THE THIRTEENTH SECTION describes the system of the _Akhshíyán_ sect.――The Mobed _Akhshí_ was by origin a Persian, possessed of great knowledge, and full of kindness towards the creatures of God; he was contemporary with _Shídáb_, and promulgated his sentiments openly, inviting all men to embrace his faith: he maintained God to be the essence of the elements; so that when people say, “God is not visible,” this implies the elemental essence, which presents no form to the sight; when they assert the ubiquity of God, they style that the essence, as he is every where under his fourfold form; their proposition of all things excepting God being perishable, means that the elements admit of change, but that their essence remains for ever in the same state. They hold the sun to be the source of fire and of the other stars, such as the falling and shooting stars, comets with tails, etc. One of those sectaries was a person named _Shídáb_, whom the author met in the costume of a merchant, in Kashmir in the year of the Hejirah 1040 (A. D. 1631), and from whom he heard what has now been written, and which was partly recited out of the book of _Akshí_. The same _Shídáb_, called also _Shams-ud-dîn_, or “the sun of faith,” composed a treatise entitled _Rázábád_ in proof of his system, which he demonstrated by texts of the Koran and the traditions. According to these sectaries, which became known after the _Radiyán_, there is no resurrection nor return to life but after this manner: the seminal principle being derived from food, when the body of a living creature is dissolved, it becomes grass and constitutes the food of some other animal: as to future rewards and punishments, they enter not into the faith or practice of this sect: their paradise consists in having fine raiment, in carousing, riding, sensual enjoyments, and such like pleasures, which alone they esteem the chief good; torment, according to them, consists in being separated from such objects: however, the founders and followers of this faith carefully avoid all kind of cruelty towards living creatures.