'The Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society. From January 1863 to December 1864. (Edited by the Secretary.) Volume XVII.' [‎156] (325/524)

156 REMARKS ON A RECENT JOURNEY
for to the capital and made responsible in the contingency of the tribes
incurring the displeasure of the Government.
51. It should not however be supposed that the Eliants are all
describable under one class. r ihe tribes vary in riches and stationari-
ness : some being wretchedly poor, filthy, and widely wandering : others
again enjoying fine camping grounds, and all the comfort of pa
triarchal wealth. You ask them while passing, who are you? Arabs
Turks, Ajmi. Many speak a sort of Turki, many a mongrel Arabic
and most of them a mixture of modern Persian, and their own dialect
interspersed with old Persian, and with some words that seem to be
identical with words still in use among the peasantry of the Deccan.
52. Being at Shirauz, I naturally made a flying visit to Persepolis
(Thakhti-Jamsheed) and to the neighbouring rock sculptures of
Nakshi Rustum and Rejib, but these scenes, in part more beautiful
and more impressive than aught else I have seen in the East, do not
belong to the subject of this report. How old are those chedder-
looking cliffs, on whose faces the sculptured tombs of ancient kings
show like scratches of yesterday ? Look at those names of a British
Embassy carved in the nineteenth century of our Lord on the same
block with that dead and lost language ! Who reared those enormous
slabs which the fanatic Omar disfigured and hurled down.
53. What architect, and whence, designed these Indianic Halls
beside which yon fluted columns soar Greekly modern ? Could not
the greatest philosopher, critic, statesman, savan of all antiquity—could
rathei noisy party, and some of the guests were in the ecstacies of a Persian dance,
yet speedily all was silence; all had gathered round the lad; all was intense attention!
I seemed for the first time to realise Homer, and how and with what effect he or
other bards chanted the national traditions and ballads to a Greek crowd. In
Bushire there is a man who daily in the afternoon takes his high arm-chair out and
places it against the wall of a terraced tea and coffee shop. Women come and sit
like ciows immediately above along the edge of the flat roof, and male auditors
crowd round and squat in the street below. Then he commences his recitative in
a loud and authoritative voice. All sit rapt in interest, and will so sit for hours
scarcely moving a limb. Surely one should in part judge a literary or poetical
work by the effect it produces on the nation in general to which it was addressed;
an perhaps no poet in any country in the world has ever become a National Poet
un ess there was a strong thread of common sense running through the web and
° ° f wor k> and coming home with more or less beauty of expression to
the heart as well of the peasant as the prince.
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