of the

trans-Indine regions by the Indo-Scythians noticed in Alexander’s day,

we find another dating from far later times. The Bactrian kingdom which

became independent sixty-nine years after the great Macedonian’s death

lasted one hundred and thirty years, and was destroyed about B.C. 126

by the “white Huns,” Chinese Tatars, who crossed the Jaxartes. Hence

possibly the Dravidian Brahins still dwelling in the midst of Aryan

populations. The apparent anomaly that the wild and vagrant Gypsies

have preserved in Europe ancient forms which have died out in the old

home has already been accounted for; I may also number amongst the

causes of conservation the total want of a written character, which

also proves the early date of the Gypsy exodus.

§ 4. “_Notes et Questions, etc._,” “_Sur le mot Zagaie, etc._”

I treat of Nos. 4 and 5 out of order of date because they are mere

_ausflugs_ illustrating Nos. 3 and 6. From the first we learn that

when the French occupied Algiers in 1830 they found the city and its

territory partly occupied by Gypsies, who did not mix with the Arabs

or the Kabyles (Kabáil or the Tribes), with the Jews or the Europeans.

They spoke their own tongue, and they were often visited by their

congeners of Hungary and other parts of Europe. It is conjectured that

these Romá may have passed over from Spain, and possibly that they

travelled eastward from Morocco, as Blidah contains many of the race.

The question becomes interesting when we find the Egyptian _Ghagar_

claiming to be emigrants from the West. According to the Librarian of

Algiers, the late M. Berbruger in 1846, they were known as Guesáni,

pronounced G'sáni or G'záne (Gezzání), the feminine singular being

Gezzána (Gezzáneh).[142] Here of course M. Paul Bataillard finds no

difficulty in detecting, through Dzâna and Tsâna, “a corruption of

the true name _Tsigani_ or _Tchingani_.” The latter form, I would

observe, retaining the nasal of the original Chingáneh and the Arabized

Jingáneh, is far preferable to the mutilated _Tsigane_ adopted

afterwards (1875) with so much pomp and such a flourish of trumpets.

A family dislodged from a house in the present Rue de Chartres was

found lying upon the straw surrounded by human skulls, serpents, and

other instruments of their craft. Whilst being evicted they noisily

threatened their molesters with all manner of devilry; but as usual

they ended by submitting. The men apparently had no occupation; the

women used to wander about the streets in small parties, generally a

matron followed by four or five girls, crying, “Gezzáneh! who wants

to know the future?”[143] The Durke,[144] or pythoness, carried a

tambourine; and when divining she placed upon her drum-head a bit of

alum and of charcoal, with pebbles, beans or grains, wheat and barley;

these represented the “elements,” water, fire, and earth, thus showing

that the process was a rude form of the Arab’s geomancy. Sometimes the

“spae-wife” made passes over the consultee’s head, holding in her hand

a lump of sugar; this reminds us of the magicians in Morocco and Egypt

and their mesmerized “clear-seers.” Between 1837 and 1838 these Gypsies

retired into the Sahará or Desert; and now they visit the city only

in caravans. Their women, tattooed and painted like the Bedawiyyah,

are generally robed in rags and tatters, and decorated with the usual

tinsel, rings, and hangings.

An interesting subject, but by no means easy of treatment, would be

the order of Dervishes known as Aïssaoua, also “called _Adrá_, from

the name of one of their festivals.”[145] They have been noticed by a

multitude of writers each more ignorant than the other. These men are

probably Gypsies, to judge by analogy with the Rifá'i Dervishes, who

will be noticed under the head of Egypt. The same may be said of the

Naïlette, the Almah (Álimeh) or dancing-girl of Algiers, who affiliates

herself with the Aulád Ná'il[146], the large and wealthy Bedawin tribe

occupying the inner regions. Similarly the Nawar Gypsies farther east

derive themselves from the Beni Nawar. These Naïlettes are public when

young, yet in after-life they become faithful wives; the same is said

of the Egyptian Ghagar and the nach-girls of India. According to one

authority, there are among the Mozabites two or three Gypsy tribes that

live by prostituting their women to caravans. It is curious to compare

the rigid chastity of the Gypsy girls in England and Spain, indeed in

Europe generally, where a lapse would lead to certain death, with their

looseness of life elsewhere. But the Romá is _une race curieuse entre

toutes_, and both extremes may be expected from it.

It remains only to treat of No. 5, which discusses the origin of the

word Zagaie or Sagaie, the Spanish and Portuguese Azagaia, a small kind

of Moorish spear which we have named assegai, transferring it to the

throwing dart of the Básetu or Káfir race. We have seen (§ 3) that M.

Paul Bataillard has fathered upon this term the mysterious racial name

_Tsigane_ (Chingáneh), and there is no reason to repeat what has been

said of his derivation. We may accept his dictum: “There are words

whose history would, if known, throw vivid light upon human migrations

and the affinity of peoples in very ancient ages.” But here we find, in

lieu of illumination, outer darkness. The comparison of Zagaie, Gæsum,

and Gais is bad enough; but it is worse to transport the assegai into

South American speech. Demersay, describing the Paraguayan tribe of

“Payagas” (the Payagúas or Canoe Indians), calls their lance _Pagaie_,

“which,” remarks our author, “may, it appears, be permitted to me to

identify with Sagaie.” This is again transcendental etymology applied

to ethnic misuse. Pagaie here is simply the popular European, and

especially French, corruption of Tacapé or Tangapé, the paddle-club of

ironwood sharpened to serve as a sword, and used by all the maritime

tribes of Eastern South America. Finally Korik, the bellows, so called

by the Gypsies of Asia Minor, is not _Turkish_, but a corruption of the

Arabic Kor.

Here ends my long notice of M. Paul Bataillard’s four papers; the

novelties introduced into them will, it is hoped, be held to justify

the prolixity.

FOOTNOTES:

[106] The following are his advertised works; he kindly supplied me

with copies of all, except the first two, which were out of print:

1. _De l’apparition et de la dispersion des Bohémiens en Europe._

Reprinted from the _Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes_, 1844,

in 8vo of 69 pages; and again in 1849 by M. Franck. I understand

that in this, his first paper, the author knew the “Zott,” but

ignored the “Jats.”

2. _Nouvelles Recherches sur l’apparition des Bohémiens en Europe

(particulièrement dans l’Europe Orientale,--avec un appendice sur

l’arrivée de dix ou douze mille Louri, Zuth, ou Djatt en Perse

entre les années 420 et 440)._ From the same _Bibliothèque_,

1849, in 8vo of 48 pages, a _petit travail_ (as the author calls

it) containing his first notice of the Jats.

3. _Les derniers travaux relatifs aux Bohémiens dans l’Europe

Orientale._ From the _Revue Critique_, Vol. II. of fifth year

(1870-71). Reprinted Paris: Franck, 1872. In treating of the

Gypsies the Jats now become an important element.

4. _Notes et questions sur les Bohémiens en Algérie._ From the

Bulletin of the _Société d’Anthropologie de Paris, Séance du 17

Juillet_, 1873. Reprinted Paris: A. Henmeyer, 1874.

5. _Sur le mot Zagaie ou Sagaie, et accessoirement sur le nom du

soufflet de forge primitif._ From the Bulletin of the _Société

d’Anthropologie de Paris, Séance du 21 Mai_, 1874.

6. _Sur l’origine des Bohémiens ou Tsiganes, avec l’explication du

mot “Tsigane.” Lettre à la Revue Critique._ Paris: Franck, 1875.

This last publication criticises my identification of the Gypsies

and the Jats, etc.

[107] _Embéo e Majáro Lucas, etc._, now rare. This version preserved

intact many of the Spanish words used by Padre Scio, instead of

converting them into pure “Romani.” See Borrow.

[108] For instance, when Borrow makes Chai denote the men of Egypt

or the sons of Heaven, when it simply signifies children, being a

dialectic variety of the Hindi Chokra, Chokrí.

[109] A second “Tsiganida” was in the hands of the late M. Pierre

Assaki, possibly composed by one of his kinsmen.

[110] Rom (man), masc. sing.; Romá (men), masc. plur. Romni, Romniá,

woman, women; Romaní, adjectival, belonging to man. Hence our phrases

“_rum_ fellow” and “pottering Rommany.” Lom is a mere popular

mispronunciation of Rom, and Ro is a vulgar abbreviation. The latter

word I would derive from the Coptic [Greek: ρωμε: rôme] (romé), a man.

[111] The bond of language has perhaps been exaggerated by M. Alexandre

G. Paspati, _Étude sur les Tchinghianés en Bohémiens de l’Empire

Ottoman_ (Constantinople, 1870), and others, where they assert

“_l’histoire entière de cette race est dans son idiome_.”

[112] As the Jews all have especial Hebrew names for the Synagogue

besides the Gentile family-names known to the world, the Gypsies are

also binominal. Thus the Stanleys are Bar-engres (stony fellows); the

Coopers, Wardo-engres (“wheel fellows,” coopers); the Hernes, Balors

(hairs, hairy fellows); the Smiths, Petul-engres (“horseshoe fellows,”

blacksmiths); and the Lovells, Camo-mescres (amorous fellows). See _The

Zincali_.

[113] Getæ, Goths.

[114] _History of Sindh_, pp. 246, 247, and Notes, p. 411; _Scinde,

or the Unhappy Valley_, Vol. II., pp. 116-19; _Journal of the Bombay

Asiatic Society_, pp. 84-90; without including the Grammar and the

Vocabulary.

[115] _Scinde, or the Unhappy Valley_, Vol II., pp. 116-19.

[116] Alluding chiefly to Captain Postans’ _Personal Observations on

Scinde_, chap. iii.

[117] Both of these statements have been modified by subsequent

experience. The Jats are _not_ immigrants, nor is their language

corrupt Panjabi. It is connected with the Sindhi; but it wants those

intricacies and difficulties, and that exuberance of grammatical

forms, which, distinguishing the latter from its Prakrit sisters,

renders it so valuable for the philological comparison of the neo-Aryan

tongues. The vernacular of the Sindh Valley has preserved many forms

for which we vainly look in its cognates, and it is notably freer

from foreign admixture than any other of the North Indian dialects,

the Panjabi, Hindi, and Bengali of our day. It has, in fact, remained

tolerably steady to that first stage of decomposition which attacked

the Prakrit of the ancients. Hence Dr. Trumpp (_loc. cit._) holds it

to be an immediate derivation from the _Apabhransha_, which the old

grammarians placed lowest in the scale of Prakrit speech. “While all

the modern vernaculars of India,” he says, “are already so degraded

that the venerable mother tongue (Sanskrit) is hardly recognizable in

her degenerate daughters, the Sindhi has, on the contrary, preserved

most important fragments of it, and erected for itself a grammatical

structure which far surpasses in beauty of execution and internal

harmony the loose and levelling construction of its sisters.”

[118] Every observer has noticed the Gypsy eye, which films over, as

it were, as soon as the owner becomes weary or _ennuyé_; it has also

a remarkable “far-off” glance, as if looking over and beyond you.

Borrow (_The Zincali_) describes it as a “strange stare like nothing

else in this world.” And again he says that “a thin glaze steals over

it in repose, and seems to emit phosphoric light.” It is certainly a

marvellous contrast with the small, fat-lidded eye of the Jew, the

oblique and porcine feature of the Chinese, and the oblong optic of the

old Egypt which in profile looks like full face.

[119] In the language of the Jat a Kaum is a clan.

[120] The italicised words are in the second edition.

[121] The author of this well-known Persian history of Sindh asserts

that the Jats and the Belochis are both sprung from the same ancestors.

[122] I cannot but suspect some connexion between the Gypsy tribal name

and that of the Counts Szapary, one governor of Fiume, and the other

commanding a _corps d’armée_ in Bosnia.

[123] _Die Einwanderung der Zigeuner in Europa._ Ein Vortrag von Carl

Hopf. (Gotha, 1870.)

[124] _Des Bohémiens et de leur Musique en Hongrie._ (Paris, 1859.)

[125] Literally, a descendant from Lot; popularly, a loose fellow, a

cad.

[126] [_The Arabic word is_ [Arabic: العود] _which is currently

transliterated as El-`Oúd_.--_Transcriber_.]

[127] _Ueber die Mundarten und Wanderungen der Zigeuner Europa’s._ Von

Dr. Franz Miklosich Denkschriften der k. Akademie der Wissenschaften.

(Wien, 1872-77.)

[128] _Étude, etc._, p. 15; see also _Derniers Travaux_, p. 37.

[129] [_While Varvvara_ [Sanskrit: वर्व्वर] _is what appeared in the

original book, it was common to omit the cross on the lower circle

in some forms of writing, so Barbbara_ [Sanskrit: बर्ब्बर] _is also

possible. Hindi Wikipedia lists the desired word as Barbara_ [Sanskrit:

बर्बर].--_Transcriber_.]

[130] Here the mincing French pronunciation has done its very worst

wholly denaturalizing the Perso-Arabic word.

[131] [_The text is transcribed as it was in the original book. However

Sín in Arabic and Persian is written_ [Arabic: س].--_Transcriber_.]

[132] [_The Sanskrit is transcribed as written in the book. However

that word would be transliterated Naṭa. Nath would be_ [Sanskrit:

नठ]--_Transcriber_.]

[133] _Asiat. Res._, VII. 451.

[134] _Histoire de la Géorgie_, Part I., p. 338. The modern Armenians

call the Gypsies Boscha, possibly from Bokchá, by which the Russian

Gypsies denote Hungary.

[135] I am not a little surprised to see a scholar like Mr. Gladstone

declaring that “Kadmos signifies a foreigner” (_Homer: Primer._) The

“Old One” with his sixteen letters is supposed by M. Freret (_Canon

Chronologique_) to have settled at Bœotian Thebes in B.C. 1590, or some

century and a half before Troy was founded (B.C. 1425).

[136] “L’Age de Bronze,” _Revue des Deux Mondes_, July 15, 1877.

[137] [Chap. xxxi. 22.]

[138] Borrow; _El Gitanismo_.

[139] Tamerlane is our corruption of Taymúr--_i.e._ long, limping

Taymur. The Gypsies call Asmodeus Bengui lango, the lame devil, the

devil on two sticks. Not a few Hungarian Chingáneh accompanied the

Napoleonic armies to Spain.

[140] For instance, Roberts on Ezekiel (chaps. xxix. and xxx.).

[141] An Urdú-Zabán has been formed in Italy, where the soldiers drawn

from a multitude of provinces, each speaking its own dialect, not to

say _patois_, have developed a special speech. The officers are obliged

to study this “pidjin-Italian.”

[142] The feminine plural is not given; analogy would suggest it to be

Ghanázineh.

[143] The same cry used by the Egyptian Gypsies: see Von Kremer’s Notes.

[144] Literally, a far-seer. The Persian word _dúr_, far or distance,

Germ. _dort_ and Engl. _forth_, is familiarly used in Hindustani, and

its compound forms are frequent in Turkish.

[145] The Id el Zuhá, alias Kurbán Bayrám, the festival of the yearly

pilgrimage to Mecca.

[146] [_The Arabic word is_ [Arabic: أولاد نائل] _which is currently

translterated as Ouled Ná'il_.--_Transcriber_.]

Part II

_TOPOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON THE GYPSIES AND THE JATS_