ANALYSES OF EASTERN WORK S.

No. I. THE ROZAT AL SOFA.

THE histories of the East, and especially of Mohamedan countries, as written by professors of that faith, may be divided into three classes-the fabulous, or those in which fable so manifestly predominates as almost wholly to destroy their value; those in which fable is mixed with truth in varying proportions; and those which may be relied on as authentic. As most oriental general histories, however, go back, at least, as far as the creation of the world, they often present the singular anomaly of a writer beginning his book with a grave detail of the most puerile stories, and concluding with a philosophical history, bearing marks of most diligent and honest research, and of sound and discriminating judgment.

Of the three divisions of historical writings which we have just ventured to make, the last contains, undoubtedly, the most valuable; but we venture to pronounce that those of the second class will be found, in many respects, the most interesting. They illustrate a state of manners, of religion, and of civilization, of which they are almost the sole records; they are written in a style more exclusively oriental, and the information they give, however meagre, is precious, from the absence of more authentic documents. The period to which they relate closes with the death of Mohamed its earlier limit it would be difficult to assign with precision. A prominent point, however, is formed by the expedition of Alexander into the East; and the history of Persia, from the birth of this conqueror to that of Mohamed, as related by Emir Khuand (Mirkhond) in the Rozat al Sofa, we propose to make the subject of this essay .Our object will be rather to present an abstract of the historical narrative given by the Persian author, than to compare its agreements or discrepancies with the parallel accounts of western writers: furnishing rather materials for comparison, than digressing in order to make one. The Rozat al Sofa enjoys a high reputation in the East; it is written in an unaffected style, and is clear and lively in its details.

The historian begins his account with the life and conquests of Alexander, whom he, in common with all the historians of the East, represents as the grandson of Philip of Macedon. This king they represent as tributary to Dara, or Darius, and they state that his daughter, who had been married to the Persian monarch, was dismissed by him in disgust, in consequence of a personal defect. On her way home, she was delivered of Alexander, who was exposed by his mother, and, that the whole history may correspond in its romantic character with that part of it founded on authentic materials, he is said to have been suckled by a sheep, and subsequently brought up by a herdsman, who had seen in his form and face the evidences of a royal descent. In due course of time, the young foundling was recognized and acknowledged by his grandfather, and educated at his court. The story of the insolent demand of tribute by the degenerate Dara the second, and the spirited refusal of his Macedonian cousin to pay it, is familiar to most European readers. The consequent war between the two monarchs, and its

termination in the treacherous murder of Dara by his own dependants, are related, with few circumstances in addition to the accounts we possess from Greek and Roman writers: the conduct of Alexander, however, to his dying antagonist, and the warning of the latter to his conqueror, are described with a pathos above the ordinary style of Persian eloquence.

The murderers, we are told, were impaled, and the whole army of Alexander marched between the stakes on which they hung. The mother of Darius was treated with respect and affection, and his daughter, Rushenk, became the wife of the Macedonian hero.

The next act of Alexander is to send a letter to Pour, a king of an Indian tribe, requiring him to turn to the true faith, of which Alexander is represented as a sincere follower. Pour refuses to do this, and is attacked by Alexander; but the event of the battle is dubious: the Indian king's advantage, in the assistance of elephants and ravenous beasts, being balanced by a stratagem of his enemy, who had filled certain figures of stags and other beasts with explosive substances, which destroyed or frighted away the brute auxiliaries of Pour. In a single combat, which takes place afterwards between the two kings, Pour is slain.

The narrative of the negociation with Keyd, another Indian prince, includes a curious detail of one of those trials of ingenuity common amongst the people of the East, and of which traces may be found in the Hebrew Scriptures. Keyd professes his willingness to submit to Alexander, and sends him, as a present, the four most precious things in his possession-a cup, out of which a whole army may drink without exhausting it; a female slave, of unequalled beauty; a physician, able to cure all diseases, and even to raise the dead; and a philosopher, capable of solving the most abstruse questions. The trial of this last is thus described:

Alexander having beheld the loveliness of the rosebud of beauty, would try the skill of the philosopher, and sent him a cup full of oil. He considered this awhile, placed in it a number of needles, and again sent it to the king. He bade these needles be melted into a globe of iron, and given to the philosopher, who commanded that of this globe of iron should be formed a polished mirror, and carried into the presence of Iskender. The monarch, seeing the mirror, bade bring a basin of water, placed the mirror upon it, and commanded that this should be shown to the philosopher. When he saw it, he ordered that the mirror should be fashioned into a drinking-vessel; and this he placed in the vessel of water, so that it swam upon the top. When this was taken to Iskender, by order of the philosopher, the prince ordered that the drinking-cup should be filled with earth, and sent back to the hakim. When he saw this, he fell into loud and bitter lamentations, and lifting up his eyes to heaven, seemed absorbed in confessions of repentance and prayers for pardon, and signed to the messengers that they should take up the basin and drinking-vessel, and carry them to Iskender, which they did. Iskender was surprised at this, but no one besides knew the meaning of all these things. After some time, as Iskender was sitting in the midst of his courtiers, councillors, and wise men, he sent for the philosopher, whom he had not seen for a long time, and noting his stature and robust make, thought within himself, this athletic form has little congruity with wisdom; and if such a form is, indeed, united with acute discri

mination and ready perception, it is one of the rare chances of fortune. The philosopher, who knew by the king's countenance what were his thoughts, passed his fore-finger round his face, and placed it upon his nose. The king asked him the meaning of this action. He said: "By the light of prudence and clearness of intellect, I have discovered the king's thoughts concerning me; and the meaning of the sign I made was, that as the nose is single in the face, so am I single amongst philosophers upon the face of the earth, especially in Hindustan." Then," said the king, "tell me what was my thought in sending thee the vessel of oil, and thine in placing therein the needles." The philosopher answered: "I judged that the king would say, by sending a vessel full of oil-'my head is so full of wisdom and knowledge, that there is no room for addition to it by the questioning of wise men, as this cup has no room to receive any addition to its contents;' and I wished to intimate, by putting the needles in the cup, that it was possible that knowledge might, of another kind, yet be added to the treasured knowledge of the king, and shine on the tablet of his mind, as the needles, by their minuteness, found place in the cup of oil." "Then," Iskender said, "what was the meaning of the globe of iron, and the mirror?" The philosopher answered, “This was the purport of your sending the globe: the king's heart said- by the pouring of blood, and commanding of soldiers, my soul has become harsh and firm like this globe of iron, and is not capable of receiving the descent of the queries of philosophy;' and I would intimate, by forming it into a mirror, that though iron is hard and firm, yet by art it may be so changed, that the brilliancy of gems may be seen in it." Then Iskender asked, "What was my intention in placing the mirror in a basin of water, and your's in floating the cup on the surface of the water ?" The philosopher answered, "The king's purpose was nothing other than this: that as that which is high sinks in the depth of the water, the days of life also soon come to an end, and we cannot acquire much knowledge in a time so short; and my meaning in forming the drinking-cup was to show, that as we may by art cause a [heavy] thing to float on the surface of the water, so the acquisition of much knowledge in a short time may be accomplished by industry and assiduity." Iskender said, “I filled the cup with dust, and sent it to thee to that thou said'st nothing." The philosopher replied, "That admitted of no answer; for the king's meaning was-that the destruction of every possible thing is amongst things necessary, and the permanence of any created thing amongst things forbidden; and that the end of this weak building (of the body) is allied to that cold and heavy element, the dust."

Alexander's next embassy is to the King of Chin, who sends him rich gifts of silk, horses, gems, and porcelain vases, in token of submission. An expedition against a nation of warlike females is also noticed; but it is hinted that the conqueror declined prosecuting the war, from the reflection that victory could bring no glory, and defeat would cover him with everlasting shame. Many stories are told of the promptness of speech, generosity, and liberality of Alexander; some of them are such as are applied as common-places in the East to the character of almost every monarch, but others show a very just appreciation of the remarkable character who is the subject of the story.

In the course of his conquests, Alexander had taken prisoners many princes of India and the neighbouring countries, and was in doubt as to his treatment of them, being unwilling either to keep them in perpetual slavery,

or to shed their blood. In this emergency, he consulted his tutor, Aristotle, and was advised by him to set them at liberty, and to commit to them in trust the kingdoms he had conquered: this suggestion was followed, and the success of the measure was as great as its magnanimity deserved.

It had been prophesied that Alexander should die in a place where the heaven was of gold and the earth of brass. On a march, he was seized with a sudden bleeding of the nose, and alighting hastily from his horse, one of the guards spread his brazen coat of mail for the monarch, and held over his head the golden shield (the agyugasis of the Greek writers), which was the badge of the Macedonian body-guard. He noted this circumstance, and coupling it with the astronomer's prediction, declared that he now knew his end was approaching. He called for a scribe, and bade him write his last words to his mother, expressive of the humility which the approach of death will produce in a proud heart. And when the coffin is carried to its burial-place, and the attendant sages are requested to take this solemn occasion of speaking a word of admonition to the spectators, a disciple of Aristotle," says our history, "stepped forward, and laying upon his own head the hand of Alexander, which had been by his command left out of his coffin, that all might know how empty-handed the possessor of so much wealth had gone into the other world, he said, 'O sweet of speech and eloquent of tongue! what has made thee thus silent? and oh! in so wide a plain of wisdom and knowledge, how hast thou been driven like a careless deer into these narrow toils ?"" And in the same strain many others are described as uttering those solemn and sententious dicta, so much in harmony with the funeral of one who had been so great and powerful. His last words to his mother had been to request that a banquet should be set out on the occasion of his death, and that proclamation should be made at the beginning of the feast, that none should taste of it but those whose lives had been uniformly prosperous. When this was proclaimed, every hand was drawn back, all sat silent; and the unhappy mother saw in this tacit and affecting confession of the troubled lot of humanity, a melancholy consolation for her own individual loss.

Here occurs a long break in the history, occupied by notices of various prophets and sages, not only of Greece and of the times of Alexander, but in fact from the beginning of the world. A prominent place, however, is assigned to the real or supposed cotemporaries (for the terms are by no means identical) of the Persian monarch.

The history is resumed at the commencement of the Ashkanian dynasty (the Arsacides of the Greeks), the notices of which are extremely meagre, and are comprehended in a few pages. Indeed they seem by this account to have been rather a dominant family among the Malk al Tawaif, or petty kings of provinces, than the independent sovereigns of Persia. A similarly brief account is given of the Ashganians, a dynasty which supplanted the Ashkanians, and flourished for a while on their ruins.

With the history of the race of Sassan, founded by Ardashir Babegan, the Persian annals begin to take an authentic form, and exhibit a consider.

a

able agreement with the rival historians of the West. At the same time they add numberless minute traits of character and graphic incidentspeculiarity which gives Oriental history much of the charm of biography. Ardashir was first noticed by a viceroy of Ardavan, the last king of the Ashganian family. This nobleman had heard of Ardashir's wonderful talents, and sent for him to his court, where he grew into such favour as to be entrusted with the government of the province during the absence of his patron. Encouraged by dreams and the predictions of astrologers, Ardashir invades and conquers Azerbijan, and writes to his father Babek to rebel against the governor of Fars, and procure his death. The old man so far complies, but confers the sovereignty of the conquered province on his eldest and favourite son, Shahpour. Shahpour summons his brother to court on the death of their father, and on his refusal to obey the invitation, marches a large army against him to compel his obedience. Betrayed by his dependants, he is taken prisoner by his brother, who gradually extends the conquests thus begun over the provinces of Persia. Ardavan, who in the first instance attempts intimidation, and subsequently an amicable arrangement, is at length routed and slain, and the son of Babek assumes the crown of all Persia, with the title of Shahinshah, 'king of kings.' For the preservation of this dignity in his own family we are told he provided, by crowning his son Shahpour during his life-time.

A romantic story of the birth and education of this prince occurs in this part of our narrative. Ardashir, after destroying as far as possible the male and female progeny of the "kings of the tribes," was struck with the beauty of a young maiden, who by degrees gained a great ascendancy over him. One day she accidentally revealed to him that she was of the Ashkanian family. Now it had been prophesied to him that his crown should pass into the hands of a descendant of that family, and to defeat this prophecy he had had recourse to the barbarous policy of putting to death the whole race, as far as they were in his power, and thus he delivered the lady to his vizir, with an injunction to put her to death. Moved, however, to compassion by her unfortunate condition, and by her plea of pregnancy, the vizir spared her life, and brought up her son in all points as a prince. A querulous complaint of the old monarch, that he was leaving his kingdom to strangers, emboldened the vizir to confess the fraud he had practised, and the king received with joy a son whom he imagined had perished with his unhappy mother, and whom he found grown in appearance and character worthy of himself, and of the throne which he had to bequeath to him.

As Shahpour grew to manhood, he distinguished himself by the bravery, generosity, and justice, of which his earlier years had given promise. One of the memorable actions of his reign was the reduction of Khadr, a stronghold of Mesopotamia, in the possession of the Arabs. This fortress was betrayed to him by the daughter of the governor, who had fallen in love with him, and whom he subsequently married. Some time afterwards, the lady complained of a severe pain, which was found to arise from her having slept, like the Sybarite, on a crumpled rose-leaf, and this extraordinary