Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/272

218 ously all the Nestorian names that he could remember. In a list of eighty which he drew up, I find only ten Old and twelve New Testament names applied to males, the rest being of a later date, and many common to the Coords as well as to the Nestorians of this region; and among an equal number of female names, there are not more than eight taken from Holy Scripture. Now this ratio of biblical appellatives is to be met with among all the Mohammedans and Christians of Turkey, and I have no doubt is exceeded in some of the northern parts of the United States. The Doctor's own Christian name was Asahel, that of Dr. Smith and the Rev. Mr. Hinsdale, two other American missionaries at Mosul, Azariah and Abel, and that of Mr. Hinsdale's son Abel Abdallah.

The language spoken by the Nestorians of the mountains is a corrupt Syriac, and varies considerably in different provinces. This dialect, which is generally called Fellehi in the plains and Soorith (Syriac) in Coordistan, is mixed up with many Arabic words in the villages around Mosul, with Coordish in the Tyari and Hakkari, and with Persian in and about Ooroomiah. The two former understand each other better than they do those of the latter district, and several of the clergy complained to me, when I visited the country in 1850, that the vulgar dialect of the New Testament lately published by the American missionaries at Ooroomia was more difficult for them to comprehend than the classical Syriac which is printed with it in a parallel column. The ancient Syriac is not understood by the lay mountaineers, and very few of the ecclesiastics, I regret to say, know more than simply how to read it. It is in this language, however, that all their rituals are written, from which it necessarily results, that the intellect at least can be but little profited by an attendance upon the services of the church. I have met with a religious treatise or two in the vulgar dialect, but these are held in no esteem, and are scarcely ever used. Epistolary communication is kept up by a few of the clergy who frequently mix up much that is vulgar with the classical Syriac. The same observations apply to the Chaldeans of Mosul, who only speak the Arabic, yet their services, with the exception of the Epistle and Gospel, which are now read in that language, are carried on in the ancient Syriac. The Chaldeans in the villages around