Zend Avesta Part 01

Author(s): James Darmesteter
Publisher: Oxford

Page 34

INTRODUCTION, III.
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fluctuating, converted Mazdeism into a religious revolution against Vedic polytheism, found historical allusions to that schism both in the Avesta and in the Veda, pointed out curses against Zoroaster in the Vedas, and, in short, transformed, as it were, the two books into historical pamphlets.
In the contest about the authenticity of the Avesta, one party must necessarily have been right and the other wrong; but in the present struggle the issue is not so clear, as both parties are partly right and partly wrong. Both of them, by following their principles, have rendered such services to science as seem to give each a right to cling to its own method more firmly than ever. Yet it is to be hoped that they will see at last that they must be allies, not enemies, and that their common work must be begun by the one and completed by the other.
CHAPTER III. THE FORMATION OF THE ZEND-AVESTA. $ 1. The collection of Zend fragments, known as the Zend-Avesta ?, is divided, in its usual form, into two parts.
The first part, or the Avesta properly so called, contains the Vendidâd, the Vispêrad, and the Yasna. The Vendidad is a compilation of religious laws and of mythical tales; the Vispêrad is a collection of litanies for the sacrifice; and the Yasna is composed of litanies of the same
" It would be unjust, when speaking of Haug, not to recall the invaluable services he rendered in the second part of his career, as a Pahlavi scholar. He was the first who thought of illustrating the Pahlavi of the books by the Pahlevi of the inscriptions, and thus determined the reading of the principal elements in the manuscript Pahlavi.
' A very improper designation, as Zend means 'a commentary or explanation,' and was applied only to explanatory texts, to the translations of the Avesta. Avesta (from the old Persian å bastå, 'the law;' see Oppert, Journal Asiatique, 1872, Mars) As the proper name of the original texts. What it is customary to call the Zend language' ought to be named the Avesta language;' the Zend being no language at all; and, if the word be used as the designation of one, it can be rightly applied only to the Pahlavi. The expression Avesta and Zend' is often used in the Pahlavi commentary to designate 'the law with its traditional and revealed explanation.'
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