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CHAPTER IV.

THE SHAH-NAMEHROOSTEM AND SOOHRAB-CONLOCH AND CUCHULLIN-MACPHERSON'S OSSIAN-IRISH ANTI

QUITIES.

"It must be owned," says an elegant and philosophic historian, when speaking of the British Arthur, "that the traditions of our heroic age have not the same historical value as those of other nations. The fables of Greece, for example, besides their singular beauty, have the merit of being the native produce of the soil. As pictures of manners, and indications of character, they are therefore true to nature. They may occasionally approach the inferior truth of time and place, of names and particulars, by a faint and rude outline of real occurrences."

As this is the very view which I have taken of the Grecian mythology in my Work on that agreeable subject, I feel both pleasure and confidence

1 Sir James Mackintosh, in his History of England, vol. i. p. 27. Should there be any among my readers-I hope they will not be few-who love to contemplate the exercise of a mild, charitable, and enlightened philosophy, and who would imbibe true political wisdom, and learn to view the institutions of their country with love and veneration, I would advise them to devote their hours to this valuable work. It is for this effect, and not for the narrative, that it should be read; and not merely read, but studied.

at finding this coincidence of sentiment between myself and so distinguished a man as the late Sir James Mackintosh.

By other nations,' in the above passage, I apprehend could only be meant the Greeks, the Persians, and the Scandinavians; for I believe these are the only nations that have a mythic history the true growth of their own soil, unmingled with exotic productions. Of that of Scandinavia I shall bye and bye have occasion to say a few words; my present business is with that of Persia, and the book in which alone it is to be found-the noble Shah-Nâmeh', or King-book.

When the Arabian deluge poured in over Persia under the first Khalifs, it extinguished alike the literature and the religion of the conquered people. The traditions of ancient Persian renown, which had been cherished by the House of Sassan, were despised by the new lords of Irân: the original worshipers of Ormuzd, who had voluntarily or compulsively embraced the law of the Arabian prophet, gradually became negligent of the tales which narrated the deeds of their fathers; and the faithful remnant who still clung to the religion of Light, either sought a refuge in India, or led a life of obscurity in remote districts of their own country. A people whose spirit is broken are generally negligent of the fame of their ancestors,

1 These letters, â, î, û, are equivalent to aw, ee, oo. I shall employ them indifferently; ou is to be sounded as in our.

which is, as it were, a reproach to themselves; and the legends of Persian glory seem to have been on the brink of perishing, when patriotism or poetic feeling urged a man of rank in Irân to seek to rescue them from oblivion. From the books and from the lips of the Moobeds (Magi), he collected the old traditions, and he wrote them out in the Pehlvi language. This book, which was named the Bostân Nâmeh (Old Book), became the consolation and the delight of all who loved to dwell on the glories of the olden time; and one of the monarchs of the Turkish house of the Samanee directed a poet to versify these tales of the ancient wars of Irân and Toorân. The poet commenced his task, but he shortly afterwards perished by the hand of an assassin. At length the renowned Mahmood of Ghizni imposed the task on Aboo-'l-Kasîm, the son of Ishak Sheriff Shah, a native of Toos in Khorassân, surnamed Ferdousee (Paradisal) from the beauty of his verses, or from his own or his father's occupation being gardening'. At the mandate of the mighty Mahmood, Ferdousee celebrated the deeds of the ancient monarchs and heroes of Irân.

The poem, when completed, was named the Shah-Nâmeh, or King-book; and it is at the present day, and is likely ever to continue to be, the pride and glory of Persian literature. It consists

1 Paradise, originally signifying park, (a word perhaps connected with it,) is of Persian origin, and was adopted by the Greeks.

of sixty thousand rimed couplets: its measure is rapid and animated; it is everywhere embellished by the flowers of a luxuriant and beautiful imagination. It is the only source from which the Persians can derive any knowledge of the history of their country previous to the Arabian conquest; and the sentiment of veneration with which they regard it, almost exceeds that felt by the Greeks for the Homeric poems.

It is impossible to assign the date of the mythic legends of a people: they spring up, one knows not how or when; they receive accessions imperceptibly; they pass from mouth to mouth for centuries before they are fixed by writing; they form a part of the life and being of the people. The labours of the early logographers of Greece, and of the Alexandrian critics, have given a descriptive chronological air to the legends of Grecian mythology: not merely the year, for instance, but the very day of the month, on which Troy was taken, was fixed; though all must confess that this event occurred before the Greeks began to write: and it may very fairly be doubted if ever Troy and its ten-year siege had an existence. All such events lie far beyond the limits of chronology.

In like manner we can assign no date to the early legends of the Shah-Nâmeh, the proper mythic history of Persia. Ferdousee asserts that he invented none of them, but gave them as he found them in the Bostân Nâmeh, or Old Book. Now we know from Moses of Chorene, the Armenian

historian, who wrote in the middle of the fifth century, that at that time the legend of Zohâk and Feridoon was well known. It, and consequently its fellow legends, could therefore hardly have been invented in the time of the Sassanians; still less can we assign them to the period of Parthian or Grecian dominion, when Persian nationality was no more. We thus find ourselves in the days of the Kyaneans (the Achæmenides of the Greeks); and I see no reason for denying that Jemsheed, Zohâk, Feridoon, Zâl, and Roostem, were the heroes of popular lays, and the wars of the Iranian Shahs against Afrâsiâb and his Turanians, sung by the bards of Irân centuries before Xerxes led his host to Greece, or Cyrus conquered Lesser Asia. One of the very few passages of the Persian poem which correspond with the history of Persia, as given by the Greeks, is that of the early days of Ky Khoosrou, which is like what Herodotus tells of Cyrus; yet even that may have been an ancient poetic fiction, and be no truer in the case of Cyrus than in that of Romulus, Paris, or Habis; of all of whom nearly the same thing is told. Herodotus, who lived not more than a century after that prince, says that there were no less than three different accounts of him, of which he selected that which appeared the most probable. He adds, that the narrators of these histories were more solicitous to exalt their heroes than to ascertain the truth.

At all events, we possess in the Shah-Nâmeh