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hours. The third day, about ten A.M., we arrived at Bir Ambar, and tasted the sweet water of the Nile. When did I think water so sweet before! for two days we had been drinking it oily, putrid, and saline, from the skins.

Bir Ambar is a village, and near it a few acacias, which were now in full blossom. To us this was Elysium. We reclined beneath the trees, and sipped water. The day was hot, so we bathed. Refreshed, we continued our journey with the Nile in sight, on our left, and at sunset we were established in a small karavanserai in Genah.

The distance from Cosseir to Bir Ambar is about ninety-eight miles; along this whole tract there is no palatable water. A low range of hills binds the road, for the first seventy miles, on either side. Not a shrub of the hardiest description is to be met with; bare sterile rocks, without even a vestige of moss, is the only scenery. About Legata the country opens, and we entered vast sandy plains, which continue to the Nile. Half-way between Legata and Bir Ambar, the traveller gets his final view of the Nile-the golden Nile. He sees its placid water meandering, with its fringe of verdure, through an interminable desert. This view is only to be had for a few hundred yards, for the road again descends. We met with a few Arabs of the Ababdee tribe: their dark swarthy features, darker by many shades than the real Arab, spoke of a warmer country than even Arabia. They were living in tents, in the most wretched condition, and were unable to supply us with milk.

The heat was intolerable. The heated rocks on either hand reflected the vertical sun's heat upon us as from two focuses. We wore sandals, and our feet, which had been bare for months, were burnt, blistered, and swelled. If we exposed the skin of our hands or faces for a moment, they suffered likewise. The road is of hard gravel, equal to any Macadamized one; and gigs or carriages might be driven upon it. H. A. O.

THE CAST-AWAY.

OH! had I the wing of that albatross, skimming
The bleak naked peaks o'er that surf-beaten cave;
Oh! had I the wing of these shoal fishes, swimming
Beneath the white crest of that high-breaking wave;
How glad would I stretch from this desolate shore

To the scenes of my boy-days, my dear native home!
Oh! blest be the day when the bold Briton's oar

Shall dash to our rescue through broad sheets of foam!
'Mongst these rocky masses our drown'd friends are sleeping,
The planks of our stout ship are strew'd on the strand;

On these sandy hillocks our sea-mates are weeping

For lost friends, for home friends, for dear native land.

Whilst houseless and hungry, whilst naked and fainting,
I sit on the watch-tower and gaze from the steep,
In fancy the form of some passing sail painting,

But nought but the broken wave varies the deep;
And nothing is heard but the hoarse ocean roaring,
The howl of the rough blast along the wild shore :
The scream of the sea-fowl, the hail-shower pouring;
And sighs for the forms we may visit no more.
Roll on, thou dark Ocean, till stretch'd in that cave,
Where no broken slumbers its inmates shall know ;
Let festoons of weed deck my shell-cover'd grave,
And sea-birds float over its tenant below.

Calcutta.

OOMANOONDA.

ON THE ZEND.

Ir is said that the merry monarch, Charles II., proposed this question to the Royal Society: "If a live fish be placed in a basin full of water, why does not the water run over?" The members of that learned Society immediately began to discuss that question, and several hypotheses were proposed for explaining and accounting for the alleged phenomenon. At length, one of the members suggested, that it might be as well to ascertain whether the circumstance stated by his Majesty was a real fact. A ́live fish was accordingly placed in a basin full of water, and the water of

course ran over.

This anecdote was forcibly recalled to my recollection when I recently read the "Mémoire sur deux Inscriptions Cunéiformes" and the "Commentaire sur le Yaçna" of M. Eugene Burnouf. For, however convinced M. Burnouf may be of the genuineness of the Zend as a language, he must be aware that several writers are of opinion that the words of which the Vendidad is composed do not belong to any language which was ever spoken by any people; and that, on the contrary, they were entirely invented by the Guebre or Parsi priests. This opinion, therefore, should surely have been discussed and refuted before M. Burnouf expressed himself in such positive terms as these: "Mais aujourd'hui les doutes, qu'on a élevés sur l'authenticité de la langue Zende, ne sont plus permis ; et il faut bien admettre que cette langue a vécu quelque part en Asie, puisqu'au v siecle avant notre ère, elle avait commencée à veiller en Perse."* For M. Burnouf himself states: "Vers la fin du xiv siecle de notre ère, la copie du Vendidad qu'ils (les Parses du Guzerate) avaient apportée avec eux, était déjà perdue. Ce fut un Destour, nommé Ardeshir, qui vint du Sistan dans le Guzerate, et qui donna aux prêtres un exemplaire du Vendidad, avec la traduction Pehlvie. On en tira deux copies, et c'est de ces deux copies que viennent tous les Vendidads Zends et Pehlvis que l'on trouve dans l'Inde." It will hence be obvious that the authenticity of the Vendidad, and the genuineness of the language in which it is written, must depend entirely on such a work and such a language being found in some part of Persia. But this has not been yet proved, and, on the contrary, Chardin has remarked: "Quant à l'ancien Persan, c'est une langue perdue; on n'en trouve ni livres ni rudimens. Les Guebres, qui sont les restes des Perses ou Ignicoles, qui se perpétuent de père en fils depuis la destruction de leur monarchie, ont un idiome particulier; mais on le croit plutôt un jargon que leur ancienne langue. Ils disent que leurs prêtres, qui se tiennent à Yezd, ville de la Caramanie, qui est leur Pirée, et leur principale place, se sont transmis cette langue jusqu'ici par tradition, et de main en main; mais quelque recherche que j'en aye faite, je n'ai rien trouvé qui fut me persuader cela.”†

It is thus admitted that the Parsis of Guzerat had lost the copies of the Vendidad which they brought with them to India before the fourteenth cenVoyages en Perse, &c., vol. ii, p. 105.

• Mémoire sur deux Inscriptions Cuneiformes, p. 165.

tury of the Christian era, and that all the copies of it now in their possession have originated since that period in some manner or other, and it is not proved that the original of those copies was brought from Persia. These circumstances alone might have led M. Burnouf to hesitate before he asserted that the results of his researches establish that the words of which the Vendidad is composed belong to a language of high antiquity, a considerable part of which is contemporary with the primitive dialect of the Vedas.* His own statement, also, must show that, with whatever discernment it may be applied, the method which he has adopted in those researches can never produce the least degree of certainty; for he says: "La comparison des mots identiques ou presque identiques en Zend et en Sanscrit, par exemple, m'avait donné un certain nombre des lois de permutations de lettres, lois dont la certitude est d'autant plus grande qu'elle repose sur un plus grand nombre d'observations, et qu'elle a sa raison dernière dans la constitution propre de l'organ vocale."+ For "la constitution de l'organe vocale" differs among different people, and nothing can be more dissimilar than the euphony of the Sanscrit and the harshness of the Zend; and, entirely arbitrary as a method depending on the permutation of letters must always be, it is in this case quite inapplicable, as neither the number nor the real pronunciation of the Zend letters has been determined. The late Professor Rask has, at the same time, remarked: "In fact, I scarcely recollect ever meeting with a single word in Zend agreeing altogether with Sanscrit ;" and in Anquetil du Perron's list of 664 Zend words, I can find only eighty-three which bear the least resemblance to Sanscrit. By permutation of letters, however, the words of one language may be easily identified with the words of another language; but such a capricious and forced manner of identifying words together can never produce conviction, nor prove the affinity of Zend with Sanscrit.

M. Burnouf has even observed: "Nous pouvons donc admettre comme établi, que le système d'écriture qui occupe le premier rang sur les monumens de Persépolis est d'origine Sémitique;"§ and yet he equally affirms: "Nous pouvons donc affirmer positivement, malgré l'opinion contraire de M. Grotefend, que la langue qui occupe le premier rang sur les inscriptions Persé politaines n'est pas le Zend des livres de Zoroastre. Mais nous pouvons dire, en même temps, que cette langue appartient à la même souche que le Zend; qu'elle s'en rapproche plus que de l'idiome des Brahmanes; enfin qu'elle a son caractère propre, que l'on ne peut méconnaitre. Ce caractère nous parait être celui d'un dialecte dérivé, dont les formes grammaticales tendent de s'éffacer de plus en plus."|| The characteristic, however, of Semitic languages is, that the consonants are the essential elements of words, and the omission, consequently, of the vowels in writing is easily supplied by the habit of speaking those languages; but the vowels, on the contrary, are so essential to the words of Sanscrit, and of the languages in affinity with it, that, were they omitted in writing, the word could not be + Ibid., p. xxix.

* Commentaire sur le Yaçna, pp. xxviii, xxix.
Transactions Royal Asiatic Society, vol. iii. p. 537.
§ Mémoire, p. 160.
Ibid., p. 163.

recognized. Defective, also, as most alphabetical systems are, no instance can be produced of any people having adopted an alphabetical system which was incapable of expressing the words of their language when written in an intelligible form. The Persians have adopted a foreign

alphabet, the Arabic; but they have altered the sounds of several letters, and also added several letters, to express sounds unknown to that language; and had, therefore, the ancient inhabitants of Persia borrowed a Semitic alphabet, it seems unquestionable that they would only have adopted it with similar alterations. If, consequently, the language of cuneiform inscriptions is a dialect of Zend, and related to Sanscrit, as M. Burnouf supposes, all the Sanscrit or Zend vowels ought to be found in those inscriptions, and no decypherment of them can in consequence be received as correct, which proceeds on the assumption that the vowels have been omitted, either wholly or partially, in the words of which those inscriptions are composed. It is, indeed, very possible that vowels may be interchanged, and that even a syllable may be contracted by the omission of a vowel; but in such case the word would be easily recognized, as the Sanscrit words are in the dialects of India, and it is therefore quite unnecessary to have recourse to a Semitic alphabetical system for the decypherment of cuneiform inscriptions, if they be written in a language which bears affinity to Sanscrit.

It must, at the same time, be admitted, that before it can be determined that any form of speech or writing is merely a dialect of a particular language, it is indispensable that that language should be fully known and understood; but M. Burnouf does not deny that the Zend has long ceased to be a living language, and that the only proof of its ever having existed is contained in a few fragments of books which have been preserved by the Guebres of Persia from the fifth century before the Christian era; for he admits, as above remarked, that the Parsis of Guzerat lost the copies of those fragments which they brought with them to India. Instead, therefore, of remarking with Professor Rask, that, "As to the authenticity of the Zendavesta, it seems to stand or fall with the antiquity and reality of the language in which it is written "-it would surely be most correct to maintain that the reality of the language must stand or fall with the authenticity of the Zendavesta; because the Zend is no longer spoken, and no trace of its existence can be discovered in any other language; for it is in vain to contend, with Professor Rask, that "In modern Persian a considerable number of radical words are derived from Zend, not Sanscrit, which phenomenon cannot be easily accounted for, if the Zend were a foreign language never spoken in Persia :' since there is no reason whatever to suppose that, for instance, the Persian asman was derived from the Zend açman-P. mard from Z. marelo-P. chashm from Z. Cashma-P. ziban from Z. zafano-P. shah from Z. Ksahyo; or the Sanscrit Ashwa from Z. aspo-S. bhumi from Z. bumie-S. stri from Z. stree-S. putra from Z. potre-S. pati from Z. paitis; but it is much more probable,

• Transactions Royal Asiatic Society, vol. iii. p. 532.

that when Sanscrit and Persian words appear in Zend, these words have been borrowed from those languages by the fabricators of the pretended language in which the Zendavesta is written; for, were this not the case, it seems inexplicable how there should be no more than ninety-three Persian words in the list of 664 Zend words given by Anquetil du Perron ; when it is considered that at least three-fourths of Latin are preserved in Italian, and four-fifths of Anglo-Saxon in English, and that, consequently, if Zend had been the ancient language of Persia, which had been superseded by Persian, much more than one-sixth of Zend words ought to be found in Persian even at the present day.* This circumstance alone must, therefore, show that the appearance of Sanscrit and Persian words in the jargon of the Zendavesta is so far from proving the antiquity and reality of Zend, that it, on the contrary, strongly supports the opinion, that the words in which the Zendavesta is written never belonged to a language spoken by any people.

Professor Rask has also remarked: "I am equally far from pretending that all the Zend fragments we now have are the genuine works of Zoroaster himself, but only that they were all of them composed before Alexander, or immediately after his conquest. Till that event, I imagine, the Zend was still a living language, and some prayers, liturgical forms, &c. might easily be composed by the priests long after the prophet was deceased; but after the conquest, a great confusion took place: the old language was lost, the religion neglected, the sacred text was to be translated; and it seems impossible that any correct piece should have been composed in such an obscure ancient dialect, or, if it were composed, that it should get such an authority and currency, not only among the priests, but in every private devotion of the common people."+ Professor Rask has thus given up the authenticity of the Zendavesta, although he maintained "that the Zend was the old popular language, at least of a great part of Iran;" and that the fragments of the works ascribed to Zoroaster, now in the possession of the Parsis, are written in that language. But the conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great took place more than two thousand years ago, and nine hundred years afterwards, that country was not only conquered by the Arabs, but its inhabitants even converted to the faith of Muhammad. If, therefore, the sacred writings of the followers of Zoroaster had been reduced, on the previous conquest of Persia, to some prayers, liturgical forms, &c., it would require the strongest testimony to render it in the slightest degree credible, that such fragments could have escaped destruction on the second conquest, and when the inhabitants were converted to a new religion. This obvious difficulty becomes the more insurmountable from the maintainers of the genuineness of the Zend also contending for the genuineness of the Pahlvi, another pretended language, into which it is said that the Zendavesta was translated in more modern times. For M. Burnouf observes: "Ce fut donc sur la connaissance du Pehlvi que reposa

* See Colonel Kennedy's Researches into the Affinity of Languages, pp. 172 et seq.

↑ Transactions Royal Asiatic Society, vol. iii. p. 539.

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