THE LOST TRIBES.* 4. orations and ingenious hook by Dr.
George Moore deals with the vexed question of the Lost Tribes ; inquires into the origin of
the Saxon race, suggesting, a connexion between the Saxons of the East, or the Sam, and the Saxons of the West ; discloses new and verypeeuliar views of Buddhism, and contains some singular translations of the so called " Rook Records in India." We will briefly report Dr. Moore's own speculations on these four topics. I. The Lest Tribes are, he thinks, to be identified with the Affghans. The Israelites, he argues, were to be a lone and se- parated people in their Assyrian captivity. Their characteristic NO, the Hebrew language, denoted by the word Jiadad. Thus the exiled rase would be known as the Budii or lonely ones. The tribe called Budii is mentioned by Herodotus, as a Scythian or Median tribe, but Herodotus was not aware that they were really Israelites hidden under this name. In looking over the localities, associated with the Israelitish people, we find two places of similar character and name ; " one the province called Bhutan, in Koordistan, and through which a river Chebar flows ; the other in India, at the further extremity of the Himalayas. Now Koordistan is the name of the country anciently known as Assyria ; and it was probably into this country that the captive Israelites were conducted. Owing, however, to the Scythian in- vasion, inc. 663, the Israelites were probably removed from Media, Mesopotamia, and Assyria into the land of the Tartars, and thence into all parts of the habitable globe. In one of the most interesting and important countries of the East, Afghanistan and the adjacent region, may be found a people who have a striking personal resemblance to the Hebrew family ; who call themselves Beni-Israel; the names of whose tribes are Israelitish ; whose personal and topical nomenclature is largely Israelitish; and whose language (the Pushtoon) has more Hebrew roots than any other. Moreover, the Affghans are called _Ratans (a word imply- ing authority), and Ptolemy locates the Aristophyli, the Noble Tribes, in juxtaposition with the Cabolita3 (the Tribes). "The antiquity of the name of Cabal or Cabool is then established, and it is also shown that some peculiar people known as " the Tribes " and the Noble Tribes, dwelt there at a very remote period." These tribes, Dr. Moore concludes, were Israelitish tribes, and the present inhabitants of Cabul may, he thinks, be fairly regarded as their descendants, and consequently as the descendants of the Assyrian captives. To corroborate this conclusion, he adduces the evidence of their Mohametan conquerors who assert, by their historians, that the Affghans are Israelites.
2. Quoting Sharon Turner in favour of the opinion that the Saxons were a Gothic or Scythian tribe, and that the Same are the people from whom the descent of the Saxons may be inferred with -the least violation of probability, Dr. Moore surmises that the name of Goth may have been transferred from Palestine to the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea, where the Greta and the Seem, the Goths and Saxons, are historically found together. But "there is indication that the Sam, if they took not their name from the house of Isaac, were at least connected with Isaac'e descendants." The reasoning employed to support this derivation will not carry conviction with it to many minds ; and, as it is desirable to be as brief as possible, we omit it entirely. The Saxons of the East and the Saxons of the West have had in some sense common characteristics, a common destiny, and a common de- scent. The Saxons of the East became nominally Buddhists, the Saxons- of the West became nominally Christians. While, how- ever, privileged to claim Israel as our great Eitarnmvater, we must yet remember that we are not the pure descendants of the sons of Isaac, not pure Sak-suns ('Zack's sons ?) but " a balanced mixture of extremes, the offspring of savages and wild men, the outcasts of the family of Japhet, united with a Semitic race inured to the difficulties and dangers of a forest life." Still if not the literal Israel ourselves, " we are partakers of a large portion of the incidental blessing resulting from the wanderings of Israel ;" and we shall hereafter form part of that universal Saxondom, in the East and West, which shall one day be consolidated out of the scattered and disconnected Seem.
3. But the Sacie of the East are associated with the Buddhists, as the Buddhists are with the children of Israel. During the reign of Asoka, India was overrun by the Sacas. The Sakian era, says Dr. Voore, appears to have commenced about 307 years before Christ. We quote, with but one trifling omission, a pas- sage in our author's treatise, which states connectedly certain illustrative facts. Speaking of India, he says- • The 4esst Tribes, and the Saxons of the East and of the West, &c. By George Moore, M.D., Member of the Royal College of Pbyalciaus, Loudon, &c. Published by Longman alikd " We find that country afterwards divided under three princes of Scythian extraction, named in the chronicle Rushee, Tushea, and Caniachea, who are stated to have reigned about 150 years after the death of Saleya-sinha, the founder of Buddhism as at present existing. Thus we learn from the chronicle two interesting facts; first, that the betas came into India, and founded Buddhism ; secondly, that the Sacas were connected with the Scythians, but properly distinguished from them. As Professor Wilson observes, The dates only corroborate the general fact, that, at some re- mote period, the Scythians (or rather the Same) did govern Casimir, and gave their sanction to the religion of Buddhism.' About the year 790 A.D., Lalitinlitya, King of Cashmir, warred against his Buddhist neighbours, and overran Nepal and Bhotan with his conquering armies. These facts serve to eennect all those places with the Sakat race and the Sakai religion."
We should like to quote or report the sense of our author's ex- position of Buddhism ; but we are compelled to economize apace. We will only say, therefore, that in his view the Buddha religion is a kind of counterpart of Christianity, Buddha himself a mock Christ, his doctrine pure, beautiful, ennobling, but that it is de- rived from Judaic sources. We think that we have somewhere read that the Antichrist was to be a Jew, and that he was to appear in Tartary ; and Dr. Moore might find something to say in favour of this hypothesis !
4. We come next to the Buddhistic caves and inscriptions-
.. Now," says Dr. Moore, " if the Ruda, called by Herodotus a tribe of the Medea, were the same as the Buddhists, and were Hebrews, as surmised, then in the early inscriptions on the rocks and cave temples of North- Western India, which are known to be Buddhistic, and supposed to have been engraved at or before the time of Alexander, we ought to find indica- done of the existence of Hebrew influence together with Buddhistic in those regions,—' in fact' we ought to find that the inscriptions in the so-called Bactrian, Arian, Scythian, or Buddhistic character, consist and bear evi- dence of being addressed, in some places at least, alike to Budii, Getm, and Sartre."
Dr. Moore thinks his anticipation has been verified. Knowing nothing of Oriental languages but a small matter of Hebrew, we cannot undertake to decide. Our author's principle of interpre- tation is very simple. He transliterates, or translates the Buddh characters into their Hebrew equivalents, and in this way he ex- plains very perplexing inscriptions, getting something like a con- tinuous meaning out of them ; and in one instance presenting .us with no less than thirteen pages of good orthodox prophetical raving, the real genuine article, done into English from these extraordinary hieroglyphics. We know what a fool the human mind can make of itself, and we are quite aware that a man may read into an inscription what he wishes to find there, and then read, it out again. But we are not in a position to say that Dr. Moore has done this ; and there is so much that is curious, in- genious, and learned in his book, that it seems to us deserving of examination, at the hands of those enviable men who are well versed in the Baehian, Arian, and other light literature of the East. The chapter, in particular, on the Karena and their traditions, is very curious. We are far from sub. scribing to Dr. Moore's opinions ; we know the extreme and suicidal ductility of prophecy; we distrust the obliging spirit of an unscientific etymology which is ever ready to accommodate theory to almost any extent. We are quite con- viiiced, moreover, that Dr. Moore is credulous, mistaken, and all abroad in his theological philosophy. But he appears to us to write as a gentleman and scholar ; to accumulate many interest- ing and striking facts ; possibly to furnish contributions and sug- gestions towards the deciphering of the ancient and mysterious East, which is the mother of us all, and so we recommend wiser men than ourselves to turn over the pages of his book ; knowing as the great Goethe says, in Mr. Milne's translation, that
" Many a beam the Orient throws By the distant waters caught, He alone that Hafiz knows, Knows what Calderon has thought."
Previous page
