Zend Avesta Part 01

Author(s): James Darmesteter
Publisher: Oxford

Page 51

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1
VENDIDÂD.
of the fourth century, represents three successive accretions at least, the first due to Vologeses in the middle of the i first century, the second to Ardashir and Tansar in the middle of the third century, and the third to Shahpûhr I, at the end of the same. Now we must inquire whether the texts of these successive editions belong, all or in part, to an older Avesta, anterior to the Greek conquest. The evidence in the Dinkart and in Tansar's letter prepares us to suppose that the post-Alexandrian element, at least as far as the form goes, must be considerable. The internal evidence allows us to give greater precision to that inference.
§ 2. One of the best-known and most brilliant pieces of the Avesta, the Hôm Yast, appears to contain an allusion to Alexander. It is said of Haoma, the plant-god, whose worship is the centre of the Mazdean liturgy, that 'he overthrew the usurping Keresâni who arose, longing for sovereignty, and said: henceforth no priest will go at his wish through the country to teach the law.' Now, the only persecutor of religion of whom Parsi tradition makes mention before the Arabs is Alexander. He is the third in that trinity of tyrants created by Ahriman, who desired to have made them immortal for the destruction of the world. But the first two, Zohâk and Afrâsyâb, were born and died before Zarathustra was born, so that Alexander alone of the three could appear as an anti-Zoroastrian persecutor; which makes us wonder whether the usurper confounded by Haoma might not be the Greek conqueror. Now that epithet Keresâni, literally a bandit, is translated or transcribed in Pahlavi by Kilisyâk, which is the name given in the Pahlavi literature to the infidels of Rum. Therefore, for the old mediaeval tradition the Keresâni usurper was neither a dêv nor a Turanian, he was a Greek. If the Keresâni persecutor were a Greek, he could be no other than Alexander. A mediaeval Pahlavi apocalypse, the Bahman Yast (II, 19), passing in review the restorers of religion, begins with the Arsacide who destroyed 'the impious Alexander, the Kilisyåk.'
If the Keresâni is Alexander, the passage quoted and the
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