JOURNAL 



OF 



THE ASIATIC SOCIETY. 



JVo. 1 1. —November, 1832. 



I. — Notice of the peculiar Tenets held by the followers of Syed 

 Ahmed, taken chiefly from the u Sirat-ul-Mustaqim" a principal 

 Treatise of that Sect, written by Moulavi Mahommed Ismail. 



The Sirdt-ul Mdstaqim, or u The True Path," is the most im- 

 portant of several treatises which have been composed by followers 

 of Syed Ahmed, the modern Mahommedan zealot and reformer, with 

 whose name the European public has recently become familiar.* 

 It gives also the fullest account generally known of his tenets and 

 pretensions. The interest attaching to his personal pretensions, has 

 in a great measure ceased with his death, but the influence of his 

 tenets still continues extensive, being understood, indeed, to have 

 reached to almost all parts of India ; and the subject is one which 

 deserves attention, with reference to the marked distinction of opinions 

 and usages which has arisen between those who have adopted his doc- 

 trines, and the mass of the Mahommedan population of the country. 

 A subordinate portion only of this work is devoted to a statement of 

 such opinions as affect points of common and obvious usage ; but it is 

 respecting these that curiosity may generally be supposed to exist. The 

 main object of the author in composing it was, in the first instance pro- 

 bably, to shew his own learning ; in the next, to justify the claims of 

 Syed Ahmed, (of whom he was a constant and confidential adherent,) 

 as a devotee, gifted with a surpassing degree of religious capacity and illu- 

 mination. Its professed purpose is, kindly to impart to the world the 

 benefits of the experience and inspired discoveries of a saint so emi- 

 nent as Syed Ahmed was proclaimed to be, in those modes of reli- 

 gious exercise which are believed by the most orthodox Mahomme- 

 dans to have an influence in purifying and strengthening the higher 

 orders of human minds, which enables them, even in life, to attain to a 



2 p 



