Zend Avesta Part 01

SR No.: 007671
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: James Darmesteter
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1895
Total Pages: 2695
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 49 MB

Page 565

INTRODUCTION,
lvii
and whether any copy of it exists, independent of K20, is doubtful.
The Pâzand version is more common in Parsi libraries, but contains a very imperfect text. Of this version two modern copies have been consulted; one of these occupies fols. 38–62 of a small manuscript, No. 22 of the Haug collection in the State Library at Munich; the other is a copy of a manuscript in the library of the high-priest of the Parsis in Bombay. Both these MSS. are evidently descended from the same original, which must have been a very imperfect transliteration of a Pahlavi text closely resembling that of K20, but yet independent of that MS., as a few words omitted in K20 are supplied by these Pazand MSS. (see B.Yt. II, 13, 14, 22, &c.) To a certain extent, therefore, these Pâzand MSS. are of some assistance in settling the text of a few sentences, but the greater part of their contents is so imperfect as to be utterly unintelligible; they not only omit Chaps. I, 1-8, II, 17, 30–32, 40, III, 9, 12, 17– 44, 58-63 entirely, but also words and phrases from nearly every other section of the text. Adhering scrupulously to the Pahlavi original for a few consecutive words, and then widely departing from it by misreading or omitting all difficult words and passages, this Påzand version is a complete contrast to the Pâzand writings of Nêryðsang, being of little use to the reader beyond showing the extremely low ebb to which Pahlavi learning must have fallen, among the Parsis, before such unintelligible writings could have been accepted as Pâzand texts.
There is also a Persian version of the Bahman Yast, a copy of which, written A. D. 1676, is contained in a large Rivâyat MS. No. 29, belonging to the University Library at Bombay. According to the colophon of this Persian version it was composed in A.D. 1496 by Rustam Isfendiyar of Yazd, from an Avesta (Pazand) MS. belonging to his brother Jamshed. This Persian version contains less than three per cent of Arabic words, and is more of a paraphrase than a translation, but it adheres very closely to the meaning of the Pahlavi text from Chaps. I, i to III, 9, where a dislocation occurs, evidently owing either to the displacement
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