﻿ON THE PERSIANS. $9 



and particularly the host of heaven, or the celestial 

 bodies, in the adoration of which the Sabian ritual 

 is believed to have consisted. There is a description 

 in the learned work just mentioned, of the several 

 Persia?! temples dedicated to the Sun and Planets, 

 of the images adored in them, and of the magnificent 

 processions to them on prescribed festivals; one of 

 which is probably represented by sculpture in the 

 ruined city of Jemshid. But the planetary worship in 

 Persia seems only a part of a far more complicated 

 religion, which we now find in these Indian provinces; 

 for Mohsan assures us that, in the opinion of the best 

 informed Persians, who professed the faith of /&». 

 shang, distinguished from that of Zeratusht, the first 

 monarch of Iran, and of the whole earth, was Maha- 

 had (a word apparently Sanscrit) who divided the 

 people into four orders, the religious, the military, the 

 commercial, and the servile, to which he assigned 

 names unquestionably the same in their origin with 

 those now applied to the four primary classes of the 

 Hindus. They added, that he received from the 

 Creator, and promulgated among men, a sacred hook 

 in a heavenly language, to which the Musehnan author 

 gives the Arabic title of Desatir, or Regulations, but 

 the original name of which he has not mentioned ; 

 and that fourteen Mahahads had appeared or would 

 appear in human shapes for the government of this 

 world. Now when we know that the Hindus believe 

 in fourteen Menus, or celestial personages with similar 

 functions, the first of whom left a book of regulations, 

 or divine ordinances, which they hold equal to the 

 Veda, and the language of which they believe to be 

 that of the gods, we can hardly doubt that the first 

 corruption of the purest and oldest religion was the sys- 

 tem of Indian theology, invented by the Brahmans, 

 and prevalent in these territories, where the book of 

 Mahabad, or Menu, is at this moment the standard of 

 all religious and moral duties. The accession of Cayu- 



