Book Title: Sacred Laws of Aryas
Author(s): Gorge Buhler
Publisher: Oxford


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Page 919
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xviii
PAHLAVI TEXTS.
words. In most such cases, however, European scholars have found that the Huzvâris word can be easily read in some other way which at once connects it with some ordinary Chaldee equivalent. It may, therefore, be reasonably assumed that the compilers of the glossary had in some instances lost the correct pronunciation of these old Semitic words, and that, in such cases, they adopted (as a Parsi would probably do at the present day) the most obvious reading of the letters before them, which thenceforth became an artificial word to be handed down to posterity, by successive generations of writers, with all the authority of old tradition.
In the same manner the artificial pronunciation of the Iranian portion of the Huzvâris may be explained. The compilers of the glossary found a number of words in the Pahlavi texts, which were written in some obsolete or contracted manner; they knew the meanings of these words, but could not trace the true readings in the altered letters; they, therefore, adopted the most obvious readings of the written characters, and thus produced another series of artificial words, such as anhômå for a harmazd, yahân for yazdân, madÔnad for mainok, shatan for shatro, &c.
Naturally enough the Parsis are loth to admit the possibility of any error in their traditional readings of Huzvāris, and very few of them have yet adopted the views of European scholars further than to admit that they are ingenious hypotheses, which still require satisfactory proof. They are quite right in demanding such proof, and they may reasonably argue that the conflicting opinions of various European scholars do not tend to increase the certainty of their explanations. But, on the other hand, they are bound to examine all proofs that may be offered, and to consider the arguments of scholars, before utterly rejecting them in favour of their own preconceived notions of traditional authority.
Fortunately, we possess some means of ascertaining the ancient pronunciation of a few Huzvâris words, independent of the opinions of comparative philologists, in the inscrip
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