BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 45 



for Dr. Chwolson might reply that the term 

 \jM)S* (magi) may have replaced a more an- 

 cient title, in this version of Ibn Wahshiya. 

 Nevertheless it must be confessed that, in 

 general, Magi-ism, or the Magian faith, 

 as it is found in Kuthami, bears a much 

 stronger resemblance to apocryphal Parsee- 

 ism, altered by the Hostanes and the Astram- 

 psyches, than the old Zoroasterism of the 

 Zend writings. Besides, there is a word, 

 given as the title of an agricultural work 

 composed by one of the most ancient sages 

 of Babylon, of which it seems to me that 

 its Pehlevian origin cannot be mistaken ; it 

 is the word j^L-i. It is well known that 

 all Persian words ending in h are termi- 

 nated in Pehlevian by &. 1 It is also certain 

 that the word <LL~>, "rules, directions," is 

 not Arabic. 2 It appears, then, very probable 



1 See "Hist. gen. des Langues Semitic," 1. iii., chap. 4, sir. 1. 



2 Sacy Chrest. Arab. t. ii. p. 160 ff., 184 ff. It is very remarkable 

 that the word yasa, from which the Arabic philologists deri . 

 and which they consider Tartar, an error, I believe, as tin- word 

 JLjLw-j is found in Arabian authors much anterior to the Tartar 

 influence, had also the form yasak. 



