Major Price’s Extracts from the Mualijat-i- Dara Shekohi. 53 
infinitely higher importance than that of which we have treated, he that is 
wise will ponder upon this. 
On these and other considerations, that vulgar and absurd opinion which 
holds that a celestial angel is employed to register the actions of man in a 
volume, which is presented to him on the day of judgment, must be founded 
in impiety: and that opinion, moreover, which maintains that the angel 
Gabriel delivered the revelations of the Koran by viva véce communications 
to the Prophet, who is thus made to have received them through his corpo- 
real ear, must be equally repugnant to truth and experience ; because sound 
cannot be produced otherwise than by the escape of air from the collision 
of two bodies. But an angel is incorporeal—unquestionably a spirit—and 
a spirit has neither fixedness nor bodily place for either the retention or 
escape of air. 
At the same time we can aver that the speculations of folly on this latter 
subject are repugnant to the express declarations contained in the word of 
God, which distinctly states that the bearer of divine revelation to the Pro- 
phet was a spirit, and a spirit we know to be incorporeal. That which is 
incorporeal cannot give birth to sound ; and therefore neither voice nor 
sound could proceed from an angel, which is a spirit. It moreover informs 
us that the angel Gabriel descended upon the heart of the Prophet, at the 
same time that he made a visible appearance before his eyes; for thus the 
Prophet expresses himself in the following exordium: ‘ This is the revela- 
tion from the Lord of all worlds, descending, through the ministry of the 
faithful spirit, upon the heart of the most retired of admonishers, and 
explained in the language of Arabia.”* 
TWELFTH MYSTERY OF DISCOURSE THE THIRD. 
To know the nature of the Ghar/, and Gharidl :* that is to say, on the 
divisions of time, and the methods of admeasurement. 
The Gharidl is an utensil of metal, seven times fused,} of a circular form 
i} TA whe, = = 4 \ peal ee 
Bal GEL uel ee el Ce el a) ee SF ell cae Ua al * 
t usd and JSbS 
case Gé> whether this should signifiy seven-fold, or seven times fused, must be left 
to the oriental scholar. There can be little doubt, though thus imperfectly described, that this 
refers to the ordinary gong on which, in India, under the native governments, the paraghari or 
sentinel strikes the hour. 
