Whether TD may be considered as a copy of the text as it stood originally, or merely of an after recension of the work, can hardly be determined with certainty until the. whole contents of the manuscript have been carefully examined ; it is, therefore, to be hoped that its owner will be induced to publish a lithographed facsimile of the whole, after the manner of Westergaard’s edition. So far as appears in the lengthy and valuable extracts, with which he has kindly favoured me, no decided difference of style can be detected between the additional matter and the text hitherto known, nor any inconsistencies more striking than such as sometimes occur in the Indian MSS. On the other hand, it will be noticed that heading No. 25 in the list of contents seems to be misplaced, which is an argu- ment against the text being in its original state; and the style of the Bundahis is so much less involved and obscure than that of the Selections of Zad-sparam (see Appendix to the Bundahis), which treat of some of the same subjects, that it may be fairly suspected of having been written originally in a different age. But the writer of the text, as it appears in TD, calls Zad-sparam! one of his con- temporaries (see Chap. XX XIII, 10, 11 of the translation); it may, therefore, be suspected that he merely re-edited an old text with some additions of his own, which, how- ever, are rather difficult to distinguish from the rest. No stress can be laid upon peculiarities of orthography in TD, as they are, in all likelihood, attributable to copyists long subsequent to Zad-sparam’s contemporaries.
Any future translator of the Bundahis will probably
have to take the text in TD as the nearest accessible
approach to the original work ; but the present translation
is based, as heretofore, upon the text in K20, corrected
in many places from M6, but with due care not to adopt
ee
* He writes the name Z4d-sparham.
Introduction. Xxxix
Since the present translation was printed, any lingering doubts, as to the genuineness of the text in TD, have been, in a great measure, dissipated by the discovery that a small fragment! of an old MS. of the Bundahis, which has long been in Europe, is evidently a portion of a text of similar character to TD, and of exactly the same extent. This small fragment consists of two folios belonging to an old MS. brought from Persia by the late Professor Westergaard in 1843-44, and which is evidently the codex mentioned by him in the preface to his Zend-Avesta, p. 8, note 3. These two folios, which are numbered 130 and 131 in Persian words, now form the commencement of this old mutilated MS., of which the first 129 folios have been lost. They contain very little more than one page of the Bundahis text, namely, the last sentences of the last chapter (corresponding to Bund. XXXIV, 7-9), followed by a colophon occupying less than two pages. This fragment of the text contains some additional details not found in the Indian MSS.., as well as a few other variations of no great importance. It may be translated as follows :—
‘[. ... Sahm? was in those reigns of Atzobd, Kavid,
and Manissihar.] Kai-Kayds, till 47s going to the sky,
seventy-five years, and after that, seventy-five years, alto-
eether a hundred and fifty years; Kai-Khusrobo sixty
1 I am indebted to Professor G. Hoffmann, of Kiel, for directing my atten- tion to this fragment, and also for kindly sending me a facsimile of it. It had been recognised as a portion of the Bundahis by Dr. Andreas some years ago, and probably by the owner of the MS., the late l’rofessor Weste: gaard, lony before that.
2 See Bund. XXXI, 27. As the beginning of this sentence is lost, its trans- lation is uncertain. Details not found in K20 and M6 are here enclosed in brackets, and words added by the translator to complete the sense are printed in italics,
x] PAHLAVI TEXTS.
years; Kai-Loharasp a hundred and twenty years; Kai- Vistasp, till the coming of the religion, thirty years ; [total (mar) one thousand years’. Then the millennium reign came to Capricornus, and Zaratihast? the Spitaman, with tidings (pétkhambarih) from the creator ACharmazd, came to King Vistasp ; avd Vistasp was king,] after receiving the religion, ninety years.
‘Vohdiman, sox of Spend-dad, a hundred and twelve years ; Hiamai, daughter of Vohiman, thirty years; Dardai, son of Kihar-asad, that is, of the daughter of Vohiman, twelve years; DAardi, son of Dardai, fourteen years; and Alexander the Raman? fourteen years.
‘The Askdnians should bear the title in an uninterrupted sovereignty two hundred and so many? years; and Artakh- shatar, son of Papak, and the number of the Sasdanians dear it four hundred and sixty years, until the withering Arabs obtained a place® [as far as the year 447 of the Persians ; now ?¢ zs the Persian year 527|°’
The colophon, which follows, states that the MS. was finished on the thirteenth day of the ninth month A.Y. 936 (A.D. 1567), and was written by Mitré-apan, soz of Anédshak- raban, soz of Ristam. This MS. is, therefore, of nearly the same age as TD; but there has been no-opportunity of collating the fragment of it, which is still extant, with the corresponding portion of TD. That it was a MS. of the same character as TD (that is, one containing the same text as K2o, but with much additional matter) appears clearly
' From the beginning of Frédin's reign, when the millennium of Sagittarius commenced,
* The usual way of spelling Zaratist in old MSS., excepting K20 and a few others.
* Here written correctly Alaksandar-i Arfiima?,
' Reading va and; as the final letter is d and not d it cannot be read navad as a variant of navad, ‘ninety.’
" The words are, vad ginak ayfft khisk6é-i Taztkan8, but the exact meaning is rather doubtful
* The last date is doubtful, as the Pahlavi text gives the ciphers only for ‘hive and twenty-seven,’ omitting that for ‘hundred,’ These Persian dates must either have veen added by some former copyist, or Chap. XXXIV must have been appended to the Bundahis at a later date than the ninth century, when the preceding genealogical chapters were probably added to the original work (see p. xliii). ‘The Persian year 527 was A, D. 1158.
INTRODUCTION. xii from the fragment translated above. Regarding its original extent, it is possible to make an approximate estimate, by calculating the quantity of text which the 129 lost folios must have contained, from the quantity actually existing on folio 130. According to this calculation, the original extent of the text of the Bundahis in this MS. must have been very nearly 30,000 words; and it is remarkable that a similar calculation of the extent of the text in TD, based upon the actual contents of ten folios out of 103, gives pre- cisely the same result. This coincidence is a strong argu- ment in favour of the absolute identity of the text lost from Westergaard’s MS. with that actually existing in TD; it shows, further, that the original extent of the Bundahis may now be safely estimated at 30,000 words, instead of the 13,000 contained in K20 when that MS. was complete.
That this fragment belonged to a separate MS, and is not the folio missing from the end of TD, is shown not only by its containing more of the text than is said to be missing, but also by the first folio of the fragment being numbered 130, instead of 103, and by its containing fifteen lines to the page, instead of seventeen, as would be necessary in order to correspond with TD.
Regarding the age of the Bundahis many opinions have been hazarded, but as they have been chiefly based upon minute details of supposed internal evidence evolved from each writer’s special misinterpretation of the text, it is unnecessary to detail them. The only indication of its age that can be fairly obtained from internal evidence, is that the text of the Bundahis could not have been completed, in its present form, until after the Muham- madan conquest of Persia (A.D. 651). This is shown not only by the statements that the sovereignty ‘went to the Arabs’ (Chap, XXXIV, g), that ‘now, #irough the invasion of the Arabs, they (the negroes) are again diffused through the country of Iran’ (Chap. XXIII, 4), and that ‘ whoever keeps the year by the revolution of the moon mingles summer with winter avd winter with summer’ (Chap. XXV, 19, referring probably to the Muhammadan year not cor- responding with the seasons), but also, more positively
xlit PAULAVI TEXTS.
by the following translation of an extract from Chap. 39 in TD :—
‘And when the sovereignty came to Yazdakard he exercised sovereignty twenty years, avd then the Arabs rushed into the country of Iran in great multitude. Yaz- dakard did not prosper (la sakaft6) in warfare with them, and went to Kharadsan and Tirkistan to seek horses, men, and assistance, and was slain by them there. The son of Yazdakard went to the Hindis and fetched an army of champions; before it came, conducted unto Khitrasan, that army of champions dispersed. The country of Iran re- mained with the Arabs, and their own irreligious law was propagated by them, and many ancestral customs were destroyed; the religion of the Mazdayasnians was weakened, and washing of corpses, burial of corpses, avd eating of dead matter were put in practice. From the original creation until this day evil more grievous than this as not happened, for through their evil deeds—on account of want, foreign habits (Aniranih), hostile acts, bad de- crees, and bad religion—ruin, want, and other evils have taken lodgment.’
None of these passages could have been written before the Muhammadan conquest; but the writer, or editor, of the text as it appears in TD, supplies the means of ap- proximating much more closely to the date of his work, in a passage in Chap. 41 of TD, in which he mentions the names of several of his contemporaries (sce Chap. XX XIII, 10, 11), Among these, as already noticed, he mentions ‘Zad-sparham sox of Yadain-Yim,’ who must have been the writer of the Sclections of Zaid-sparam, a_ translation of which is added as an appendix to the Bundahis in this volume. This writer was the brother of Mands/ihar son of Yodin-Yim, who wrote the Dadistan-i Dinik!, and from colophons found in certain MSS. of the Dadistan (which will be more particuiarly described in the next section of this introduction) it appears that this Mandskihar was oe SDN Nay Opn ENG Pada EE Ee
' It is quite possible that Maniskihar was also the reviser of the Bundahis ; sce the note on Dadakih-i Ashovahist6 in Chap. XXXIII, 10,
INTRODUCTION. xii high-priest of Pars and Kirman in A. Y. 250 (A.D. 881). This date may, therefore, be taken as a very close ap- proximation to the time at which the Bundahis probably assumed the form we find in TD; but that MS., having been written about 650 years later, can hardly have been copied direct from the original. Whether that original was merely a new edition of an older Pahlavi work, as may be suspected from the simplicity of its language, or whether it was first translated, for the most part, from the Avesta of the Damddad Nask, in the ninth century, we have no means of determining with certainty. Judging, however, from Chap. I, 1, the original Bundahis probably ended with the account of the resurrection (Chap. XXX), and the extra chapters, containing genealogical and chro- nological details (matters not mentioned in Chap. I, 1), together with all allusions to the Arabs, were probably added by the revising editor in the ninth century. The last, or chronological, chapter may even have been added at a later date.
A Gugarati translation, or rather paraphrase, of the
Bundahis was published in 1819 by Edal Darab Jamshéd
Jamasp Asi, and a revised edition of it was published by
Peshutan Rustam in 1877". In the preface to the latter
edition it is stated that the translator made use of two
MSS., one being a copy of a manuscript written in Iran
in A.Y. 776 by Rustamji Meherwanji Margaban She-
heriar *, and the other a MS. written in India by Dastir
Jamshédji Jamaspji in A. y.1139%. It is also mentioned
that he was four years at work upon his translation. The
editor of the new edition states that he has laboured to
' Bundehes ketab, iane dunia-ni awal-thi te A4kher sudhi pedaes-ni sahruat-ni hakikat; bigi-var sudharine skapawanar, Peshutan bin Rustam; Mumbai, 1877.
