Note 687 — Chapter X · THE SWORD IN BABYLONIA, ASSYRIA AND PERSIA, AND ANCIENT INDIA.

Herod. i. 136, 138, &c. All writers assure us that the ancient Egyptians and Persians, the Chinese and Hindús (Marco Polo), were truth-telling races who abhorred a lie. ‘How sweet a thing is truth!’ exclaimed a Nile-dweller. In the Carpentras Inscription the Lady Ta-Bai ‘spoke no falsehoods against any one.’ In the trilingual Behistun Inscription (b.c. 516) Darius the king says, ‘Thou who mayest be king hereafter, the man who may be a liar, and who may be an evil-doer, destroy them with the destruction of the Sword’ (col. iv. par. 14). They are now emphatically the reverse. The wild tribes, such as the Bedawin, the Iliyát, and the outcasts of India, still preserve the old characteristic. ‘The word of a Korager’ is proverbial on the West Coast of the Hindu Peninsula. I cannot but attribute the deterioration to extensive commerce, contact with strangers, and change of faith. The subject, however, is too vast and important even to glance at in these pages; but I may note that the Hindú has deteriorated even in my day. In 1845 the trade-books of a Sahukár (merchant) were received as evidence in our law courts. In 1883 the idea would be scouted.