§ X.――THE RELIGION OF THE SADIKIAHS. The third volume of this work begins with the seventh chapter, upon the religion of the _Sadikiahs_. It is generally known that, during the life of Muhammed, another prophet, called Musaylima, arose in the country of Yamáma, and dared offer to himself in a letter to the former as a partner of his sacred mission, but was treated as a liar. He had however gained a great number of followers, at the head of whom he was defeated and himself slain in a bloody battle against Khaled, a general of the first Khalif, the very same year as Muhammed’s death. We find in the Dabistán, what appears less generally known, that Musaylima’s sect, far from being entirely crushed after his fall, existed under the name of _Sadikias_ in the seventeenth century of our era, and conformed to a second _Faruk_, or Koran, to which they attributed a divine origin, and a greater authority than to the first.[168] Another account, not frequently met with, is contained in the eighth chapter of the Dabistán, concerning _Vahed Mahmud_, who appeared in the beginning of our thirteenth century, and is by his adherents placed above Muhammed and Ali. Among his tenets and opinions is to be remarked that of an ascending refinement or perfection of elemental matter, from the brute or mineral to that of a vegetable form; from this to that of an animal body; and thence progressing to that of Mahmud.[169] Further, the particular mode of transmigration of souls by means of food into which men, after their death, are changed; such food, _in which intelligence and action may reside_, becomes continually the aliment and substance of new successive human beings. We were not a little astonished to find these singular opinions agreeing with the information, which Milton’s archangel Raphael imparts to Adam, the father of mankind.[170] “O Adam, one Almighty is, from whom All things proceed, and up to him return, If not depraved from good, created all Such to perfection, one first matter all, Indued with various forms, various degrees Of substance, and in things that live, of life; But more refin’d, more spirituous, and pure, As nearer to him plac’d or nearer tending, Each in their several active spheres assign’d, _Till body up to spirit work_, in bounds Proportioned to each kind. So from the root Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves More aery, last the bright consummate flower Spirits odorous breathes: _flow’rs and their fruit, Man’s nourishment, by gradual scale sublim’d, To vital spirits aspire, to animal, To intellectual_; give both life and sense, Fancy and understanding; whence the soul Reason receives, and reason is her being, Discursive, or intuitive ―― ―― ――.”