NESTORIUS. A Christian sect in Kurdistan and Mesopotamia is said to be called from Nestorius, who was Bishop of Constantinople in the 5th century, and whose doctrines were spread with much zeal through Syria, Egypt, Persia, India, Tartary, and China. They number about 200,000 in Persia, Turkey, and Kurdistan. They do not accept the view that describes them to be followers of the creed of Nestorius, and claim to .be Kaldi, descendants of the Chaldamns, and state that their name is derived from Nassara (Nazarene) or Nazareth. Turks and other orientals call them Nasrani.
Colonel Yule, in Cathay and the Way Thither, says that so late as the 14th century a Nestorian bishopric existed in the neighbourhood of the modern Ilazrati Turkestan, north of Samarcand, and that the sect had been established in that district since the 4th century. In l'ersia the sect inhabit the district of Urumia, in Azerbijan, and the mountains to the south, occupying the Hakkian chain in Kurdistan. In Upper Mesopotamia there are many Nestorian, some of whom have become Roman Catholics, and Jacobite as well as Roman Catholic Syrians. Their priests are styled Kieshish and Abuna, and are hereditary office-holders. Their patriarch is designated, he says (p. 272), Mar Shumun? He dwelt at Kojamis, near Julamerk, in the heart of the Kurd mountains. They live amongst the Kurds, and are wild, brave, and grasping. The Kurds, about the year 1870, attacked and massacred a large body of the Christians. Nestorian Tiyari women and girls bathe unrestrained in the presence of men in the streams that pass their doors.
Nestorius was patriarch of Constantinople, and in 431 was expelled and denounced as a heretic by the Council of Ephesus, for refusing to call the Virgin Mother of God, and sundry other so-called heresies. Nestorian doctrines are more like those of the Protestant Church than other Eastern Christian systems. They have no image or relics, no convents or nunneries ; they acknowledge no purgatory, no transubstantiation, no auricular confession ; and their notions of the divinity of the Saviour are scriptural and accurate.
The Nestorian faith, after being condemned in the west during the first half of the 5th century, spread rapidly in the east, and prevailed in Persia and Asia Minor. American missionaries have established themselves at Urumia on the frontier of that region, and are now zealously employed in educating and instructing many of the younger members of this Christian sect.—Colonel Chesney ; Magner; Yule ; Layard, i. p. 196 ; MacGregor, iv. p. 343; Vambery, p. 61; Grant.
NET.
Rets, Filets, . . . Fs. Pukat, Panauk, MALAY. Netz, GER. Red, Sr.
nal, Jain, . . HIND. Agh, . TURK. Rote, Reticclla, Ragma, 1T.
Net-making is the art in which the fabric is required to be transparent, but in which the fibres are decussated and retained in their places by knots, that the interstices may retain their form and size, and prevent objects from escaping ; it seems to have been known in the earliest ages in Egypt, and is practised with the greatest skill throughout the East Indies in great variety, their nets being from a few to 60 fathoms in length. Those of
Singapore are made with cotton, and others with the fibre, which is very similar to, if not identical with, that forming the so-called China grass ; mini fibre, trap fibre, cotton, and hemp being all employed in net-making. Nets are woven also of hempen thread, and boiled in a solution of gambier (Uncaria gambier) to preserve them from rotting. The fishing-smacks which swarm along the Malay coast go out in pairs, partly that the crews may afford mutual relief and protection, but chiefly to join in dragging the net fastened to their boats.
In the shallows of rivers, rows of heavy poles are driven down, and nets secured to them, which are examined and changed at every tide. Those who attend these nets, moreover, attach to their boats scoops or drag-nets, so loaded that they will sink and gather the sole, ray, and other fish feeding near the bottom. Lifting nets, 20 feet square, are suspended from poles elevated and depressed by a hawser worked by a windlass on shore ; the nets are baited with the whites of eggs spread on the meshes. There are also casting-nets and sieve nets. In hunting and fowling, also, nets are in use to a considerable extent, and the clap-net seen in use in Sind and elsewhere is identical with that depicted on the Egyptian monuments for catch ing wild-fowl. Job xix. 6 ; Psalm cxl. 5; Isaiah li. 20.
For sea-fishing in Sind a suitable net costs £40 or £50, and does not last above a year. A sea going fishing-boat costs about £100, and ought to be serviceable for several seasons. Stake-nets are extensively constructed off the coasts of Sind, Bombay, and the Malay Peninsula. In Sind and Bombay the stakes are usually the trunks of some species of palm trees, and by joining are made up to 100 feet in length. Those near land are placed at right angles to the shore, and pressed perpen dicularly into the mud to a depth of 12 feet or inure, and 25 feet apart. Nets of a bag or funnel shape, often 40 yards long, are attached to them, and the currents sweep the fish into the bag. But the banks far out at sea are similarly utilized, the fishermen attending at each change of the tide to empty the capture, and reverse the funnel-net. The dip-net is worked from a framework fixed on the bank of a tidal river, or from a boat or platform. The purse-net, lave-net, and bag-net are fixed on bamboo frames, and dragged up narrow or shallow pieces of water. The cast-net is easily carried from place to place, and, being thrown horizontally with a centrifugal motion, it spreads out over a considerable surface. Several of these are occasionally joined together to form a drag net. Cones and traps made of bamboo are in much request. The Chinese nets are the bag, casting, flat sluice, trawl, and stake nets, and the sieve ; also nets for shrimps and shell-fish.—Ro.y/e, Arts, etc., of p. 505.