# An Essay on the Age and Antiquity of the Book of Nabathæan Agriculture/Chapter III

CHAPTER III.
The author of “The Book of Nabathæan Agriculture” was acquainted with Greek science; an echo of the Bible, or at the very least, of Jewish belief, is found in his writings; he allows full authority to the apocryphal writings ascribed to Hebrew patriarchs; he believes in those half-trickish writings which pretended to represent the science of the Indians, Egyptians, and Persians, in the first centuries of our era; and he admits Hermes and Agathedæmon amongst Babylonian sages. The date of the “Nabathæan Agriculture,” at least a parte ante is from these facts sufficiently determined. It remains now to be seen whether we do not possess other works, the bringing of which into juxtaposition may ​assist us in fixing yet more precisely the character of the singular work which engages our attention.
It is Dr. Chwolson himself who shall furnish the means of our doing so. One of Dr. Chwolson’s merits indeed is to have drawn attention to the fact that “The Book of Nabathæan Agriculture” is not the only work of its kind, and that we possess three other works of the same nature, all translated by Ibn Wahshíya. The first of these books, the كتاب السموم‎ or “Book of Poisons;” is composed of three works, which according to Dr. Chwolson, have been blended together by Ibn Wahshíya. The authors of the three works are Súhab-Sáth, Yarbúká, and Rewáthá; Súhab-Sáth is more ancient than Yarbúká, and Yarbúká is quoted in “The Book of Nabathæan Agriculture.” All the peculiarities, therefore, which denote Yarbúká to be an author of ​very moderate antiquity, must also destroy the pretensions which are raised with regard to the name of Kúthámí. Now numberless traits prove that Yarbúká is a Chaldæan of comparatively modern times. He speaks of the city of Kazvin, which appears to have been founded in the time of the Sassinides; ​he quotes a certain Bábekái as an ancient Babylonian sage. The science of “The Book of Poisons” is imbued with charlatanism; sorcery abounds in its pages;—we feel that these are the fruits of an art in its decay, which, no longer sustained by the traditions of true science, degenerates into superstition. Verbiage, trivial personalities, so unlike the style of ancient writers, are here even more rife than in the work of Kúthámí.
We have, then, a work, anterior to “The Book of Nabathæan Agriculture,” which throughout presents evident marks of modern origin. But another Nabathæan work, also translated by Ibn Wahshíya, gives rise to yet more important deductions. This work is entitled كتاب تنكلوشا البابلي القوقاني‎ “The Book of Tenkelúshá, the Babylonian, the Kukanian.” It is a genethlialogical ​work, one of those books which, on going out into the world towards the close of the age of the Seleucides, made the word Chaldæan synonymous with charlatan. Here there can be no doubt. Dr. Chwolson gives up all idea of putting “The Book of Tenkelúsha in the same rank with those of Yarbúka and Kúthámí. He places it in the period of the Arsacides, at the latest towards the first century after Christ. Greek influence betrays itself here indeed in an unmistakeable manner; a certain ارسطايولوس‎ is cited in this work, a name in which one may trace Aristobulus, and which in any case, is certainly that of a Greek.
I shall prove, presently, that the work of Tenkelúshá is not alone known to us through the translation of Ibn Wahshíya, and that the Greeks have often quoted it. Let it suffice for the, present, that Dr. Chwolson recognizes that Tenkelúshá is a Chaldæan of the lower period. How is it that Prof. Chwolson has not perceived ​the important deductions which follow this admission? The work of Tenkelúshá, by Dr. Chwolson’s own confession, must be posterior by fifteen centuries to the “Agriculture,” and “The Book of Poisons.” There should, therefore, be a marked difference between the book of Kúthámí (? Tenkelúshá) and these two works; but there is scarcely any. The work of Tenkelúshá is exactly of the same physiognomy as those of Kúthámí and Yarbúká. There is similar science; a similar state of religion; the same celebrities; the same authorities; similar apocryphal traditions; and, in one word, it is of the same school. Tenkelúshá, like the ancient sages of “The Book of Nabathæan Agriculture,” is surrounded by fabulous legends, mingled with the old mythology of the country. The state of prosperity and political independence, that flourishing cultivation, that rich and varied literature, that art so fully developed, which induces M. Quatremère to fix the ​publication of “The Nabathæan Agriculture” in the times of Nebuchadnezzar, is met again feature for feature in the Arsacidan or Sassinidan book of Tenkelúshá. Can it be admitted that in fifteen, or even in eight centuries (to confine ourselves to the calculation adopted by our deceased brother, M. Quatremère, nothing should have been altered in Babylon, and that two works composed at such a long interval should evince so striking a resemblance? A deduction of the same kind, and decisive, may be drawn from the very title of the work. The author, after the epithet البابلي‎, puts that of القوقاني‎. Dr. Chwolson considers that this epithet designates a School; and I will not argue the point with him. But Kúthámí too assumes the title of القوقاني‎. Yarbúká, much more ancient, according to Prof. Chwolson, also bears the same epithet of القوقاني‎. Can any one conceive it probable that the same school should have continued for two thousand years, and that, by some ​extraordinary accident, the only three Babylonian writers, whose works have come down to us, should, at such immense intervals, have been attached to the same institution?
The fourth Nabathæan work, entitled كتاب اسرار الشمس والقمر‎ which sets forth the opinions of the pretended Babylonian sages, Adámi, Ankebúthá, and Askolábíta, on the artificial production of living beings, appears anterior, at least in point of ideas, to “The Book of Nabathæan Agriculture,” since Kúthámí constantly appeals to the principles which are there developed. Now it is very difficult to allow that this novel composition belongs to high antiquity. The science which it contains, is that which we find in Berosus and Sanchoniathon; a sort of atheism, professing to explain the formation of beings after a materialist fashion, and without the intervention of the Godhead. This idea appears to have been one of the fundamental principles of Babylonian science. ​Can one see in it anything but a plagiarism from the atomist theories of the Greeks? Or, must it be admitted that the materialist cosmogonies of the East and of Greece had their rise in Babylon? Surely here, we are permitted to hesitate. But I do not think, that any enlightened reader would entertain any doubts as to the age and character of the scholars referred to, after perusing pages 265 to 268 of Dr. Chwolson’s memoir. In seeing them boldly give rules for the formation at will of plants and animals, affirm manifest impossibilities; in following the relation of one of them, Ankebúthá, of the manner by which he had succeeded in forming a man, and kept him alive for a year; in reading the story of another who maintains that he, too, had succeeded in the same experiment, but that the king, for political reasons, had forbidden him to repeat it;—one is tempted, I imagine, to class them, not among the ancient founders of real science, but among those more modern charlatans, who under ​cover of the formularies of a worn out science, inundate the world with idle fancies, and contribute, in a deplorable manner, to the abasement and perversion of the human intellect.
One deduction appears to me to arise from the analysis to which we have subjected “The Book of Nabathæan Agriculture,” and the other Nabathæan writings, and that is that the School to which they belong, taken altogether, cannot be anterior to the third or fourth century of our era; and that the literary movement which they suggest as earlier, does not allow us to place it before Alexander. I am far from insisting that the work of Kúthámí could not have preserved to us many most ancient fragments, remodelled in the course of time in all sorts of way. It may be that the art which it teaches in its procedure can be traced back to the most ancient epochs of ​Assyria, in the same way that the Cyrimensores Latini, recently published for the first time, have preserved to us usages and rites, which can only be explained by reference to the Brahmanas of India; and which belong, therefore, to the most ancient periods of the Arian race. The question now under discussion is a question of literary history; such questions, it is well known, are quite apart from historical criticism. In confining the problem, within these limits, I venture to believe that the proofs adduced above are conclusive. Peculiarities which mark a modern age, are found in the very heart of “The Book of Nabathæan Agriculture;” the theories of the book, taken altogether, are those of the Hellenic period; the authors cited by Kúthámí, themselves quote the Greeks; the point to which the book carries us, is that of the Sabiasm of the first centuries of our era. Before drawing this statement to a close, however, I ought, 1st, to endeavour to account for some ​of the singularities which have led Dr. Chwolson to adopt his theory; and, 2nd, to explain how the composition of such writings was possible in Babylon, at the period which I have assigned to them.
Two strange peculiarities give an undoubted appearance of solidity to Dr. Chwolson’s hypothesis: the first is the term Canaanite, applied to the reigning dynasty of Babylon at the period of the composition of “The Book of Nabathæan Agriculture;” and the second, that there are names of Babylonian kings mentioned in the “Agriculture” which are not found in any known dynasty. The assertion of Kúthámí as to what concerns the Canaanite dynasty, is not so isolated as it appears at first sight. Many Arabian historians and geographers, some of whom are anterior to the Arabic translation of “The Book of Nabathæan Agriculture,” speak of Canaanite kings reigning at Babylon, and Nemrod is expressly mentioned as the founder of this dynasty, which they connect by the most ​contradictory and absurd genealogies to Canaan, son of Ham. Nemrod, is, according to them, a title common to all the sovereigns of the Nabathæans, on which account they have made a plural to it النماردة‎‎ An Arabian geography, which M. Quatremère believes to be anonymous, but which M. Reinaud has shown to be the work of Dimeshki, enumerating the nations comprised under the name of Nabathæans, places among them the Chaldæans, Casdæans, Jenbáns, Garmæans, Kútaris, and Canaanites. M. Quatremère quotes at the same time a passage from the “Agriculture” where the Canaanites and the inhabitants of Syria are comprehended among the Nabathæans. The total want of judgment and accuracy which characterises Arabian historians, when treating of ancient history, does not however admit of any safe conclusions being drawn from these passages. ​Besides which, one fact is sure to spoil every hypothesis which might be formed from them; and that is, that the Hebrew patriarchs Anúhá and Ibrahim are called Canaanites, which would seem to make that word synonymous with Israelites. We must wait for the solution of this enquiry till the entire publication of the “Agriculture.” Two things, however, appear certain. The first, that the name of Canaanites with the Babylonians did not always refer to the ancient inhabitants of Phœnicia; and the second, that this theory of a Canaanite dynasty of which Nimrod was the founder, is of Biblical origin. “After the deluge,” says Masoudi, “mankind established themselves in different countries; such were the Nabathæans, who founded the city of Babylon, and those of the descendants of Ham, who settled in the same province, under the guidance of Nimrod, son of Kanaan, son of Sínkhárib, son of Ham, and grandson of Noah.” “The Nabathæans,” says Dimeshki, “descended from Nabit, son of ​Kanaan, son of Kúsh, son of Ham. They inhabited the province of Babylon, and had for their king Nimrod the great. The same thing is found in the Kitáb tabacáth al-úmem, the Sâid of Toledo: “The Chaldæans are a nation illustrious from the antiquity of their empire, and the celebrity of their kings, who were descended from the Nimrods the giants, of whom the first was Nimrod, son of Cúsh, son of Ham.” M. Chwolson himself thinks that Masoudi has borrowed what he says of his Nimrodian dynasty, from Christian sources. Who knows, that the name of Canaanites is not in this instance one of those ​conventional words, by which, in the East, it was often sought to escape from getting embroiled with suspected powers; something in the way in which the Jews successively designated the nations which persecuted them by the name of Edomites or Amalekites, and the capitals of nations which were hostile to them by that of Babylon. The reserve with which Kúthámí speaks of the Canaanites, confirms this hypothesis. The histories of the Jews, Samaritans, Mendaïtes, Harranians, Nosaïris, and Yezidis, offer examples of this kind of falsification. Possibly, too, many of the singular names which surprise us in “The Book of Nabathæan Agriculture,” proceed from some form of the cabbala or secret writing. The use of these forms is very ancient in the East; since we find at least two very probable examples in the text of Jeremiah.
​The names of the Babylonian kings furnished by Nabathæan writings cause at first the greatest astonishment. Here are the seventeen names of kings which I have gathered from Dr. Chwolson: Abéd-Fergílá, Bédiná, Salbamá, Harmáti, Hináfa, Kamash, Marináta, Númrúda, Kerúsáni, Kijámá, Riccána, Sahá, Shámajá, Shémúta, Súsikyá, Thibátána, Zahmuna. Only one of these names positively corresponds with those known to us elsewhere, and that is Númrúda, which, as we have seen, carries us back to a fabulous antiquity. Another name, that of Kerúsáni, may possibly, I think, correspond with pre-historical traditions. A hero, common to the literature of the Vedas, and in the Zend-Avesta, and who therefore may be carried back to ancient Arian mythology, is Kerúsaní, who, like Nimrod, ​fills the part of an archer and a hunter. It is even very possible, that Kerúsaní, like Zohak (the Persian Ajdáhák), and like Zoroaster himself, may be a personage of the Iranian mythology, adopted by Babylonia. As to the other names, they are too obscure to allow either of objections or proofs to invalidate the authority of Kúthámí. Shámajá and Súsikyá have an Hebrew look; Abed-Fergílá (עבד...אל), Salbámá, Kijámá, and Riccána, appear Shemitic. With the exception of these, it would be difficult to find a series of names which are so obscure to the philologist and the historian.
It is doubtful whether all these singularities will be explained even by an acquaintance with the entire “Book of Nabathæan Agriculture.” It is well known that one fatal circumstance throws a grievous uncertainty ​on particulars with respect to foreign nations which have adopted the Arabic alphabet. I allude to the indecisive form of certain letters; the absence of any diacritic points in proper names, or the inaccurate way in which the points are placed. All Shemitic alphabets are bad channels of transcription, owing to the absence of vowels. How then is this difficulty to be overcome, when to this source of inaccuracy, we have to add another, even more serious, that of the uncertainty as to the letters themselves; the same character, for example, being, perchance, either b, n, t, y. ​The perplexity which one experiences in certain chapters of Masoudi or Ibn-Abi-Oceibia, whenever the subject relates to Greece and Assyria, is scarcely less than that which “The Book of Nabathæan Agriculture” occasions. There are the same difficulties in seeking to establish the list of forty-two Babylonian kings, beginning with Nimrod, and ending with Darius, which is given by the first of these authors, as in finding the key to the history contained in the work of Kúthámí. The geography of “The Book of Nabathæan Agriculture,” which one would imagine must be more easy to settle, is not a bit less obscure. It is impossible to form equally sound deductions from such faulty records, as from faithful documents. Besides which, nearly the same effect is produced on historical facts by the poverty and scantiness of Arabic prose, as by their alphabet or proper names. Not one of the circumstances which they have handed down to us respecting Greece is ​recognisable. Their translations themselves are nothing more than free reproductions, accommodated to their habits of writing, and we are told expressly that all the translations of Ibn Wahshíya were dictated by him to one of his disciples, who subsequently adapted them to the taste of his times.
I would ask permission to hazard, if only under the form of a mere conjecture, a supposition which, however, it is very difficult not to entertain—I mean the possibility of a literary fraud, or some degree of bad faith, on the part of the author. Most undoubtedly the book is of an epoch which always gives rise to suspicions, and not without cause. The instance of the Desatir occurs to me, as a case in point, whether we like it or not, to confuse the mind of a critic. The hypothesis of the Desatir being apocryphal is surrounded by as many difficulties as that which declares the history fabricated upon which “The Book of ​Nabathæan Agriculture” is founded, rendering it necessary to find at some point in history, the reality of that series of sects, of prophets, and founders of religion, which the book of the Parsee enumerates. To reconcile other portions, gives rise to equal doubts. Kúthámí, like Berosus or Sanchoniathon, like Josephus, or Mar Abas Catina, or Moses Choronensis, appears to have been afflicted to the greatest degree with the faults of all Oriental writers from the time of Alexander to about our fifth century, a total want of judgment, unmeasured syncretism, silly deductions (évhémérisme), and exaggerated national vanity. Untruths, apocryphal fabrications, all sorts of confusion;—sticking at nothing, in order to establish their favourite position, proof of the high antiquity of their doctrines, and superiority of those doctrines over those of the Greeks. That position was sometimes true, at least so far as the antiquity of ​the doctrines is concerned; but the arguments brought forward to prove it, were almost always detestable. An imaginary history, formed by artful contrivances, obtained credit, and after some centuries, became an authority. From this air of folly and extravagance, which pervades ancient Babylonian histories in Arabian writers of the school of Bagdad, often led away themselves by the false method of their predecessors, “The Book of Nabathæan Agriculture” appears to have been written at the date of this apocryphal and trickish literature. The author is not a forger himself, but he appears to be misled by forgers. The true descendants of the Nabathæans, the Mendaïtes, continued until the Mussulman epoch, and almost up to our own times, to practise similar frauds, from which small communities free themselves with such difficulty. Many of their mythological personages have thus become Hebrew patriarchs. The Yezidis have ​fallen into the same errors. The Parsees, likewise, in order to elude the pursuit of Mussulman fanaticism, have more or less Shemiticised their entire mythology. The treatise of Hyde on the religion of the ancient Persians, so imperfect as a picture of the true Zoroastrian institutions, unknown at the time when Hyde wrote in 1700, but so curious as a picture of old Persian traditions disfigured by Islamism, presents at every step, names of Hebrew patriarchs, substituted for those of the heroes of Persia. Finally, the Ardaï Viraf Nameh, of the period of the Sassanides, presents the extraordinary phenomenon of a Jewish book, “The Ascension of Isaiah,” changed bodily into full-blown Mazdeism, and applied to a pretended sage, contemporary with Ardíshir Bábíkán, Ardaï Viraf. The habit of fraud and untruth which infested the East towards the close of the ​period of the Seleucides, has furnished criticism with enigmas which cannot be explained; for those natural deductions, which are so sure a guide, in considering honest productions of the mind, are entirely at fault, when dealing with these equivocal and artificial compositions, the fruit of enfeebled reason and sordid passions.
To the best of my belief, then, a very limited range must be assigned to the Nabathæan school. This school presents to us the last phase of Babylonian literature, that which extends from the first centuries of our era, or, if you will, from the period of the Seleucides or Arsacides, to the Mussulman invasion. This literature, stricken to death by Islámism, dragged out a miserable existence during the Middle Ages, among the poor sect of the Sabians, Nazoreans, or Christians of St. John, and sank to an unheard-of degree of degradation and extravagance in their writings. The works translated by Ibn Wahshíya, and the books of the Mendaïtes, are to us productions of one and ​the same literature, with this difference, that the books preserved and probably rewritten or re-modelled by the Mendaïtes have suffered from the influence of Parseeism, and followed that fatal growth of imbecility which the East was not able to resist. As to the Nabathæan language, it is no longer doubtful that it was identical with that of the Mendaïtes; and it was probably from manuscripts, analogous to those which are termed Sabian in our libraries, that Ibn Wahshíya made his translations.
Who can assert that we have here an intellectual group of which it is impossible to prove its origin and unity? Take away, to avoid the appearance of begging the question, the four Nabathæan works which have come down to us, still what Arabian writers inform us concerning the Sabians; what we know of the School of Harran, which perpetuated the traditions of the Syro-Babylonian school, improved by hard ​study, to the twelfth century of our era; what we read of science and philosophy in Arabian historians,—Sáid of Tolèdo, Mohammed Ibn Ishak, Jémal-eddín Ibn al-Kifti, Ibn Abi-Oceibia, Abúl Pharágius—on the origin of various branches of knowledge, and concerning the lives of certain philosophers who have become subjects of fiction, together with the Mussulman legends of Edris, identified with Enoch, Hermes, Otarid; a sort of scientific mythology received by all learned Arabs, and which is not of Moslem origin; all proceed, I maintain, evidently from the same homogeneous school, sui generis, the writings of which were composed in an Aramaic dialect. A host of facts prove that Babylon was the theatre of a great upheaving of ideas ​in the first centuries of our era. The Jews displayed a literary activity which, beyond doubt, did not remain shut up in the bosom of their communities. The Gnostic sects, Pérates, Elchasaïtes, etc., developed themselves with a boldness and liberty which mark at least an awakened intellect. The wrestling of the Syrian Christians—St. Ephraim, the Syrian, for instance—against the Chaldæans, presumes that Christianity found there the most formidable resistance which it had yet encountered. Finally, I do not doubt that an attentive analysis of Greek manuscripts on astrology, on genethliacs, etc., made with a preoccupation of ideas awakened by the labours of Dr. Chwolson, may show this result, that our ​libraries, in Greek no less than in Arabic manuscripts, contain considerable fragments of Nabathæan literature. I will only offer one example, because it presents the singular instance of a discovery made with extraordinary penetration, by a scholar of the great French school of the early part of the seventeenth century, and which, buried in oblivion for nearly two hundred years, has acquired an unexpected importance from the researches of modern criticism. In the preface to his treatise, De Annis Climactericis et Antiqua Astrologia (Leyde, 1648), Salmasius, after having quoted Tenkelúshá according to Nasireddín Tousi, adds: “تنكلوشا‎ autem sive Tenkelus ille Babylonius quem memorat Nasirodinus, is omnino est qui Τεῦκρος Βαβυλώνιος Græcis vocatur, et fortasse in scriptis Græcorum perperam hodie legitur Τεύκρος pro Τένκρος, idque deflexum ex illo nomine Babylonio Tenclus. Nisi sit verius Græcos ad nomen sibi familiare propter adfinitatem soni vocabulum ​Chaldæorum deflexisse, ut mos est illis. Nam Τεῦκρος Græcum nomen est, non Τένκρος nec Τένκλος.” One is struck with admiration at the quick perception of a scholar, who deduced from the aspect alone of this singular name of the author, what Dr. Chwolson, with all his tact, has failed to do from the work itself, after having read the whole of it. There is, indeed, no room to doubt that this Tenkelúshá al-Babéli of Arabic and Persian manuscripts is the Τεῦκρος Βαβυλώνιος, called also Τεῦκχρος, Teucer, Zeuchrus, Zeuchus, author of genethliacs, quoted by Psellus, by Antiochus the Apotelesmatist, and by many others, and ​of whom, at least, extracts exist in our collections of Greek manuscripts. The contents of these extracts tally precisely with what we know, from Dr. Chwolson, of the work of Tenkelúshá. All tends to the ​belief that the true name of this Helleno-Babylonian was Τεῦκρος, and that Tenklúsh is an alteration. What proves this, and gives, at the same time, a remarkable confirmation to the preceding opinion, is, that in the Kitáb el-fihrist, by the side of Tenklus, figures a طينقروس‎=Tincrus, whose legend has a wonderful resemblance to that of Tenklus, and to whom a work is ascribed identical in title with that of Tenklus. It is evident that these two authors are but one and the same, and that their names represent two forms of the primitive Τεῦκρος. There is nothing surprising in such a name, when borne by a Babylonian sage, since in ​the work of Said, entitled Kitáb tabacáth al-úmen, we find a Babylonian scholar figuring as Istéfan al-Babéli, whom the Arabian author places confidently in the times of Jethro, in spite of his Greek name and Christian prefix of Stephanus. If some Hellenistic scholar were to take the trouble of carefully examining the Greek manuscripts on astrology and magic which have come down to us, I have no doubt that he would find there a host of texts, really Babylonian, kindred to those to which Dr. Chwolson has drawn our attention.
From all this we may deduce, I imagine, a complete idea of the intellectual state of Babylonia, in the first centuries of our era; but it will not, as Dr. Chwolson believes, furnish us with science at all equal to that of the Greeks. What was deficient in this movement was neither activity nor extent; it lacked earnestness and method. If we seek to appreciate, as a whole, the part which Babylon took in the grand work of ​civilization, we are astonished to find all the productions of the Babylonian mind tainted by one radical vice. Judicial astrology, sorcery, a branch of gnosticism, and the first germs of the Cabbala—such are the wretched gifts which Babylon has presented to the world. There is no doubt that Babylon is gravely responsible for the enfeeblement of the mind in the first centuries of our era, and that the epidemic of superstition and chimerical science, which prevailed at that epoch, must, in a great measure, be set down to Chaldæan influence. It is certainly possible that Babylon may have possessed real science, before the time at which she devoted herself to this unhappy propagation of error. Judicial astrology leads to the belief of an earlier regular astronomy; magic, which pretends to direct the secret forces of Nature, presupposes a certain development of the physical sciences. But we ​cannot allow ourselves to doubt that Babylonian studies had greatly degenerated at the time of the Seleucides; one cannot, in fact, conceive that Babylonia should have spread abroad nothing but chimerical science, had she possessed a sound philosophy. We cannot, then, shut our eyes to the exaggeration of the part which Dr. Chwolson ascribes to Babylonia in the history of the human mind. Rectitude of thought, surety of judgment, exclusive love of truth—without which science cannot keep itself from degenerating into routine, and interested self-complacency—are the essential qualities of philosophical creation. It is because she possessed these qualities, to a degree of originality which constitutes genius, that Greece holds a place in the education of the mind, of which it is not probable that she will ever be dispossessed.
* ↑ M. Weyers had previously given this bibliographical information most fully. (“Specimen criticum exhibens locos Ibn Khacanis,” Lugd. Bat., 1831, pp. 100, 101, note.
* ↑ M. Barbier de Meynard has kindly communicated to me the following information on this subject: “The accounts furnished by Mahometan chroniclers as to the origin of Kazvin, will not allow our assigning a date to this city anterior to the Christian era. The national vanity of the Persians, we know, neglects no occasion of placing the founding of their old capital cities in the obscurity of primitive ages. Their historians have adopted a naive form on this point, which constitutes at once the disorder and the vitality of their memorials. They attribute the foundation of such towns as Balkh, Rhages, Susa, etc., to the mythical kings Taomurs and Houchgen of the fabulous dynasty of the Pichdadiens. The silence which they preserve as to Kazvin has, therefore, a significance which criticism cannot ignore. A very popular cosmographer in the East, Hamd-Allah, of Kazvin, has compiled a sketch of his native city, for which he has consulted local legends no less than the writings of his predecessors. Among the records that he brings forward, one only quotes Shahpúr, son of Ardéchir (Sapor I.), as the founder of a little town named Shadpúr, which was the cradle of Kazvin. Hamza of Ispahan names Behram I., without resting his assertion on any proof. On the contrary, Shahpúr Zúl-Aktaf (Sapor II.) is almost universally considered as the founder of this city. That prince, wishing to subdue his warlike neighbours, before attacking the Roman empire, constructed a fortified town, about A.D. 330, a sort of outpost destined to hold the hordes of Deïlem in awe. The ruins, of which (Hamd-Allah) Kazvini has not ventured to fix the date, have doubtless no other origin. In a word, from such scanty evidence of the Oriental traditions, as well as the absolute silence of the Greek historians, one is justified in coming to the conclusion that the opinion which would assign a remote antiquity to Kazvin only rests on doubtful documents or on merely gratuitous conjectures.
* ↑ P. 136 ff.
* ↑ Pp. 99, 136, 156 ff.
* ↑ P. 132.
* ↑ Pp. 150, 150 ff.
* ↑ P. 31 ff.
* ↑ P. 165 ff.
* ↑ In the Sanscrit Pantchatantra is allusion to similar pseudoscience. See Benfey’s Pantschatantra, fuenf Buecher Indischer Fabelu, vol. II. p. 332 ff. Translator’s Note.
* ↑ See Berosi Fragmenta, l. init.
* ↑ Chwolson, pp. 67-68; Quatremère, pp. 57-58, 62.
* ↑ Introd. à la Géographie d’Aboulféda, p. 150 ff.
* ↑ Quatremère, pp. 62-63.
* ↑ P. 61.
* ↑ Quatremère, pp. 56, 57, 62.
* ↑ Here is the entire passage, according to the MS. of M. Schefer, p. 19: وامّا الامّة الثالثة وهم الكلدانيون فكانت امّة قديمة الرياسة نبيهة الملوك كان من النماردة والجبابرة الذين اوّلهم النمرود بن كوس بن حام باني اعجول (؟) الذي ذكره الله في كتابه العزيز فقال‎, etc. According to the passage in the Koran, xvi. 28. The plurals جبابرة‎ and نماردة‎ formed, after the same analogy, from גִּבֹּר and נִמְרֹד (Gen. x. 8-9), betray in themselves a biblical origin. Some lines below there is, in the Said, the identical genealogies given by Masoudi.
* ↑ Since the completion of this memoir, I have received some communications from M. Kunik, Member of the Academy at St. Petersburgh, which confirm me in this hypothesis. M. Kunik is tempted to believe that the Mussulmans appear in the “Agriculture” under some pseudonyme. He has taken up some extremely ingenious views as to the part which must there be assigned to Gnosticism. He thinks (and a similar idea had already occurred to me) that Jesus Christ is concealed under the name of Azada; that Saturn arrayed in black (Chwolson, pp. 115, 135) is the God of the Jews, the Sathaneal of the Anti-Christian gnostics; that the pretended Babylonian anchorites (Chwolson, p. 159) are Christian monks; so that the antipathy of the Gnostics to the Christians betrays itself in many places.
* ↑ Weber, Indische Studien, II. pp. 313-314; Kuhn, Die Herabkunft des Feuers, pp. 131, 138 ff., 146, 147, 171 ff.
* ↑ Compare the name of the Babylonian sage Ναβουριανός (נבודיחן) in Strabo, (XVI. i. 6). But this name of Riccána, according to Prof. Chwolson, must be much more modern than the others, and of the period of the Arsacides.
* ↑ The name of ىىىوساد‎, for instance, which previously was read: Yanbúshádh, at the time when “The Book of Nabathæan Agriculture” came to the knowledge of the Jews in the 12th century (v. ante, p. 7), and which would give the key to the problem, if it could be clearly ascertained—this Yanbúshádh, in fact, should be a personage whom we know under some other name,—is susceptible of such a variety of renderings, that we may say that the forms or letters of which it consists are of no value. The first three forms may be taken each for four different letters; the و‎ which follows them is easily confounded with the ر‎; the three forms of the ﺱ‎ may be like the strokes at the beginning, three different letters, each reading in four ways; the ا‎ is often confounded with the ل‎ and the د‎ with the ر‎‎.
* ↑ Pp. 15-16.
* ↑ See, for fuller details, my Mémoire sur Sanchoniathon, in the Mémoires de l’Acad. tome XXIII. 2nd part, p. 317 ff.
* ↑ Chwolson, Die Ssabier, I. p. 651.
* ↑ Chwolson, Die Ssabier, I. p. 648 ff.
* ↑ Hist. Religionis Vett. Persarum, eorumque Magorum, etc. Lond. 1760.
* ↑ See Histoire Générale des Langues Sémitiques, l. III., c. ii, sect. 82.
* ↑ See the learned work of M. Chwolson: Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, St. Petersburgh, 1856.
* ↑ This source, less known than the others, will appear one of the most important, when M. Schefer has published the Kitáb tabacáth ul-úmem, of which he possesses a manuscript, the only complete one, I believe, in Europe.
* ↑ Journal Asiatique, March-April, 1854, p. 263; August-Sept., 1854, pp. 181, 187-188; Bar Hebræi Chron. Syriacum, pp. 176-177 of the text; pp. 180-181 of the translation.
* ↑ On the various Schools of Babylonia, and on the Babylonian sages, Cidénas, Nabúriánus, Sudínus, Séleucus, see Strabo (XVI. i. 6); Pliny (VI. xxx. 6); the Kitáb el-fihrist (Zeitschrift der Morgenl. Gesellschaft, 1859, p. 628); the work before cited of Saïd (pp. 21-22 of the MS. of M. Schefer). See also Stanley, Histoire de la Philosophie Orient., p. 14 ff. Brucker, Historia Critica Philosophiæ, I. p. 130 ff. Unfortunately the dates put us completely at fault here.
* ↑ Bp. Jeremy Taylor hence calls Ephraim, the Syrian, the Destruction of Heresies.—Translator’s note.
* ↑ This preface is not paged; the catch word of the leaf is c. 3.
* ↑ The work of Tenkelúshá is often represented as a book of paintings by the Arabs and Persians (See Chwolson, p. 140 ff. Hyde, de Vett. Pers. Bel., pp. 282-283). This is easily understood, on looking at the manuscripts on genethliacs still in rogue in the East (our Paris manuscript, Supplément Turc, No. 93, for instance). The numerous illustrations with which they are decorated make them resemble albums at the first glance.
* ↑ See Salmasii Opera Critica, præf. leaf, c; and his Exercitationes Plinianæ in Solinum (Paris, 1629), pp. 654-655; Brucker, Historia Crit. Philos. t. I. p. 130; Fabricii Biblioth. Græca, Harles, tom. IV pp. 148, 166; Paradoxographi Westermanni, præf. p. 47 ff.; Miller, Journal des Savants, Oct., 1839, p. 607, note. M. Miller has pointed out to me other quotations from the same author in the great astronomical compilation contained in the MSS. 2420, 2424 of the Bibliothique Imperiale (fol. 82 of the 2nd part of the first manuscript, and fo. 31 of the second), and in the abridgement of the Thesaurus Talism. of Antiochus, abridged by Rhétorius (No. 1991 of the Bibl. Imp., fol. 118). The quotation from Porphyry, mentioned by Salmasius and Westermann, is erroneous: the work which they had in view is by this Antiochus. (See Fabricii Bibl. Græca, Harles, tom. IV. pp. 151, 166; tom. V. p. 741). I do not know why Fabricius proposes to identify Teucer with Lasbas.
* ↑ In particular one fragment entitled Τεύχρου Περὶ τῶν παρανατελλόντων, in the grand astrological collection of manuscripts 2420, 2424 of the Bibl. Imp. fol. 89 of the 3rd part of the first, fol. 134 of the 5th part of the second. This second reference corresponds with that of Labbe, Nova Bibl. MSS. Libror. (Paris, 1653), p. 278. The same fragment is mentioned by Bandini (Catal. Codd. Gr. Bibl. Laurent. II. col. 60, No. xiii.), under this title: Ηερὶ τῶν παρανατελλόντων τοῖς ιϐ ζῳδίοις κατὰ Τεῦκρον. It appears more fully in the manuscript of Florence. M. Miller, to whom I addressed myself to discover the manuscript cited by Labbe, and to whom I owe the preceding information, adds the following note: “According to the passage of Michel Psellus, quoted by Salmasius (Exerc. Plin. p. 654), without saying from whence he took it, and which I have also found in the Greek manuscript 1630, fol. 228, Teucer must have written many works (βιβλίων), among others: 1st, Περὶ τῶν ἐν οὐρανῷ ζῳδίων; 2nd, Περὶ τῶν παρανατελλόντων (this is the work already mentioned); 3rd, Περὶ τῶν λεγομένων δεκανῶν.” We should also examine Philosophumena, cura Duncker and Schneidewin, p. 84, etc., and Bardesanus, in Cureton’s Spicil, Syriac, p. 24 ff.
* ↑ In fact, the termination úsh is that of all the Greek names which have passed into the Arabic and Persian. It is known that l and r are confounded in Babylonian, and that these two letters only make one in Pehlevi. The termination a is the Aramaic emphasis. The Kitáb el-fihrist gives the form Tenkélúsh.
* ↑ Look to the analysis of Kitáb el-fihrist given by M. Fluegel, in the Zeitschrift der Morgenl. Gesellschaft, 1859, p. 628. M Fluegel reads erroneously Tinacrius. The titles given in the Kitáb el-fihrist are: 1st, for Tenklus, كتاب الوجه الحدود‎‎; 2nd, for Tincrus, كتاب المواليد علي الوجوه والحدود‎, both of which correspond sufficiently with the Greek titles referred to above.
* ↑ Pp. 21-22 of the manuscript of M. Schefer.
* ↑ Similar results have happened to alchemy. The alchemy of the middle ages, judged according to the extravagance of the sixteenth century, was universally in the West, since the thirteenth century, a chemical labour firmly established, but which at present is allowed to lie all but forgotten in manuscripts.
* ↑ The same may be said of Egypt. Egyptian and Babylonian science appear to have had analogous destinies. Lacking that purely analytical, experimental, and rational principle which gave force to the Greek, as it still does to the modern mind, they have not been able to defend themselves from the charge of charlatanism, a term fatal to all culture which rests on anything but purely scientific researches.