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V. TAHMURAS' FRAGMENTS..
These fifty-three Zend fragments, of which only ten were already known, are found in a sort of Pahlavi catechism of questions and answers, contained in a manuscript belonging to the well-known Pahlavi scholar, Tahmuras Dinshawji Anklesaria, at Bombay, who most kindly let me have a copy of the Zend texts. These texts are quotations introduced into the answers in support of the dogmatic statements contained in those replies; and sometimes they are not given in full, but only announced by their first or some other typical words. We had not the whole of the treatise at hand, so that the circumstances of which the Zend quotations were explanatory are unknown. However, the Pahlavi translation which accompanies the Zend text, and which, in the cases when the quotation is abridged, is more complete than the fragment given, offers generally sufficient help for a correct understanding of the original.
Tahmuras' manuscript is Irâni (written in Persia): it was finished on the 19th day (Farvardin) of the 8th month (Avân) of the year 978 after the moth year of Yazdgard, that is to say, in 1629, by Fredûn Marzpân. It was copied from his father's copy of a manuscript written by Gôpatshah Rustam, who himself transcribed from a manuscript by Kai Khosrav Syâvakhsh, who lived in the last quarter of the fifteenth century. The text is sufficiently correct to allow of the task of translation, as most of the barbarous forms, in which it is not deficient, generally find their explanation in the Pahlavi translation. Though we have already published the text in our French translation of the Avesta, yet as it has not been hitherto incorporated in any general edition of the Avesta, we have thought it useful to have it reprinted here, for the use of those who have not access to the editio princeps. As to the Pahlavi translation, which was our principal and best guide in the interpretation of the text, we beg to refer to the Commentary in our French Avesta, where it is given in full.
T2
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