modern growth. The ancients knew no such sect as the Sabian; Greek and Latin historians, the early Armenian annalists, the Syrian Fathers, make no mention of such a creed. The Sabeans of Arabia Felix are the only people of similar name referred to by the classical writers; but these, though their name has given rise to frequent confusions among scholars of all ages, have absolutely nothing in common with the genuine Sabians. The Sabæans are simply the people of Saba in the Yemen, the traditional descendants of Sheba, the rulers of that wonderful but little known Cushite kingdom in Southern Arabia which is now known by the name of Himyerite: as Philostorgius puts it, τοὺς πάλαι μὴν Σαβαίους νῦν δὲ Ὁμερίτας Kaλovμέvovs.* In language, religion, race, and history, these καλουμένους. Sabæans are totally distinct from the Sabians of the Koran and of the medieval antiquaries.

6

The Mohammedan writers are the first to mention the Sabians, and it is not till the study of Arabic and the Jewish redactors of Arabic works became the fashion in Europe that we have any discussion of this mysterious people. Maimonides' Moreh han Nebukim,' in the fifteenth century, was the beginning of the fray; and since the discovery of his passage on the Sabians no scholar-knight thought his spurs won till he had broken a lance de Zabiis. Casaubon lighted on the place, and forthwith wrote urgently to Joseph Scaliger, Doce me, obsecro, quæ hæc gens fuerit;' to whom Scaliger, omniscient as ever, Scito esse Chaldæos, Arab. Tzabin; dicti a vento Apeliote quasi dicas Orientales.' He has not the least doubt about it, and Casaubon receives the decision meekly. Our own John Selden walked in the same way, and in his work on the Syrian gods, De Diis Syriis,' identified the Sabians with the ancient Chaldeans, curiously citing Eutychius to prove that Zoroaster was the founder of the Sabian religion. Salmasius came to a similar conclusion, and laid it down that the Sabians were a sect of the Chaldees. Stanley, in his History of Philo'sophy' (1655), devotes a remarkable chapter to the Sabians, in which he collects a fine cluster of myths, cites the passage in the Book of Job wherein it is related how the Sabeans fell upon' the patriarch's oxen and asses, and took them away: yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword;" and ends by placing the Sabians (i.e. Sabæans) in Arabia, adding the definition Arabes, hoc est Sabæi,' which, if over comprehensive, is sufficiently correct as regards the Sabæans, but entirely false if taken to describe the Sabians. Pococke in

*Hist. Eccl. iii. 4.

geniously, but erroneously, derives the name from a word meaning army,' and defines the Sabians as worshippers of the heavenly host; and Bochart and Golius follow him in his etymology. So the theories went on. Everybody had a conjecture to offer about the Sabians, but nobody really had the necessary data on which to ground an opinion. The only point on which all agreed was that the essential characteristic of the Sabian religion was the worship of the stars; and this idea has generally been the prevailing notion in Eastern and Western minds when they thought of the Sabian creed. Meanwhile, travellers in the East were bringing back accounts of a peculiar people, called Sabians, who dwelt in the fens of Lower Mesopotamia, and had a religion of their own which could not be explained altogether by the old conception of star-worship, and whose reverence for St. John Baptist gained for them, among Europeans, the name of Christians of St. John.' Ignatius a Jesu published at Rome, in 1652, his Narratio' of the origin, ritual, and errors of the Christians of St. John; and for a long time after this the history of the controversy is only anarratio' of the errors of Ignatius a Jesu. Further complications were introduced by the discovery of many references in Oriental writers to a sect also called Sabian, dwelling at Harran. The problem now seemed involved beyond hope of extrication. To distinguish or to unite the Sabeans of Job and Philostorgius, the Sabians of Babylonia, and the Sabians of Harran, was beyond the skill of the scholars of the day. They tried to identify the Sabians of Babylonia with those of Harran, and had to invent for that purpose a new Harran in Mesopotamia, instead of the ancient Carrhæ; but a junction between these and the Arabian Sabæans was not to be effected.

The wonderful growth of Oriental studies in the present century could not fail to clear up much of this obscurity. It was easy to separate the Sabians from the Sabæans, when it was discovered that the two words began with different letters, and went on with different letters, and had, in fact, nothing in common. It did not require much scholarship to do this; but as the writings of the vast body of intelligent, observant, studious men who composed that enormous Arabic literature which is slowly being unfolded to our view, became better known and understood, it became apparent (1) that there was a distinction between the two sects called Sabian, that of Harran and that of Babylonia; and (2) that the solution of the difficulty, at least as far as the Babylonian division was concerned, would have to be sought elsewhere than in the Mohammedan literature. The Muslim writers maintain a difference between the two

kinds of Sabians, and give considerable details about those of Harran; but of the Babylonian Sabians they tell us next to nothing. Now, interesting as the sectarians of Harran seemed to be, with their bizarre combination of Greek philosophy and the old heathen religion of Syria, the geographical position of the more eastern sect, as well as its greater mystery, gave it an even superior charm. Who could these Sabian Christians ' of St. John' be? Living in the swamps of Lower Babylonia, on the site of the old Chaldean empire, could they be a relic of the Wise Men of the East? Might we not find among them the religion which the Assyrians borrowed from the Babylonians, with its triads of gods and its planet-worship? Would their divinities have Accad names? Might we not even find the people now weeping for Tammuz,' as they did in the days of Ezekiel (viii. 14), and in older days, long before the Greeks set up their answering Adonis?

6

However delightful such speculations might be, a little serious study soon proved their futility. The publication of one of the sacred books of the Babylonian Sabians, under the title of the Book of Adam,' or Codex Nazaræus, by Norberg, at the beginning of this century, provided scholars with something approaching to a definite ground on which to build with more security than before. Although by no means a scientific edition, containing mistakes which led to corresponding errors in those who worked from Norberg's premisses, the Codex Nazaræus was a genuine Sabian authority, and dispelled a good many of the mists which surrounded the character of this people and their religion. But the first really scientific work on the subject did not appear till 1856, when Chwolsohn in his Ssabier und Ssabismus' conclusively demonstrated who were and who were not Sabians, showed the fallacies and confusions of the earlier hypotheses, and, touching lightly on the Babylonian Sabians, gave a very comprehensive account of the Harranian sect. This elaborate and thoroughly scientific work cleared the ground for ever of all the undergrowth of fancies and myths which had sprung up round the name of Sabians; and though among the advanced German school of Orientalists it is now the fashion to adopt a somewhat patronising tone towards the careful and painstaking' Chwolsohn, and to dispute his conclusions about the Babylonian sect, his researches into the antiquities and religion of Harran have a worth that can never be depreciated, and his labours in this direction will never have to be done again.

6

The disappointing thing in Chwolsohn's book is the slight notice he takes of the Babylonian sect, which he admits to

have been the true Sabians, as understood by the early Mohammedan writers, but to whom he nevertheless devotes only one short chapter, whilst the rest of his bulky volumes is entirely concerned with the Sabians of Harran, who only took the name of Sabian in A.D. 830, under the reign of the Khalif Mamun, in order to escape the penalties of heathens, and to enrol themselves among the recognised sects of the Koran. Mohammed had said in the fifth Sûra, Verily, they who be'lieve, and the Jews and the Sabians and the Christians-who'ever of them believeth in God and the Last Day, and doth 'what is right, on them shall come no fear, neither shall they 'be put to grief. The people of Harran could not pretend to be Christians or Jews, but the other sect mentioned with these in this sentence of amnesty, the Sabians, was so vague, and the Mohammedans knew so little who they were, that the Harranians adopted the name, and thereby avoided the obloquy and oppression which was the lot of those whom the Koran treated as heathen. This sect, therefore, was only adoptively Sabian, and it is to these adoptive Sabians, and not to the true Sabians of Babylonia, whom the Mohammedan writers had long before recognised as the people referred to in the Koran, that Chwolsohn devoted his main attention. However much we may regret that he did not investigate the other part of the subject more closely, it is impossible not to feel grateful for the completeness and accuracy of his researches into Harranian religion. Though not true Sabian, the Harran adopters of the name are well worthy of study. Their religion is one of the most curious religious phases that Syria, the land of changing creeds, has produced. It was the old heathenism of the country, mixed with many foreign elements. • Eclecticism prevailed at that period, and it was not only Greeks and Ro'mans that found the influence of foreign, chiefly Eastern, 'metaphysical speculation irresistible.' We find at Harran Biblical legends, Jewish ceremonial laws, Greek gods, such as Helios, Ares, and Kronos-probably translations of native divinities and finally something of Aristotle and a good deal of the Neo-platonism of Porphyry. It was the symbolical veneration of the planets, which formed a part of this græcised Syrian heathenism, to which we owe the modern idea that Sabian means star-worshipper. After the people of Harran adopted the name Sabian, the Mohammedan writers began to use the word as synonymous with star-worshipper, and finally called all and any idolaters Sabians. The process is very similar to that by which Hellên came to mean Pagan; and Harran itself was called Hellenopolis, the city of paganism.

The explanation of the true Sabian religion, as preserved in the remnant of a religious sect in Babylonia, was reserved for another hand. Whilst Chwolsohn was clearing up the obscurities surrounding the name of Sabian, and explaining the characteristics of the adoptive Sabians of Harran, Petermann was travelling in Mesopotamia, studying the true Sabians (or Mandæans, as they call themselves) in situ, learning their language, and taking down their traditions and doctrines from Priest Yahya, the most learned man of the sect. The results of these researches appeared in his Travels' in 1860, and seven years later he published the text of the great scripture of the Sabians, which Norberg had imperfectly edited before, whilst Dr. Euting did the same service to another of their sacred books. Petermann's writings still form the highest authority on the true Sabian religion, and the publication of accurate editions of the Sabian scriptures enabled other scholars to investigate the mythology and legends in detail, and finally gave Professor Theodor Nöldeke the means of making an exhaustive study of the Sabian language, and to collect the most important results of his investigations in his 'Mandäische Grammatik.' The linguistic importance of the sect would alone make them worthy of careful study. They speak an Aramaic dialect closely allied to Syriac and Chaldee, but much freer from foreign influences than either. Whilst Syriac shows in many ways the effect of Greek influence, and Chaldee is obviously deeply affected by its greater Hebrew kinswoman, Mandæan, the dialect of the Sabians of Babylonia, is comparatively untouched, for the importation of some Persian words does not affect the language in any fundamental manner. Hence no one who wishes to understand the character and history of the Aramaic branch of the Semitic family of languages, especially in its syntactic relations, can afford to neglect the Mandæan dialect, which is, in fact, the legitimate descendant of the tongue of the ancient Shemites of Babylonia.

Finally, the French Vice-Consul at Mossoul, M. Siouffi, has published this year the results of his conversations with a Sabian youth who had been converted to the Catholic faith by the energies of the Carmelite mission at Baghdad. As far as ceremonies and customs go, M. Siouffi's book is interesting and useful; but as soon as he ventures upon theological ground he is not to be trusted. Both the knowledge and the honesty of the young convert Adam are questionable; he certainly seems to have endeavoured to deceive M. Siouffi on more points than one-a feat, however, not very difficult of