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


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Page 922
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INTRODUCTION.
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gone out of use, after the establishment of the Sasanian dynasty, as the latest known inscription, in which it occurs, is that of Pâî Kûlî, which contains the name of Auharmazd I (A. D. 271-272); while the long inscriptions of Naqs-i Ragab and Naqs-i Rustam, which contain the name of Varahrân II (A. D. 275-283), are engraved only in Sasanian-Pahlavi. From these facts it seems probable that Chaldæo-Pahlavi went out of use about A. D. 275. The Sasanian characters continue to appear, with very little alteration, upon the coins until the end of the fifth century, when most of them begin to assume the cursive form of the manuscript Pahlavi, which appears to have altered very slightly since the eighth century.
The oldest Pahlavi manuscript known to be extant, consists of several fragments of papyrus recently found in a grave in the Fayam district in Egypt, and now in the Royal Museum at Berlin; it is supposed to have been written in the eighth century. Next to this, after a long interval, come four manuscripts written on Indian paper, all by the same hand, in A. D. 1323-1324; they are two copies of the Yasna and two of the Vendidad, containing the Avesta with its Zand, or Pahlavi translation and commentary; two of these old MSS. are now preserved in Kopenhagen, one in London, and one in Bombay. Next to these in age are two MSS. of miscellaneous Pahlavi texts, written probably about fifty years later; one of these is now in Kopenhagen and one in Bombay. Another MS. of nearly the same age is also a miscellaneous collection of Pahlavi texts, written in A. D. 1397, and now in Munich; where there is also one of the oldest PâzandSanskrit MSS., a copy of the Ardâ-Vîrâf-nâmak, written in A. D. 1410. Another Pâzand-Sanskrit MS., a copy of the Khurdah Avesta, of about the same age, exists in Bombay. Pahlavi and Pâzand manuscripts of the sixteenth century are rather more numerous.
Pahlavi literature reached the zenith of its prosperity about thirteen centuries ago, when it included the whole literature of Persia. Seventy years later its destruction commenced with the fall of the Sasanian dynasty (A.D.
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