one and the same stone. And such has been the view of Elphinstone, Erskine, and others. On the other hand, it must be admitted that native writers vary very much in their statements of the diamond's weight, and that it is also not clear what Babar meant by the word mishqal, or what its exact weight was. Perhaps Babar meant some coin, but what coin is the question. He may mean a gold mishqal or a silver one. At p. 332 he speaks of the mishqal being equal to 5 mashas or 40 ratis, and it is in this way of course that we arrive at the weight of 320 ratis for his diamond. Abul Fazl tells us in his Ayin, Blochmann's translation, that the gold coin called the dinar weighed one mishqal and that the latter was equal to 13* dirhams. So perhaps we might get at the weight of Babar's mishqal by weighing a dirham and adding thereto. But it is not only the weight of the mishqal that is in question. The number of mishqals that the diamond weighed varies very much. Babar says it weighed about (the à peu près of P. M. Courteille, and ghaliban of the Persian) 8 mishqals, Khur Shah says 6 in one place and 7 in another, Iskandar Munshi, the author of the 'Alam Arai, says, Rieu supplemental volume, British Museum Add. 7654, p. 78a, that two authorities, viz., Hasan Beg and Qāzi Ahmed Ghafārī, have stated the weight of the diamond to be 4 mishqals 4 dāngs, and we have verified his references (see British Museum MS. Or. 141 222b, and British Museum Add. 4134). On the other hand, British Museum MS. Or. 4678 p. 124a gives the enormous weight of 24 mishqals 4 dangs.

We have now given all the information that we have been able to gather about the early history of Babar's Diamond. We regret that we have not more to offer, and freely confess that we are unable to say positively if the diamond was the Koh-i-Nur or not. We hope that someone will pursue the inquiry, and would suggest that investi

*Professor Maskelyne apparently takes the mishqal as only equal to a dirham, but if we take Abul Fazl's calculation, we shall have to add nearly a half to this weight.

gations made at Ahmadnagar and Haidarabad might have good results and show what became of the diamond after it was brought back to Southern India. We submit, however, that we have thrown some light on the subject. We have carried on the history of the diamond to 1547, when 1526 has hitherto been regarded as the first and last historical mention of it. Above all, we have removed the difficulty hitherto felt, that Babar's Diamond could not be the Koh-i-Nur because it had always been in Northern India, whereas the Koh-i-Nur, if it were the same as Mir Jamla and Tavernier's diamond, must have come from the Deccan in the 17th century.

FIRDÚSI AN ACCURATE HISTORIAN:

THE PÁRTHIANS, MAGIANS, FROM THE TIME OF THE VEDÁS.

BY JAMSHEDJEE PALLONJEE KÁPADIÁ.

DURING the rule of the "Commonwealth of the Magian monarchies," both in Persia and Tartary, when their power was at its greatest height, the Magian religion was practised to a very large extent in several of their provinces. It has been stated by Pliny (vide H. N., xxx. 2), who lived about the middle of this period, "that the doctrine of the Magians prevails to this day among a great part of the nations, and in the East is supreme over the 'King of Kings' (i.e., the Arsacids), and vouches for Hermippus that he had written with great care about the Magians, from whose work he quotes some particulars of the doctrine of Zoroaster" (see Max Duncker's "History of Antiquity," vol. v., p. 54). This religion, no doubt, had been in existence for centuries, and had naturally become sectarian and considerably altered; but the Parthians of whom we are speaking had been born and bred to Zoroastrianism from their very commencement. They clearly distinguished between Hormazd and Ahriman; they swore by Mithra, the Méhar Yazad of the Parsees, while entering into contracts; they held Anahitá (Ab án Ardvisúr) in the highest veneration, and looked upon Fire as a sacred symbol of God. Gibbon records that about this time nearly seventy different sects would interpret the sacred scriptures of the Avestá differently in different ways according to their lights, and this statement of the historian of the “Decline and Fall" has been borne out by the Arab writer Sáristáni. Strabo tells us that many foreign rites and ceremonies had at his time been incorporated by contact with nonZoroastrians into the old primitive faith of Zoroaster. But it is hard to believe that during the seventy-five years that the Greeks ruled in Persia after the death of Alexander they could have succeeded in converting the Iranian Zoroastrians to their own faith. In the first place, the Mahometans, in spite of their fanaticism and their power of the sword, have signally failed during a period of nearly 1,300 years to convert the whole of Persia to Islám. In the next, the Greeks, and even the Jews, of that age were not all in the habit of proselytizing, and hence it is impossible that the Zoroastrian religion could at all have been effaced in so short a space of time. Nevertheless it is but natural to expect that men's minds continued to be influenced more or less by the Greek philosophy, down to the end of the Párthian rule. Arrian, the biographer of Alexander, who lived in the reign of Hadrian and the Parthian King Vologeses or Narsees II., and was the Roman Governor of Kápádokiá between the years A.D. 132 to 136, states that Alexander had quite a predilection for Parsee rites and ceremonies, and had himselt got several of his generals married to Parsee ladies in accordance with Parsee ceremonies. It is related that on one

occasion in the capital city of Susá he had as many as ten thousand of his Greek soldiers married to as many Parsee women, and no less than a hundred of his best and ablest generals married to young Parsee ladies of high birth and noble lineage. Similarly he did not hesitate to marry Greek women to the noble youths of Persia in accordance with the Persian rites and ceremonies. And this fact is corroborated by the Persian poet, Firdúsi, who relates that Alexander himself was married to Statirá, daughter of Darius, after the custom of the Majusis (Magians). His words are:

"Nashistand ve oorá be a'hin bekhást,

Be rasm-i-Majoosán ve paivand rást.”

That is to say, "having seated the princess by his side, he got himself married to her and entered into the sacred bond of matrimony according to Zoroastrian rites." This couplet has been corrupted by ignorant copyists, and is found in all the extant editions of the Sháh-Náméh with the words, “Be rasmé Massihá”—that is, according to Christian rites. But I cannot believe that Firdúsi, whose knowledge of Christianity was so extensive, could at all have made such a blunder. For from the commencement of the Khalifate in Persia down to the death of Ma'hmood of Ghiznee and even later, Christians of the Nestorian sect were largely employed as clerks in Government offices. Firdúsi himself says to his patron that in "your Majesty's exalted countries not only there are Mahometans but even Magians, Jews and Christians live in large numbers." Thus the great poet, having had to come in contact with learned men of diverse Christian and Magian sects, had acquired a thorough knowledge of Magism and Christianity and also of the age of Jesus Christ. Moreover, the sarcastic couplets which were addressed by the poet to the Roman Emperor of the time of Chosroes II., and which were conveyed to the former by KhúrádBúrjin, the then Persian Ambassador at the Court of Constantinople, are a clear reflex and a true translation of the well-known "Sermon on the Mount" (see my "Magian Monarchies," p. 85, note 1). This also shows that Firdúsi could not have been guilty of the blunder attributed to him by Mr. Turner Macan (vide his Sháh-Námeh, English Preface) and others as to the age of Christ falling long after the advent of Alexander. Again, it is also incorrect to trace the error, as some scholars have done, ultimately to Pehlevi writers on which the Sháhá-Námeh was originally based. For during the era of the Sassanides the Parsee Dasturs had frequently to enter into philosophic and religious discussions with Christian priests, especially the then newly-converted Armenians, and it is not too much to suppose that these Dasturs could not have held their own, as they appear to have done against their antagonists in argument, without a thorough knowledge of the history and doctrine of the Christian religion (see English translations of "Dinkard," "Epistles of Minoscheher and Sikand Gumánic Vajar," and other Pehlevi works).

It was the invariable practice of Alexander, as it was of Napoleon in modern times, out of pure political motives, to endeavour to bring Europe and Asia into closer union by promoting matrimonial alliances between the two races. And the Mobeds of those days seem to have given him their

weighty support. For they laid it down that no Mobed could legally perform the Ashirwad ceremony on the marrying couple without first investing the non-Zoroastrian party with the Súdréh and Kústí (the Parsee sacred shirt and thread). Hence, if we are correctly informed that the Greek officers and soldiers were married to Parsee ladies in accordance with Parsee rites and ceremonies, they must have been made to put on the Súdréh and Kústí even for a while during the progress of the Ashirwad ceremony. If after the ceremony is over the party not of the Zoroastrian faith took off the Súdréh and Kústí, that did not in any way invalidate the union, and the marriage continued to be a valid and subsisting one between the parties "till death do them part." Similarly, until very recent times, when infant marriages prevailed in the Parsee community, it was the custom to put the Súdréh and Kústí on the persons of the marrying children while the Ashirwad ceremony was being performed, and then afterwards to take them off and to substitute the usual children's frocks in their place. If the man was a Greek and the bride a Parsee, the offspring of the union followed the status of the father and became Greek, as they would, under the circumstances, even in our days. Vice versa, if the man was a Zoroastrian and the mother a Greek lady, their children were brought up in the Zoroastrian faith. But we are not in a position to state how long this state of things lasted after the death of Alexander. I am inclined to believe that these intermarriages continued for about 50 or 60 years only, and that then they altogether ceased, for the Greeks had been fast losing ground in Persia. Among the princes of the blood, no doubt, the custom prevailed down to the end of the Parthian Empire; as witness the historians of the period, who frequently refer to intermarriages between Greek and Parsee princes and princesses. Even in our own days, in spite of religious scruples of the Hindu religion, the ruling Hindu chiefs of India do not hesitate to marry Mahometan princesses of rank and bring up their offspring in the Hindu faith. And we meet with a similar practice among the ruling monarchs of Europe. Princes and Kings are more particular about the nobility of the blood than ordinary men, and thus, by promoting such intermarriages, they consult the political needs and interests of the country far more than their individual and personal inclinations.

Having shown now that it is incorrect to speak of Firdúsi as having introduced Alexander the Great as a Christian, let us digress a little from our main subject and dwell for a while on some other charges levelled against the great poet, which are equally false and groundless. To begin with, it is certain that while the Sháh-Náméh was being composed, the Zoroastrians of Persia had still preserved to them at least fourteen of the Nosks, that is, the "sacred Scriptures," as mentioned by the learned author of the Dabistán, out of which just two or three have now come down to us in an imperfect and garbled state. Hence many of the missing links in the Avestá may be supplied from the Sháh-Náméh and the Vedas, which are to us, as it were, the key to the Avestá. For instance, the sisters of King Jamshid are not mentioned at all by name in the Avesta, nor in the Pehlevi scriptures now extant, but their names are met with in the Sháh-Náméh. Similarly, as Professor Darmesteter has shown, the