THE SCIENCES OF LANGUAGE AND OF ETHNOGRAPHY. 113 
less about Egypt than I did before. For instance, I find (and 
I am specially referring to the blue-book in my hand) that 
letters of the greatest importance from the Mahdi are treated 
in the following flippant manner: “ This is nothing more or 
less than an unauthenticated copy of a letter sent by the 
deceased Mahdi to General Gordon!” Is this not enough 
to deserve attentive inquiry? General Gordon would, pro- 
bably, not have agreed with the writer of this con- 
temptuous remark, which is doubly out of place when 
we are also told that the Mahdi was sending Gordon 
certain verses and passages from the Koran, illustra- 
tive of his position, which are eliminated by the translator 
as unnecessary, of no importance, and of very little interest! 
Now, considering that this gentleman knows Arabic, I think 
Iam right when I add that with a little more sympathy he 
would have known more, and had he known more he would 
have quoted those passages, for it is most necessary for us to 
know on what precise authority of the Koran or of tradition 
this so-called Mahdi bases his claim, and knowledge of this 
kind would give us the opportunity of dealing with the matter. 
Again, on the question of Her Majesty’s title of “ Kaisar-i- 
_ Hind,” which, after great difficulty, | succeeded in carrying 
into general adoption in India, the previous translators of 
“Kimpress”’ had suggested some title which would either have 
been unintelligible or which would have given Her Majesty 
a disrespectful appellation, whilst none would have created 
that awe and respect which, I suppose, the translation of the 
Imperial title was intended to inspire. Even the subse- 
quent official adopter of this title, Sir W. Muir, advocated it 
on grounds which would have rendered it inapplicable to India. 
With the National Anthem, similarly, we had a translation by 
a Persian into Hindustani which was supported by a number 
of Oriental scholars in this country, who either did not study 
it or who dealt with the matter entirely from a theoretical point 
of view, and what was the result? The result was—that for 
““God save the Queen”? a passage was put which was either 
blasphemous, or which, in popular Muhammedan acceptance, 
might mean “God grant that Her Majesty may again 
marry!” whereas one of the glories of Her Majesty among 
her Hindu subjects is that she is a true“ Satti” or Suttee, viz.: a 
righteous widow, who ever honours the memory of her terrestrial 
and spiritual husband—neither of these views being intended 
by the translator, nor by that very largeand responsible body of 
men who supported him, and that still larger and emphatically 
loyal body that intended to give the translation of the 
National Anthem as a gift to India at a cost of several 
VOL. XXIII. i 
