commission or omission, he must repeat a form of confession to God, part of which is thus translated :

All that I ought to have thought and have not thought, all that I ought to have said and have not said, all that I ought to have done and have not done, all that I ought not to have thought and yet have thought, all that I ought not to have spoken and yet have spoken, all that I ought not to have done and yet have done; for thoughts, words and works, bodily and spiritual, earthly and heavenly, pray I for forgiveness.

Not that the whole of a Zoroastrian's religion consists in elaborate personal purifications. Fire, earth, and sea are symbolical of various attributes of the Godhead, and must be carefully protected from defilement. Fire must never be contaminated by the breath. It must never be kindled in proximity to the mouth (as, for example, in smoking tobacco). As to mother earth, she must on no account be defiled by contact with impure substances—least of all by dead bodies, which are the most impure of all things. They must be exposed on the top of towers made of solid granite, and erected on high hills. There they must be left to be devoured by birds of prey. All animals which fall under the good creation are to be held in veneration, especially bulls, cows, cocks,32 and dogs. On the other hand, snakes, frogs, scorpions, mice, and all belonging to the evil creation, are to be destroyed. A dog must be brought to look at a corpse, that its passage over the bridge Chinvat to Paradise may be secured.

Nor must it be forgotten that there exists in Zoroastrianism an elaborate system of religious services and symbolical ceremonies.33 The highest attributes of the Supreme Being are symbolised by his creations, fire, light, and the sun. Of these, fire is the one most accessible and manageable, and most conveniently isolated in separate localities. Hence worship is conducted by regularly appointed priests dressed in pure white garments, in the presence of sacred fire, or rather with the face turned towards it.34 The fire is first consecrated by solemn formularies, and then maintained day and night in firetemples by offerings of sandal-wood and other fragrant substances, every attendant priest being required to wear a veil (penom) before his mouth and nostrils. Worship may also be performed in the open air, prayers being repeated with the face turned towards the sun (compare Ezekiel viii. 16), or towards the sea, as objects typical of God's majesty and power. Homage must, of course, be paid to the whole heavenly hierarchy, the very name Yazata meaning 'worthy of worship.' No animals ought ever to be sacrificed; nor is there any image worship. Idolatry, such as is practised by the Hindus of the

32 The cock is said to be sacred to the angel Sraosh.

Whether Freemasonry has borrowed, as is often asserted, any of its mysticism and symbolism from Zoroastrianism, I must leave Freemasons themselves to decide. "Fire, the sun, and the sea, are practically the Zoroastrian's Kiblah, as Mecca is that of the Muhammadans, but in reciting the Ormazd Yasht, or prayer to the Supreme Being, he does not turn his face to any emblem of any kind.

present day, is an abomination to all true Zoroastrians. Yet complicated mystical ceremonies are performed with metal cups and vessels, with consecrated water (Zaothra), with homa (a liquid concocted from a plant substituted for the Indian Soma), with pomegranate leaves, with the sacred twigs or wires35 (called Baresma or Barsom), with the Darun or consecrated flat cakes offered to angels and deceased persons, and with the liquid excretions of cows and bulls.36

In all such ceremonies, to be more fully described in my next paper, prayers, invocations, and formularies of various kinds are recited, all of which are in Zend and taken from the Avesta.

IV. The limits of the present paper will not admit of my explaining at any length the contents of the sacred Avesta.

The fact is that the Zoroastrian bible is a simple reflection of the natural workings, counter-workings, and inter-workings of the human mind in its earnest strivings after truth, in its eager gropings after more light, in its strange hallucinations, childish vagaries, foolish conceits, and unaccountable inconsistencies. Here and there lofty conceptions of the Deity, deep philosophical thoughts, and a pure morality are discoverable in the Avesta like green spots in a desert; but they are more than neutralised by the silly puerilities and degrading superstitious ideas which crop up as plentifully in its pages as thorns and thistles in a wilderness of sand. Even the most tolerant and impartial student of Zoroastrianism must admit that the religious cravings of humanity can no more be satisfied with such food than a starving man be kept alive by a few grains of good wheat in a cartload of husks. Happily we are not obliged to resort to the Avesta any more than to the Veda to be spiritually fed, nor yet to be mentally feasted. Our object in studying these ancient documents is to gain an insight into the earliest thoughts and feelings of our Aryan forefathers, to follow the gradual growth of their religious ideas, and to watch the operation of those intellectual, spiritual, and moral forces out of which our own higher civilisation and more refined culture have been slowly and laboriously developed.

An account of the expulsion of the Zoroastrian religion from Persia, and of the modifications it underwent among the Parsīs of India, must be reserved for a future paper.

MONIER WILLIAMS.

NOTE.-Professor Darmesteter's translation of the Vendidad, with an Introduction, forming one of the Sacred Books of the East, has been published since this paper was written, but has not led me to alter or modify any of the opinions I have here expressed.-M.W.

35 In the present day metal wires are used for the Barsom, which ought properly to consist of slender twigs cut from a particular tree. These appear to be alluded to

in Ezekiel viii. 17.

This is called Nirang, and thought to have a very purifying effect.

THE BASUTOS AND THE CONSTITUTION

OF THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.

PUBLIC attention is at present so exclusively devoted to Ireland that there is less chance than usual of much thought being given by our statesmen and public writers to other parts of the British dominions. South Africa is, meanwhile, passing through a crisis as momentous to the fortunes of our colonies as that which occasions so much anxiety in Ireland, and there is considerable danger of changes, which may be very serious and very disastrous in their consequences, being effected in our relations with our South African possessions, before many on this side the ocean are at all aware of what is being

done.

Since the late Governor was recalled, the extreme members of the party in England who had so persistently demanded his recall as the one thing needed to restore peace and prosperity to South Africa have changed their cry. They now demand the forcible intervention of the Home Government to suspend the Constitution granted eight years ago to the Cape Colony, to take the administration of native affairs in South Africa under the direct control of the Secretary of State, and to revert to the worst features of that form of government which kept the Cape Colony for so many years in continual hot water, occasioned a constant succession of Kaffir wars, and a steady annexation of Kaffir territory. This retrograde and cruel policy is urged on her Majesty's Government by extreme sections of the Liberal and humanitarian parties-by men who, if they knew the real facts of the case and the real tendency of the measures they propose, would be the last to countenance a course which must prove alike fatal to the liberties and development of the European colonies, and to the chances of any steady improvement of the native races in civilisation or the arts of peace.

The deputation which lately waited on Lord Kimberley to advocate the course I have described, received from the Secretary of State little in the way of encouragement to their designs on the liberties of VOL. IX.-No. 47.

N

their fellow-subjects at the Cape; but the persistent misapprehension and misrepresentation of facts which has already been the cause of so much mischief still continues, and the advocates of a change in the Cape Constitution may now refer for support to two articles in the Nineteenth Century of April 1879 and December 1880, as affording them the countenance of the most experienced philosophical statesmanship and of the highest political morality.

Believing that these articles could not have been written had the real facts of the case been known, I propose to state those facts as they will, I am sure, be found by any one who has the means and the will to investigate them. I propose to confine my remarks for the present to the Basuto rebellion. I believe that an equally strong case could be made out with regard to the Kaffir wars of 1877 and 1878, and the later Zulu war; but the Basuto question is less complicated by side issues; it is a more complete test of the power of the Colonial Government and of the way in which that Government is likely to use its powers; and, above all, it is used, as the last and most conclusive argument, by those who would withdraw or contract and control the powers of self-government which the Cape Colony now possesses.

It seems generally supposed, by English writers and speakers on the subject, that the Basutos are an ancient race of mountaineers long settled in their present country, and for many generations past in the enjoyment of freedom, and conspicuous for their loyalty and attachment to the British Crown. This, however, is far from being the case. Under their present name, and in their present position, the Basutoland Basutos have no history beyond the memory of many men still living. They, in fact, owe their existence as a separate community, their name, and their position, entirely to their old and able chief Moshesh, who, less than twelve years ago, handed himself and his people over to the British Government, to save them from utter destruction and dispersion. The Basutos have, in fact, only come to what we now call Basutoland within the last generation. Within living memory, before Chaka created the military organisation of the Zulus, most of the clans of Bechuanas now settled in Basutoland lived in the open country, north of the Orange River, between the twenty-second and twenty-eighth degrees of south latitude and the twenty-second to twenty-ninth degrees of east longitude. The Bechuanas were more civilised and peaceful than the Zulus and other Kaffir tribes between the Drakensburg and the sea, and Basutoland had then few human tenants save Bushmen.

Early in the century the growing Zulu power disturbed tribes far inland from the present Zulus. Among the more civilised and peaceful Bechuana tribes then inhabiting the Transvaal, was a small clan ruled by the widow of a chief, who had for her counsellor Moshesh, a natural statesman and general. Moshesh first of all shared,

and eventually superseded, the authority of his chieftainess, made himself independent, and attracted to his rule many of the broken clans who had been ruined by intestine wars, or who were flying before the advancing hordes of Moselakatze, the emigrant Zulu chief. On the other side of the Bechuanas, advancing from the south-west, were the forerunners of the great Boer emigration from the Cape Colony. Retiring before these adverse forces, Moshesh sought refuge in Basutoland, which was then inhabited by few but the aboriginal Bushmen of the country. Here, in comparative peace, he consolidated his power, his people settled down in the deep valleys and multiplied, drawing to them many fugitives from all quarters, and over these Moshesh ruled with much wisdom and sagacity.

But his people, who had grown in lawlessness, did not give up the predatory habits they had acquired during their wanderings. They stole cattle, got into trouble with their neighbours on every side, and when Sir George Cathcart, just before the Crimean war, was settling the country which now forms the frontier districts of the Cape Colony and Orange Free State, he found it necessary to organise an expedition to bring Moshesh and his cattle-stealing people to account. Moshesh sent messengers and sued for peace. When a friendly chief remonstrated with Moshesh he replied, with characteristic sagacity, that he could have driven the redcoats then before him into the sea; but he knew that ten times their number would come out of the sea, and eventually destroy him; hence he was convinced that the best use he could make of the strong position he held was to secure peace and the goodwill of his powerful English neighbours.'

The peace which Sir George Cathcart accorded to him was in every way most advantageous, and might have secured the content, prosperity, and independence of his country; but the predatory habits of the Basutos were not so easily checked, and, after a while, brought about hostilities with the Orange Free State; which, meantime, had grown up between the Basutos and the Vaal River. In this contest the Basutos were effectually worsted; and the persistent courage of the Free State Boers under their able President Brand reduced Moshesh to the last extremity. The Boers were besieging his stronghold, and must have starved him out, when Moshesh, advised by the French Protestant missionaries who had settled in his country, appealed to the English Government to save him. He opened negotiations both with Sir Philip Wodehouse, the Governor of the Cape Colony, and with the Lieutenant-Governor of Natal, who was, at the time, in an almost independent position. With much natural diplomatic skill Moshesh tried to gain the best terms he could by playing off the one English Government against the other, and both against the Orange Free State. Finally, he decided to ask to be annexed to the Cape, mainly because he thought he could,