'The Expedition for the survey of the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, carried on by order of the British government, in the years 1835, 1836, and 1837; preceded by geographical and historical notices of the regions situated between the rivers Nile and Indus. In four volumes. With fourteen maps and charts, and embellished with ninety-seven plates, besides numerous wood-cuts. Volume the first.' [‎234] (299/905)

234
EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE.
[CHAP. XI.
people were born merely to serve him, and administer to his
pleasures. In a kingdom where the sovereign obliges even
the heir apparent to stand before him at the head of the other
princes, etiquette and precedency naturally become objects of
the first consideration, especially with the rich and noble.
Martial exercises and hunting take the next place ; and in
both of these occupations they excel from childhood.
Courses of Education is usually intrusted to a mulla, who commences
instruction. w ^] 1 grammar, theology, and arithmetic. To these succeed
short courses of mathematics, philosophy, geography, astro
nomy, history, and biography; but poetry and polemics
engross the chief attention of those who are to receive a
liberal education. 1 Ordinary instruction is communicated in
schools; every town, village, and camp, and most of the large
mosques, being provided with a teacher. During the day,
boys are taught to read poetry; the study of the Koran
follows, and then that of the Persian classics. Those
destined to be mullas next study Arabic, logic, law, and
theology, which subjects are occasionally followed at one
of the colleges by ethics, metaphysics, history, medicine, and
astronomy—above all, poetry, in order that the student may be
prepared with scraps and sentences suited for every occasion.
Literature, The Magian and Pehlevian literature must at one time
modern. an have been spread over the whole of Western Asia; but
scarcely anything, except the occasional references to them
which were made in the reign of Nusheravan (in the sixth
century), now exists, 2 and both may almost be said to be lost;
unless, indeed, any remnant should be hereafter discovered in
the yet undecyphered inscriptions at Persepolis, Sus, and else
where in Persia. 3 In later times, the encouragement given
by the rival sovereigns of Persia, Ghaznein, and Turkistan, in
the tenth century, caused literature to flourish for a time;
and it is now slowly recovering from the blighting effects of
1 Elphinstone's Kabul, pp. 188, 189.
Bun Dehesh, or Persian Cosmogony, has been translated from the Pehlevi
by Anquetil de Perron.
In the Gabr colonies, and also in a few detached villages of Azerbaijan
and Dizmar in particular, the vernacular dialect is Pehlevi.—Major Rawlin-
son, Vol. IX. Part I. p. 109, of the Royal Geographical Journal.