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 1914

xxiv
PAHLAVI TEXTS.
powerful personages who arise in successive ages of the world. The golden branch is 2. himself, the silver is Gustâsp, the copper is an Askânian king, the brass is Ardashîr the Sâsânian, the lead is king Bahrâm (Gôr), the steel is Nôshêrvân who destroys the heretic Mazdak, and the mixed iron is the malicious monarch who upsets the true faith. Then follow many details of the lamentable evils which then occur; and when the Hazârahs 1 appear, · the condition of Iran becomes still worse, as described in Byt. II, III, until the arrival of king Bahrâm the Hamâvand from India, and Peshôtan from Kangdiz, who restore the Iranian monarchy and religion.
44. This additional narrative is evidently a paraphrase of the Pahlavi Bahman Yast, translated in S. B. E., vol. v, pp. 191--235; and that Pahlavi text appears to be merely an enlarged edition of Fargard VII of the Sadkar Nask, of which a short summary is given in Dk. IX, viii.
45. From the foregoing epitome of the Persian Zartustnâmah, it will be evident that its author's information was a combination of the statements still surviving in Dk. VII and Zs. XII-XXIII, so far as they suited his fancy and convenience. Many statements are omitted, others either condensed, or greatly elaborated; but very few novelties can be detected, excepting such as are clearly due to the writer's own imagination. Whether any small residuum of these novelties can be attributed to other sources than the Persian writer's fancy, must remain doubtful until some older authority for such details is discovered.
46. With regard to Zi's vision of heaven and hell, which is mentioned in Zartust Bahrâm's final episode, his immediate informant was certainly Byt. II, 11-13; but the original authority was the Spend Nask, as summarized in Dk. VIII, xiv, 7, 8, although Dk. VII omits this incident, and Zs. XXI, 21, 22 merely mentions the bodily appearance of the omniscient wisdom, without referring to Z.'s vision. The details of the conferences with the six archangels,
Those specially belonging to the latter millenniums, probably meaning the people who were expected to make most of the last two centuries intolerably wicked.
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