Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/164

110 E. A. My brother's.

Q. Are you permitted to marry?

E. A. Yes, the Nâzir alone is not allowed to have a wife.

Q. Why did you light the wicks at the tombs?

E. A. In token of respect.

Q. When do you receive your names?

E. A. As soon as we are born.

Q. Where are you circumcised?

E. A. At the villages where we are born.

Q. When are you dipped into the water?

E. A. When we first come to Sheikh Adi, and every time afterwards.

Q. What prayers do you use at the feast of the pilgrims?

E. A. We don't pray; the Kawwâls pray, but we do not know what they say.

Q. Don't you worship towards the sun?

E. A. Yes, at sunrise and sunset.

I then endeavoured to obtain from them some explanation of the different symbols engraved upon the front of the temple; but their only answer was, that they knew of no secret meaning attached to them. The inscription over the entrance records the rebuilding of the edifice by Husein Beg, the grandfather of the present Emeer of that name, in the year of the Hegira 1221, and my informants stated, that the different representations of a comb were inscribed on the walls out of respect for his long beard. I have since spoken with many Kawwâls and others on the subject, and am of opinion, that if originally intended as mystical signs, their meaning is lost to the Yezeedees of the present day, who regard them as mere ornaments.

The Christians in these parts entertain an opinion that the temple of Sheikh Adi was originally a church dedicated to Mar Addai, or Thaddeus, of the Seventy, one of the great apostles of the East. Nothing in the arrangement of the interior favours this belief; and the adoration offered to the sun by the Yezeedees, sufficiently accounts for its being built east and west.