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readily for fifty dollars each; but the transaction is not considered respectable. The American, however, readily distinguishes the real article from "false scalping," by the unusual thickness of the cutis, which is more like that of a donkey than of a man; set in a plain gold circlet it makes very pretty brooches. Moreover, each tribe has its own fashion of scalping, derived from its forefathers. The Sioux, for instance, when they have leisure to perform the operation, remove the whole headskin, including a portion of the ears: they then sit down and dispose the ears upon the horns of a buffalo skull, and a bit of the flesh upon little heaps of earth or clay disposed in given ways, apparently as an offering to the manes of their ancestors, and they smoke ceremoniously, begging the Manitou to send them plenty of scalps. The trophy is then stretched upon a willow twig, bent into an oval shape and lined with two semi-ovals of black or blue and scarlet cloth. The Gutas and the Prairie tribes generally, when pressed for time, merely take off the poll-skin that grows the long tuft of hair, while the Chyuagara, or Nez Percé's, prefer a long slip about two inches wide, extending from the nape to the connection of the hair and forehead. Indians are aware of the aversion with which the pale-face regards this barbarity. Near Alkali Lake in the valley of the Plate River, where there was a large "Lakotu Tipi”— encampment of Sioux-I tried to induce a tribesman to go through the imitation process before me; he refused with a gesture, indignantly repudiating the practice. A glass of whisky would doubtless have changed his mind, but I was unwilling to break through the wholesome law that prohibits it.

RENAN ON THE SHEMITIC NATIONS.*

THE attention which has been paid by modern anthropologists to the Shemitic school of thinkers, and to those vague traditions which are wafted to us from the shores of Syria, the plains of Padan Aram, or the banks of the Euphrates, is now beginning to produce its good fruits; and the controversies of Chwolson, Quatremère, and Renan as

An Essay on the Age and Antiquity of the Book of Nabathæan Agriculture; to which is added an Inaugural Lecture on the Position of the Shemitic Nations in the History of Civilisation. By Ernest Renan, Membre de l'Institut; Hon. Fellow of the Anthropological Society of London, etc. 12mo. Trübner: 1862.

to the age and authenticity of The Book of Nabathaan Agriculture has produced a beneficial influence over the thoughts of Europe.

The work entitled The Book of Nabathaan Agriculture is alluded to both by S. Thomas Aquinas and Moses Maimonides. Upon the assumption that it was a genuine document, it was a translation made by Ibn Walshiya al Kasdani, a Mussulman, in A.D. 904, from a Chaldean manuscript, by an author named Kúthámi. Quatremère considers that Kúthámi flourished about the reign of Nebuchadnezzar the Second. Meyer, the botanist, of Königsberg, however, assigned its date to the first century of our era. Professor Chwolson, of St. · Petersburgh, however, considers it extremely probable that the period when Kúthámi, the Babylonian, wrote The Book of Nabathæan Agriculture was certainly not later than B.C. 1300.

The contents of this book, on the presumption of its antiquity, give the most remarkable ideas as to the literature of Babylon, and of the founders of the various Chaldean religions. According to M. Renan's account:

"In the foreground appears the chief personage of Babylonian literature, a certain Yanbúshádh, founder of natural sciences and originator of a kind of Monotheism. He is separated from Kúthámí by four or five centuries. Some ages before Yanbúshádh, appears Daghrith, founder of another school, which had some disciples, even after Yanbúshádh. This Daghrith lived, according to Dr. Chwolson, two thousand years before Christ; and speaks of various persons of Babylonian tradition in a manner which shows that he then considered them as men of early antiquity. Indeed, long before Daghrith, there is another age of literature, of which the representatives are Másí the Suranian, his disciple Jernáná, and the Canaanites, Anúhá, Thamithrí, and Sardáná (towards 2500). All these sages appear at once as priests, founders of religions, moralists, naturalists, astronomers, agriculturists (agronomes), and as universally endeavouring to introduce a worship freed from idolatrous superstitions. A short time before them Ishíthá flourished, the founder of a religion which Kúthámí vehemently opposes, though he acknowledges that it exercised, in his own time, a salutary influence. Before Ishíthá, Adami appears as the founder of agriculture in Babylon, acting the part of a civiliser (civilisateur) and hence named 'The Father of Mankind.' Before him we

find Azada, the founder of a religion which the higher classes persecuted, but which was cherished by the lower; Ankebúthá, Samáí-Nahari, the poet Húhúshi, whose attention was already directed to agricultural science; Askúlebíthá, a benefactor of mankind and the earliest astronomer; and finally, Dewánáï, the most ancient lawgiver of the Shemites, who had temples, was honoured as a god, and was called 'Master of Mankind.' The age of Dewánáï is, according to Dr. Chwolson, strictly historical, and Babylon was already, at that time, a completely organised state. There are indications, before

Dewánáï, of great efforts towards civilisation; and it is in that distant period that Professor Chwolson places Kámásh-Nahari, the author of a work on agriculture; the saints and favourites of the gods, Aámi, Súlina, Thúlúni, Resáï, Kermáná, etc.; and finally, the martyr Tammúzi, the first to found the religion of the planets, who was put to death, and afterwards lamented by his followers. Dr. Chwolson stops here; he acknowledges that before that period all fades into the mist of fabulous antiquity."

Professor Renan, however, does not assign any very high antiquity to the work. The frequent references in it which are made to the Greeks or Ionians (Yunánis), the use of the term Antioch (Anthakia), the mention of such Neoplatonic ideas as those of Hermes (Armísá) and Agathodæmon (Agháthádimún), the allusion to Esculapius ('Aokληos) under the name of Askolábita, the statement that the Pehlevi language existed as a Persian dialect in the time of Kúthámi, the manifest acquaintance which the author possessed with the Zend Avesta, the allusion to Indian civilisation, and many other passages, exemplify the contact of the Nabathæans with a high and a late civilisation. To take one allusion which is made to Jewish tradition :

"There are persons who believe that the Chaldæans began the attack on the Assyrians; but it is not so. The Assyrians, in fact, are not of the race of Adam, while the Chaldæans are his descendants. Thus, the language of the Assyrians, and the names by which they call different objects, cannot be older than Adam, who first gave to everything its name, and was the first who established and organised language itself. Therefore it is not the Chaldæans whom the Assyrians oppose, but Adam; for Adam named this plant akermaï. Now, it is universally acknowledged that what Adam ordained is true and wise; and what others have ordained is without foundation. Then, too, the Assyrians are the children of Shabrikan the First, who is neither comparable nor equal to Adam, and who cannot even come near to him."

"These two nations (the Canaanites and the Chaldæans) are descended from two brothers, both sons of Adam, and of the same mother, one of the wives of Adam; for Adam, according to those skilled in genealogy, had sixty-four children, of whom twenty-two were daughters and forty-two sons. These forty-two sons left eighty heirs. The others had no posterity which has descended to our times."

The Jewish influence is thus strongly manifest in the thoughts of the old Nabathæan. But the allusions to the early Hebrew patriarchs are most frequent:

"One of the ancient sages who fills the most important part in "The Book of Nabathæan Agriculture" is Adami. Adami was considered as the founder of agriculture in Chaldæa; to him are attributed

certain books of which Kúthámí doubts the authenticity, and which he found altered or interpolated. . . . We know that many apocryphal writings were attributed to Adam, that the Mendaïtes ascribed their chief book to him, and that the ancient Sabians had books under his name. Our Adami is thus most undoubtedly the Adamas or apocryphal Adam of the Babylonian sects. Can there remain any doubt about this identity, when it is seen that Adam bears, in The Agriculture, the title of Father of Mankind, a title which all the Moslem East gives to Adam."

"Ishitha, the son of Adami, described as a religious legislator, as the founder of astrology and of astrolatria, is undeniably Seth. . . Akhnúkha or Hánúkhá is Enoch."

"Anúhá, the Canaanite, another of the founders, represented as the apostle of Monotheism, is undoubteely Noah. Indeed, a great deluge happened in his time. Moreover, Anúhá planted the vine, and he is always cited as an authority in speaking of the making of wine. Finally, Ibrahim, the Canaanite (that is to say of Palestine), is certainly, in spite of what Dr. Chwolson says about it, the patriarch Abraham. "As to the part which Númrúda plays in The Book of Nabathaan Agriculture, as a Canaanite priest, and as founder of the Canaanite dynasty at Babylon, it would be presumptuous to say that this idea only has its origin in a plagiarism from the Bible. It is very possible that there might be some national tradition respecting him. Nimrod, as we shall presently see, was a popular personage in Chaldæa in the first centuries of our era. It is difficult to unravel, amidst the confusion of ideas which then prevailed in the East, the origin of legends so denuded of true character, and over which is thrown that general level of mere platitude which gives such a singular air of monotony and conventionalism to all the traditions trasmitted to us by Arabian writers."

The manner in which some of these patriarchs are described in the genethlialogic work On the Secrets of the Sun and Moon is very amusing. This work sets forth the opinions of the pretended Babylonian sages, Adámi (Adam) Ankebúthá and Askolábíta (Esculapius), on the artificial production of living beings. They were, figuratively speaking, the Pasteurs, Schultzes, and Pouchets of their day. The miracles of Esculapius and the wonders of Adam, however, sink into insignificance before the feats of their colleague, Ankebúthá. This heterogenetic savant outdid Prometheus or Frankenstein. He succeeded in forming a man, and kept him alive for a year. Another rival advocate of spontaneous generation under difficulties also succeeded in the same experiment, but the king, for political reasons, forbade him to repeat it. It would be highly inconvenient to increase a surplus population in this manner.

The work of "Tenkelúshá, the Babylonian, the Kukanian," belongs to the same date. The author, however, is proved to be com

paratively modern by the researches of Salmasius.* Salmasius says, “Tenkelus ille Babylonius quem memorat Nasirodinus (i.e. Nasireddín Tousi) is omnino est qui Teôкpos Baßulários Græcis vocatur, et fortasse in scriptis Graecorum perperam hodie legitur Τεύκρος pro Τένκρος, idque deflexum ex illo nomine Babylonio Tenclus." The author of this Helleno-Babylonish treatise was consequently named Teucer.

Yarbúká was the author of a Book of Poisons, perhaps contemporary with the other writers. M. Renan thus sums up the whole investigation:

"One deduction appears to me to arise from the analysis to which we have subjected The Book of Nabæathan 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."

The more interesting part, however, of the present work is the copy which is given of Professor Renan's inaugural lecture on the Shemitic nations. A few extracts only are all we can give of this eloquent oration. It should be read throughout to be actually appreciated :

"The most important results to which historical and philological science has arrived during the last half century, have been to show, in the general development of our races, two elements of such a nature which, mixing in unequal proportions, have made the woof of the tissue of history. From the seventeenth century-and, indeed, almost from the middle ages-it has been acknowledged that the Hebrews, the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Syrians, the Babylonians (at least from a certain period), the Arabs, and the Abyssinians, have spoken languages most intimately connected. Eichhorn, in the last century, proposed to call these languages Shemitic, and this name, most inexact as it is, may still be used.

"A most important and gratifying discovery was made in the beginning of our century. Thanks to the knowledge of Sanscrit, due to English scholars at Calcutta, German philologists, especially M. Bopp, have laid down sure principles, by means of which it is shown that the ancient idioms of Brahmanic India, the different dialects of Persia, the Armenian, many dialects of the Caucasus, the Greek and Latin languages, with their derivatives, the Slavonic, German, and Celtic, form one vast family entirely distinct from the Shemitic group, under the name of Indo-Germanic or Indo-European.

"The line of demarcation, revealed by the comparative study of languages, was soon strengthened by the study of literatures, institutions, manners, and religions. If we know how to assume the right point of view in such a careful comparison, it is seen that the ancient literatures of India, Greece, Persia, and the German or Teutonic

* De Annis Climacteris, et Antiqua Astrologia. Leyden: 1648.

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