THE SCIENCES OF LANGUAGE AND OF ETHNOGRAPHY. 119 
Mecca or to Kerbelé. You may imagine that, even as 
regards the Druses, there must be something higher 
than their “Lord of the Universe’’?; but, such as he 
is, it is with him that this covenant is made. Revert- 
ing to his living colleague, the Indian “Lord,” it may 
be stated that there are men scattered throughout India of 
whose influence we have only the faintest conception. I 
pointed out in 1866 that if any one wanted to follow successfully 
my footsteps in Dardistan he would have to get recommen- 
dations from His Highness Aga Khan of Bombay, and I am 
glad to say that Col. Lockhart has taken advantage of that 
recommendation. The Druse “Lord of the Universe” is 
regarded as one with whom nothing can be compared. The 
Druses are to render him the most implicit obedience, and to 
carry out his behests at the loss of everything, good name, 
wealth, and life, with the view of obtaining the favour of one 
who may be taken to be God; but the sentence is so constructed 
as to make him, if not God, only second to God; in other words, 
only just a discrimination between God as the distant ruler 
of the Universe and, perhaps, some lineal descendant of 
Hakim, or rather, Hakim himself as an ever-living being, 
as the ruler of this world. This and some other prayers, with 
some songs, one amongst which breathes the greatest hatred 
to Muhammedanism, and speaks of the destruction of Mecca 
as something to look forward to, seem to be deserving of 
study. There are also references in them to rites connected 
with Abraham. A full translation of these documents, com- 
pared with invocations in portions of the Koran, would, 
indeed, reward the attention of the student. 
I will now again revert from the Druses of the Lebanon to 
the Muldis in the Himalayas. I obtained the poem in my 
hand from the head of that sect, and the wording is so that it 
denies whilst affirming the immortality and transmigration 
of souls. It says, “It is no use telling the ignorant 
multitude what your faith is.” ‘‘ Tell them,” continues the 
poem in effect, “if they want to know, in an answer of wisdom 
to a question of folly: ‘if your life has been bad you will 
descend into the stone, the vegetable, or the animal; if 
your life has been good you will return as a better man, The 
chain of life is undivided. The animal that is sacrificed pro- 
ceeds to a higher life.” You cannot discriminate and yet deny 
individual life, and apportion that air, stone, or plant to the 
animal and to man, but you ought to be punished for saying 
this to others!” And on this principle at any rate the Druses 
also act or acted, that that is no crime which is not found out ; 
and a good many people, I am sorry to say, elsewhere think 
