radical fubverfion of every characteristic circumstance which distinguishes nation from nation. The ancient government of the Perfians was overturned; their religion profcribed; their laws trampled upon; and their civil transactions disturbed by the forcible introduction of the lunar for the folar calendar: whilst their language, which the laws of nature preserved from immediate and abfolute annihilation, became almost overwhelmed by an inundation of Arabic words; which, from that period, religion, authority, and fashion, incorporated with their idiom.

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THE worship of the ancient Perfians had unquestionably been very early corrupted. The reverence paid to the Sun and to Fire, which Zoroafter confidered perhaps merely as reprefentatives of Omnipotence, the fountain of light, feems to have been an idea too refined for the grofs capacities of the vulgar : who, without regard to the great invisible Prototype, turned all their thoughts to the adoration of thofe oftenfible deities. Much abfurd and barbarous fuperftition must in confequence have crept in, and clouded by degrees the purer faith of their ancestors. Upon other grounds it will be difficult to account for that fingular severity with which Alexander first, and afterwards the Arabian

Khalifs, reprobated the tenets of the Magi; destroyed their books; and perfecuted, with unrelenting rigour, all who made profeffion of their religion.

THE Grecians and Romans had enlarged fentiments of toleration. They adopted the gods of all the nations they fubdued: and, in the belief, that every people and every place had their tutelary divinities, they were at uncommon pains to please them, and were equally careful in avoiding all offence. From Arrian we learn, that Alexander facrificed to the Babylonish gods and other Afiatic deities, though then unknown in Greece: and we are told by Pliny, that the firft endeavour of the Romans, when befieging a city, was to discover the name of the guardian divinity (without which, it feems, they could make no invocation); when, by promifes of greater honours than he had hitherto enjoyed, they endeavoured to bribe him to betray his former votaries. Such having been the extended ideas of the old Polytheifts, we are forced to conclude, That fome fingular circumftances of intolerance and horror had marked the Magian rites, which peculiarly provoked the vengeance of their Macedonian conqueror.

A SIMILAR reafon must account for that uncommon severity with which they were

crushed by their Moflem mafters. These enthufiafts, it must be confeffed, knew little of the tolerant principles of the ancient Greeks; and confidered it as a religious duty to establish their new faith with fire and fword. To the Chriftians, Jews, Sabians, and other fects, they paid, however, fome fhow of refpect; and permitted them, if averse to Moslemism, to follow their old belief, on paying a certain extraordinary tribute. But their fury against the Magi knew no bounds; deftruction or conversion being the only alternatives they deigned to offer, The body of the nation chose the last; whilst the small remainder of confirmed enthusiasts fheltered themselves in the mountains of Kuhiftan. Some retired to the ifle of Ormuz; whence they afterwards embarked for Diu; and at length, towards the close of the eighth century, they obtained permiffion to fettle in Surat, and other places in the territory of Guzerat: where their defcendants, under the denomination of Parfis or Guebres, by avoiding all intermarriage with the aboriginal natives of Hindoftan, ftill maintain themselves a diftinct body of harmless and unpowerful people.

IT may be faid, perhaps, that the religion and learning of the Magi was by no

means the fingle object of Mohammedan de vaftation; the deftruction of the famous library of Alexandria being another memorial of the execrable zeal of the Khalif Omar. It is true, that this great but bigoted prince, confidering all books which coincided with the Alcoran to be fuperfluous, and all that oppofed its doctrines to be pernicious, iffued his barbarian mandate to destroy that noble monument of ancient learning and magnificence but ftill there was nothing striking in the perfecution of the Egyptians; the general mode of an advanced tribute being all that was exacted, for permiffion to follow the various religious fyftems, which prevailed in that country previous to the conquest.

THESE fingular events, which marked the fate of the Perfian religion, joined to the unfuccefsful researches which have hitherto been made, seem to furnish strong collateral evidence in fupport of the foregoing arguments: and lead us to conclude, with every circumftance of probability, That the original works of the Perfian lawgiver have long ago fallen a facrifice to the ravages of time and of conqueft; that the publications of M. Anquetil have no pretenfions to authenticity; and that nothing now remains, bearing the names of those once celebrated books, but the abfurd

ceremonials of the modern Guebres; which preferve, apparently, no nearer resemblance to the ancient Worship of Perfia, than the corrupted tenets of the Mingrelians or Georgians have to the Chriftian religion. The Parfis of Guzerat even acknowledge, that, fo far from now poffeffing the ancient books of Zoroafter, they have not fo much as one fingle copy faved by their ancestors from the general wreck in the feventh century: the formularies which they now use, being only transcripts of a translation by Ardeshir, one of their Deftours, who lived about 400 years ago. In Europe, we have had many inftances of the forgery of books, in matters of mere curiofity; and we have found their detection difficult. But how much more powerful must have been the temptation to the Guebre priests on the lofs of the writings of their lawgiver for rule was their object; and they have ever ruled with defpotifm. Abfurd ceremony feems to have ufurped the place of common fenfe; and the barbarous dialect of the Zend may poffibly have been invented, to throw a more impenetrable veil over their mysterious nothings. A Parfi cannot even pare his nails, or cut his hair, without hundreds of unmeaning prayers, and the moft tedious and ridiculous obfervances. But