Mashhad, and that he went to Transoxania in 920, and died there in 924 A.H. See Blochmann's note 6 to p. 102 of his 'Ain translation. With reference to the Armenian Agha Mirza, who copied the famous Alwar copy of the Gulistan, it is interesting to observe that he is mentioned in Saiyid Ahmad's book on Delhi, called the Aṣar-i-Sanādid, among the calligraphers of Delhi. See p. 120, article Agha Sahib, where he is described as a pupil of Saiyid Muḥammad Amir. At Alwar I was told that the Armenian was converted to Islam by a Delhi Muḥammadan known as Panjakash, or the Wrestler.

QUARTERLY REPORT ON SEMITIC STUDIES

AND ORIENTALISM.

BY PROF. DR. EDWARD MONTET.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.

AMONGST the works of a general class relating to Orientalism and Semitic studies we may point out that of W. von Zehender on the Congress of Religions at Chicago ("Die Weltreligionen auf dem Columbia-Congress von Chicago").* This is an interesting summary of the works introduced at this remarkable assembly. With respect to this publication, it would not be out of place to observe the general characteristic of the last years of the nineteenth century regarding religion and religious instruction: this result has been accomplished from studying and presenting Christianity in its relations with other religions-religions of the past and present. The most important endeavour in this sense was made at the Congress of Chicago in 1893. A similar endeavour, though different from the former, as it will be confined to the historical aspect, will be made this year at the Congress of the History of Religions at Paris. It is not only on scientific grounds that Christianity is studied in its relations to other religions in learned assemblies, but it is also the same in the religious press. During last May the American Unitarian Association met at Boston, where not only were represented a considerable number of Churches belonging to the five parts of the globe, from Europe to Japan and the Indies, but also Churches of various dispositions and characters, including those of the Jewish communities. In short, in one of the principal English religious journals (The Inquirer) there appeared, during May and June of this year, some very interesting articles from the pen of Professor Carpenter on the religions of the Old World and those of mankind at the present time in their relations to the religion of Israel and the religion of Jesus.

The doyen of the Faculty of Protestant Theology of Paris, Mr. A. Sabatier, has lately published an original study on "L'Apocalypse juive et la philosophie de l'histoire."‡ In it he upholds the genuine argument that the Apocalypses are essays on the philosophy of history. "With Constantine," the author writes, "the first period of the philosophy of history, the Apocalyptic period is closed; a second commences, the theological period. This opens with a chef d'œuvre, and closes with another. The first is the 'Cité de Dieu,' by St. Augustin; the second, the 'Discours sur l'histoire universelle,' by Bossuet."

We have to draw the attention of our readers to an important work

* Gotha, Perthes, 1900.

+ We shall give an account of this Congress in the next number of the Asiatic Quarterly Review.

Paris, Durlacher, 1900.

relating to one of the most important and attractive religions of the ancient Orient, and later of Imperial Rome: the religion of Mithras. Under the title of "Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra," vol. i., Introduction,* Mr. F. Cumont has written a true and critical history of Mithracism from its most remote origin in Persia up to its disappearance in the fourth century of the Christian era.

We may be allowed, by right of curiosity, to announce an interesting study by Harnack on the Irenical fragments, called the fragments of Pfaff.† Irene was not a Hebraist, and the etymologies which he gives of Hebrew names of the Old Testament are fanciful; but one will forgive this digression by the author of these Reports, who has of old studied Irene and his legend. According to Harnack ("Die Pfaff'schen Irenaeus-Fragmente als Fälschungen Pfaff's nachgewiesen "),§ and the explanation which he gives is acute and concise, the self-styled fragments of Irene discovered by Pfaff in the Library of Turin are spurious. The chief argument given by Harnack is that the manuscripts from which these fragments have been extracted do not exist. This argument, as may be seen, is decisive.

THE OLD TESTAMENT-HISTORY OF ISRAEL.

Under the title of "Israel's Messianic Hope to the Time of Jesus,'|| Professor Goodspeed gives an interesting sketch of the religious development of the people of Israel. This essay is, at the same time, a judicious chrestomathy of the classical texts of the Old Testament.

We have to recommend a French translation of the Psalms, which possesses a genuine scientific value, and the existence of which we have only lately become aware of. This work is due to a Catholic priest, M. Flament, who has adopted the metrical style of Bickell. It is a critical translation of the most advanced criticism.

Euringer has published an interesting study on the interpretation of the Song of Solomon in the Ethiopian Church.** On the testimony of Bruce, the celebrated traveller, at the end of the eighteenth century, it was believed that the Abyssinians considered the Song of Solomon as a work of Solomon, composed in praise of the daughter of Pharaoh ; this evidence appeared to be confirmed by the opinion of Theodore of Mopsueste -Syrian influences having acted on the Ethiopian translators-in such a way that the Ethiopian Church had ignored or rejected the allegorical interpretation of the Song. Euringer shows that the Ethiopian version of the Song contains some traces of allegorical interpretation; that it may be Brussels, Lamertain, 1899. Vol. ii. includes the texts, inscriptions, etc., and appeared in 1896.

+ Vide these fragments in the edition of the works of St. Irene by Stieren, vol. i., from p. 847 (Leipzig, Weigel, 1853).

E. Montet, "La legende d'Irénée et l'introduction du Christianisme à Lyon," Geneva, Schuchardt, 1880.

§ "Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der alt-christlichen Literatur," N.F., V. 3, Leipzig, Hinrichs, 1900.

New York, Macmillan and Co., 1900.

"Les Psaumes traduits en français sur le texte hébreu," Paris, Blond, 1898.

** "Die Auffassung des Hohenliedes bei den Abessiniern," Leipzig, Hinrichs, 1900.

recognised also in the glosses of this translation and in several Ethiopian writings; and that, finally, it is the only exegesis of the Song which the Abyssinians of the present day are acquainted with.

In the Journal of Biblical Literature (1900) Haupt has published a very interesting article on the Babylonian elements in the Levitic ritual. The fol lowing are the principal conclusions at which he arrives: (1) The indication of the Divine will from which an oracle is derived is termed tertu; this word is identical with the Ethiopic temhért (instruction), as well as with Hebrew, while Aram NN and Ethiopic ôrit correspond to the Assyrian byform of tertu, viz., úrtu. (2) The Hebrew term (covenant) is identical with the Babylonian biritu, which is derived from the same stem as baru (diviner). n seems to be a Babylonian loan-word, just as and the original meaning of may have been oracle. (3) The comparative study of the ante-Islamic religion of the Arabs undoubtedly throws much light on certain forms of ancient Israelitish worship; but if we wish to trace the origin of the later Jewish ceremonial of the Priestly Code, we must look for it in the cuneiform ritual texts of the AssyroBabylonians.

THE TALMUD.

The fine and scientific edition of the Talmud of Babylon (text and translation) published by L. Goldschmidt has been enriched by a new fascicle, containing the first portion of the treatise "Pesahim."* A eulogium of this publication is unnecessary. The editors have inserted in this last fascicle an interesting notice which is not without piquancy. This notice relates to an edition of the Talmud of Babylon, with a French translation by Jean de Pavly, which we mentioned without any comments in our report for July, 1899. If the writers of this notice are to be believed, the edition of the Talmud of Pavly† is only a utilization of the edition of the Talmud of Jakob Scheftel, which appeared at Berditschew in 1895. Jean de Pavly had purchased a great many copies of the Talmudic text edited by Scheftel, and had added to each treatise an introduction and an epitome of the translation, forming in all not more than 214 pages of print; the paging in the Scheftel edition commencing anew with each treatise-this artifice that is, if the facts are exact, was easily carried out. We are reluctant to believe that it is so, and for the honour of science we shall be pleased with a complete contradiction.

ASSYRIOLOGY.

The "Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek," published under the direction of Mr. Schrader, has been enriched with a new volume, "Assyrischbabylonische Mythen und Epen," by Jensen. This volume, of which we have but the first part, contains some celebrated texts (with translation and commentary): the account of the Creation and the descent to the Sheol of Istar, etc.

This work gives us the opportunity to go back to another volume of the

* Berlin, Calvary, 1900.

+ Orleans, Fourniquet, 1900. Berlin, Reuther und Reichard, 1900.

same collection, one which contains the famous letters of Tell-el-Amarna (ed. Winckler, Berlin, 1896). In a lecture given at Paris at the Lutheran Conferences in May last, M. Philippe Berger, professor of the Collége de France and member of the Institute, has affirmed that the tablets of Tellel-Amarna inform us that 150 years before Moses the Hebrews besieged Jerusalem. One feels the graveness of this assertion and the discredit which it throws upon Biblical documents. But as we have shown in a study that we have recently published on "les Israelites en Egypte,"* there is no occasion to speak, with respect to the sojourn of Israel on the banks of the Nile, of the documents of Tell-el-Amarna if the Habiri of these texts were Hebrews. But nothing is less certain than this identification, so that the capture of Jerusalem, to which fragment 185 (ed. Winckler) makes a vague allusion, remains enigmatical. At the Congress of Orientalists at Rome in 1899, discussion on this question showed how still more obscure it was. We have just learnt that Professor Kautzsch, one of the masters of the science of the Old Testament, refuses absolutely to recognise in the Habiri of the cuneiform inscription Hebrews or Israelites.

ARABIC AND ISLAM.

We have the pleasure to announce at the commencement of this paragraph the publication of the last part of the grammar of Sibawaihi, edited by Jahn,† denique tandem! This important work is finally complete.

The fourth volume of the admirable bibliography of Arabic works, or works relating to the Arabs, by V. Chauvin, has appeared since our last report. This volume is devoted to the "Thousand and One Nights," first part. A eulogium of this work is unnecessary. The very deep erudition and most trustworthy critical insight are its greatest characteristics. Nothing is more interesting than the contents of this new volume. After an introduction ("Essays and Researches upon the Collection of the Thousand and One Nights"), the author gives a very detailed and analytical bibliography of the texts (Habicht, manuscripts, Oriental editions) and translations. Galland's version, with its several editions and the numerous translations which have been made, occupy the place of honour in Chauvin's bibliography. Following the enumeration and the description of other translations (Burton, Habicht, Von Hammer, Lane, etc.) comes finally the examination of collections analogous to that of the "Thousand and One Nights" ("The Hundred Nights," "The Thousand and One Days," etc.). The volume ends with a series of tables (translations, editions of the text, manuscripts, analogous collections) most valuable to Arabists and all who desire to thoroughly study this inexhaustible subject.

We must besides mention an interesting article by V. Chauvin, which appeared in the Centralblatt für Bibliothekswesen,§ on the sources of the

* Le Progrès religieux, Geneva (July 28, 1900).

† Berlin, Reuther und Reichard, 1900 (2 vols. in 8vo). Vol. i., xviii, 385 and 321 pages; vol. ii., xvi, 903 and 552 pages.

Liège, Vaillant-Carmanne, 1900.

§ Leipzig, Harrassowitz, July, 1900.

THIRD SERIES. VOL. X.

X