AS-ASA.

Caspian, and North of the IIindu Kush and Paropa- generally to the common heir-loom of the Aryan misan Mountains. There, at a period long anterior language. The proper appreciation of this fact in its to all European history-while Europe was perhaps general bearing will shew how a similar remark only a jungle, or, if inhabited at all, inhabited by made by Niebuhr, with regard to Greek and Latin, tribes akin to the Finns, or perhaps to the American requires a very different explanation from that which Indians dwelt that mother-nation of which we that great scholar, from his more restricted point of have spoken. From this centre, in obedience to view, was able to give it. It will shew that all the a law of movement which has continued to act Aryan nations had led a long life of peace before through all history, successive migrations took place they separated, and that their language acquired towards the north-west. The first swarm formed individuality and nationality as each colony started the Celts, who seem at one time to have occupied in search of new homes-new generations forming a great part of Europe; at a considerably later new terms connected with the warlike and advenepoch came the ancestors of the Italians, the turous life of their onward migrations. Hence it is Greeks, and the Teutonic peoples. All these would that not only Greek and Latin, but all Aryan lanseem to have made their way to their new settle- guages have their peaceful words in common; and ments through Persia and Asia Minor, crossing into hence it is that they all differ so strangely in their Europe by the Hellespont, and partly, perhaps, warlike expressions. Thus the domestic animals are between the Caspian and the Black Sea. The generally known by the same name in England and stream that formed the Slavonic nations is thought in India, while the wild beasts have different names, to have taken the route by the north of the Caspian. even in Greek and Latin.' At a period subsequent to the last north-western migration, the remnant of the primitive stock would seem to have broken up; part poured southwards through the passes of the Himalaya and Ilindu Kush into the Punjab, and became the dominant race in the valley of the Ganges; while the rest settled in Persia, and became the Medes and Persians of history. It is from these eastern members that the whole family takes its name. In the most ancient Sanscrit writings (the Veda), the Hindus style themselves Aryans; and the name is preserved in the classic Arii, a tribe of ancient Persia, Aria, the modern Herat, and Ariana, the name of a district comprehending the greater part of ancient Persia, and extended by some so as to embrace Bactriana. Ariana, or Airyana, is evidently an old Persian word, preserved in the modern native name of Persia, Airan or Iran. Arya, in Sanscrit, signifies 'excellent,' 'honourable,' being allied probably to the Greek ari(stos), the best. Others connect it with the root ar (Lat. arare, to plough), as if to distinguish a people who were tillers (earers) of the earth from the purely nomadic Turanians or Turks.

The several members of this ethnological group will receive special notice each in its place. As to the hypothetical mother-nation-the primitive Aryan stock before separation, it might seem impossible to affirm anything beyond its mere existence and locality. But the ethnologist does not content himself with this. In an admirable essay on Comparative Mythology (Oxford Essays, 1856), Professor Max Müller has drawn a picture of the Aryan family while yet one and undivided, in which the state of thought, language, religion, and civilisation is exhibited in a multitude of details. Where the same name for an object or notion is found used by the widely spread members of the family, it is justly inferred that that object or notion must have been familiar to them while yet resident together in the paternal home. It is in this way established, that among the primitive Aryans not only were the natural and primary family relations of father, mother, son, daughter, hallowed, but even the more conventional affinities of father-in-law, mother-in-law, sister-in-law; that to the organised family life there was superadded a state organisation with rulers or kings; that the ox and the cow constituted the chief riches and means of subsistence; and that houses and towns were built.

One general observation made by Müller is so interesting that we take the liberty of quoting it entire. It should be observed,' he says, that most of the terms connected with chase and warfare differ in each of the Aryan dialects, while words connected with more peaceful occupations belong

In this mainly pastoral life, the more important of the primitive arts were known and exercised: fields were tilled; grain was raised and ground into meal; food was cooked and baked; cloth was woven and sewed into garments; and the use of the metals, even of iron, was known. The numbers as far as a hundred had been named, the decimal principle being followed. The name for a thousand had not come into requisition until after the dispersion, for it differs in the different Aryan tongues.

Finally, it was among the yet undivided Aryans, while abstract language did not yet exist, while every word was a metaphor, and the setting of the sun, for example, could only be expressed by his growing old and dying, that those stories of gods, heroes, and monsters originated, which, with more or less of variety, but still with a family-likeness, formed the pagan mythology of every member of the group.

AS was the designation both of a Roman weight (called also libra) corresponding very nearly to an English pound (q. v.), and also of a coin made of the mixed metal aes, or bronze. The As (coin) originally no doubt weighed a (Roman) pound; but it was It is thus difficult to assign any fixed value to the gradually reduced to of a pound, and even lower. As. About 270 B.C., the denarius (= 83d.) contained

10 ases; so that the value of the As was then a little more than 3 farthings; when 16 ases went to the denarius, the value was about a halfpenny. It was by the sestertius (q. v.) that money was reckoned at Rome. The oldest form of As usually bore the figure of an ox, a sheep, or other domestic animal (pecus); from which it is usually supposed that the Latin word for money, pecunia, is derived.

A'SA, son of Abijah, and grandson of Rehoboam, was the third king of Judah. At the beginning of his reign, he was very young, and his character apparently undeveloped, for he allowed his grandmother, Maachah, to encourage idolatry; but on assuming the reins of government, one of his earliest acts was to remove her from all authority 'because she had made an idol in a grove' (1 Kings, xv. 13; 2 Chron. xv. 16). His zealous efforts to extirpate the vices and impieties

ASA DULCIS-ASARABACCA.

|

ASBEN-ASCARIS.

sneezing, and are employed as a counter-irritant in cases of headache, ophthalmia, toothache, &c. The plant contains a volatile oil, and a crystalline substance called Asarine, to which it seems to owe its active properties. The genus Asarum is distinguished by twelve horned stamens, distinct from each other and from the style, and by a bell-shaped three-lobed perianth. A. Europaum has a very short stem with two shining kidney-shaped leaves on long stalks, from the axil of which springs a single drooping greenish-brown flower.-A nearly allied species, A. Canadense, a native of Canada, is stimulant and diaphoretic, and is used under the name of CANADA SNAKEROOT, instead of Aristolochia Serpentaria. It is also called WILD GINGER, and used as a spice, being of a warm aromatic quality, and not acrid, like its European congener. AS BEN, or A'ÏR, a country of Central Africa, situated in 15-20° N. lat., and 6-11° E. long. Pop. estimated at 64,000. Its territory comprises a large amount of desert, as well as considerable tracts of mountain land. The inhabitants are chiefly of Berber extraction, and generally profess the religion of Mohammed. They are of a degraded character, and given to marauding. The climate is rather healthy, and generally hot and dry. The rainy season is from August till October. The soil in many places is fertile, producing the doom palm, dates, and senna. Dr. Barth, the traveller, says of the aspect of the country: Rocky ground, overtopped by higher mountain masses or by detached peaks, and hollows overgrown with rich vegetation, and preserving for a longer or a shorter time the regular form of valleys, succeed each other by turns, and constitute the predominant feature of the country of Asben.' The capital is Agades (q. v.).

The

Philistines. Its name often occurs in the history of the people of Israel in the Old Testament, where it is represented as falling at an early period into the hands of the tribe of Judah. Herod the Great embellished it with baths, palaces, and fountains; but in the subsequent wars with the Romans, it suffered much damage. There was a celebrated temple of Derketo, the Venus of the Syrians, at A., which is recorded to have been plundered by the Scythians, 630 B.C. After continuing long under the dominion of the Roman empire, the city came into the possession of the Saracens in the 7th c. In 1099 a great battle was fought on tho plains of A., between the Crusaders and Saracens, when the Christians gained a decisive victory. The city, however, a number of years after, was recaptured by the Moslems, and held by them as a strongly fortified place until 1153, when it was taken by the Crusaders under Baldwin III. In 1187 it was retaken by the Saracens, but afterwards (1192) fell into the hands of Richard Cœur de Lion. Subsequently, being more than once dismantled and repaired during the wars between Richard and Saladin, it was reduced to desolation by Sultan Bibars in 1270.

Part of the

The ruins of this ancient city occupy an extensive semicircular eminence, sloping gently to the east, but abrupt and steep towards the sea. walls are still standing, with the remains of Gothic churches, a palace, and several edifices of more ancient date, which attract the notice of the traveller and the antiquary.

A'SCARIS, a genus of Entozoa, or intestinal worms, of the order Nematoidea of Zeder, Cuvier, &c., and of the division Sterelmintha of Owen. The ascarides have a body approaching to cylindri cal, but thickest in the middle. They inhabit the intestines of animals. The species are numerous. One of the best known is A. lumbricoides, often I called the common round worm, which occurs in the intestines of man and in some of the lower animals, as the bog, ox, horse, &c., and which often occasions severe disease, and sometimes death, particularly when it ascends from the intestines to the stomach. Its presence even in its most ordinary situation in the small intestines, is attended with unfavourable effects upon the general health; and the greater the number present-which, however, is not usually large-the greater, of course, is the injury; although when they remain in the intestines, worms of this species are less injurious and less annoying than other, and even much smaller intestinal worms. subjects otherwise diseased, they occasionally find their way out of the intestines into the closed serous cavities of the body, and even pass through ulcerated parts of the external integument; but the mouth is formed only for suction, and is provided with no

In

ASBE'STUS, a mineral very closely allied to tremolite, actinolite, and hornblende, and which, along with tremolite and actinolite, is often ranked among the varieties of hornblende. It consists chiefly of silica, magnesia, lime, and oxide of iron, and is of a fine fibrous character, the fibres sometimes combined together in a compact mass, sometimes easily separable, elastic and flexible. It is generally of a whitish or greenish colour. variety called Rock-cork very much resembles cork, is soft and easily cut, and so light as to swim in water. Rock-leather and Rock-wood are varieties somewhat aimilar to rock-cork, but not so light. The finest fibrous variety with easily separable fibres is called Amianthus (from a Greek word signifying unpollutible, as A. is from a Greek word signifying indestructible), because cloth made of it was cleansed by passing it through fire. This cloth was used by the ancients to enwrap dead bodies placed on the funeral pile, so as to preserve the ashes of the body unmixed. Amianthus has sometimes been used for the wicks of lamps, and is often employed to fill vinaigrettes, being moistened from time to time. with a few drops of aromatic vinegar. The finest amianthus is found in the Tarentaise in Savoy. It is particularly abundant in Corsica. It is found also in Cornwall, at Portsoy in Scotland, and in several of the Shetland Islands. None of the varieties of A. are very common, but they are not unfrequent in serpentine and allied rocks in different parts of the One-third of the true linear dimensions; a is the head of the world. Minerals which resemble A. in their fibrous character are sometimes called asbestous or asbestiform, and some of them are believed to be varieties of augite rather than of hornblende.

A SCALON, or A'SHKELON, a ruined city of Palestine, situated on the shore of the Mediterranean, 36 miles W.S.W. of Jerusalem, and 12 N. by W. of Gaza. It was in ancient times a fortified city, and the principal town of one of the five lordships of the

Ascaris lumbricoides (male).

worn.

means of boring through the healthy intestine. An immense number of remedies (anthelmintics or vermifuges) have been proposed and used in order to expel this parasite, some of which are very effectual. They do not in general kill the worms, but act by making their dwelling-place disagreeable to them (see VErmifuge). It is, however, remarked by Küchenmeister, in his work on Parasites, that the

ASCARIS-ASCENSION.

treatment of cases of this description is as yet purely | less. Some recent authors of high reputation have empirical, because, although there must be a condi- separated this species from A., and call it Oxyuris tion of the intestinal canal which favours the thriv

ing of worms, we are by no means certain what it is. The A. lumbricoides is ordinarily, in size and

.

The mouth of Ascaris lumbricoides, magnified. Shewing the fleshy tubercles spread out, with cockscomb-like nuscles interior to them, and the entrance to the intestinal canal.

appearance, pretty much like the Common Earthworm (Lumbricus terrestris), from which resemblance it has received its specific name, although the resemblance is rather in general form than in more essential characteristics. It has been seen fifteen inches in length. Its mouth consists of three fleshy tubercles, which can be spread out upon the intestine to form a broad circular sucker, and within which there is a small tube capable of being protruded. The alimentary canal consists of a muscular gullet and stomach, and a thin-walled intestine. Between the muscular layers of the body is produced a pale reddish oily matter, with a strong and very peculiar odour, which is gradually communicated to spirit in which the worm is preserved. The males are smaller than the females, and much more rare. The females produce eggs in great numbers; but it is uncertain if ever they are developed within the intestine in which the parent worm resides. They are certainly capable of being developed elsewhere, and probably the young enter the intestines of the animals of which they are eventually to be the parasites, after having spent a certain stage of their existence in very different circumstances: the worm in a very young state having never been found in the intestines of man or of quadrupeds, the situation of its perfect development. The inhabitants of damp valleys are believed to suffer more than others from the A. lumbricoides. It is said also to be particularly frequent in persons who are much accustomed to eat raw leaves and roots; and it has been supposed that the young may exist, perhaps in an encysted state, in the bodies of insects or other very small animals which are accidentally eaten along with such food, as the young tapeworm finds its way into the human intestines from its residence as a creature of very different size and form in the flesh of the sheep or the pig. The once prevalent idea of the equivocal generation of these worms is now completely abandoned.

A. vermicularis is another species usually referred to this genus, and is the only other species troublesome to mankind. It is known as the Thread-worm or Maw-worm, and is very common both in children and adults. It infests chiefly the lower part of the intestines, and particularly the rectum, great numbers being often present together, and occasioning intolerable itching, irritation, and loss of sleep, although there is not in general much serious injury to health. The same anthelmintics employed against other intestinal worms are found efficacious also in the expulsion of this; and clysters are often employed with great success. The thread-worm is white, not more than half an inch in length, the male much

ASCENSION, one of the comparatively few single islands on the globe, being about 800 miles to the north-west of St Helena, and almost as far to the south south-west of St Matthew. It is said to have received its name from the circumstance of its having been discovered by the Portugese on Ascension-day. It is nearly in the middle of the South Atlantic, the lat. of its fort being 7° 55' 55" S., and its long. 14° 25' 5"W. A. is 8 miles long by 6 broad; its area being about 35 square miles. Though it was discovered as early as 1501, yet it remained uninhabited till 1815, when, in connection with Napoleon Bonaparte's detention in St Helena, the English took possession of it. It is a naval victualling-station and hospital. Pop. (1871) 27. Like St. Helena, it is of volcanic origin, and generally mountainous-one peak rising to a height of 2870 feet. Owing to the extreme dryness of the climate, which, however, is healthy, the suface is nearly destitute of verdure. Among indigenous productions are the tomato, castor-oil plant, and pepper; and various European vegetables are successfully cultivated. The chief exports of A. are turtle and birds' eggs-10,000 dozens of the latter having occasionally been collected in one week.

ASCE'NSION, RIGHT (Lat. ascensio, a rising; Ger. gerade aufsteigung), the name given in astronomy to one of the arcs which determine the position relatively to the equator of a heavenly body on the celestial sphere, the other being the declination. See ARMILLARY SPHERE. It is the arc of the equator

ASCENSION-DAY-ASCETICISM.

In

intercepted between the first point of Aries (q. v.), | humanely suppressed by the efforts of the British and the point at which the circle of declination government. Buddhism, which may be considered passing through the star cuts the equator. Measured as a kind of puritan revival or reformation-always from west to east, right A. on the heavens cor- the methodism of the Indian religion-carried responds to longitude on the earth. The right A. of a the principle beyond its previous bounds. heavenly body is ascertained by means of the transit its contemning the world; in its inculcating a life instrument and clock. The transit instrument deter- of solitude and beggary, mortification of the body, mines its meridian passage, and the transit clock and abstinence from all uncleanness and from all gives the time at which this takes place. When the exciting drinks, the object was to keep as distant and first point of Aries is in the meridian, the clock detached as possible from this Vale of Sorrow' (see stands at 0 hours, 0 minutes, 0 seconds, and it is so BUDDHISM and NIRVANA). The sober Chinese, and arranged as to indicate 24 sidereal hours, the time the more moral and rational Persians, never carried that elapses between two successive passages of that asceticism to these extravagances; and the earnest point. The reading of the clock, therefore, at the Egyptians sought to confine it to monogamy of the passage of any heavenly body gives its right A. in time, priests, abstaining from the flesh of swine and from and this, when multiplied by 15, gives the same in beans, rigid purity, circumcision, moderate flagelladegrees, minutes, and seconds. The right A. is usually tion, and frequent contemplation of death (which given, however, in time. The old term, oblique A., there were arrangements for bringing to rememwas given to the right A. of the point of the equator brance, even in the midst of festivities). These that rose simultaneously with the heavenly body; are certainly milder forms of A., but the principle and the difference of the oblique and right A. was is the same. called the ascensional difference.'

ASCENʼSION-DAY (sometimes called HOLY THURSDAY), one of the great religious festivals of the Episcopal, and also of the Roman Catholic, Church. It is heid on the fortieth day after Easter,

and is intended to commemorate the ascension of Christ into heaven. It is one of the six days occur

In the

It is in the light of this fore-history that we must consider Judaic and Christian asceticism. oriental mind, especially in Egypt, circumcision. avoiding of all uncleanness, and fasting, were signs of humiliation before God; and in the Mosaic ritual they were conditions of the favor of the holy Jehovah. Voluntary vows, abstaining even from lawful food, ring in the year for which the Church of England wine, &c., were held to have a special purifying, appoints special psalms, and the same church also consecrating efficacy, particularly for prophets and But self-castigation conparticularly recommends it as a fitting day for men of special callings. the receiving of the communion. Ascension-day has tinued for long foreign to the sobriety of Judaism, been observed from the earliest times of the Chris- and even hermitism came into established practice tian Church. St. Augustine believes it to have been only shortly before Christ, in Palestine among the instituted either by the apostles themselves, or the Essenes (q. v.), in Egypt among the Therapeutæ primitive bishops succeeding them. Though some- (q. v.); though doubtless Jewish A. had become more stern and gloomy since the exile in Babylon. times called Holy Thursday it is not to be conA. was far less congenial to the reflective nations founded with the Thursday of Holy Week, which some churches, especially the Roman Cath- of the West, above all to the cheerful Greeks. A olic, is more particularly denominated Holy Thurs-Greek felt himself entitled to enjoyment as well as day. See ROGATION DAYS and PERAMBULA- his gods; hence Greek religious festivals were pervaded by cheerfulness. The only exception appears to be the Eleusinian mysteries, which never took hold of the people generally, and the passing phenomenon of the Pythagorean fraternity. The attack made by the Socratic school upon the body as the prison of the soul-a view reminding one of the East

in

TION.

and the extravagant contempt for the elegances, and even decencies of life, professed by the later Stoics and Cynics, were no genuine fruits of the popular Greek mind; and we must also ascribe to the infusion of oriental philosophy the ascetic tendencies of Neoplatonism, in holding abstinence from flesh and from marriage as chief conditions of absorption into the divinity.

ASCE'TICISM. Among the Greeks, askēsis denoted the exercise and discipline practised by the athletes or wrestlers, who had to harden their bodies by exertion and to avoid all sensual and effeminating indulgences. In the schools of the philosophers, especially of the Stoics, the same word signified the practice of mastering the desires and passions, or of severe virtue. In these senses it passed into the language of the early Christians. The language of St Paul in comparing the Christians to wrestlers who had to contend with Satan, the world, and the flesh, contributed to this. But the philosophy of the time had more to do with it, which held the It was into the midst of these ideas that Chrisfreeing of mind from matter to be the means of union tianity was introduced, The Jewish converts brought with God; or, at least, that the refraining from all with them their convictions about fasting. Fasting luxurious pleasure was the way to restore the soul and Nazaritic observances were thought sanctifying to its original purity. To understand the vast influ- preparatives for great undertakings; and the inculence that ascetic ideas have exercised on the Christian cation of abstinence from marriage, on the ground of religion, we must look beyond the bounds of its the expected speedy re-appearance of Christ, falls in history. Their root lies in the oriental notion, that with the same notion, namely, that the flesh, that is, the Absolute or All is the only real existence; and the sensuous part of our nature, is the seat of sin, that individual phenomena, especially matter in all and must therefore, before all things, be rigorously its shapes, are really nothing, and are to be despised chained. The old oriental traditions of A.; the and avoided, as involving the principle of separation spirituality of Christianity, pointing away from earth from the Absolute. The East, accordingly, is the to heaven; opposition to the corruption of the native soil of A. The glowing imagination of heathen world; the distinction made between belief the oriental carries the practice of it to a monstrous and knowledge, as a higher and lower stage of intel extravagance, as is seen in the frightful self-ligence, leading to a corresponding distinction of a tortures of the yogis and fakirs, the suicides in higher and lower stage of virtue: all combined to the sacred Ganges and under the wheels of Jugger- make the Christians of the first two centuries hold nauth, and the practices now or recently prevalent aloof from the world and its wisdom, and favour of offering children in sacrifice, and of burn- abstinence from marriage, more especially on the Ing widows; most of which, however, have been part of the clergy. This ascetic spirit began as early