Major Pricx’s Extracts from the Mualijat-i-Ddéra Shekohi. 33 
This work, which comprises seven-and-twenty parts or dissertations (in 
the original), I have been contented to bring under four discourses, or 
lectures, as a sufficient conclusion to the key of my dissertation on the 
repository of meanings. It is a composition of not less than eight hundred 
years standing, by that genuine philosopher and guide to the true principles 
of science whose name is above recorded, and whom we acknowledge to 
have been a lineal and no remote descendant of our venerated Prophet, and 
who continues to the present day to be the master and instructor of the 
wisest of the moderns in the sphere of the understanding.. To his descent 
we have the testimony of his own words in the following couplet :—* I, who 
am the Prophet’s truest heir—!, Nasar, the son of Khosru, son of Hareth.” 
Now Hareth was one among the children of Khorasan’s royal Imam : 
accordingly, all such as have treated on the knowledge of things appertain- 
ing to the faculties of the human understanding, have diligently directed 
their studies to this excellent work, and thus acquired for themselves distin- 
guished renown. 
For myself, let me observe, that although in some things the following 
discourse may, from unavoidable repetition, have carried the subject to an 
inconvenient length ; yet, reflecting that things repeated stand confirmed, 
and paying a due regard to the advancement of knowledge, I trust that I 
shall be entitled to indulgence, remembering that to do a thing well it must 
be thoroughly done. He therefore that, as far as it is intelligible, has 
derived instruction or entertainment from the performance, let him take it 
in good part, and let what is deficient be ascribed to the incompetence of 
the author. I shall now proceed to my object ; and first, to the Dibdchah, 
or prefatory discourse of the Zdd-ul-Musdfarin. 
Eternal praise to that Being, who is the creator of the essences of all 
things, whether visible or unseen, who holds at his nod the circumstances 
of all time and position; who is supreme above all question of what and 
works are known to have been translated into Arabic under the reign of Ul-Mamun. It exhibits 
a curious specimen of the manner in which abstract speculations were treated in the East at so 
remote a period, about the middle of the ninth century, and the opinions then entertained of the 
operations of the human mind, The illustrious author of the “ Essay on the Human Under- 
standing” is generally considered to have commenced his work in the year 1670, more than 
600 years subsequent to the date of the Zdd-ul-Musdfarin, and not to have completed it till 
sixteen years afterwards. 
Vor. III. Ny 
