viewed the valley to its uttermost border, and descried from afar, a man solitary as a willow, whose head and beard were whitened with the snow of years: in order to administer comfort he went up and gave him a hearty welcome, and after the custom of the generous, thus kindly entreated him, saying; "Oh! precious ap❝ple of mine eye! be courteously pleased "to become my guest!"-The old man consented, and getting up stept briskly forward, for he well knew the beneficent disposition of Abraham (on whom be God's blessing). The domestic compa nions of that beloved friend of God seated with reverence the poor old man: orders were issued, and the table spread, and the family took their respective stations around it: when the company began to ask God's blessing before meat, nobody could hear the stranger utter a word. Then did Abraham say to him; "Oh! sage of an"tient times! thou seemest not to be ho❝ly and devout as is usual with the aged: "is it not their duty, when they break "his bread, to call upon that Provi"dence, who has graciously bestow"ed it?" The old man replied, "I fol"low no religious rite, that has not had "the sanction of my priest of the fire!" The well-omened prophet was now made aware, that this depraved old wretch had been bred a Guetre; as an alien to his faith, he thrust him forth with scorn, for the pure abhor the contamination of the vile. From glorious Omnipotence an an gel came down, and in the harshness of rebuke called aloud,“ Oh! Abraham, for a century of years I bestowed on him "life and food, whom thou hast taken to " abominate on an hour's acquaintance; «for though he is offering adoration to "the fire, why art thou to withhold the "hand of toleration from him?" We are told by oriental writers, for the Persians claim Abraham as one of their forefathers, that the Almighty often communed with him thus, and was pleased to impart to him the secret counsels and purposes of his Providence, whence he was stiled the la Khalil Khoda, or beloved friend of God; see Isaiah xli. 8. He was the second son, according to them, of Azar; and had in his youth been educated in the idolatries of his father, who though descended from the prophets, had followed the multitude of those days to do evil, and became on their account a maker of images in the city of Bamian Balkh. But Abraham, being recalled to the true faith, went while yet a youth into his father's diculed such as came to buy them; shop, and breaking the images riwhen his father took him for chasstead of punishing him, was ditisement before Nimrod; who, inverted by his miracles and wit. After this he removed to the eastern border of the Persian empire, and was famed for his love and piety to the deity, and justice and hospitality to his fellow creatures; for which last purpose he often pitched his tents on the edge of the wilderness near the city of Haran, that he might, as the above apologue informs us, entertain 'travellers passing towards that place. Oriental scholars, who are aware of the peculiar and fierce prejudices, that the Musulmans entertained against the Guebres, cannot sufficiently admire the benevolent spirit displayed by Sadi in these and many of his apologues, where he has occasion to notice different religious sects; and many well meaning Christians might learn good manners on this head by studying such parts of his works. We may moral of such parables to our own all read, and equally apply the conduct, so as to enable us to set aside all narrow and violent prejudices, and imbibe in their room and liberal notions of toleproper rance in religious matters; particularly towards such as differ from is ceremonial; recollecting to this us perhaps in little else than what purpose that excellent maxim of our own gospel :-" Forbid him not; for he that is not against us (in the propagation of the knowledge of one only and true God,) is on our part."--Were indeed the Socrateses, the Plinys, the Fene lons, the Addisons, and the Sadis of distant ages and nations thus benevolently to talk over the subject of religion and morality, that spleen of the soul, superstition, might be cured of its gloomy brooding; and that bane of humanity, fanaticism, reduced to sobriety and reason; and the soundness and integrity of our simple, as it is superior, Christian doctrines, might all the sooner gain, what every considerate man among us would wish and hope to see, that ultimate victory over all other faiths. To the avoiding evil inclinations and practices, and to improvement in sentiments and habits of piety and virtue we cannot be indifferent, certainly without being criminal; yet we may assuredly tolerate without impatience or animosity, the errors, whether of our own dissenting sects of faith, or those of Muhammadans and idolaters, so long as their peculiar tenets are not active in sapping the foundations of our own special belief; and we ought to combat their errors only by reason, argument and truth, and not as some of us have lately done by abuse, falsehood and misrepre sentation. If in the course of such discussions the opposite parties should have opportunities of promulgating some errors, that without this provocation might have translation and refutation of the Koran (Sale's is only a copy of part of it) is an able work; but then he was a Papist, and had the worship of images and other objectionable tenets to defend, which neither Musulman nor Hindu could be ever reconciled to. The, plain faith and simple doctrine of the gospel, according to the acceptation of our best and ablest divines, may be compared to our system of British government, which required only a thorough and impartial discussion to distinguish the licentiousness, which wild theorists and hot-headed enthusiasts have at different times inculcated from true liberty; and a memorable example of this has in the temporary madness of the French revolution passed in review before the eyes of mankind, and may deter other governments. for some time from meddling with their constitutions. prius: there is nothing new under I was first made aware of by pro- remained within their own narrower sphere, as this would nevertheless lead to a freer and more open inquiry, so it were the most likely and best means of combating the obstinate part of them with success, and of converting the reasonable. In our own now extensive settlements in the East-Indies, (and where can we fix a limit to those settlements, and the liberality of our governments there ?) we have readier means of making converts than any other Christian nation; and from the liberality of the Bri-Hadis or tradition of the protish press, abler vindications of the Old and New Testaments have been published in England than in all the world beside. Maracci's "Karun, (the Korah of our Scriptures, Numb. xiv.) was notorious for his riches and stinginess; and there is a phet (Muhammad), that Moses the cousin of Karun had the divine permission to punish this wickedness. Accordingly, in the midst of his kindred and wealth, to sit down; but observing that the old man eat and prayed not, nor begged for a blessing on his meat, he asked him why he did not worship the God of heaven? The old man told him; he worshipped the fire only, and acknowledged no other God: at which answer, Abraham grew so zealously angry, that he thrust the old man out of his tent, and exposed him to all the evils of the night, and an unguarded condition. When the old man was gone, God called to Abraham, and asked him, where the stranger was? He replied, "I thrust him away, Moses ordered the earth to open and swal- 66 σε "because he did not worship thee." God answered him and said, "I have suffered "him these hundred years, although he "dishonored me; and could'st thou not "endure him for one night, when he 66 Yet if Sadi was in this instance a plagiary, men of no contemptible literature have ourselves among made free with his story of Abraham. One indeed restores it to the Jewish Talmud, from which Muhammad had no doubt taken it; for the historical part of his Koran is chiefly borrowed from that, our Scrip-ed by the God of Abraham!" tures, and the twenty-one Nosks or canons of Zartasht; and the conscionsness of his theft made his immediate followers so savage with the Guebres, Jews and Christians : Sadi's other debtor for this apologue claimed it as his own, after having amused himself for years by imposing it on his clerical friends as a portion of Scripture. The first is that excellent Bishop of Down and Conner, Jeremy Taylor, who had he needed the lesson himself, lived in an age of calamity of Church and State, sufficient to have taught humility to the proudest dignitary among us; and died in 1667. gave thee no trouble?" Upon which, saith the story, Abraham fetched him back again, and gave him hospitable entertainment and wise instruction." The worthy Bishop adds:-" Go and do thou likewise, and thy charity shall be reward He says at the conclusion of a chapter of his Liberty of Prophesying: I end with a story I find in the Jewish Books:-"When Abraham sat at the door of his tent, according to his custom, waiting to entertain strangers, he espied an old man, stooping and bearing on his staff, weary with age and travel, coming towards him, who was a hundred years of age. He received him kindly, washed his feet, provided supper and caused him A Dr. Franklin's imitation of Sadi's apologue I shall not here quote, as it is to be met with in so many late periodical works. In his well-known story of the Whistle, the Doctor has also copied verbatim another apologue of Sadi's Bustan ix. 13; but as that book has not to my knowledge been translated into any language of Europe, I cannot fancy through what channel he got them. comparison may be drawn between all the three apologues of Abraham's intolerance, and notwithstanding its priority of date, and the lameness of my verbal translation, I cannot doubt to which the man of taste will give his preference. In all the three, Abraham is represented as comfortable in his domestic circle, grateful for the benefits of Providence, and hospitable to strangers; but from an ignorant zeal he is also represented as instigated to an act of intolerance, which the deity notices and reproves. So far the parable is complete, having a beginning, a mid *dle and an end; and I cannot but admire both the Bishop's and Doctor's oriental phraseology and happy imitation of the narrative simplicity of the original; but actuated by our European taste of amplifying their subject, the Bishop proceeds in the detail of bringing the old man back, and the Doctor adds to it the particulars of Abraham's punishment; and thus both destroy the unity and integrity of the fable and plot, which together constitute the chief beauty of a real Persian apologue. Many think, that the stories, like the manners of the east, must undergo an ordeal to adapt them to the ideas of modern Europe; but they will find, that the point of the epigram is blunted, and that they are thus refined into a vitiated and spiritless imbecility. The abstraction of modern European philosophy, that fashion of a day, enters too much into all our translations from the Persian language; and the simplicity of sentiment and forcible diction of the original is frittered away; and thus the highly expressive is sacrificed to the neat, the pathetic to the brilliant, the strong to the frivolous, and the energetic to the clear. A writer in narrating a story expresses it either in the sentiments of another man, or in his own: the first mode is the simple narrative, and that generally is adopted in Europe; the second the dramatic, which is most consistent with the oriental idiom, and particularly with that of the Persian language. With his usual fine taste, Addison caught the real oriental knack of telling a story and has often availed himself of it in giving an English dress to the many oriental parables, with which he has decora ted the pages of the Spectator; and I shall finish with quoting two of his stories, and giving literal translations of them out of Sadi's works from which he drew them through that best of oriental travellers Sir John Chardin; and would it be be Asiatic Journ.-No. 16. lieved, that though he travelled under the patronage of our Charles the IId. we have not to this date a complete translation of his travels into English, but a valuable edition of the original was lately published in France. Sadi in his Risallah ii. Sermon 4, for like our Saviour he introduces many of his most beautiful apologues as parables; in his theological discourses, tells us that: "One day Ibrahim Adham, let the glory of God encircle his majestic state, had seated himself in the porch of his him in attendance; when, behold! a palace with all his retinue standing around his shoulders, a scrip in one hand, and a poor Dervise with a patched cloak about pilgrim's staff in the other, presented himself before him, and was making his way into the inner hall of the palace. The servants called to him and said, "Oh! "reverend Sir! where are you going?" He replied; "I am going into this pub"lic inn." The servants said; "this is "the palace of the king of Balkh." Ibra him commanded that they would bring him forward: he now said; "oh ! Der"vise! this is my palace and no Inn." The Dervise asked him saying; "oh! "Ibrahim, whose house was this origi"nally?" He replied; "it was the "house of my grandfather." The Dervise said, "when he departed this life, "whose house was it?" He replied; "it was my father's:" he said; and "when thy father also died, whose "house did it become?" he replied; “ it "became mine:" he said; "and when "thou departest, to whom will it be"long?" he replied; "it will then bethe Dervise say, long to the Prince my son!" Then did "Oh! Ibrahim a house, "which one man is after this manner en"tering and another quitting, may be an "Inn, but is the palace or fixt habitation "of no man!" cal taste has only to read and admire, and no longer be led astray by the vulgar European notion, that the language of Persian poe try is not something better than verbiage! Addison's elegant imitation may be read in No. 298 Spectator : خجل شد چو پنهاي دريا بديد يكي قطري باران زابري چکید ک جائي که دریاست من کیستم * کر او هست حقا چو خود را بچشم حقارت بدید سپهرش بجایی رسانید کار من چیستم * صدف در کنارش بجان پرورید که شد نامور لولوئي شاهوار بلندي از آن یافت کو پست شد * در نیستي کوفت تا هست شد A solitary drop of water, as it was falling from a cloud, blushed when it saw the huge extent of the sea: saying,— *Where the ocean exists, what place is " left for me to occupy, if that immense "body of water be present, my God! "what an inconsiderable atom of matter am I?" While it was after this manner reviewing itself with an eye of humility, an oyster took it into the bosom of its shell, and nourished it with its whole soul: the revolution of fortune raised it into an exalted station, for it ripened into a precious pearl, and became the chief jewel of the imperial diadem of Persia: it rose into dignified eminence, because its walk was humble, and knock'd at the gate of annihilation, till it was ushered into an illustrious existence. In my next I shall offer some extracts from the Persian poets to show how handsomely the Musulmans speak of our blessed Saviour, and with what charity also even of Popish Christians, whom they must of course consider as idolaters: being, &c. GULCHIN NARRATIVE OF A VOYAGE TO COCHIN CHINA, IN 1778. By Mr. Chapman.-(Continued from p. 231.) ON our leaving Tringano, I requested Captain Maclennan, the commander of the Amazon, to be as particular in his observations upon the coast, its forts, and harbours, as our stay and situation might admit of; and to form charts of the most remarkable parts. I was induced to do this, from the general utility of such observations, and from a conviction of the ability of the person I applied to, being a man of science and mathematical knowledge in his profession; but a severe disorder, which in a short time deprived him of his life, frustrated my wishes. We were but a little more than two days from Pullo Ubi to Cambodia river. The point of Cambodia as well as the whole coast from thence to the mouth of the western branch of the river, is covered with underwood and exceedingly low. The water is so shallow, that, at the distance of five or six miles from the shore, it is rarely more than four fathoms. The small vessel, our consort, in repeated attempts, made by the commander, could never approach the shore nearer than within two or three miles; few inhabitants appeared, and only two boats near the entrance of the river. Our boat was sent to speak with them; but the people, proving to be poor Chinese fishermen, were not able to understand our Cochin Chinese linguist. The 24th of June we cast anchor in sight of the mouth of the west channel of Cambodia river, between three and four * Lat.. 30' N. from hence in a clear day you may see PuloCondore, which lies in Lat. 8°. 40' N. |
