id ' L O K 
they will be able to form an idea of the wifdom attributed 
to this celebrated character in ancient ftory. 
Lokman was one day feared in the nfraft of a circle of 
auditors, when a man of high rank among the Jews, ob- 
ferving the attention with which they Idle tied to him, 
alked him if he was not that black have whom he had 
feen attending the flocks of a perfon whom he named ? 
Lokman faid he was. The other then afked him, how, 
in that low condition, he had acquired the knowledge^ of 
a fage and philofopher ? Lokman replied, “ By following 
exactly thefe three precepts : always (peak the truth, with¬ 
out difguife ; keep, inviolably, the promifes which you 
have made; and never meddle with what does not con¬ 
cern you.” Being afked, at another time, from whom he 
Jiad learned that wifdom and difeernment, which made 
him fhine fo confpicuonfly on every iabject, heanfwered, 
“ From the blind, who will believe nothing but what they 
touch with their own hands.” It was Lokman who firft 
faid, that “the tongue and the heart were both the heft 
and the worft parts of men.” A caravan, in which Lok¬ 
man was prefent, having been pillaged by robbers, who 
could not be moved to pity by the tears and lamenta¬ 
tions of the fufFerers* one of the plundered merchants 
faid to Lokman, “ Thcu fhouldeft have given to thefe rob¬ 
bers ledons of wifdom and good conduct; perhaps they 
might then have been diverted from their purpofe by thy 
advice and remonftrances, and would have reftored to ns 
'our goods, or, at leaft, in part repaired the heavy lofs which 
they have occafioned us.” “It would have been a much 
greater lofs,” replied Lokman, " to have thrown away 
feifons of wifdom on villains incapable of underflanding 
or appreciating them. No file can polifh the iron, when 
the ruft has entirely cotifumed it." Being repeatedly 
afked whence he had drawn that treafure of virtue and 
wifdom, which he poffefi'ed in fo eminent a degree, hean¬ 
fwered, “ From the foolifh and wicked ; by obferving 
their aCtions, and comparing them with the dictates of my 
own confcience, I have learned what to perform, and what 
to ^hun.’ , Lokman’s mailer having one day given him a 
bitter melon, or coloquintida, to eat, he immediately ate 
it all, without fhowing the leaft repugnance. Surprifed 
at his ready obedience, his mafter faid to him, “How was 
at pofhble for you to eat a fruit fo difagreeable to the tafte ?” 
Lokman replied, “I have received fo many fweets from 
you, that it is not furprifing I fhould have eaten the only 
bitter fruit which you have ever given me.” This gene¬ 
rous anfwer fo forcibly itruck his mafter, that he imme¬ 
diately gave him his liberty. 
Some idea of the high fenfe which the orientals entertain 
of the wifdom of our philofopher, may be underftood from 
their common ufe of the proverb, “To teach any thing 
to Lokman,” which is employed to exprefs lomething ab- 
foluteiy impolfible. It is alfo worthy of notice, that Ma- 
-bomet In the chapter of the Alcoran to which his name is 
prefixed, puts into Lokman’s mouth thefe maxims con- 
-cernino- the unity of God, which are repeated in almoll 
every page of that book : “ And Lokman gav.e.this leffon 
to his foil: O my fon! affociate no name with that of 
God ; for it is a very culpable error to fuppofe an equal 
to the Almighty.” In this paffage Mahomet ules the au¬ 
thority of Lokman as a fupport for his own opinions; 
which Ihows the high degree of efleem in which he was 
field by the Arabs, at the time when the koran was made 
public. This efteem is not in the leaft diminilhed at the 
prefent day ; and feveral of the Mufiulman doctors give 
him the title of faint and prophet. Some writers alfert, 
that he embraced the Jevvifh religion, and entered into the 
fervice of king David, who entertained a high efteem for 
him ; and the author of the Tarikh Montekheb informs 
us, that he died in Judea, at a very advanced age ; and 
that in his time his tomb was ftill to be feen at Randall, 
a Imall town in Syria, not far from Jerufalem. 
‘Marcel maintains, that the fables of Lokman, with thofe 
of Pilpay, may be coniidered as the only original pieces 
jof ^ampofition of this lpecies; and of which the fables of 
£ 
L O L 
iEfop, molt cf thofe of Phaedrus, and even many of la Fon¬ 
taine, are only tranflations and copies. “ If it be true,” lays 
he, “ that AEfop is not a mere fictitious perfonage, at leaft he 
muft have exifted longafter Lokman. Plutarch, Suidas, and. 
Paufanias, agree in placing Asfop about the time of Crce- 
fus king of Lydia, and Solon legiflator of the Athenians ; 
that is to fay, Come time between the 46th and 55th Olym¬ 
piad. Now all the oriental writers, both the Arabian and 
Perfian, agree in placing Lokman 500 years prior to ASfop, 
at the fame period with the reign of. David over the He¬ 
brews, and Kaykhofru over the Perfians. In this cafe, 
Lokman would be the original from whom Ac fop borrowed 
his apologues; as the latter might eafily have come to the 
knowledge of the Arabian fabulift, duiing the refidence 
which he is faid to have made in the courts of different 
princes of Alia. But the opinion the moil generally re¬ 
ceived, and which indeed is much more probable than the 
former, is, that Lokman is the fame perfon, whom the 
Greeks, not knowing his real name, have called, in their 
own tongue, Aie-avra, or ALfop, a term derived from that 
of Ai&kvtt;, or Ethiopian, by a flight change, which often 
occurs in a word while palling from one dialed to an¬ 
other.” And he conceives that the particulars concern¬ 
ing Lokman, already given from the oriental writers, many 
of which are alfo related of /Efop, ierve to eltabiilh the iden¬ 
tity between them. His hypothefis carries with it an air 
of plaufibiiity; but is attended with chronological diffi¬ 
culties, on which we are incapable of deciding. We 
therefore leave it, together with the opinion of other cri¬ 
tics, that the work attributed to Lokman feems rather to 
be a collection of ancient fables than the production of 
any one writer, to the judgment of thofe who may think 
it worthy of farther inveftigation. The fcanty relics of 
the fables of Lokman were publifhed by Erpenius, in 
Arabic and Latin, at the end of his Arabic grammar, in 
1636 and 1656, in 4to. and Tannaquil Faber prefented 
them to the public in elegant Latin verfe. A French 
tranflation of them was publilhed by Galland, together 
with thofe of Pilpay, in 1714, in 2 vols, 121110. and in the 
year 1803, we law announced a notice of a new edition 
of them, in the original Arabic, accompanied with a French 
tranflation, by citizen J. J. Marcel. D’Herbelot's Bibl. 
Orient. Monthly Mag. vol. xiv. 
LOK'MAN, a town of the Arabian Irak, on the Ti¬ 
gris : fixteen miles north of Bagdad. 
LO KO, a finall ifland, on the'eaft fide of the gulf of 
Bothnia. Lat. 60. 51. N. Ion. 20. 59. E. 
LOKOHA'R, a town of Hindooltan, in Bahar: thirty* 
fix miles north-eaft of Durbunga. 
LOKTE'VA, a town of Rulfia, in the government of 
Kolivan : thirty-fix miles fouth-weft of Kuznetzk. 
LOLBAZA'R, a town of Bengal: fevehteen miles 
fouth-weft of Beyhar. 
LOLBINIE'RE, a town of Canada, on the St. Lau¬ 
rence : twenty-five miles fouth-weft of Quebec. 
LOLDONG', a town and fortrefs of Almora: fifty 
miles north-weft of Collipour, and eighty-five north-north- 
eaft of Delhi. Lat. 29. 47. N. Ion. 78. 36. E. 
LOLGUN'GE, a town of Hindooltan, in Qude : fixteen 
miles north-eaft of Manickpour. 
LOLGUN'GE, a town of Hindooltan, in Benares: 
twelve miles fouth-weft of Merzapour. 
LOLGUN'GE, a town of Hindooltan, in Oude: twenty 
miles lbuth of Azemgur. 
LO'LIUM , f. [of uncertain derivation.] Darnel, or 
Ray-grass ; in botany, a genus of the dais triandria, or¬ 
der digy nia, natural orderof gramma, gramineaj, or gralfes. 
The generic characters are—Calyx: receptacle common 
elongated into- a lpike, prefling the flowers diitichally 
fpiked to the angle of the culm. Glume univalve; op- 
polite the fliaft, awl-!haped, permanent. Corolla: bivalve; 
valvule inferior narrow-laceolate, convolute, lharp-point- 
ed, the length of the calyx : valve fuperio'r, Shorter, linear, 
more obtuie, concave upwards. NeCtary : two-leaved; leaf¬ 
lets ovate, obtuie, gibbous at the bate. Stamina: filaments 
- three, 
