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THE ZEND-AVESTA
PART I
THE VENDIDAD
TRANSLATED BY
JAMES DARMESTETER
Second Edition
@rford AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
p. 1895
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NOTE.
THE completion of this second edition of Professor Darmesteter’s translation of the Avesta has been interrupted by the sudden and untimely death of the author. Fortunately, he had already revised the proof-sheets of his translation of the Vendiddd, and completed his manuscript of the Introduction and Fragments. And, as the original manuscripts and collations, from which the text of the Fragments was derived, are mostly in my possession, the revision of the remaining proof-sheets has been chiefly in my hands, but has been carried out strictly in accordance with the author's views, as ascertained from his French translation of the Avesta. I have only to add that, though differing from my lamented friend in some of his more speculative opinions, I am convinced that it would be difficult to find a sounder scholar, a more brilliant writer, and a more estimable man, all united in the same individual.
E. W. WEST. May, 1895.
CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION.
CHAPTER I. THE DISCOVERY OF THE ZEND-AVESTA .
PAGE xiii
” II. THE INTERPRETATION OF THE ZEND-AVESTA xxvii
» III. THE FORMATION OF THE ZEND-AVESTA . . » IV. PARTHIAN ELEMENTS IN THE AVESTA'. . » Vv. BRAHMANICAL, BuppHist, AND GREEK ELE-
MENTS . . .
» VI. JEWISH ELEMENTS IN THE RELIGION
» WII. ACHAEMENIAN AND EARLIER ELEMENTS » VIII AGE AND GROWTH OF THE AVESTA . » IX. CONCLUSIONS
» & THE VENDI{DAD .
TRANSLATION OF THE VEND{DAD.
FARGARD I. AN ENUMERATION OF SIXTEEN PERFECT LANDS CREATED BY AHURA MAZDA, AND OF AS MANY PLAGUES CREATED IN OPPOSITION BY ANGRA MAINYU
FARGARD II. MYTHS OF YIMA . . . : . .
FARGARD III. THE EARTH . . .
I (1-6). What comforts most the Genius of the Earth? II (7-11). What discomforts most the Genius of the Earth? _ III (12-35). What rejoices the Earth most? .. IV (36-42). Adevelopment forbidding the burialofthe dead
MYTHS OF YIMA . . . : . .
FARGARD III. THE EARTH . . .
I (1-6). What comforts most the Genius of the Earth? II (7-11). What discomforts most the Genius of the Earth? _ III (12-35). What rejoices the Earth most? .. IV (36-42). Adevelopment forbidding the burialofthe dead
FARGARD IV. CONTRACTS AND OUTRAGES Ia (2). Classification of the contracts according to the value of their object. . . (3-4). A-contract is cancelled by paying the amount of the contract higher by one degree . (5-10). Religious responsibility of the family for the breach of a contract by one of its members. . (11-16). Punishment of the Mibir- Drug (ones who breaks a contract) . . . . . . . Ila(17). Definition of the outrages known as 5 Agerepta (threatening attitude), avaoirista (assault), aredus
III a (44-45). Contract of charity to coreligonsts . 45 IV a (46). Heinousness of false oath . . 46
— II] b (47-49 a). Dignity of wealth; of marrage of physical weal . . . . 46 —
IV b (49 b-55). Heinousness of false oath. " Ordeal : - 48 FARGARD V. . . . . . . . . . - 49
I (1-7). If a man defile the fire or the earth with dead matter (Nasu) involuntarily or unconsciously, it isno sin. 50
II (8-9). Water and fire do not kill . . . 52 III (10-14). Disposal of the dead during winter, when it is not possible to take them to the Dakhma . . 53
IV (15-20). Why Ahura, while forbidding man to defile water, sends water from the heavens down to the Dakhmas, covered with corpses. How he purifies that water . . 54 V (21-26). On the excellence of purity and of the law that shows how to recover purity, when lost. 56
VI (27-38). On the defiling power of the Nasu being greater or less, according to the greater or less dignity of the being that dies . 58 VII (39-44). On the management of sacrificial implements defiled with Nasu . . 61
VIII (45-62). On the treatment of a woman n who has been delivered of a still-born child ; and what is to be done with her clothes . . . : . . . - 62 FARGARD VI. . . 67 : I (1-9). How long the earth remains unclean, when defiled by the dead . 67
II (10-25). Penalties for ‘defiling the ground with dead matter 68 III (26-41). Purification of the different sorts of water,
when defiled by the dead . . . . . . - 71
IV (42-43). Purification of the Haoma : - 73
L V (44-51). The place for corpses; the Dakhmas : - 74
FARGARD VII. . . 76 I (1-5). How long after death the Drug Nasu takes possession of the corpse . 76
Purification of the different sorts of water, when defiled by the dead . . . . . . - 71
IV (42-43). Purification of the Haoma : - 73
L V (44-51). The place for corpses; the Dakhmas : - 74
FARGARD VII. . . 76 I (1-5). How long after death the Drug Nasu takes possession of the corpse . 76
II (6-9). Howfar the defiling power of the DrugNasu extends 78 III (10-22). Cleansing of clothes defiled by the dead. . 79 IV (23-24). Eating of Nasu an abomination . . 81 V (25-27). Bringing Nasu to fire or water an abomination 82 x CONTENTS.
VI (28-35). Cleansing of wood and corn defiled by the dead
VII a (36-40). Physicians ; their probation
VII b (41-44). Their fees .
VIII (45-59). Purification of the earth, of the "Dakhmas. The Dakhmas and the Daévas.
IX (60-72). Treatment of a woman who has brought forth a still-born child . .
X (73-75). Cleansing of vessels defiled by the dead .
XI (76-77). Cleansing of the cow . .
XII (78-79). Unclean libations .
FARGARD VIII. . . . .
I (1-3). Purification of the house where a man has died
{I (4-13). Funerals .
IIL (14-22). Purification of the ways slong which the corpse has been carried . . - ee
1V (23-25). No clothes to be thrown on a corpse .
V (26-32). Unlawful lusts .
VI (33-34). A corpse when dried up does not contaminate
VII (35-72). Purification of the man defiled by the dead .
“" VIII (73-80). Purification of the fire defiled thy the dead .
IX (81-96). The Bahram fire . .
X (97-107). Purification in the wilderness .
FARGARD IX. THE NINE NIGHTS’ BARASHNOM . Ia(1-11). Description of the place for cleansing the unclean (the Barashnim-ga4h) . I b (12-36). Description of the cleansing II (37-44). Fees of the cleanser . III (47-57). The false cleanser ; his punishment
FARGARD X. SPELLS RECITED DURING THE PROCESS OF THE CLEANSING. . . .
FARGARD XI. SPECIAL SPELLS FOR THE CLEANSING OF THE SEVERAL OBJECTS .
FARGARD XII. THE UPAMAN: HOW LONG IT LASTS FOR DIFFERENT RELATIVES .
FARGARD XIII. THE DoG
I (1-7). The dog of Ormazd and the dog of Ahriman .
Ia (1-4). Holiness of the dog Vangh4para (‘the hedge-hog ’)
Ib (5-7). Hatefulness of the dog Zairimyangura (‘the tortoise ’) . . . :
II (8-16). The several kinds of dogs. Penalties for the murder of a dog.
III (17-19). On the duties of the shepherd’ dog and the house-dog . .. . . . .
PAGE
p. 142
p. 148
p. 155
155 155
157 157 159
CONTENTS,
xi
IV (20-28). On the food due tothe dog. .
V (29-38). On the mad dog and the dog diseased ; how they are to be kept, and cured . : .
VI (39-40). On the excellence of the dog .
VII (41-43). On the wolf-dog .
VIII (44-48). On the virtues and vices of the dog
IX (49). Praise of the dog . . . . . .
X (50-56). The water-dog .. . . .
FARGARD XIV. THE ATONEMENT FOR THE MURDER OF A WATER-DOG
FARGARD XV.
I (1-8). On five sins the commission “of which ‘makes the sinner a Peshétanu .
Ila (9-12). On unlawful unions ‘and ‘attempts to procure miscarriage .
Praise of the dog . . . . . .
X (50-56). The water-dog .. . . .
FARGARD XIV. THE ATONEMENT FOR THE MURDER OF A WATER-DOG
FARGARD XV.
I (1-8). On five sins the commission “of which ‘makes the sinner a Peshétanu .
Ila (9-12). On unlawful unions ‘and ‘attempts to procure miscarriage .
II b (13-19). On the obligations ‘of the illegitimate father towards the mother and the child
III (20-45). On the treatment of a bitch big with young .
IV (46-51). On the breeding of dogs . :
FARGARD XVI. . I (1-7). Onthe uncleanness of women during their sickness II (8-12). What is to be done if that state lasts too long . III (13-18). Sundry laws relating to the same matter
FARGARD XVII. HaiIR AND NAILS
FARGARD XVIII. . . . . I (1-13). On the unworthy priest and ¢ enticers to ; heresy . II (14-29). The holiness of the cock, the bird of Sraosha, who awakes the world for prayer and for the protection of Atar III (30-59). On the four sins that make the Drug Pregnant UV with a brood of fiends . IV (60-65). On the evil caused by the Gahi (‘ ‘the prostitute ) V (66-76). How intercourse with a Dasht4n woman is to be atoned for. . . . . . .
FARGARD XIX.
I (1-3). Angra Mainyu sends the demon Boiti to kill Zarathustra : Zarathustra sings aloud the Ahuna-Vairya, and the demon flies away, confounded by the sacred words and by the Glory of Zarathustra :
la (4-10). Angra Mainyu himself attacks him and propounds riddles to be solved under pain of death
II (11-16). How to destroy the uncleanness born from a contact with the dead .
III (17-19). How to promote the prosperity of the creation
PAGE
p. 160
163 164 165 166 168 168
169 176
176 178
179 180 184
185 185 187 188
p. 190
193 193
p. 196
200 *
p. 208
p. 210
212 214—
xii CONTENTS.
PAGE
IV (20-25). How to purify man and clothes defiled by thedead 215
V (26-34). On the remuneration of deeds after death ; on the fate of the wicked and the righteous ; the Kinvad bridge 217 II a (35-42). Avseries of invocations . 220
__ VI (43-47). The demons, dismayed by the birth of the Prophet, rush back into hell. - 224 FARGARD XX. THRITA AND THE ORIGIN OF MEDICINE 225 FARGARD XXI. . . : . . 230 I (1). Praise of the holy bull . 231 II (2-3). Invocation addressed to rain as a healing power . 231
III a (4-7). Joint invocation addressed to the waters and to the light of the sun . 231
III b (8-11). Joint invocation addressed to the waters and to the light of the moon . 233
Ill c (12-17). Joint invocation addressed to the waters and to the light of the stars . . 233 IV (18-23). Spells against disease 235
‘AHURA MAZDA APPLIES FOR HEALING TO THE HOLY WORD AND TO AIRYAMAN 236
FRAGMENTS OF THE NASKS.
I. WESTERGAARD’S FRAGMENTS . . . 245
II. ZEND FRAGMENTS IN THE ZEND-PAHLAVI FARHANG . 252
III. ZEND FRAGMENTS QUOTED IN THE PAHLAVI CoM- MENTARY OF THE YASNA . 258
I. WESTERGAARD’S FRAGMENTS . . . 245
II. ZEND FRAGMENTS IN THE ZEND-PAHLAVI FARHANG . 252
III. ZEND FRAGMENTS QUOTED IN THE PAHLAVI CoM- MENTARY OF THE YASNA . 258
1V. ZEND FRAGMENTS QUOTED IN THE PAHLAVI Com. MENTARY OF THE VENDIDAD . 260
V. TAHMURAS’ FRAGMENTS 275
VI. ERPATISTAN AND NfRANGISTAN 300
VII. SUNDRY FRAGMENTS ee ee 389
VIII. AOGEMAIDE . . . . . . . . . 372
Transliteration of Oriental Alphabets adopted for the Translations of the Sacred Books of the East . .
p. 387
INTRODUCTION.
CHAPTER I. THE DISCOVERY OF THE ZEND-AVESTA.
THE Zend-Avesta is the sacred book of the Parsis, that is to say, of the few remaining followers of that religion which reigned over Persia at the time when the second successor of Mohammed overthrew the Sassanian dynasty (642 A.C.)1, and which has been called Dualism, or Mazdeism, or Magism, or Zoroastrianism, or Fire-worship, according as its main tenet, or its supreme God’, or its priests, or its supposed founder, or its apparent object of worship has been most kept in view. In less than a century after their defeat, most of the conquered people were brought over to the faith of their new rulers, either by force, or policy, or the attractive power of a simpler form of creed. But many of those who clung to the faith of their fathers, went and sought abroad for a new home, where they might freely worship their old gods, say their old prayers, and perform their old rites. That home they found at last among the tolerant Hindus, on the western coast of India and in the peninsula of Guzerat*. There they throve and there they live still, while the ranks of their co-religionists in Persia are daily thinning and dwindling away *.
1 At the battle of Nibavand. ® Ahura Mazda.
3? They settled first at Sang4n, not far from Daman; thence they spread over Sorat, Nows&ri, Broach, and Kambay; and within the last two centuries they have settled at Bombay, which now contains the bulk of the Parsi people, nearly 90,000 souls (89,887 according to the census in 1891).
* A century ago, it is said, they still numbered nearly 100,000 souls; but
Xiv VENDIDAD.
* A century ago, it is said, they still numbered nearly 100,000 souls; but
Xiv VENDIDAD.
As the Parsis are the ruins of a people, so are their sacred books the ruins of a religion. There has been no other great belief in the world that ever left such poor and meagre monuments of its past splendour. Yet great is the value which that small book, the Avesta, and the belief of that scanty people, the Parsis, have in the eyes of the historian and theologian, as they present to us the last reflex of the ideas which prevailed in Iran during the five centuries which preceded and the seven which followed the birth of Christ, a period which gave to the world the Gospels, the Talmud, and the Qur’an. Persia, it is known, had much influence on each of the movements which produced, or proceeded from, those three books; she lent much to the first heresiarchs, much to the Rabbis, much to Mohammed. By help of the Parsi religion and the Avesta, we are enabled to go back to the very heart of that most momentous period in the history of religious thought, which saw the blending of the Aryan mind with the Semitic, and thus opened the second stage of Aryan thought.
Inquiries into the religion of ancient Persia began long ago, and it was the old enemy of Persia, the Greek, who first studied it. Aristotle’, Hermippus *, and many others® wrote of it in books of which, unfortunately, nothing more than a few fragments or merely the titles have come down to us. We find much valuable information about it, scattered in the accounts of historians and travellers, extending over ten centuries, from Herodotos down to Agathias and Procopius (from 450 B.C. to 550A.C.)*. The clearest and most faithful account of the dualist doctrine is found in the treatise De Jside et Osiride, ascribed to Plutarch. But there now remain no more than 8,000 or 9,000, scattered in Yazd and the surrounding villages (Dosabhoy Framji, History of the Parsis.—Houtum- Schindler gave 8,499 in 1879 ; of that number there were 6,483 in Yazd, 1,756 in Kirmfn, 150 in Teherfn : see Z. D. M.G., 1882, p. 55)-
* Dinon, Theopompus (the 8th book of his Philippica), Hermodoras, Heraclides Cumanus.
‘ All this store of information has been collected by Brisson (see below), Kleuker (see below), and Windischmann (Zoroastrische Studien, 260 seq.)
INTRODUCTION, I. xv
Cf. Windischmann, Zor. Stud. p. 288.
* Dinon, Theopompus (the 8th book of his Philippica), Hermodoras, Heraclides Cumanus.
‘ All this store of information has been collected by Brisson (see below), Kleuker (see below), and Windischmann (Zoroastrische Studien, 260 seq.)
INTRODUCTION, I. xv
Zoroastrianism was never more eagerly studied than in the first centuries of the Christian era, though without anything of the disinterested and almost scientific curiosity of the earlier times. Religious and philosophic sects, in search of new dogmas, eagerly received whatever came to them bearing the name of Zoroaster. As Xanthos the Lydian, who is said to have lived before Herodotos, had mentioned Zoroastrian Adyia 1, there came to light, in those later times, scores of oracles, styled Ady:a tof Zwpodorpov, or ‘Oracula Chaldatca sive Magica,’ the work of Neo-Platonists who were but very remote disciples of the Median sage. As his name had become the very emblem of wisdom, they would cover with it the latest inventions of their everdeepening theosophy. Zoroaster and Plato were treated as if they had been philosophers of the same school, and Hierocles expounded their doctrines in the same book. Proclus collected seventy Tetrads of Zoroaster and wrote commentaries on them?; but we need hardly say that Zoroaster commented on by Proclus was nothing more or less than Proclus commented on by Proclus. Prodicus the Gnostic possessed secret books of Zoroaster ®; and, upon the whole, it may be said that in the first centuries of Christianity, the religion of Persia was more studied and less understood than it had ever been before. The real object aimed at, in studying the old religion, was to form a new one.
Throughout the Middle Ages nothing was known of Mazdeism but the name of its founder, who from a Magus was converted into a magician and master of the hidden sciences. It was not until the Renaissance that real inquiry was resumed. The first step was to collect all the information that could be gathered from Greek and Roman writers. That task was undertaken and successfully completed by Barnabé Brisson *. A nearer approach to the
1 See Nicolaus Damascenus, Didot, Fragm. Hist. III, 409.
2 Fabricius, Graeca Bibliotheca, fourth ed. p. 309 seq.
® Clemens Alexandrinus, Stromata I. Cf. Porphyrius, de vita Plotini, § 16.
« “De regio Persarum principatu libri tres,’ Paris, 1590. The second book is devoted to the religion and manners of the ancient Persians.
Xvi VEND{DAD.
p. 409
2 Fabricius, Graeca Bibliotheca, fourth ed. p. 309 seq.
® Clemens Alexandrinus, Stromata I. Cf. Porphyrius, de vita Plotini, § 16.
« “De regio Persarum principatu libri tres,’ Paris, 1590. The second book is devoted to the religion and manners of the ancient Persians.
Xvi VEND{DAD.
original source was made in the following century by Italian, English, and French travellers in Asia. Pietro della Valle, Henry Lord, Mandelslo, Ovington, Chardin, Gabriel du Chinon, and Tavernier found Zoroaster’s last followers in Persia and India, and made known their existence, their manners, and the main features of their belief to Europe. Gabriel du Chinon saw their books and recognised that they were not all written in the same language, their original holy writ being no longer understood except by means of translations and commentaries in another tongue.
In the year 1700, a professor at Oxford, Thomas Hyde, the greatest Orientalist of his time in Europe, made the first systematic attempt to restore the history of the old Persian religion by combining the accounts of the Mohammedan writers with ‘the true and genuine monuments of ancient Persia!’ Unfortunately the so-called genuine monuments of ancient Persia were nothing more than recent Persian compilations or refacimenti* But notwithstanding this defect, which could hardly be avoided then, and a distortion of critical acumen °, the book of Thomas Hyde was the first complete and true picture of modern Parsiism, and it made inquiry into its history the order of the day. A warm appeal made by him to the zeal of travellers, to seek for and procure at any price the sacred books of the Parsis, did not remain ineffectual, and from that time scholars bethought themselves of studying Parsiism in its own home.
1‘Veterum Persarum et Parthorum et Medorum religionis historia,’ Oxford, 1700.
3 The Saddar, an excellent text-book of Parstism, of which he gave an incorrect edition (the only one still in existence) and an incorrect translation, superseded only lately by West’s translation in the Sacred Books of the East.— A Persian metrical translation of the Pahlavi Ard& Viraf’s visit to hell—The Farhangi Jihangirt, a Persian dictionary compiled in 1609 and explaining many Pahlavi and Pazend terms.
3 Being struck with the many analogies between the Zoroastrian and the biblical systems, he recognised in Abraham the first lawgiver of ancient Persia, in Magism a Sabean corruption of the primeval faith, and in Zoroaster a reformer, who had leamt the forgotten truth from the exiled Jews in Babylon.
a
INTRODUCTION, I. . xvii
a
INTRODUCTION, I. . xvii
Eighteen years later, a countryman of Hyde, George Boucher, received from the Parsis in Surat a copy of the Vendidad Sada, which was brought to England in 1723 by Richard Cobbe!. But the old manuscript was a sealed book, and the most that could then be made of it was to hang it by an iron chain to the wall of the Bodleian Library?, as a curiosity to be shown to foreigners. A few years later, a Scotchman, named Fraser, went to Surat, with the view of obtaining from the Parsis, not only their books, but also a knowledge of their contents. He was not very successful in the first undertaking, and utterly failed in the second.
In 1754 a young man, twenty years old, Anquetil Duperron, a scholar of the Ecole des Langues Orientales in Paris, happened to see a facsimile of four leaves of the Oxford Vendidad, which had been sent from England, a few years before, to Etienne Fourmont, the Orientalist. He determined at once to give to France both the books of Zoroaster and the first European translation of them. Too impatient to set off, to wait for a mission from the government which had been promised to him, he enlisted as a private soldier in the service of the French East India Company ; he embarked at Lorient on the 24th of February, 1755, and after three years of endless adventures and dangers through the whole breadth of Hindustan, at the very time when war was waging between France and England, he arrived at last in Surat, where he stayed among the Parsis for three years more. Here began another struggle, not less hard, but more decisive, against the same mistrust and ill-will which had disheartened Fraser; but he came out of it victorious, and prevailed at last on the Parsis to part both with their books and their knowledge. He came back to Paris on the 14th of March, 1764, and deposited on the following day at the Bibliothéque Royale the whole of the Zend-Avesta and copies of several tradi-
* It was entitled: ‘Leges sacrae ritus ex liturgia Zoroastri, . . . scripsit hunc libruam Tched Divdadi filius,’ Vendidad (Gat Dév Dat) being mistaken for a man’s name. The manuscript was written in the year 1050 of Yazdgard (1680-1681 A.D.)
It is numbered nowadays, Orientalia, 322.
[4] b
XVill VENDIDAD.
tional books. He spent ten years in studying the material he had collected, and published in 1771 the first European translation of the Zend-Avesta !.
The manuscript was written in the year 1050 of Yazdgard (1680-1681 A.D.)
It is numbered nowadays, Orientalia, 322.
[4] b
XVill VENDIDAD.
tional books. He spent ten years in studying the material he had collected, and published in 1771 the first European translation of the Zend-Avesta !.
A violent dispute broke out at once, as half the learned world denied the authenticity of the Avesta, which it pronounced a forgery. It was the future founder of the Royal Asiatic Society, William Jones, a young Oxonian then, who opened the war. He had been wounded to the quick: by the scornful tone adopted by Anquetil towards Hyde and a few other English scholars: the Zend-Avesta suffered for the fault of its introducer, Zoroaster for Anquetil. In a pamphlet written in French *, with a verve and in a style which showed him to be a good disciple of Voltaire, W. Jones pointed out, and dwelt upon, the oddities and absurdities with which the so-called sacred books of Zoroaster teemed. It is true that Anquetil had given full scope to satire by the style he had adopted : he cared very little for literary elegance, and did not mind writing Zend and Persian in French; so the new and strange ideas he had to express looked stranger still in the outlandish garb he’ gave them. Yet it was less the style than the ideas that shocked the contemporary of Voltaire®. His main argument was that books, full of such silly tales, of laws and rules so absurd, of descriptions of gods and demons so grotesque, could not be the work of a sage like Zoroaster, nor the code of a religion so much celebrated for its simplicity, wisdom, and purity. His conclusion was that the Avesta was a rhapsody of some modern Guebre. In fact the only thing in which Jones succeeded was to prove ina decisive manner that the ancient Persians were not equal to the lumiéres of the eighteenth century, and that the authors of the Avesta had not read the Encyclopédie.
Jones’s censure was echoed in England by Sir John
1 ‘Zend-Avesta, ouvrage de Zoroastre, contenant les Idées Théologiques, Physiques et Morales de ce Législateur. . . . Traduit en Frangois sur l’Original Zend.’ Par M. Anquetil Du Perron, 3 vols. in 4°, Paris, 1771.
2 ‘Lettre 4 M. A*** du P***, dans laquelle est compris l’examen de sa traduction des livres attribués 4 Zoroastre.’
5 Cf. Voltaire’s article on Zoroaster in the Dictionnaire philosophique.
INTRODUCTION, I. xix
Anquetil Du Perron, 3 vols. in 4°, Paris, 1771.
2 ‘Lettre 4 M. A*** du P***, dans laquelle est compris l’examen de sa traduction des livres attribués 4 Zoroastre.’
5 Cf. Voltaire’s article on Zoroaster in the Dictionnaire philosophique.
INTRODUCTION, I. xix
Chardin and Richardson, in Germany by Meiners. Richardson tried to give a scientific character to the attacks of Jones by founding them on philological grounds}. That the Avesta was a fabrication of modern times was shown, he argued, by the number of Arabic words he fancied he found both in the Zend and Pahlavi dialects, as no Arabic element was introduced into the Persian idioms earlier than the seventh century; also by the harsh texture of the Zend, contrasted with the rare euphony of the Persian ; and, lastly, by the radical difference between the Zend and Persian, bothin words and grammar. To these objections, drawn from the form, he added another derived from the uncommon stupidity of the matter.
In Germany, Meiners, to the charges brought against the newly-found books, added another of a new and unexpected kind, namely, that they spoke of ideas unheard of before, and made known new things. ‘Pray, who would dare ascribe to Zoroaster books in which are found numberless names of trees, animals, men, and demons unknown to the ancient Persians ; in which are invoked an incredible number of pure animals and other things, which, as appears from the silence of ancient writers, were never known, or at least never worshipped, in Persia? What Greek ever spoke of Hém, of Jemshid, and of such other personages as the fabricators of that rhapsody exalt with every kind of praise, as divine heroes ? ?’
Anquetil and the Avesta found an eager champion in the person of Kleuker, professor in the University of Riga. As soon as the French version of the Avesta appeared, he published a German translation of it, and also of Anquetil’s historical dissertations *. Then, in a series of dissertations of his own *, he vindicated the authenticity of the Zend
' *A Dissertation on the Languages, Literature, and Manners of Eastern Nations,’ Oxford, 1777.
3 * De Zoroastris vita, institutis, doctrina et libris,’ in the Novi Commentarii Societatis Regiae, Goettingen, 1778-1779.
3 *Zend-Avesta ...nach dem Franzoesischen des Herr Anquetil Du Perron,’ 3 vols, in 4°, 1776.
* * Anhang zum Zend-Avesta,’ 2 vols. in 4°, 1781.
b 2 xx VENDIDAD.
books. Anquetil had already tried to show, in a memoir on Plutarch, that the data of the Avesta fully agree with the account of the Magian religion given in the treatise on ‘Isis and Osiris.’ Kleuker enlarged the circle of comparison to the whole of ancient literature.
b 2 xx VENDIDAD.
books. Anquetil had already tried to show, in a memoir on Plutarch, that the data of the Avesta fully agree with the account of the Magian religion given in the treatise on ‘Isis and Osiris.’ Kleuker enlarged the circle of comparison to the whole of ancient literature.
In the field of philology, he showed, as Anquetil had already done, that Zend has no Arabic elements in it, and that Pahlavi itself, which is more modern than Zend, does not contain any Arabic, but only Semitic words of the Aramean dialect, which are easily accounted for by the close relations of Persia with Aramean lands in the time of the Sassanian kings. He showed, lastly, that Arabic words appear only in the very books which Parsi tradition itself considers modern.
‘Another stanch upholder of the Avesta was the numismatologist Tychsen, who, having begun to read the book with a prejudice against its authenticity, quitted it with a conviction to the contrary. ‘There is nothing in it, he writes, ‘but what befits remote ages, and a man philosophising in the infancy of the world. Such traces of a recent period as they fancy to have found in it, are either due to misunderstandings, or belong to its later portions. On the whole there is a marvellous accordance between the Zend-Avesta and the accounts of the ancients with regard to the doctrine and institutions of Zoroaster. Plutarch agrees so well with the Zend books that I think no one will deny the close resemblance of doctrines and identity of origin. Add to all this the incontrovertible argument to be drawn from the language, the antiquity of which is established by the fact that it was necessary to translate a part of the Zend books into Pahlavi, a language which was growing obsolete as early as the time of the Sassanides, Lastly, it cannot be denied that Zoroaster left books which were, through centuries, the groundwork of the Magic religion, and which were preserved by the Magi, as shown by a series of documents from the time of Hermippus. Therefore I am unable to see why we should not trust the Magi of our days when they ascribe to Zoroaster those traditional
INTRODUCTION, I. Xxi
books of their ancestors, in which nothing is found to indicate fraud or a modern hand 1.’
Two years afterwards, in 1793, was published in Paris a book which, without directly dealing with the Avesta, was the first step taken to make its authenticity incontrovertible. It was the masterly memoir by Sylvestre de Sacy, in which the Pahlavi inscriptions of the first Sassanides were deciphered for the first time and in a decisive manner. De Sacy, in his researches, had chiefly relied on the Pahlavi lexicon published by Anquetil, whose work vindicated itself thus—better than by heaping up arguments—by promoting discoveries. The Pahlavi inscriptions gave the key, as is well known, to the Persian cuneiform inscriptions, which were in return to put beyond all doubt the genuineness of the Zend language.
The Pahlavi inscriptions gave the key, as is well known, to the Persian cuneiform inscriptions, which were in return to put beyond all doubt the genuineness of the Zend language.
Tychsen, in an appendix to his Commentaries, pointed to the importance of the new discovery: ‘ This,’ he writes, ‘is a proof that the Pahlavi was used during the reign of the Sassanides, for it was from them that these inscriptions emanated, as it was by them—nay, by the first of them, Ardeshir B&abag4n—that the doctrine of Zoroaster was revived. One can now understand why the Zend books were translated into Pahlavi. Here, too, everything agrees, and speaks loudly for their antiquity and genuineness.’
About the same time Sir William Jones, then president of the Royal Asiatic Society, which he had just founded, resumed in a discourse delivered before that Society the same question he had solved in such an off-hand manner twenty years before. He was no longer the man to say, ‘ Sied-il 4 un homme né dans ce siécle de s’infatuer de fables indiennes?’ and although he had still a spite against Anquetil, he spoke of him with more reserve than in 1771. However, his judgment on the Avesta itself was not altered on the whole, although, as he himself declared, he had not thought it necessary to study the text. Buta glance at the Zend glossary published by Anquetil suggested to him a remark
1 «Commentatio prior observationes historico-criticas de Zoroastre ejusque scriptis et placitis exhibens.’ Goettingen, in the Novi Comment. Soc. Reg. 1791.
Xxil VEND{DAD.
which makes Sir William Jones, in spite of himself, the creator of the comparative grammar of Sanskrit and Zend. ‘When I perused the Zend glossary,’ he writes, ‘I was inexpressibly surprised to find that six or seven words in ten are pure Sanscrit, and even some of their inflexions formed by the rules of the Vydcaran!, as yushmacam, the genitive plural of yuashmad. Now M. Anquetil most certainly, and the Persian compiler most probably, had no knowledge of Sanscrit, and could not, therefore, have invented a list of Sanscrit words; it is, therefore, an authentic list of Zend
| words, which has been preserved in books or by tradition;
‘ it follows that the language of the Zend was at least a dialect of the Sanscrit, approaching perhaps as nearly to it as the Prdcrit, or other popular idioms, which we know to have been spoken in India two thousand years ago#’ This conclusion, that Zend is a Sanskrit dialect, was incorrect, the connection assumed being too close; but it was a great thing that the near relationship of the two languages should have been brought to light.
In 1798 Father Paulo de St. Barthélemy further developed Jones’s remark in an essay on the antiquity of the Zend language *. He showed its affinity with the Sanskrit by a list of such Zend and Sanskrit words as were least likely to have been borrowed, viz. those that designate the degrees of relationship, the limbs of the body, and the most general and essential ideas. Another list, intended to show, on a special topic, how closely connected the two languages are, contains eighteen words taken from the liturgic language used in India and Persia. This list was not very happily drawn up, as out of the eighteen instances there is not a single one that stands inquiry ; yet it was a happy idea, and one which has not even yet yielded all that it promised. His conclusions were that in a far remote antiquity Sanskrit was spoken in Persia and Media, that it gave birth to the Zend language, and that the Zend-Avesta is authentic: ‘Were it but a recent compilation, he writes, ‘as Jones
1 The Sanskrit Grammar. ® Asiatic Researches, II, § 3. * ‘De antiquitate et affinitate linguae samscredamicae et germanicae,’ Rome,
1798. .
INTRODUCTION, I. Xxiil
asserts, how is it that the oldest rites of the Parsis, that the old inscriptions of the Persians, the accounts of the Zoroastrian religion in the classical writers, the liturgic prayers of the Parsis, and, lastly, even their books do not reveal the pure Sanskrit, as written in the land wherein the Parsis live, but a mixed language, which is as different from the other dialects of India as French is from Italian?’ This amounted, in fact, to saying that the Zend is not derived from the Sanskrit, but that both are derived from another and older language. The Carmelite had a dim notion of that truth, but, as he failed to express it distinctly, it was lost for years, and had to be re-discovered.
The first twenty-five years of this century were void of results, but the old and sterile discussions as to the authenticity of the texts continued in England. In 1808 John Leyden regarded Zend as a Prakrit dialect, parallel to Pali; Pali being identical with the Magadhi dialect and Zend with the Sauraseni4. In the eyes of Erskine Zend was a Sanskrit dialect, imported from India by the founders of Mazdeism, but never spoken in Persia?. His main argument was that Zend is not mentioned among the seven dialects which were current in ancient Persia according to the Farhang-i Jehangiri *, and that Pahlavi and Persian exhibit no close relationship with Zend.
In Germany, Meiners had found no followers. The theologians appealed to the Avesta in their polemics‘, and Rhode sketched the religious history of Persia after the translations of Anquetil °.
Erskine’s essay provoked a decisive answer ® from Emmanuel Rask, one of the most gifted minds in the new school of philology, who had the honour of being a pre-
1 Asiatic Researches, X. 3 Ibid. X.
3 A large Persian dictionary compiled in India in the reign of Jehangir.
Erskine’s essay provoked a decisive answer ® from Emmanuel Rask, one of the most gifted minds in the new school of philology, who had the honour of being a pre-
1 Asiatic Researches, X. 3 Ibid. X.
3 A large Persian dictionary compiled in India in the reign of Jehangir.
4 « Erlauterangen zam Neuen Testament aus einer neuerdffneten Morgenlindischen Quelle, ‘180d pdryor dwd dvaroday,’ Riga, 1775.
5 «Die Heilige Sage... des Zend-Volks,’ Francfort, 1820.
cursor of both Grimm and Burnouf. He showed that the list of the Jehangiri referred to an epoch later than that to which Zend must have belonged, and to parts of Persia different from those where it must have been spoken ; he showed further that modern Persian is not derived from Zend, but from a dialect closely connected with it; and, lastly, he showed what was still more important, that Zend was not derived from Sanskrit. As to the system of its sounds, Zend approaches Persian rather than Sanskrit ; and as to its grammatical forms, if they often remind one of Sanskrit, they also often remind one of Greek and Latin, and frequently have a special character of their own. Rask also gave the paradigm of three Zend nouns, belonging to different declensions, as well as the right pronunciation of the Zend letters, several of which had been incorrectly given by Anquetil. This was the first essay on Zend grammar, and it was a masterly one.
The essay published in 1831 by Peter von Bohlen on the origin of the Zend language threw the matter forty years back. According to him, Zend is a Prakrit dialect, as it had been pronounced by Jones, Leyden, and Erskine. His mistake consisted in taking Anquetil’s transcriptions of the words, which are often so incorrect as to make them look like corrupted forms when compared with Sanskrit. And, what was worse, he took the proper names in their modern Parsi forms, which often led him to comparisons that would have appalled Ménage. Thus Ahriman became a Sanskrit word ariman, which would have meant ‘the fiend ;’ yet Bohlen might have seen in Anquetil’s work itself that Ahriman is nothing but the modern form of Angra Mainyu, words which hardly remind one of the Sanskrit ariman. Again, the angel Vohu-mané, or ‘good thought,’ was reduced, by means of the Parsi form Bahman, to the Sanskrit bahum4n, ‘a long-armed god.’
At length came Burnouf. From the time when Anquetil had published his translation, that is to say, during seventy years, no real progress had been made in knowledge of the Avesta texts. The notion that Zend and Sanskrit are two kindred languages was the only new idea that had been
INTRODUCTION, I. XXV
From the time when Anquetil had published his translation, that is to say, during seventy years, no real progress had been made in knowledge of the Avesta texts. The notion that Zend and Sanskrit are two kindred languages was the only new idea that had been
INTRODUCTION, I. XXV
acquired, but no practical advantage for the interpretation of the texts had resulted from it. Anquetil’s translation was still the only guide, and as the doubts about the authenticity of the texts grew fainter, the authority of the translation became greater, the trust reposed in the Avesta being reflected on to the work of its interpreter. The Parsis had been the teachers of Anquetil; and who could ever understand the holy writ of the Parsis better than the Parsis themselves? There was no one who even tried to read the texts by the light of Anquetil’s translation, to obtain a direct understanding of them.
About 1825 Eugéne Burnouf was engaged in a course of researches on the geographical extent of the Aryan languages in India. After he had defined the limits which divide the races speaking Aryan languages from the native non-brahmanical tribes in the south, he wanted to know if a similar boundary had ever existed in the north-west ; and if it is outside of India that the origin of the Indian languages and civilisation is to be sought for. He was thus led to study the languages of Persia, and, first of all, the oldest of them, the Zend. But as he tried to read the texts by help of Anquetil’s translation, he was surprised to find that this was not the clue he had expected. He saw that two causes had misled Anquetil: on the one hand, his teachers, the Parsi dasturs, either knew little themselves or taught him imperfectly, not only the Zend, but even the Pahlavi intended to explain the meaning of the Zend; so that the tradition on which his work rested, being incorrect in itself, corrupted it from the very beginning ; on the other hand, as Sanskrit was unknown to him and comparative grammar did not as yet exist, he could not supply the defects of tradition by their aid. Burnouf, laying aside tradition as found in Anquetil’s translation, consulted it as found in a much older and purer form, ina Sanskrit translation of the Yasna made in the fifteenth century by the Parsi Neriosengh in accordance with the old Pahlavi version. The information given by Neriusengh he tested, and either confirmed or corrected, by a comparison of parallel passages and by the help of comparative grammar, which had just
XXvi VENDIDAD.
The information given by Neriusengh he tested, and either confirmed or corrected, by a comparison of parallel passages and by the help of comparative grammar, which had just
XXvi VENDIDAD.
been founded by Bopp, and applied by him successfully to the explanation of Zend forms. Thus he succeeded in tracing the general outlines of the Zend lexicon and in fixing its grammatical forms, and founded the only correct method of interpreting the Avesta. He also gave the first notions of a comparative mythology of the Avesta and the Veda, by showing the identity of the Vedic Yama with the Avesta Yima, and of Traitana with Thraétaona and Feridin. Thus he made his ‘Commentaire sur le Yasna’ a marvellous and unparalleled model of critical insight and steady good sense, equally opposed to the narrowness of mind which clings to matters of fact without rising to their cause and connecting them with the series of associated phenomena, and to the wild and uncontrolled spirit of comparison, which, by comparing everything, confounds everything. Never sacrificing either tradition to comparison or comparison to tradition, he knew how to pass from the one to the other, and was so enabled both to discover facts and to explain them.
At the same time the ancient Persian inscriptions at Persepolis and Behistun were deciphered by Burnouf in _ Paris, by Lassen in Bonn, and by Sir Henry Rawlinson in Persia. Thus was revealed the existence, at the time of the first Achaemenian kings, of a language closely connected with that of the Avesta, and the last doubts as to the authenticity of-the Zend books were at length removed. It would have required more than an ordinary amount of scepticism to look still upon the Zend as an artificial language, of foreign importation, without root in the land where it was written, and in the conscience of the people for whom it was written, at the moment when a twin language, bearing a striking likeness to it in nearly every feature, was suddenly making itself heard from the mouth of Darius, and speaking from the very tomb of the first Achaemenian king. That unexpected voice silenced all controversies, and the last echoes of the loud discussion which had been opened in 1771 died away unheeded 1.
1 The attacks of John Romer (‘ Zend: Is it an Original Language?’ London,
INTRODUCTION, II. XXVii
CHAPTER II. THE INTERPRETATION OF THE ZEND-AVESTA.
That unexpected voice silenced all controversies, and the last echoes of the loud discussion which had been opened in 1771 died away unheeded 1.
1 The attacks of John Romer (‘ Zend: Is it an Original Language?’ London,
INTRODUCTION, II. XXVii
CHAPTER II. THE INTERPRETATION OF THE ZEND-AVESTA.
The peace did not last long, and a year after the death of Burnouf a new controversy broke out, which still continues, the battle of the methods, that is, the dispute between those who, to interpret the Avesta, rely chiefly or exclusively on tradition, and those who rely only on comparison with the Vedas. The cause of the rupture was the rapid progress made in the knowledge of the Vedic language and literature: the deeper one penetrated into that oldest form of Indian words and thoughts, the more striking appeared its close affinity with the Avesta words and thoughts. Many a mysterious line in the Avesta received an unlooked-for light from the poems of , the Indian Rishis, and the long-forgotten past and the origin of many gods and heroes, whom the Parsi worships and extols without knowing who they were and whence they came, were suddenly revealed by the Vedas. Emboldened by its bright discoveries, the comparative method took pity on its slower and less brilliant rival, which was then making its first attempts to unravel the Pahlavi traditional books. Is it worth while, said the Vedic scholars }s to try slowly and painfully to extract the secret of the old book from that uncouth literature? Nay, is there any hope that its secret is there? Translating the Avesta in accord- y ance with the Pahlavi is not translating the Avesta, but only translating the Pahlavi version, which, wherever it has been deciphered, is found to wander strangely from the true meaning of the original text. Tradition, as a rule, is wont to enforce the ideas of its own ages into the books of past ages. From the time when the Avesta was written to the time when it was translated, many ideas had undergone great changes: such ideas, tradition must needs either
1855) called forth a refutation only in Bombay (Dhanjibai Framji, ‘On the Origin and the Authenticity of the Aryan Family of Languages, the Zend- Avesta and the Huzvarash,’ 1861).
misunderstand or not understand at all, and tradition is always either new sense or nonsense. The key to the Avesta is not the Pahlavi, but the Veda. The Avesta and the Veda are two echoes of one and the same voice. the reflex of one and the same thought : the Vedas, therefore, are both the best lexicon and the best commentary to the Avesta.
The key to the Avesta is not the Pahlavi, but the Veda. The Avesta and the Veda are two echoes of one and the same voice. the reflex of one and the same thought : the Vedas, therefore, are both the best lexicon and the best commentary to the Avesta.
The traditional school! replied that translating Zend by means of Sanskrit and the Avesta by means of the Vedas, because Zend and the Avesta are closely related to Sanskrit and the Vedas, is forgetting that relationship is not identity, and that what interests the Zend scholar is not to know how far Zend agrees with Sanskrit, but what it is in itself: what he seeks for in the Avesta, is the Avesta, not the Veda. Both the Vedic language and the Vedas are quite unable to teach us what became in Persia of those elements, which are common to the two systems, a thing which tradition alone can teach us. By the comparative method, the Zend meregha, which means ‘a bird, would assume the meaning of ‘gazelle’ to accord with the Sanskrit mviga; ratu,‘a part of the day,’ would be extended to ‘a season’ out of regard for rztu; mainyu, ‘a spirit,’ and dahyu, ‘a province,’ would be degraded to ‘anger’ and to ‘a set of thieves,’ and ‘the demons,’ the Daévas, would: ascend from their dwelling in hell up to heaven, to meet their philological brothers, the Indian Devas. The traditional method, as it starts from matters of fact, moves always in the field of reality; the comparative method starts frém an hypothesis, moves in a vacuum, and builds up a fanciful religion and a fanciful language.
Such being the methods of the two schools, it often happened that a passage, translated by two scholars, one of each school, took so different an aspect that a layman would have been quite unable to suspect that it was one and the same passage he had read twice. Yet the divergence between the two methods is more apparent than real, and proceeds from an imperfect notion of the field in
Spiegel, Justi.
INTRODUCTION, II. XXiX
Yet the divergence between the two methods is more apparent than real, and proceeds from an imperfect notion of the field in
Spiegel, Justi.
INTRODUCTION, II. XXiX
which each of them ought to work. They ought not to oppose, but assist one another, as they are not intended to instruct us about the same kind of facts, but about two kinds of facts quite different and independent. No lan- | guage, no religion, that has lived long and changed much, can be understood at any moment of its development, unless we know what it was before and what it became . afterwards. The language and religion of the Avesta record but a moment in the long life of the Iranian language and thought, so that we are unable to understand them, unless we know whence they came and what they became. What they became we learn directly from tradition, since the tradition arose from the very ideas which the Avesta expresses ; whence they came we learn indirectly from the Vedas, because the Vedas come from the same source as the Avesta. Therefore it cannot happen that the tradition and the Veda will really contradict one another, if we take care to ask from each only what it knows, from one the present, and from the other the past. Each method is equally right and equally efficacious at its proper time and in its right place. The first place belongs to tradition, as it comes straight from the Avesta. The second inquiry, to be successful, requires infinite prudence and care: the Veda is not the past of the Avesta, as the Avesta is the past of tradition ; the Avesta and Veda are not derived from one — another, but from one and the same original, diversely altered in each, and, therefore, there are two stages of variation between them, whereas from the Avesta to tradition there is only one. The Veda, if first interrogated, gives no valuable evidence, as the words and gods, common to the two systems, may not have retained in both the same meaning they had in the Indo-Iranian period: they may have preserved it in one and lost it in the other, or they may have both altered it, but each in a different way. The Veda, generally speaking, cannot help us in discovering matters of fact in the Avesta, but only in explaining them when discovered by tradition. If we review the discoveries made by the masters of the comparative school, it will be seen that they have in reality started, without noticing it,
XXX VEND{DAD.
from facts formerly established by tradition. In fact tradition gives the materials, and comparison puts them in order. It is not possible, either to know the Avesta without the former, or to understand it without the latter. ;
from facts formerly established by tradition. In fact tradition gives the materials, and comparison puts them in order. It is not possible, either to know the Avesta without the former, or to understand it without the latter. ;
The traditional school, and especially its indefatigable and well-deserving leader, Spiegel, made us acquainted with the nature of the old Iranian religion by gathering together all its materials; the comparative school tried to explain its growth. The traditional school published the text and the traditional translations, and produced the first Parsi grammar, the first Pahlavi grammar, and the first translation of the Avesta which had been made since Anquetil. The danger with it is that it shows itself too apt to stop at tradition, instead of going from it to comparison. When it undertakes to expound the history of the religion, it cannot but be misled by tradition. Any living people, although its-existing state of mind is but the result of various and changing states through many successive ages, yet, at any particular moment of its life, keeps the remains of its former stages of thought in order, under the control of the principle that is then predominant. Thus it happens that its ideas are connected together in a way which seldom agrees with their historical sequence: chronological order is lost to sight and replaced by logical order, and the past is read into the present. Comparison alone can enable us to put things in their proper place, to trace their birth, their growth, their changes, their former relations, and lead us from the logical order, which is a shadow, to the historical order, which is the substance.
The comparative school developed Indo-Iranian mythology. Roth showed after Burnouf how the epical history of Iran was derived from the same source as the myths . of Vedic India, and pointed out the primitive identity of Ahura Mazda, the supreme god of Iran, with Varuaa, the supreme god of the Vedic age. In the same direction Windischmann, in his ‘Zoroastrian Essays’ and in his studies on Mithra and Anéhita, displayed singular sagacity. But the dangers of the method came to light in the works of Haug, who, giving a definite form to a system still
INTRODUCTION, III. XXXi
fluctuating, converted Mazdeism into a religious revolution against Vedic polytheism, found historical allusions to that schism both in the Avesta and in the Veda, pointed out curses against Zoroaster in the Vedas, and, in short, transformed, as it were, the two books into historical pamphlets.
In the contest about the authenticity of the Avesta, one party must necessarily have been right and the other wrong; but in the present struggle the issue is not so clear, as both parties are partly right and partly wrong. Both of them, by following their principles, have rendered such services to science as seem to give each a right to cling to its own method more firmly than ever. Yet it is to be hoped that they will see at last that they must be allies, not enemies, and that their common work must be begun by the one and completed by the other.
CHAPTER III. THE FORMATION OF THE ZEND-AVESTA.
§ 1. The collection of Zend fragments, known as the Zend-Avesta *, is divided, in its usual form, into two parts.
The first part, or the Avesta properly so called, contains _the Vendidad, the Vispérad, and the Yasna. The Vendidad is a compilation of religious laws and of mythical tales ; the Vispérad is a collection of litanies for the sacrifice; and the Yasna is composed of litanies of the same
1 It would be unjust, when speaking of Haug, not to recall the invaluable services he rendered in the second part of his career, as a Pahlavi scholar. He was the first who thought of illustrating the Pahlavi of the books by the Pahlavi of the inscriptions, and thus determined the reading of the principal elements in the manuscript Pahlavi.
2 A very improper designation, as Zend means ‘a commentary or explanation,’ and was applied only to explanatory texts, to the translations of the Avesta. Avesta (froni the old Persian AbastA, ‘the law;’ see Oppert, Journal Asiatique, 1872, Mars) Js the proper name of the original texts. What it is customary to call ‘the Zend language’ ought to be named ‘the Avesta language ;’ the Zend being no language at all; and, if the word be used as the designation of one, it can be rightly applied only to the Pahlavi. The expression ‘Avesta and Zend’ is often used in the Pahlavi commentary to designate ‘the law with its traditional and revealed explanation.’
XXXli VENDIDAD.
kind and of five hymns or G&athas written in a special dialect, older than the general language of the Avesta.
These three books are found in manuscripts in two different forms: either each by itself, in which case they are generally accompanied by a Pahlavi translation; or the three mingled together according to the requirements of the liturgy, as they are not each recited separately in their entirety, but the chapters of the different books are intermingled; and in this case the collection is called the Vendidad SAda or ‘Vendidad pure,’ as it exhibits the original text alone, without a translation.
The second part, generally known as the Khorda Avesta or ‘Small Avesta,’ is composed of short prayers which are recited not only by the priests, but by all the faithful, at certain moments of the day, month, or year, and in presence of the different elements; these prayers are the five Gah, the thirty formulas of the Sirézah, the three Afrigan, and the six Ny4yis. But it is also usual to include in the Khorda Avesta, though they are no real part of it, the Yasts or hymns of praise and glorification to the several
Izads, and a number of fragments, the most important of
' which is the Hadhékht Nask.
§ 2. That the extent of the sacred literature of Mazdeism was formerly much greater than it is now, appears not only from internal evidence, that is, from the fragmentary character of the book, but is also proved by historical evidence. In the first place, the Arab conquest proved fatal to the religious literature of the Sassanian ages, a great part of which was either destroyed by the fanaticism of the conquerors and the new converts, or lost during the long exodus of the Parsis. Thus the Pahlavi translation of the Vendidad, which was not finished before the latter end of the Sassanian dynasty, contains not a few Zend quotations from books which are no longer in existence: whole chapters also, or large quotations, of lost books are preserved in Pahlavi and Parsi tracts, like the Nirangistan and the Aogemaidé ; and numerous quotations, from texts unknown before, have recently come to light in a Pahlavi Ravdet discovered in Bombay. It is a tradition with the Parsis,
INTRODUCTION, III. XXxili
that the Yasts were originally thirty in mumber, there having been one for each of the thirty Izads who preside over the thirty days of the month; yet there are only eighteen now extant. The Bundahis contains much matter which is not spoken of in the existing Avesta, but which appears to have been taken from Zend books that were still in the hands of its compiler.