and learning. So, when young Taib was fifteen years
of age, he tied up his few books in a shawl, and set out from home
to sit at the feet of the renowned Manki Mullah. The learned man
himself would not condescend to teach so immature a pupil, but he
was surrounded by his Sheikhs, who acted as his staff, and taught
the talibs who flocked there from all parts of the country. Besides,
here Taib met with Mullahs from Delhi, Lucknow, Bukhara, Kabul, and
other far-famed seats of learning, contact with whom could not fail
to widen the horizon and enlarge the experience of the pupils who
sat around them, and listened to their arguments and dissertations on
the various schools of thought, and engaged in wordy polemics, which
practised the budding Mullahs in the art of drawing fine theological
distinctions on the interpretation of a Hadis or the difference of
a vowel point in the Quran.

Of a night the talibs would wile the hours away by telling tales
of their respective countries or capping verses from the Persian
poets. But Taib must travel and visit other Mullahs, too; so it
happened that, when seventeen years old, he visited Bannu, and
lodged in the mosque of a noted Mullah near the bazaar. One day,
when passing down the Bannu bazaar, he saw a crowd, and, going up,
he found an animated discussion going on between two Afghans. While
one was obviously a Mullah, the other seemed not to be; but with him
was a companion dressed as a Mullah, whose face struck Taib as not
quite that of any of the Afghan tribes he knew. He began to listen
to see if the enigma would be solved, but was still more surprised
to find that the argument was as to whether the Ingil (Gospel) and
Tauret (Pentateuch) should be read by Muhammadans or not. The Mullah
was arguing that the books had been abrogated by the mission of
Muhammad and the descent of the Quran on that Prophet, saying that,
though it was right to read them till Muhammad came, since then it
was only lawful to read the Quran. The stranger, on the other hand,
pointed out that Muhammad himself expressly referred his followers
to the perusal and study of the "former Scriptures," and clinched
his argument by quotations from the Quran itself.

Finally, the Mullah, finding himself getting into a dilemma, obtained a
release by the artifice with which we are very familiar by now. "It is
time for afternoon prayers. I must hurry off, or my prayers will lapse
by default," he said; and, folding up his