Fetching
One moment.
Fetching
One moment.
Romanised transliteration as printed by the translator, not the original script. This is what we hold.
1f the Gathds antedated their cult, there is no telling how old they may be. The decision of criticism is to refrain from conjectures too closely limiting their age. The other particular as to which I would now abandon my scepticism is the poetic personification of the Bountiful (or Holy) Immortals. I no longer doubt that it was poetical, and that they were actually appealed to and besought to approach the worshippers while yet understood to be divine and human attributes and not merely personal beings. I of course yielded to this opinion frequently in my earlier treatment, but I would now cancel every doubt. When the Good Mind, the Holy Order, and the Divine Sovereign Power, are bid ‘to hear’ and ‘to come’, I am now willing to believe that the sage subordinated entirely the inferior conception that they were personal beings to the very impressive conception that they were spiritual qualities in the mind of the Deity which were besought-for as acquisitions to the mind of the worshipper. The personification was almost wholly figurative in the Gathas, and this appears to me to be most remarkable in view of their remote age. In this part of my book which I now offer to the learned public, and especially to those eminent scholars who have so long been in possession of the first part in its imperfect condition, I have used, as I have said, a perhaps painful succinctness. And I have expressed the hope that this will be condoned by non-specialists and by beginners in view of the fulness and unusual simplicity of the mass of exegetical matter which I have now with equal fulness introduced, and which is contained in the XXXIst vol. of the Sacred Books of the Hast, and in the first volume of this work, but I trust that notwithstanding a perhaps excessive parsimony in the use of language here, no statement will be found on careful examination to be obscure. I cannot however claim that the Commentary, if read by itself, will be other than inscrutable to non-specialists, and not very inviting to beginners. It is not intended to replace a dictionary, nor yet a grammar, both of which I had hoped and still hope to furnish. (My grammar, which I hope will appear before very long, will contain, and in fact will largely consist of a very full collection of comparative paradigms of the Zend and Vedic Sanskrit.) XXT In concluding my necessarily extended explanations, I shall say a word to the large number of scholarly friends (not specialists in Oriental philology) who may have censured (some of them) the devotion of so many years to a recondite and difficult branch of investigation. My answer to any such strictures would be short. If the history of human thought is of any importance, the Avesta claims a very prominent position in that history.
2tal philology) who may have censured (some of them) the devotion of so many years to a recondite and difficult branch of investigation. My answer to any such strictures would be short. If the history of human thought is of any importance, the Avesta claims a very prominent position in that history. It not only affords one of the oldest, if, not the oldest, monument of Aryan speculation, but, in view of its enormous influence upon later Jewish and Christian theology, it must justly claim a decisive place in the development of religion and so even in the moulding and destiny of the human soul. We have the gravest reason to believe that the entire change from the free-thinking Sadduceeism to that orthodoxy which now underlies the Catholic Creed . was due to Parsism which moulded Judaism under the modified name of Pharisaism: So far ‘as I can see, no thorough examination of the Jewish theology can be completed without a thorough knowledge of the Avesta in its general complexion, and in many of its particular statements. But I have a further excuse. A valuable knowledge of the Avesta can now be acquired with little labour and delay, but a critical knowledge of it, which alone befits an original expositor, requires very extensive and prolonged study, and this not only consumes a good part of a lifetime, but it leads the toiler through fields of supreme interest. First there is the Veda, and especially the Rik, so different from the oldest part of the Avesta, and so kindred to the Yashts. Here is an engaging study alone worth years, and to prepare himself for the Avesta the specialist in Zend should study hundreds of these rich and poetic hymns. Then Pahlavi literature has its gems, as West has so thoroughly shown us, and for an author in Zend the Pahlavi is indispensable. Then the Zend-philolog must see much of the Persian. Surely these particulars alone furnish an excuse for concentration. It is concentration not upon a point but upon a dise, and upon a dise of no narrow dimensions. As several inteltigent friends and sympathizers have also asked. me what led me at first to Zoroastrianism, I may as well descend still further into personal particulars and describe an experience of very great enjoyment as well as profound satisfaction. I had felt an irresistible tendency to interior investigations from early years, and at last began to specialize on the Gnostic philosophy, happening first upon Matter’s XXII work. Coming to Europe in 1872 I developed this pursuit till it became time to turn to the descendants of Gnosticism in the modern philosophy. But in that rich study I became so fastinated with Kant’s immortal Kritik that I settled upon an exposition of it, and I have my copious MSS. yet with the subject worked up from its foundations and with close detail having availed myself of the advice of the then leading German authorities.
3losophy. But in that rich study I became so fastinated with Kant’s immortal Kritik that I settled upon an exposition of it, and I have my copious MSS. yet with the subject worked up from its foundations and with close detail having availed myself of the advice of the then leading German authorities. I left the Kantian philosophy and its successors for Zend philology to seek the origin of the Gnosis, as I had left the Gnosis for them to search for its results. The, whole series of studies are . closely connected, and each is an independent link in one chain, the history of religious philosophy in its entirety. Surely no one should accuse me of undue concentration after this. L. H. Mills. Oxford, Dee., 1890. XXUI Additional remarks on the publication of Yasna XXVIII—XXXIV as part I of the work. On issuing the Ahunavaiti text entirely reprinted I would only add a few words to what was said when I published the Commentary some time ago. First as to the Alphabet: I would retract my remark on p. 447; I no longer think that ) is better than } for m, as }stands in the oldest undated Zend document J.?. The letter should be curved somewhat even when represented by j, as it is curved toward thé bottom in J.2 It is however straight in D., and longer than seems natural. Not to be singular I have used 6y in reprinting, but §. stands in J.2, J.8, J*. S(k) 944) stands in J.2, K.5, J.3 in s(k)yaoth, otherwise shy, or sy, appears oftenest, so ashyd appears in the Vendidiéd MS. given me by Dasttr J. M. Perhaps the additional stroke was the Pahlavi sign for y, as the character 9% never occurs except as preceding y in the newer Avesta character. In D. and others 0 is used. Except where sh =Sansk. ksh, I have used 3%) = sk uniformly before y in reprinting in order not to differ needlessly from Geldner, and this notwithstanding the usage of the . older MSS. The distinction between & and w_is carried out in J.?, J.%, but not in J.*, nor in D.: is also used for 6 in my Vendidad MS. & exactly in that form I find in J.* as far as to Y. 44. 2, 0 where a different writer begins who uses CG. In D. it occurs in 8(k)yaothna. J.?, J. have ik more erect than Go 32 has both GC, and lL apparently, and in somewhat close proximity, but the more erect form turns to the left at the top. I have only noticed Cin the Vendidad MS. My printer did not appear to have a type which could represent l, erect when printing the texts. I must also mention that I have collated still one more MS. of the Pahlavi. It was from Haug’s Munich collection no. 7 under 6a, 6 which contains scattered fragments of the Gathas with Pahlavi translations, but as they seem very much more extended than the others, it was hardly XXIV fair to publish the differences as variations of the same document. In reprinting I have given a partially restored text in the transliteration.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
Romanised transliteration as printed by the translator, not the original script. This is what we hold.
1f the Gathds antedated their cult, there is no telling how old they may be. The decision of criticism is to refrain from conjectures too closely limiting their age. The other particular as to which I would now abandon my scepticism is the poetic personification of the Bountiful (or Holy) Immortals. I no longer doubt that it was poetical, and that they were actually appealed to and besought to approach the worshippers while yet understood to be divine and human attributes and not merely personal beings. I of course yielded to this opinion frequently in my earlier treatment, but I would now cancel every doubt. When the Good Mind, the Holy Order, and the Divine Sovereign Power, are bid ‘to hear’ and ‘to come’, I am now willing to believe that the sage subordinated entirely the inferior conception that they were personal beings to the very impressive conception that they were spiritual qualities in the mind of the Deity which were besought-for as acquisitions to the mind of the worshipper. The personification was almost wholly figurative in the Gathas, and this appears to me to be most remarkable in view of their remote age. In this part of my book which I now offer to the learned public, and especially to those eminent scholars who have so long been in possession of the first part in its imperfect condition, I have used, as I have said, a perhaps painful succinctness. And I have expressed the hope that this will be condoned by non-specialists and by beginners in view of the fulness and unusual simplicity of the mass of exegetical matter which I have now with equal fulness introduced, and which is contained in the XXXIst vol. of the Sacred Books of the Hast, and in the first volume of this work, but I trust that notwithstanding a perhaps excessive parsimony in the use of language here, no statement will be found on careful examination to be obscure. I cannot however claim that the Commentary, if read by itself, will be other than inscrutable to non-specialists, and not very inviting to beginners. It is not intended to replace a dictionary, nor yet a grammar, both of which I had hoped and still hope to furnish. (My grammar, which I hope will appear before very long, will contain, and in fact will largely consist of a very full collection of comparative paradigms of the Zend and Vedic Sanskrit.) XXT In concluding my necessarily extended explanations, I shall say a word to the large number of scholarly friends (not specialists in Oriental philology) who may have censured (some of them) the devotion of so many years to a recondite and difficult branch of investigation. My answer to any such strictures would be short. If the history of human thought is of any importance, the Avesta claims a very prominent position in that history.
2tal philology) who may have censured (some of them) the devotion of so many years to a recondite and difficult branch of investigation. My answer to any such strictures would be short. If the history of human thought is of any importance, the Avesta claims a very prominent position in that history. It not only affords one of the oldest, if, not the oldest, monument of Aryan speculation, but, in view of its enormous influence upon later Jewish and Christian theology, it must justly claim a decisive place in the development of religion and so even in the moulding and destiny of the human soul. We have the gravest reason to believe that the entire change from the free-thinking Sadduceeism to that orthodoxy which now underlies the Catholic Creed . was due to Parsism which moulded Judaism under the modified name of Pharisaism: So far ‘as I can see, no thorough examination of the Jewish theology can be completed without a thorough knowledge of the Avesta in its general complexion, and in many of its particular statements. But I have a further excuse. A valuable knowledge of the Avesta can now be acquired with little labour and delay, but a critical knowledge of it, which alone befits an original expositor, requires very extensive and prolonged study, and this not only consumes a good part of a lifetime, but it leads the toiler through fields of supreme interest. First there is the Veda, and especially the Rik, so different from the oldest part of the Avesta, and so kindred to the Yashts. Here is an engaging study alone worth years, and to prepare himself for the Avesta the specialist in Zend should study hundreds of these rich and poetic hymns. Then Pahlavi literature has its gems, as West has so thoroughly shown us, and for an author in Zend the Pahlavi is indispensable. Then the Zend-philolog must see much of the Persian. Surely these particulars alone furnish an excuse for concentration. It is concentration not upon a point but upon a dise, and upon a dise of no narrow dimensions. As several inteltigent friends and sympathizers have also asked. me what led me at first to Zoroastrianism, I may as well descend still further into personal particulars and describe an experience of very great enjoyment as well as profound satisfaction. I had felt an irresistible tendency to interior investigations from early years, and at last began to specialize on the Gnostic philosophy, happening first upon Matter’s XXII work. Coming to Europe in 1872 I developed this pursuit till it became time to turn to the descendants of Gnosticism in the modern philosophy. But in that rich study I became so fastinated with Kant’s immortal Kritik that I settled upon an exposition of it, and I have my copious MSS. yet with the subject worked up from its foundations and with close detail having availed myself of the advice of the then leading German authorities.
3losophy. But in that rich study I became so fastinated with Kant’s immortal Kritik that I settled upon an exposition of it, and I have my copious MSS. yet with the subject worked up from its foundations and with close detail having availed myself of the advice of the then leading German authorities. I left the Kantian philosophy and its successors for Zend philology to seek the origin of the Gnosis, as I had left the Gnosis for them to search for its results. The, whole series of studies are . closely connected, and each is an independent link in one chain, the history of religious philosophy in its entirety. Surely no one should accuse me of undue concentration after this. L. H. Mills. Oxford, Dee., 1890. XXUI Additional remarks on the publication of Yasna XXVIII—XXXIV as part I of the work. On issuing the Ahunavaiti text entirely reprinted I would only add a few words to what was said when I published the Commentary some time ago. First as to the Alphabet: I would retract my remark on p. 447; I no longer think that ) is better than } for m, as }stands in the oldest undated Zend document J.?. The letter should be curved somewhat even when represented by j, as it is curved toward thé bottom in J.2 It is however straight in D., and longer than seems natural. Not to be singular I have used 6y in reprinting, but §. stands in J.2, J.8, J*. S(k) 944) stands in J.2, K.5, J.3 in s(k)yaoth, otherwise shy, or sy, appears oftenest, so ashyd appears in the Vendidiéd MS. given me by Dasttr J. M. Perhaps the additional stroke was the Pahlavi sign for y, as the character 9% never occurs except as preceding y in the newer Avesta character. In D. and others 0 is used. Except where sh =Sansk. ksh, I have used 3%) = sk uniformly before y in reprinting in order not to differ needlessly from Geldner, and this notwithstanding the usage of the . older MSS. The distinction between & and w_is carried out in J.?, J.%, but not in J.*, nor in D.: is also used for 6 in my Vendidad MS. & exactly in that form I find in J.* as far as to Y. 44. 2, 0 where a different writer begins who uses CG. In D. it occurs in 8(k)yaothna. J.?, J. have ik more erect than Go 32 has both GC, and lL apparently, and in somewhat close proximity, but the more erect form turns to the left at the top. I have only noticed Cin the Vendidad MS. My printer did not appear to have a type which could represent l, erect when printing the texts. I must also mention that I have collated still one more MS. of the Pahlavi. It was from Haug’s Munich collection no. 7 under 6a, 6 which contains scattered fragments of the Gathas with Pahlavi translations, but as they seem very much more extended than the others, it was hardly XXIV fair to publish the differences as variations of the same document. In reprinting I have given a partially restored text in the transliteration.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
No commentary for this page.