THE KORAN. 275 



their coins. Its principal sentences, \vritten on the 

 walls of their mosques, remind them of their social 

 and solemn duties. They bestow upon it the exalted 

 epithets of the True Book, the Word of God, the 

 Director of Men and Demons, the Quintessence of 

 all Sacred Compositions, and not only the greatest 

 miracle, but the spiritual treasmy of 60.000 miracles. 

 They have been at pains to compute the number of 

 verses, words, and letters it contains ; and even the 

 different times each particular letter occurs. Of the 

 seven ancient copies, the first reckoned 6000 verses, 

 the second and fifth 6214, the third 6219, the fourth 

 6236, the sixth 6226, and the seventh 6225 ; but they 

 agree in the common amount of 77.639 words and 

 323,015 letters. 



After the example of the Masoretic rabbis, the 

 learned Moslems have introduced vowel-points to 

 ascertain the true meaning and pronunciation; 

 which, without this adventitious hght, must often 

 appear obscure.* The most ancient manuscripts 

 now known are on parchment, in the Cufic charac- 

 ter ; the modern are in the Niskhi, on paper curiously 

 prepared from silk, and poUshed to the highest degree 

 of beauty. Exemplars are to be found in every 

 pubhc library in Europe ; but, as the Christians are 

 prohibited the use of the Koran, most of these have 

 been taken in battle, and some of them belonging to 

 princes and persons of distinction. Copies of pecu- 

 liar elegance were found among the spoils of Tippoo 

 Sultan. That most admired for the character of its 



* Like the Hebrew and Greek, the antiquity of accents or 

 vowel-points in the Arabic has been much disputed. Hottinger 

 (Clavis Script, p. 403) and Adler (Museum Cufic. Borgianum. p. 

 34-37) contend that the language was never ■\\ithout them; 

 though their sh>^pe and position have occasionally varied. Gre- 

 gory Sharpe (Dissert, on the Origin. Power of Letters, p. 87) 

 maintains that the vowel-points were not m use till several years 

 after the time of Mohammed. So hkewise think the Turks who 

 give All the honour of the invention.— .W/rs Hist, of Mitham 

 chap. V. p. 281, note. 



