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PAHLAVI TEXTS.
book, or revelation generally. The concluding chapters give the genealogies of the legendary Persian kings and heroes, and of Zaratūst and certain priests, together with an epitome of Persian chronology from the creation to the Muhammadan conquest.
As the work now stands it is evidently of a fragmentary character, bearing unmistakable marks both of omissions and dislocations; and the extant manuscripts, as will be seen, differ among themselves both as to the extent and arrangement of the text. Many passages have the appearance of being translations from an Avesta original, and it is very probable that we have in the Bundahis either a translation, or an epitome, of the Dâmdad Nask, one of the twenty-one books into which the whole of the Zoroastrian scriptures are said to have been divided before the time of Darius. This may be guessed from a comparison of the contents of the Bundahis with those of the Dâmdad Nask, which are detailed in the Dînî-vagarkard as follows? :-'It contained an explanation of the spiritual existence and heaven, good and evil, the material existence of this world, the sky and the earth, and everything which Adharmazd produced in water, fire, and vegetation, men and quadrupeds, reptiles and birds, and everything which is produced from the waters, and the characteristics of all things. Secondly, the production of the resurrection and future existence; the concourse and separation at the Kinvad bridge; on the reward of the meritorious and the punishment of sinners in the future existence, and such-like explanations. Moreover, the Damdâd Nask is twice quoted as an authority in the Selections of Zadsparam (IX, 1, 16), when treating of animals, in nearly the same words as those used in the Bundahis.
The first manuscript of the Bundahis seen in Europe was brought from Surat by Anquetil Duperron in 1761, and he published a French translation of it in his great work on the Zend-Avesta in, 17712. This manuscript,
See Haug's Essays, &c., second edition, pp. 127, 128. : Zend-Avesta, ouvrage de Zoroastre, &c., par Anquetil Duperron; Paris, 1771. Tome seconde, pp. 343-422, Boun-dehesch.
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