Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/90

80 credibility of such a story. He sounds the springs of the Nile with a cord thousands of fathoms long, and finds no bottom; he accomplishes the prediction of one oracle by pouring a libation out of a brazen helmet, and of another, concerning cocks, by leading an army of Carians, with crested helmets, against Tementhes, king of Egypt, and he figures in the Greek version of the story of Cinderella's slipper. Another account is related in the life of James IV. of Scotland. "The King also caused tak ane dumb voman, and pat her in Inchkeith, and gave hir tuo bairnes with hir, and gart furnisch hir in all necessares thingis perteaning to thair nourischment, desiring heirby to knaw quhat languages they had when they cam to the aige of perfyte speach. Some sayes they spak guid Hebrew, but I knaw not by authoris rehearse," etc. Another story is told of the great Mogul, Akbar Khan. It is mentioned by Purchas, only twenty years after Akbar's death, and told in detail by the Jesuit Father Catrou, as follows:—"Indeed it may be said that desire of knowledge was Akbar's ruling passion, and his curiosity induced him to try a very strange experiment. He wished to ascertain what language children would speak without teaching, as he had heard that Hebrew was the natural language of those who had been taught no other. To settle the question, he had twelve children at the breast shut up in a castle six leagues from Agra, and brought up by twelve dumb nurses. A porter, who was dumb also, was put in charge and forbidden on pain of death to open the castle door. When the children were twelve years old [there is a decided feeling for duodecimals in the story], he had them brought before him, and collected in his palace men skilled in all languages. A Jew who was at Agra was to judge whether the children spoke Hebrew. There was no difficulty in finding Arabs and Chaldeans in the capital. On the other hand the Indian philosophers asserted that the children would speak the Hanscrit [i.e. Sanskrit] language, which takes the place of Latin among them, and is only in use among the learned, and is learnt in order to understand the ancient Indian