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


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PAHLAVI TEXTS.
eternity of evil as Christianity does, and that Christianity has been content to leave all its other ideas about the devil in a very hazy and uncertain form, while Zoroastrianism has not shrunk from carrying similar ideas to their logical conclusion. If, therefore, a belief in Aharman, as the author of evil, makes the Parsi religion a dualism, it is difficult to understand why a belief in the devil, as the author of evil, does not make Christianity also a dualism. At any rate, it is evident from the Bundahis that a Christian is treading on hazardous ground when he objects to Zoroastrianism on the score of its dualism.
Another misrepresentation of the Pargi religion is shown to have no foundation in fact, by a passage in the Selections of Zâd-sparam. Several writers, both Greek and Armenian, contemporaries of the Sasanian dynasty, represent the Persians as believing that both Adharmazd and Aharman were produced by an eternal being, who is evidently a personification of the Avesta phrase for 'boundless time.' This view was apparently confirmed by a passage in Anquetil Duperron's French translation of the Vendidad (XIX, 32-34), but this has long been known to be a mistranslation due to Anquetil's ignorance of Avesta grammar ;| SO that the supposed doctrine of boundless time ' being the originator of everything is not to be found in the Avesta ; \ still it might have sprung up in Sasanian times. But the Selections of Zâd-sparam (1, 24) distinctly state that Adharmazd produced the creature Zorvân (precisely the term used in the phrase "boundless time' in the Avesta). Here 'time,' although personified, is represented as a creature of Adharmazd, produced after the first appearance of Aharman; which contradicts the statement of the Greek and Armenian writers completely, and shows how little reliance can be placed upon the assertions of foreigners regarding matters which they view with antipathy or prejudice.
With reference to the general plan of these translations of Pahlavi texts a few remarks seem necessary. In the first place, it will be obvious to any attentive reader of this introduction that a translator of Pahlavi has not merely to translate, but also to edit, the original text; and, in some
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