Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/273

Rh Mosul are in a like case with the mountain Nestorians, speaking the same dialect, or nearly so, and understanding scarcely anything of what is read in their churches.

The Nestorians of central Coordistan are, generally speaking, very simple and ignorant. Deploring this state of things among them, Kash' Aurâha said to me one day: "What can you expect? The poor people have scarcely ever seen anything but the heavens above, and the earth beneath them." The only books which they possess, are the church rituals, and I have not heard of a single author at present existing among them. To be able to read the service books, and write a tolerable hand is considered the very acme of education, and this is all that is required in candidates for holy orders. While at Asheetha I had an opportunity of seeing the Archdeacon give this kind of instruction to several youths, who were destined to become deacons. Five sat down round a psalter, placed upon a low stool, in such a way, that to two at least the book was upside down. The best reader led the way, and the rest followed his voice and finger as he pointed to the place where he was reading. The Archdeacon would occasionally stop and explain the meaning of a difficult passage or word which he supposed they could not understand; but this scarcely interrupted him in his copying or transcribing, in which occupation he spends most of his time. The same course is pursued in other villages, in none of which, however, is there so capable an instructor as Kash' Aurâha, and as schools are unknown among them, the reader may easily imagine how gross must be the ignorance of these neglected mountaineers.

I cannot better describe the moral condition of the Nestorians in central Coordistan, than by quoting the language of Mr. Ainsworth, whose remarks on this subject, prove that he had made a just estimate of their character: "It has been advanced by the most eminent traveller of the present age (De Humboldt), that certain climates, more especially Alpine districts, where but a brief interval of sunshine alternates with storms, and where the ruggedness of nature begets sternness and moroseness in mankind, are most favourable to the propagation of a religion of asceticism and monastic seclusion. But here, in the heart of Coordistan, where snow-clad rocks perpetually frown