The Dabistán, or School of manners, Volume 2 (of 3): translated from the original Persian, with notes and illustrations
Religion
The Dabistán, or School of manners, Volume 2 (of 3): translated from the original Persian, with notes and illustrations
Iran -- Religion; Religions
[482] We find in a treatise entitled “The Sage and the
Fool,” making part of the Kahgyur, one of the principal
religious works of the Tibetans, that a brahman, not
satisfied with his disciple, and desirous of causing his
ruin, gives him the following advice: “Keep thyself pure
during seven days; cut off the heads of a thousand men; take
a single finger of each, to make thyself a rosary; and thou
shalt undoubtedly, after thy death, be born again in the
substance of Brahma.”――(See Mr. Schmidt’s Tibetan Grammar.)
[483] We read in “Turner’s Embassy to Tibet,” that, at a
religious ceremony, a priest played a sort of flute made of
the bone of a man’s leg.――(French Transl., p. 61.)
* * * * *
The last four notes have been obligingly furnished to me by
M. Foucaud, professor of the Tibetan language in Paris.
CHAPTER IV.
From the book _the Dabistán_, a short account of the religion of the
Yahuds, contained in two sections.
_Section the first_, the information received from the tongue of
Mohammed Sâíd Sarmed.
_Section the second_, upon the translation of the page of Adam, which
is the beginning of the book of Moses (the Pentateuch).
SECTION THE FIRST.――The author of this book never happened to have
intercourse with learned and distinguished men among the Yahuds; and
he set no value upon what he found in the books of foreigners about
their religion: because envy is a corrosion and a fire, which attacks
the enemy. But in the year of the Hejira 1057 (A. D. 1647), when I
came to Hyder abad, I contracted friendship with _Mohammed Sâid
Sarmed_, who was originally from a family of learned Yahuds, of a
class whom they call Rabánián (Rabbins); after an investigation into
the faith of the Rabbins and the perusal of the Mosaic books, he
became a Muselman; he read the scientific works of the wise men of
Iran, such as Mulla Sader, and Mír Abu-’l Kásem, of Kazer sak, and
many others: at last, for the sake of commerce, he undertook by sea
the voyage to Hindustan. When he arrived in the town _Tata_,[484] he
fell in love with a Hindu boy, called Abhi Chand, and, abandoning all
other things, like a Sanyási, naked as he came from his mother, he sat
down before the door of his beloved. The father of the object of his
love, after having found by investigation the purity of the attachment
manifested for his son, admitted Sarmed into his house, and the young
man too met him with an equal affection, so that he could no more
separate from him, and he read the book of Moses, the psalms of David,
and other books with Sarmed. The following verses are the composition
of this young Hindu:
“I submit to Moses’ law; I am of thy religion, and the guardian of
thy way:
I am a Rabbi of the Yahuds, a Kafir, a Muselman.”
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