The Golden Verses of Pythagoras — with commentary (1917)
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These Persians, today imitators of the Arabs, were in very remote times disciples of the Indians. Their sacred tongue then called Zend, in which are written the fragments that remain to us of Zoroaster, was a dialect of Sanskrit.'' These fragments that we owe to the indefatigable zeal of Anquetil Duperron, appear to be written, as the Vedas, or as all the sacred books of India, in cadenced prose. After the Zend-Avesta, the most famous book among the Parsees is the Boun-Dehesh, written in Pehlevi, and containing the cosmogony of Zoroaster. Pehlevi, which is derived from Chaldaic Nabataean, indicates a translation, ' and testifies that Persia had already passed from under the dominion of India to that of Assyria. But when, thanks to the conquests of Cyrus, Persia had become free and mistress of Asia, Pehlevi, which recalled its ancient servitude, was banished from the court by Bahman-Espandiar, whom we
' Le P. Parennin sajrs that the language of the Manchus has an enormous quantity of words which express, in the most concise and most picturesque manner, what ordinary languages can do only by aid of numerous epithets or periphrases. (Duhalde, in-foL, t. iv., p. 65.)
' Ci-desstis, p. 31.
3 Voyez la traduction frangaise des Rech. asiatiq., t. ii., p. 49, notes a et b.
■" Voyez ce que dit de Zend, Anquetil Duperron, et I'exemple qu'il donne de cette ancienne langue. Zend-Avesta, t. i.
s D'Herbelot, Bibl. orient., p. 54. Asiat. Research., t. ii., p. 51.
8o The Golden Verses of Pythagoras call Artaxerxes Longimanus.
' The Parsee replaced it; this last dialect, modified by Greek under the successors of Alexander, mixed with many Tartar words under the Parthian kings, polished by the Sassanidae, usurped at last by the Arabs and subjected to the intolerant influence of Islamism, had no longer its own character: it has taken, in the modern Persian, all the movements of the Arabic, notwithstanding its slight analogy with it*; following its example, it has concentrated all the beauties of poetry in rhyme and since then it has had neither Etmiolpoeia nor Epopceia.
As to the Arab, no one is ignorant of the degree to which he is a slave to rhyme. Already, by a sufficiently happy conjecture, a French writer had made the first use of rhyme in France coincide with the irruption of the Moors into Europe at the beginning of the eighth century.' He has said that Provence had been the door by which this novelty was introduced into France. However difficult it may appear of proving rigorously this assertion, lacking monuments, it cannot, however, be denied that it may be very probable, above all considering what influence the Arabs exercised upon the sciences and arts in the south of France after they had penetrated through Spain. Now, there is no country on earth where the poetry that I have called romantic has been cultivated with more constancy and success than in Arabia; rhyme, if she has received it from India, was naturalized there by long usage, in such a way as to appear to have had birth there. If it must be said, the Arab tongue seems more apt at receiving it than the Sanskrit. Rhyme seems more requisite to poetry there, on account of the great quantity and inflexibility of the monosyllables, which joining together only with much difficulty to form the numerous and rhythmic combinations,
' Anquetil Duperron, Zend-Avesta, t. i.
"Asiat. Research., t. ii., p. 51.
3 L'abb6 Massieu, Histor. de la PoSsiefrans., p. 82.
The Essence and Form of Poetry 8i had need of its assistance to soften their harshness and to supply the harmony which they lacked.
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