Page:An Essay on the Age and Antiquity of the Book of Nabathaean Agriculture.djvu/106

90 the same literature, with this difference, that the books preserved and probably rewritten or re-modelled by the Mendaïtes have suffered from the influence of Parseeism, and followed that fatal growth of imbecility which the East was not able to resist. As to the Nabathæan language, it is no longer doubtful that it was identical with that of the Mendaïtes; and it was probably from manuscripts, analogous to those which are termed Sabian in our libraries, that Ibn Wahshíya made his translations.

Who can assert that we have here an intellectual group of which it is impossible to prove its origin and unity? Take away, to avoid the appearance of begging the question, the four Nabathæan works which have come down to us, still what Arabian writers inform us concerning the Sabians; what we know of the School of Harran, which perpetuated the traditions of the Syro-Babylonian school, improved by hard