But you will say, perhaps, that Moshan Fani’s authorities were, in a great measure, _floating_, and dependent upon _histories_ of a merely oral stamp, which--wanting as they do, the impress of lettered perpetuity, and subject, as they are, to variation, both of curtailment and of addition, besides the colour of depreciation or enhancement, which they must furthermore undergo, according to the nature of the successive _media_ through which they pass,--cannot, after repeated transfusions, retain much similarity with the original truth, nor afford to a rational and thinking mind, however they may gratify selfish or national love, much stability for conviction or satisfactory acquiescence? To the first I shall reply that it seems not correct, as the manuscripts by which he was guided appear still in existence; and this was not without its influence on Sir John’s own scepticism, when he declares, that “the doubtful authority of this work has received some support from the recent discovery of a volume in the ancient Pahlivi, called the Dussadeer, or Zemarawatseer, to which its authors refer.” Then, as to the _vanity_ alluded to, the compiler may well be acquitted of any, as being of a different creed, and proverbially intolerant, he could not, _did not truth oversway_, have felt much communion of pleasure in celebrating the glories of a defunct religion. And though I concede that _that_ species of information, which arises from the traditions of successive races of men, cannot be so satisfactory as that which is _stereotyped_ in alphabetic characters; nay, that, according as it diverges from its first outlet, it is likely to diverge also from exactness; still I do insist, that the prevalence of those _traditions_, wherever they occur, argues some alliance with _fact_ and _reality_; just as idolatry itself, in all its ramifications, is but the corrupt transmission of original pure religion. CHAPTER XV. The objections against the Dabistan being thus superseded, and the idea of its being an “invention”[213] having never crossed anyone’s thoughts, I shall now give a bird’s-eye view of its tenour in Sir John’s own summary thereof.