naturally compare those of our countrymen. I should not undertake, even if I had the ability and the right-to which I certainly make no pretensions-to sit in judgment upon the labours of the scholars of England, to whom we owe so much; but, if the opinions of eminent Englishmen themselves are of any authority in this case, the actual state of philological and ethnographical knowledge among them is far lower than it ought to be. But, although this, if true, may render the competition of other nations in this branch of knowledge so much the more easy, yet those who have the true spirit of scholars will naturally look for the standard, at which they ought to aim, in those nations where this learning is in highest state, as success in such a case would be proportionably the more honourable. And then Mr. Pickering cites acknowledgments, made by English authors, of the great inferiority of our philologers and ethnographers to those of other nations, which it is humiliating to read, and the truth of which it is vexatious to be obliged to confess: Pudet hæc opprobria nobis, Et potuisse dici, et non potuisse refelli. We have been thus full in describing the views and objects of the American Oriental Society, because we think the description will gratify the few in this country who take an interest in the advancement of Orientalism, and because it may, as we have already hinted, operate in others upon a feeling of honest shame, when they reflect that, in a few years, we may be learners instead of teachers, and indebted for information respecting Eastern literature to American writers. PENALTY FOR ASKING FOR PROMOTION IN CHINA. SOME useful hints may be taken from the official regulations even of China. For example: in a late Peking Gazette, the Board of Punishments is directed to inflict a hundred blows upon an inferior officer for daring to presume to ask for promotion; but as the style and wording of the paper were correct, he was not to be dismissed from office. PHARAOH'S MAGICIANS. THE historical writings of Oriental nations offer to the intelligent reader, at first sight, so many fictions, so much mixture of the false with the true, the probable with the absurd; facts are so often accompanied by prodigious and sometimes ridiculous circumstances, that he is tempted to doubt even those matters which are most authentic, and to confound them with the marvellous incidents which embellish, or rather disfigure them. Nevertheless, when we come to reflect, it will appear that these extraordinary narratives are not to be altogether despised, and that, with the help of an enlightened critical sagacity, it is possible to educe from them some advantage with regard to the knowledge of past events. In fact, although they are, for the most part, the fruit of an uncontrolled imagination, many of them have been wrought out of the wrecks of records too remote and obscure to form a part of genuine history; some are allegories, the occult interpretation of which has been lost in the lapse of ages, and others, deeply impressed with the seal of the miraculous, were destined in their origin to display, in the march of certain events, the invisible and providential hand which disposes, as seems best to it, of the hearts of mortals and the destiny of empires. To reject unexamined, without distinction, all narratives of this kind, would be, in our opinion, a proof of little discernment; it would be to refuse the light which they may throw upon the darkness of ancient times, and to incur the reproach which has been made against the writers of the last century, of having too lightly and carelessly discredited every thing in history which did not bear the evident and incontestable marks of authenticity. It is true that there exists an opposite vice, which should be carefully shunned by every sincere friend of truth: it consists in finding explanations of all the dreams, furnishing commentaries to all the absurdities, and a meaning to all the fables, which antiquity has transmitted to us. This habit, so common to restless and systematic minds, but so dangerous from the errors into which it may lead, tends naturally to enlarge the knowledge of facts by the discoveries accomplished by conjecture and induction. It has its source in that irresistible movement which, in our days, impels the human mind towards scientific researches, out of the impatient ardour to know every thing, the insatiable desire to fathom and explain all things, from the scarcely perceptible phenomena of nature to the slightest historical allusion: a manifest proof that mind is at work, and is extending its range, for thought is a necessary aliment of its existence. But there is a means of avoiding the two vices we have pointed out, and we may enter upon the field of conjecture without encountering the danger of being misled, or at least deviating too much from historial verity; namely, that of taking no more of such narratives than is consistent with facts already proved, and of adopting only these conjectures which are founded upon probability. Guided by this wise and sure principle, the orientalist may study in the original authors the history of past times, with the hope of making fortunate discoveries, and of furnishing plausible explanations of most of the traditions which have been hitherto disregarded because their sense and bearing have been unknown. He will comment with advantage upon fables which conceal the origin of primitive nations, and will draw from obscurity or neglect a multitude of events which lie hid in tales and legends, and which owe in great part their preservation either to their original and striking form, or to the character they bear of the marvellous, for which mankind have always a partiality. It is in this spirit that we have endeavoured to explain the following tradition of the Mussulmans respecting the magicians of Pharaoh. It is taken from a work highly esteemed in the East, written by one of the most celebrated Arabian compilers,-the treatise on "The Charms of Society," or "History of Egypt and Cairo," by Jellal-eddin Abd el-Rahman el Soyuthy, who flourished in Egypt, as we are informed in his own biography, about the middle of the ninth century of the Hegira :— "We read in Al-Kandi,* that the recorders of traditions agree that never were so many persons converted at once as when the magicians of Egypt believed in the mission of Moses. "Ibn Abd el-Hokm† relates, after Yazid ben-Abi-Habib, that one of the contemporaries of the companions of the Prophet said: 'Never were more people converted at the same time than when the Egyptians believed in Moses.' The same author relates, after Abd-allah Hobairah alSabbany, after Bekr ben-Amru al-Haulany and Yazid ben-Abi-Habib: 'There were in Egypt, in the time of Pharaoh, twelve magicians, who were the chiefs of all the rest; each was at the head of twenty diviners, and each diviner commanded 1,000 sorcerers: including diviners, magicians, and sorcerers, there were in all 240,252 persons versed in the practice of the occult arts. When they had been witnesses of the prodigies performed by Moses, they were convinced that heaven had declared in his favour, and their twelve chiefs, conceiving that they ought not further to resist the will of God, prostrated themselves, as a mark of devotion, and their example was followed by the diviners, who were, in their turn, imitated by the other sorcerers, all crying out, 'We believe in the Master of the Universe, the God of Moses and of Aaron.'§ * Abu Omar al-Handi Mahommed, son of Yussuf, son of Yakoob, flourished in Egypt about the middle of the fourth century of the Hegira, under the reign of Sultan Kafur. He is author of two works: "On the Prerogatives of Egypt," and "On the Cadhis of Egypt." † Author of "The Conquest of Egypt," who died in that country, A.H. 237. St. Paul (2 Tim. iii. 8) informs us that the chiefs of Pharaoh's magicians were two personages named Yannes and Mambres. In the Greek text, the name of the latter is written Taubong, Yambhres, or as we write it, Jambres. Numenius, a Pythagorean philosopher, cited by Origen (Contra Cels., iv. 51) and by Eusebius (Prep. Evang., ix. 8), likewise mentions Yannes and Mambres; he states that these magicians were chosen by the Egyptians to oppose Museus, chief of the Jews, whose prayers were very powerful with God, to cause the plagues which afflicted Egypt to cease. These words are from the Koran (see sur. xxv. 46, 47-Lane's Selections, p. 196). Mahomet is the first, to our knowledge, who has spoken of this conversion of the magicians: he had this tradition, no doubt, from the Rabbis. He attributes to the new converts a language worthy of the early martyrs of Christianity: "I will cut off your hands and feet, alternately, and crucify you all," Pharaoh says to them. Verily," replied the magicians, "then we shall return unto G Asiat.Journ.N.S. VOL.IV.No.19. our "Ibn Abd-al-Hokm relates, moreover, after Yazid ben-Abi-Habib, that a contemporary of the Prophet said: The magicians were of the number of the companions of Moses, and none of them took part in the backslidings of the children of Israel, when the latter offered incense to the golden calf. The same says: "We have the following tradition from Hani ben-al-Motawakkel, who had it from Ibn al-Lohayah,* who had it from Yazid ben-Abi-Habib, who had it from a contemporary of the companions of the Prophet: the magicians who had believed having requested of Moses leave to return to their property and their families, in Egypt, that Prophet granted it, and added his blessing. They then retired to the summit of the mountains, and were the first who embraced a solitary life. They received the name of Separated. Nevertheless, they did not all quit the camp of the Israelites; part of them remained with Moses, and adhered to that holy man till the moment when God called him to him. In the sequel, the inclination for a monastic life having ceased, there were no longer any ascetics in Egypt till the appearance of the companions of the Messiah, who peopled anew the deserts of Egypt with men devoted to a life of seclusion." OBSERVATIONS. The Holy Scripture informs us that the Hebrews were followed to the wilderness by an innumerable crowd of Egyptians of every age and of both sexes; but it nowhere gives us to understand that the magicians who resisted Moses were of the number. It is true that, after the third plague, they cried "This is the finger of God;" + but they continued not the less to calumniate the Prophet to the king, and to encourage the latter in his obduracy. They were soon after smitten, like all the others, with the sixth plague, against which all the resources of their art became fruitless, and their bodies were covered with ulcers and tumours. Nothing, however, hinders the admission that some of these magicians may have been in the end converted, and that they may have even asked Moses to lead them with his own people into the Wilderness to sacrifice there to Jehovah. The tradition just quoted, thus understood, has nothing improbable in it, and may even serve to explain the incessant murmurs of the Israelites against God and his messenger, their complaints and their tears at the remembrance of the delicacies they had tasted in the land of Misraim, and the extreme facility with which they gave themselves up to idolatry at the very foot of Mount Sinai, still resounding with the voice of the Almighty. We can thus conceive how the Hebrews, placed, on the one hand, under the influence of the ills and privations which they endured in solitude, on the other, shaken by the seditious and impious discourses of the Egyptians who our Lord. We trust that God will pardon our sins since we were the first to believe" (see Koran sur. xxvi, 49 51; sur. xx, 75; sur. vii. 117 et seq.). If we credit the Talmudists, the king of Egypt, the victim of his obstinate incredulity, was at length forced to retract the blasphemies he had uttered against the God of Israel. * Author of a book of traditions. He was a cadi and lawyer. He was of Hadramaut, in Southern Arabia. He died in Egypt, A.H. 164. ↑ Lit." The finger of God is here." Erod. viii. 19. had followed them, more to escape the plagues which afflicted their From a paper by L'Abbé Bargès: Journ. Asiatique, Juill.-Aug. 1843. EXTORTED CONFESSIONS. THE following remarkable recent instance of the ill-consequences of extorting confession from natives of India is related in the Bombay Courier :— A native, named Bhamia, a labourer of Ghotowlee, in the Tannah collectorate, had been assaulted by three fellow-villagers, for which he cited them before the mamlutdar, in a neighbouring village. Whilst on his way home, he met four Company's sepoys, who, being in want of a cooly, forced him to carry their baggage. Bhamia accompanied them to Poonah, where he was laid up with the guinea-worm. In the meanwhile, his father, alarmed at his absence, reported the circumstance to the mamlutdar, who, suspecting that the three villagers had, in revenge, kidnapped the man, got them apprehended, and, finding no evidence to criminate them, ordered them to be bastinadoed till they confessed their guilt! To put an end to the torture, they confessed they had murdered the man, and named the first place they could think of as containing his remains, and where a corpse was actually found! The mamlutdar at once committed them for trial by the session judge. When the trial came on, they repeatedly asserted their innocence, to the astonishment of the judge, who ordered the body found to be exhumed, and examined by the civil surgeon, Dr. Kirk. That gentleman reported that the body was that of a female. It bore no marks of violence, and had to all appearance been buried some time. The judge, not having heard of the means used by the mamlutdar to extort the confession, postponed the trial for the purpose of making further inquiry into the matter. Some days afterwards, it being intimated to him that fresh evidence had been procured against the prisoners, they were again put on their trial; the witness was called, and his examination had gone some length, when, to the amazement of every body, Bhamia was brought into court by several of the prisoners' relatives! He had shortly before arrived at his native village, and was forced along almost up to the judge's seat." |