92

THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.

Accordingly there is already a deposit of more than Rs. 3,000 in the local treasury, and nothing more is required but a definitive order that this sum, and what shall hereafter accrue, shall be devoted, under

[MARCH, 1873.

Government supervision, to the restoration, until such time as it is thoroughly completed.” The Lieutenant-Governor has promised to act upon this suggestion.

REVIEW. Essays on EASTERN QUEstions, by W.M. Gifford PALGRAve, Author of “Central and Eastern Arabia.” (London, Macmillan & Co. 1872.)

This handsome volume of Essays is very appro priately dedicated to the Earl of Derby, “whose guidance of England's foreign policy has been always marked by a statesmanlike insight into character and race.” There are ten Essays here reprinted:—Three on “Mahometanism in the Levant” from Fraser ; from the same periodical there are other three, entitled “The Mahometan Revival,” “The Monastery of Sumelas,” and “The Poet 'Omar ;” two from the Cornhill, called—“The Turkomans and other Tribes

of the North-East

Turkish Frontier,” and “The Abkhasian Insurrec

one devoted to the Mahometan Revival (Fraser, February 1872), which was written on the perusal of Hunter's Our Indian Mussalmans, to which it forms a sort of supplement. “Its object is to show calm ly, and without sensational exaggeration, how wide spread and deep-rooted is the present revival of Islam, particularly in that part of the world which may be looked upon as its stronghold, the Asian Turkish Empire. Hence it is natural to infer with what caution and steadiness of statesmanship

we should deport ourselves towards such mani festations of it as arise within the circle of our

own dominion ; though I have purposely abstained from specialized conclusions.” To quote briefly—“So strong, indeed, is the bond of union supplied by the

tion ;” one from the Quarterly on “Eastern Chris tians;” and one from Macmillan on “The Brigand

very name of Islam, even where that name covers the

Ta'abbet Shurran.”

of the “infidel, the deep clefts which divide Soonnee and Sheeah are for a time and purpose obliterated ; and the most heretical sects become awhile amalga mated with the most uncompromisingly orthodox, who in another cause would naturally reject and disavow them. Very curious in this respect is the evidence afforded by Mr. Hunter; nowhere more so

“To expect,” says the author, “that the collec tion of a few Essays and their republication can have any material effect towards removing erroneous ideas, or substituting exacter ones, about the Mahometan East of our own times, would be presumptuous indeed. Yet even these writings may in a measure contribute to so desirable a result; for correct appreciations are, like incorrect ones, formed not at once, but little by little. . . . These Essays, taken together, form a sketch mostly out line, part filled in, of the living East, as included within the Asiatic limits of the Ottoman Empire. Now, as for centuries past, the central figure of

that picture is Islam, based on the energies of Arabia and the institutions of Mahomet, propped up by the memories of Chaliphs and the power of Sultāns, and though somewhat disguised by the later in crustations of Turanian superstition, still retaining the chief lineaments, and not little of the stability and strength, of its former days. Round it cluster the motley phantoms of Eastern Christianity, in digenous or adventitious ; and by its side rises the threatening Russian colossus, with its triple aspect of Byzantine bigotry, western centralization, and eastern despotism. This group, in its whole and in some of its details, I have at different times endeavoured to delineate ; and if the pencil be an unskilful one, its tracings, so far as they go, have the recommendation, not perhaps of artistic grace fulness, but at least of realistic truth.”

Mr. Palgrave has an uncommon knowledge of the religious and social manifestations of Muhamma danism in India, Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey. Per haps the most instructive of all these Essays is the

most divergent principles and beliefs,that,in presence

than in the light he throws, almost unconsciously it would seem, on the true character of the so

called Wahhabee movement, spreading from the rebel camp of Sittana to Lower Bengal, and recon centrating itself in the centres of Maldah, and at Patna in particular. Here we have the most

simple and rigid form that Islam has ever assumed, namely, the puritanical Unitarianism of the Nejdean Wahhabee, combined with all that the Nejdean Wahhabee, as such, would most condemn—

I mean, the superstitious belief in a coming “Mahdee, the idea of personal and, so to speak, corporeal virtue and holy efficacy in the ‘Imam’ of the day; and lastly, with the organised practice of private assassination, a practice long held for distinctive of the free-think

ing Isma'eleeyeh and their kindred sects among the Rafidee heretics. . . . Islam is even now an enormous

power, full of self-sustaining vitality, with a surplus for aggression ; and a struggle with its combined

energies would be deadly indeed. Yet we, at any rate, have no need for nervous alarm, nor will its

quarrel, even partially, be with us and our Empire, so long as we are constantly faithful to the practical

wisdom of our predecessors, that best of legacies bequeathed to us by the old East India Company.” Speaking of Indian legal difficulties—“Where plaintiff and defendant, testator and legatee, are alike Muslims, let matters be between them in

a court cognizant of Muslim civil law, and re