SCIENCE. 



[Vol. X. No. 246 



by the people with Hterary pretensions, who fly into a passion when 

 one of these ignorant fellows, flushed with success, dubs himself a 

 Sha-ir. He is not a Pathan by race, though he has been pa- 

 thajiised ■ he is a low sort of creature, whom the Khans and Sardars 

 treat as the mediaeval barons might have treated the itinerant 

 Jongleur, — despised, insulted, honored, liberally paid, intensely 

 popular amongst the people. 



The novice Dum goes to a celebrated Diim, who is a master, an 

 Ustad : he becomes his disciple, his skagird. The master teaches 

 him first his own songs, then the songs of the great Dums of the 

 present and past generations. The fZr/arf takes his shagirds with 

 him to the festivities to which he has been asked, private or public, 

 profane or religious : he takes them to the hujra, the ' common 

 house' or town-hall of the village, where idlers and travelling 

 guests meet every night to hear the news that is going round, and 

 listen to any man that has a tale to tell or a song to sing. The 

 Ustad pockets half the sum given by the host, and the other half is 

 divided between the shagirds. When a shagzrd ie.e\s he can com- 

 pose for himself and is able to achieve a reputation, he leaves his 

 master and becomes himself an Ustad. I am sorry to say that 

 Dims generally are not over-sensitive about literary honesty : 

 plagiarism is rife among them. A Du7n will readily sing, as his 

 own, songs of the dead or the living. It is the custom that poets 

 should insert their names in the last line : you have only to sub- 

 stitute your own name for the name of the real author or of the 

 former plagiarist. People will not applaud you the less, though of 

 course the injured party may retort with a satire or a stab. A 

 good Dtim may die a rich man. Mira would hardly open his 

 mouth anywhere under fifty rupees. He was an illiterate man : he 

 could not read, but he knew by heart a wonderful number of songs, 

 and could improvise. You would ask him for a song in a certain 

 shade of feeling ; then he would go out with his men, and an hour 

 afterwards they would come back and sing a beautiful chorus on 

 the rebab. His song of ' Zakhme ' is sung wherever there are 

 Afghans, as far as Rampor in Rohilkhand, and Hayderabad of 

 Dekhan, and sets them a-dancing as soon as the first notes are 

 struck. It was sung at the Ravul Pindi interview as the national 

 song of the Afghans, though it is nothing more — or, rather, 

 nothing less — than a love-song. An Irish journalist — Mr. Grat- 

 tan Geary, of the Boinbay Gazette — was struck with its melody, 

 and had it printed. It is probably the only Afghan song that has 

 ever been published (two songs have been translated by Mr. Thor- 

 burn in his book on Bannu, and another by Colonel Raverty in 

 the introduction to his Afghan grammar). 



The people piously inclined object to song, among the Afghans as 

 well as elsewhere ; and the MoUahs inveigh against the Dums. 

 There is only one occasion when even a MoUah will approve of the 

 song of a Dujn : it is when the Crusade, or, as the Anglo-Indians 

 say, the Crescentade, has been proclaimed ; then is the time for the 

 Dum to rehabilitate himself, as he sings the glories of the sacred 

 war, the bliss reserved to the Ghazi, the roses that grow for him in 

 the groves above, and the black-eyed houris that come from heaven 

 and give the dying man to drink of the sherbet of martyrdom. 

 But, in spite of the MoUahs, the Dum. is as popular in his profane 

 as in his semi-sacred character. Song is a passion with the Af- 

 ghans ; in fact, one of the few noble passions with which he is en- 

 dowed. Whenever three Afghans meet together, there is a song 

 between them. In the hujra, during the evening conversation, a 

 man rises up, seizes a rebab, and sings, sings on. Perhaps he is 

 under prosecution for a capital crime ; perhaps to-morrow he will 

 be hunted to the mountain, sent to the gallows ; what matters .' 

 Every event of public or private life enters song at once, and the 

 Dums are the journalists of the Afghans. Possibly the Dicm of to- 

 day has preserved for us faithfully enough a picture of what the 

 Bard was with the Gauls. 



ENGLISH COIN-SALES OF 1886 AND 1887. 



As the English season for coin-sales will soon begin again. The 

 Athenceum gives its readers some information on the general re- 

 sults of those which have taken place during the last ten months. 

 The coin-seUing year may be said to commence in November, and 

 to end in July : sometimes it is extended into August, but, if so, it 



never oversteps the first week of that month. Even between No- 

 vember and August there are certain periods which have to be 

 avoided, especially immediately before and after Christmas and 

 Easter. The reason for these precautions arises from the circum- 

 stance that collectors of coins are comparatively few, and some of 

 the largest buyers live out of London : consequently those who have 

 collections to dispose of must be careful to offer their wares for sale 

 when these rare birds are most likely to be in town. Sales of 

 pictures and china will generally secure a good attendance, but not 

 so is it with coins : so these precautions must be taken. 



Coin-sales may be divided into two classes, — ancient and mod- 

 ern ; the former dealing chiefly with the coinages of Greece and 

 Rome, the latter with those of nations of modern times. It will be 

 found, on looking through the sale-catalogues of the last season in 

 England, that those of modern coins predominate. Of ancient 

 coins there have been only three collections sold : viz., a portion of 

 the stock of the late William Webster, the well-known dealer, Dec. 

 22 ; a collection of " a gentleman relinquishing the pursuit," June 

 14 and 15; and a cabinet of select Greek coins, June 2710 July 

 I. On the modern side there have been three sales of four to six 

 days each, in December, May, and August : others of the war med- 

 als, etc., of Capt. E. Hyde Greg ; the coins of the late Joseph Mayer 

 of Liverpool ; of the late Archdeacon Pownall, vice-president of the 

 Numismatic Society ; and of Major W. Stewart Thorburn.- There 

 has been one very important sale in Paris of Roman and Byzantine 

 gold coins, belonging to the Vicomte Ponton d'Amecourt ; but, as 

 we are concerned chiefly with what has taken place in England, we 

 shall not enter into any particulars of that sale, beyond remarking 

 that the prices yielded on that occasion far surpassed those of any 

 previous sale of this class of coins. We mention it as it attracted 

 many English buyers. 



A general glance at the above-mentioned catalogues will show 

 that there is, and has been for some few years, a considerable 

 falling-off in the prices of ancient coins, while a more than corre- 

 sponding increase has taken place in the sums realized by modern 

 coins and medals. Rare and fine Greek and Roman coins will 

 always command a market, but these pieces are exceptional ; and a 

 general good average depends principally on the more ordinary 

 pieces in silver and on the copper coins. The sale of a " cabinet of 

 select Greek coins " in June and July, when the catalogue was 

 issued, bid fair to witness some big prices ; but unfortunately, when 

 the coins came to be examined, by far the greater portion, at least 

 of the rarities, were pronounced to be forgeries, and the conse- 

 quence was that those collectors who went to London bent on 

 making some good purchases for their cabinets returned home with, 

 their purses but little lightened. It was a bitter disappointment to 

 many ; but it has served as a warning, to those who have collec- 

 tions to dispose of, to be careful and see that what they offer for 

 sale is 'above suspicion.' A coin, before it passes from the 

 auctioneer's hands into those of the buyer, has to undergo a severe 

 and critical examination. It is turned over and over, its merits or 

 demerits are discussed on all sides, and, if any doubt is expressed 

 as to its genuineness, rumor soon spreads the doubt, and it is 

 generally doomed. In the sale referred to, among the false coins 

 there were many genuine pieces, and some of considerable rarity ; 

 but their character was damaged by their false brethren, and they 

 paid the penalty of being in such bad company. The other sales- 

 show a fair average of prices for the finer pieces, but a very low one 

 for the more common ones, especially those in copper. As an illus- 

 tration we may give a few examples. Syracusan decadrachms, or 

 ' medallions ' as they are more commonly called on account of their 

 size, realized from ^^19 to ^20 ids. ; a tetradrachm of Naxos, with 

 seated figure of Silenus on the reverse, £7 los. ; similar coins of 

 Aenus, ^10 ; of Akanthus, £7 7s. ; of Ariarathes IX., king of Cap- 

 padocia, ^18; an electrum stater of Cyzicus, ^^13; a tetradrachm 

 of Antiochus VI. of Syria, £12, etc. These pieces are all some- 

 what rare ; but, when we examine the lots containing the smaller 

 silver coins and those of copper, we find as many as twenty or 

 more going for only a few shillings. These results are very disap- 

 pointing, especially to those who formed collections some years ago, 

 and consider them in the light of invested capital. 

 . Let us now turn to the modern side, and see what is taking place 

 with English coins and medals. Other European coins, for the 



