Zend Avesta Part 02

SR No.: 007672
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: James Darmesteter
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1883
Total Pages: 2221
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 41 MB

Page 1348

INTRODUCTION.
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by Åtärpåd, son of Hêmêd, one of his successors. From the Madigân-î gugastak Abalis we learn that Atar-farnbag had a religious disputation with Abàlis in the presence of the Khalifah Al-Mâmûn, who reigned A. D. 813-833; he must therefore have been compiling the Dînkard during the first half of the ninth century. In the Sikand-gumånik Vigår, IV, 107, IX, 3, X, 55, he is also mentioned as a compiler of the Dînkard, but the details there quoted must have been taken from its first two books which are still missing. It is likewise stated at the beginning of both its fourth and fifth books that their contents are derived from his statements, and a similar acknowledgement is made with regard to some of the contents of Chap. CXLII of the third book; so that the evidence of his authorship is very complete. With regard to Åtûrpád, the completer of the Dînkard, we may safely identify him with the Åtorpåd, son of Hâmêd, mentioned in Bd. XXXIII, 11 as a contemporary of Zad-sparam, who flourished at the latter end of the ninth century (see S. B. E., vol. xviii, p. xiv). We have, therefore, every reason to be satisfied that the whole of the Dînkard was compiled during the ninth century.
The history of the transmission of the text of its last seven books, through the last thousand years, down to the present manuscripts, is equally satisfactory, owing to the preservation of a series of colophons appended to the text, of which the first and most important may be translated as follows:
Completed in great joy and full of gratification this last portion of the manuscript of the incomparable, priceless, and unequalled Dînkard, at the place where it was found and happily disinterred? by us in Asūristân, within the happily prosperous, odoriferous, precious, well-thriving, and glorious Bakdâd of Good Rectitude"; from a copy which, as regards the religion, is just as the leaders of the saintly and orthodox, who were of the family of the saintly Âtürpåd, son of Måraspend, (who re-explained knowledge, by five or six well-destined ones, from the pure revelation
Khas-kand might be the name of a place here, but cannot be so in the next paragraph.
• The angel Ahartsvang (Av. ashis vangahi).
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