Piquet < ur Picqvtet i,Clai DE,a French monastic, at Dijon in the Becond half of the 16th cen- tury, tie joined the Franciscan Order, and became the this order at Chalons-sur-Sa6ne and at Rome- nay. !!'■ was also professor ot philosophy. He died alter 1621. lie left Commentaria suj t r evangelicam
frairum Minorum regulam ac '■ testa-
Lyons, 1597, 8vo). It contains a life ot the founder, and a catalogue of the distinguished men of his order: — Provincial 8. Bonaventura, seu J fratrum Minorum regularis observantia, etc, i (Tournon, 1610 and L612, 8vo). Claude Piquet left, among other manuscripts, a life of pope Clement IV.— Hoefer, Souv. Biog. Generate, xl, 298.
Pi'ra (n«pa), a name found in the apocryphal ac- count of the family-heads who returned from the Cap- tivity with Zerubbabel tl Esdr. v, 19); bni not con- tained in the parallel Heb. texts (Ezra ii,25; Neh, vii, 29), and evidently originating from a repetition of the name I laphira pre
Pi'ram (Heb. Piram', =N~~. lih a ■ . I e.
fleet : Sept $i5wv, v. r. Alex, ibtpaa.fi, Vulg. PharanC), the Amoritish king of Jarmuth at the time of Joshua's conquest of Canaan (Josh, x, 3). B.C.cir. 1618. With his four confederates he was defeated in the great bat- tle before Gibeon, and fled for refuge to the Makkedah, the entrance tov hich was closed by Joshua's command. At the close of the long day's slaughter and pursuit, the five kings were brought from their hiding-place, and hanged upon five tries till sunset, when tiieir bodies were taken down and east into the cave "wherein they had been hid" (Josh, x, 27). — Smith. See Jarmuth.
Pir'atlion (Heb. Piratkon', 'jinS'lB, Gesea.prinee- ///,■ Filrst, a cleft or ameek; Sept. QapaBuv, v. r. <i>apa- §w/l and $pa2rd)v), the name of one or two Palestine. We read in the book of Judges that " Abdi n the son of Hillel, u Pirathonite, judged Israel, . . . and was buried in Piratkon, in the land ofEphraim, in the mount of the Amalekites" (xii, 13, 15). The city is not again mentioned in the Bible; but among David's mighty nun was "Benaiah thi Pirathonite, of the chil- dren ofEphraim" (1 Chron. xxvii. 14; xi,31; 2 Sam. xxiii, 30). The city of I'irathon was therefore situ- ated in the territory of Ephraim, and among the moun- tains, apparently where a colony of the wandering Amalekites had settled. Jerome mentions it(i s. v. Fraaton), but does not appear to have known any- thing of it. It is mentioned, however, by the accurate old traveller hap-Parchi as lying about two hours vest oi Shechem, and called Fer'aia (Asher's / /
Tud. ii, 126). About six miles W.S.W. of NSbulus, upon the summit of a tell among low liills-. .-till stands the little village of Fer'ata, which is doubtless iden- tical with the ancient Pirathon (Robinson, Bib. Res. iii. 13 l i. According to Schwarz (Palest, p. 1">1 ), it i> iden- tified by Astori with the modern village mountain of Amalek, five English miles west .1 She- chem, doubtless referring to the same place.
Josephus mentions a Pharathon ($>apa$GJv), group- ing it between Timnah and Tekoa (Ant. xiii. 1,3); and the same name occurs in 1 Mace, ix, 50 (*a among the towns whose ruined fortifications Were re- stored by Baccbides, in his campaign against the dews; but it could scarcely have been identical with the l'ira-
tl ot Ephraim, though the name- are the same. This
city was probably situated somewhere in the v.
of Judah; but the site ha- not been discovert See
I'll: \ I HONITE.
Pir'athonite (Heb. Pirathoni', ""Tr" and
"I"'"1^. from Pirathon; Si pi. ikapai Suvti, OT tK <\'<i<nt~stiifi. a native or inhabitant of I'ira- thon (q. V.); the epithet of the judge Abdon (Judg. xii,
13, lot. and of two of David's officers, namely . B( uaiah, captain of the eleventh armj contingent < 1 (Inoii. xxiii, 14), and a member of the royal guard (1 Chron. xi, 31). Pirie, Ali \ vndi r, a Scotch divine, flourishi d near the opening of the present century. His eccl connection w a- first %\ i i li the Antiburghers, then with the Relict Synod, and finally he joined the Indepen- dents. He dud at Newburgh, in lite, in 1804 His
PIRIT
225
PIRKE ABOTH
works, collected and published after his death (Edinb. 1805-6, 6 vols. 12mo), contain various treatises, relating to the Jews, to the primitive condition of man, on dif- ficult passages of Scripture, on baptism and the cove- nant of Sinai, and a dissertation on Hebrew roots. On all these topics he has many fanciful and visionary spec- ulations, and it is to be regretted that a mind so capa- ble and a life so industrious was spent so largely on tri- fles, or things of a fanciful nature. Ilis controversial pamphlets are prized because they exhibit his religious modifications.
Pirit, a ceremony among the Buddhists of Ceylon, which consists in reading certain portions of the Bana, for the purpose of appeasing the daemons called Yakus, from whom all the afflictions of men are supposed to proceed. This ceremony, which is the only one that professes to be sanctioned by Gotama Buddha, is thus described by Mr. Spence Hardy in his Eastern Mona- chism: