The Reconciliation of Races and ReligionsCheyne, T. K. (Thomas Kelly)
Religion
The Reconciliation of Races and Religions
Cheyne, T. K. (Thomas Kelly)
Bahais
How, then, came the Bāb to give Mirza Yaḥya such a name? Purely
from cabbalistic reasons which do not concern us here. It was a
mistake which only shows that the Bāb was not infallible. Mirza
Yaḥya had no great part to play in the ushering-in of the new
cycle. Elsewhere the Bāb is at the pains to recommend the elder of
the half-brothers to attend to his junior's writing and spelling.
[Footnote: The Tablets (letters) are in the British Museum collection,
in four books of Ezel, who wrote the copies at Baha-'ullah's
dictation. The references are--I., No. 6251, p. 162; II., No. 5111,
p. 253, to which copy Rizwan Ali, son of Ezel, has appended 'The
brother of the Fruit' (Ezel); III., No. 6254, p. 236; IV., No. 6257,
p. 158.] Now it was, of course, worth while to educate Mirza Yaḥya,
whose feebleness in Arabic grammar was scandalous, but can we imagine
Baha-'ullah and all the other 'letters' being passed over by the Bāb
in favour of such an imperfectly educated young man? The so-called
'nomination' is a bare-faced forgery.
The statement of Gobineau that Ṣubḥ-i-Ezel belonged to the
'Letters of the Living' of the First Unity is untrustworthy.
[Footnote: _Fils du Loup_, p. 156 n.3.] M. Hippolyte Dreyfus has
favoured me with a reliable list of the members of the First Unity,
which I have given elsewhere, and which does not contain the name of
Mirza Yaḥya. At the same time, the Bāb may have admitted him into
the second hierarchy of 18[19]. [Footnote: _Fils du Loup_,
p. 163 n.1. 'The eighteen Letters of Life had each a _mirror_
which represented it, and which was called upon to replace it if it
disappeared. There are, therefore, 18 Letters of Life and 18 Mirrors,
which constituted two distinct Unities.'] Considering that Mirza
Yaḥya was regarded as a 'return' of Ḳuddus, some preferment may
conceivably have found its way to him. It was no contemptible
distinction to be a member of the Second Unity, i.e. to be one
of those who reflected the excellences of the older 'Letters of the
Living.' As a member of the Second Unity and the accepted reflexion
of Ḳuddus, Ṣubḥ-i-Ezel may have been thought of as a director of
affairs together with the obviously marked-out agent (_wali_),
Baha-'ullah. We are not told, however, that Mirza Yaḥya assumed
either the title of Bāb (Gate) or that of Nuḳṭa (Point).
[Footnote: Others, however, give it him (_TN_, p. 353).]
I must confess that Ṣubḥ-i-Ezel's account of the fortune of the
Bāb's relics appears to me, as well as to M. Nicolas, [Footnote:
_AMB_, p. 380 n.] unsatisfactory and (in one point) contradictory.
How, for instance, did he get possession of the relics? And, is there
any independent evidence for the intermingling of the parts of the two
corpses? How did he procure a crystal coffin to receive the relics?
How comes it that there were Bahaites at the time of the Bāb's
death, and how was Ṣubḥ-i-Ezel able to conceal the crystal coffin,
etc., from his brother Baha-'ullah?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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