“We are gone, and we took a separate corner of a sepulchre, That our bones might not be a burden to any body’s shoulder.”
This class of men have not their equals in enchantments, juggling, spells, and magic. Their king, if his mother be not of royal blood, is by them called _Arghún_, and not considered their true king; whoever of this sect belongs to the worldly people, does not abstain from killing animals, eating flesh and meats forbidden by religion, and associates with every body in eating. When the author of this book conversed with a learned man of this sect by means of an interpreter, whenever a question about some subtilty occurred, the translator could not always by his interpretation satisfy him.
“Without possessing the tongue, it is strange to make a friend by means of the tongue.”
[480] (T)_kon_(M)_tchog_, “the chief of the rarity, the rarest being, God.”――(Dict. Tibetan and English, by Alexander Csoma de Körös, p. 66, col. 2, l. 13.)
[481] [(M)_tchod_-(R)_ten_, “a chapel, a temple.”――(Dict. of Csoma de Körös.)
[482] We find in a treatise entitled “The Sage and the Fool,” making part of the Kahgyur, one of the principal religious works of the Tibetans, that a brahman, not satisfied with his disciple, and desirous of causing his ruin, gives him the following advice: “Keep thyself pure during seven days; cut off the heads of a thousand men; take a single finger of each, to make thyself a rosary; and thou shalt undoubtedly, after thy death, be born again in the substance of Brahma.”――(See Mr. Schmidt’s Tibetan Grammar.)
[483] We read in “Turner’s Embassy to Tibet,” that, at a religious ceremony, a priest played a sort of flute made of the bone of a man’s leg.――(French Transl., p. 61.)
The last four notes have been obligingly furnished to me by M. Foucaud, professor of the Tibetan language in Paris.
From the book _the Dabistán_, a short account of the religion of the Yahuds, contained in two sections.
_Section the first_, the information received from the tongue of Mohammed Sâíd Sarmed.
_Section the second_, upon the translation of the page of Adam, which is the beginning of the book of Moses (the Pentateuch).
SECTION THE FIRST.――The author of this book never happened to have intercourse with learned and distinguished men among the Yahuds; and he set no value upon what he found in the books of foreigners about their religion: because envy is a corrosion and a fire, which attacks the enemy. But in the year of the Hejira 1057 (A. D. 1647), when I came to Hyder abad, I contracted friendship with _Mohammed Sâid Sarmed_, who was originally from a family of learned Yahuds, of a class whom they call Rabánián (Rabbins); after an investigation into the faith of the Rabbins and the perusal of the Mosaic books, he became a Muselman; he read the scientific works of the wise men of Iran, such as Mulla Sader, and Mír Abu-’l Kásem, of Kazer sak, and many others: at last, for the sake of commerce, he undertook by sea the voyage to Hindustan. When he arrived in the town _Tata_,[484] he fell in love with a Hindu boy, called Abhi Chand, and, abandoning all other things, like a Sanyási, naked as he came from his mother, he sat down before the door of his beloved. The father of the object of his love, after having found by investigation the purity of the attachment manifested for his son, admitted Sarmed into his house, and the young man too met him with an equal affection, so that he could no more separate from him, and he read the book of Moses, the psalms of David, and other books with Sarmed. The following verses are the composition of this young Hindu: