We have already, in Chapter I, touched on some of the general questions connected with the origin, age, and home of the Avesta, and the language in which it is written—questions not admitting, unfortunately, of very precise or certain answers. Geldner's article on “Zoroaster” in the ninth edition of the Encyclopœdia Britannica (1888), and Dar-mesteter's French translation of the Avesta in the Annales du Musée Guimet, vols. xxi, xxii, xxiv (1892-3), may be taken as representing the two extreme views. According to Geldner's earlier views (1888). the former, part of the Avesta at least (the Gáthás) represented the actual utterances of Zoroaster or his immediate disciples; Bactria was the scene of his activity, and its language the vehicle of his teaching; the King Víshtásp (Gushtásp, Hystaspes), whom he converted, and who became the zealous patron and protector of his creed, “has no place in any historical chrono­logy,” “must have lived long before Cyrus,” and “must be carefully distinguished from Hystaspes the father of Darius;” and the period at which he flourished may have been any­thing from B.C. 1000 (Duncker) to B.C. 1400 (Gutschmid). According to the latter, the Zoroastrian scriptures of Achæ- Darmesteter's later views (1893). menian times (if they ever existed) entirely perished after Alexander's invasion; the con­struction of the Avesta (of which we now possess a portion only) began in the first century of our era, in the reign of the Parthian Vologeses I (A.D. 51-78), was continued under the Sásánians until the reign of Shápúr II (A.D. 309-379), and, in its later portion, was largely influenced by the Gnosticism of the Alexandrian or Neo-Platonist philosophy; Media was the home of the Zoroastrian doctrine, and the Medic language its vehicle of expression; and the origin of the Zoroastrian creed goes back (as definitely stated in such Pahlawí books as the Arda Viráf Námak and the Bundahish) only to a period of three centuries or less before Alexander's time, that is, to the sixth or seventh century before Christ, or, in other words, to a period slightly more remote than the beginning of the Achæmenian dynasty.

The views advanced by Darmesteter, though they have not commanded general assent, have nevertheless greatly modified Geldner's later view (1896). those of the other school, notably of Geldner, especially by causing them to pay much greater attention to the traditions embodied in the Pahlawí, Pársí, and early Muhammadan writings. Thus Geldner, in the interesting article on the Avesta contributed by him to Geiger and Kuhn's Grundriss (1896), while with­holding his assent from some of Darmesteter's most revolu­tionary views as to the modern origin of the Avesta in the form known to us, attaches great importance to the Pársí tradition; identifies Zoroaster's King Hystaspes with the historical father of Darius; makes Zoroaster a contemporary of Cyrus the Great; fixes, accordingly, the earliest limit of the Avesta as B.C. 560; admits the destruction of the original Avesta during the period separating Alexander's invasion from the reign of Vologeses I, who first began its reconstruction, a work renewed with vigour by Ardashír, the founder of the Sásánian dynasty; and allows that additions may have con­tinued to be made to it till the reign of Shápúr II (A.D. 309-379). He still holds, however, that the Gáthás are not only the oldest portion of the Avesta, but represent the actual teachings and utterances of Zoroaster, of whose real, historical character he remains firmly persuaded; and adduces good historical evidence against Darmesteter's view that the Gáthás are to be regarded as reflecting Alexandrian Gnosticism, or that the Vôhu-manô (Bahman) which appears so frequently in them owes its origin to the <text in Greek script omitted> of Philo Judæus.

Since Anquetil's time it has been well known that the Avesta, as we now possess it, is only a fragment of the entire The Sásánian Avesta. work which existed even in the Sásánian period; while this in turn was “not more than a single priest could easily carry in his head” out of the Avesta “written with gold ink on prepared ox-hides and stored up in Stâkhar-Pápakán,” which was destroyed by “the accursed Alexander the Roman.” Yet the Vendidâd, which constitutes a considerable portion of the existing Avesta, makes a fair-sized volume, and it was but one of the twenty-one nosks into which the Sásánian Avesta was divided, and of which the contents are in some measure known to us from the Pahlawí Dínkard, a very important work, dating, probably, from the ninth century of our era. These twenty-one nosks, of which the Pahlawí names are known to us,* were divided equally into three groups—the gásáník (mainly theological and liturgical), the dátík (mainly legal), and the hátak-mánsarík (philosophical and scientific). Of the seven nosks constituting the first group (intended principally for the priests) we still possess fragments of three—the Stôt-yasht, the Bako, and the Hâtôkht; of the second seven (intended for the laity) also three—the Vendidâd, and parts of the Hûspâram and Bakân-yasht; while the third group, appealing to the more limited circle of learned and scientific men, has unfortunately (probably for that very reason) perished entirely. According to West's conjecture, these twenty-one nosks, which composed the Sásánian Avesta, contained in all about 347,000 words, of which we now possess only some 83,000, or about a quarter. Concerning the division above mentioned, Geldner remarks that it is “partly artificial, and is based on the attempt to establish a strict analogy between the whole Avesta and the Ahuna-Vairya verse, which is regarded as the quintessence and original foundation of the whole Avesta revelation.” This remark A curious analogy. suggests two interesting analogies with later times, and serves to illustrate what has been already said as to the remarkable persistence or recurrence of ideas in the East—a phenomenon of which I have elsewhere spoken in greater detail. The first of these is embodied in a Shí'ite tradition ascribed to 'Alí, which runs as follows:—

“All that is in the Qur'án is in the Súratu'l-Fátiḥa [the opening chapter], and all that is in the Súratu'l-Fátiḥa is in the Bismi'lláh [the formula ‘In the name of God, the Merciful, the Forgiving,’ which stands at the head of every chapter except one of the Muḥammadan Scripture, and which is used by Muhammadans when entering on any undertaking], and all that is in the Bismi'lláh is in the B of the Bismi'lláh, and all that is in the B of the Bismi'lláh is in the point which is under the B, and I am the Point which is under the B.”

The second is the further expansion and application of this idea by the Báb, the founder of the last great religious move­ment in Persia, who was put to death in 1850 at Tabríz; for he declared 19—the number of the letters in the Bismi'lláh— to be the “Unity” (in Arabic Wáḥid, “One,” in which, curiously enough, the numerical values of the component letters add up to 19) which was at once the intelligible Mani­festation of the Ineffable One and the proper numerical base of all computation, so that he made his books to consist of 19 “Unities,” each containing 19 chapters, and the year to consist of 19 months of 19 days each (= 361 days).

The existing Avesta, as already said, contains but one complete nosk out of the twenty-one which it comprised in Divisions of the present Avesta. Sásánian times, viz., the Vendidâd; while portions of at least four others enter into the composition of the Yasna, and other fragments are preserved in some Pahlawí books, notably the Hûspâram in the Níran-gistán. The extant books and religious formulæ of the Avesta are divided into five chief groups or sections, which are as follows:—

1. The Yasna, or liturgical portion, consisting of hymns recited in honour of the different angels, spirits, and divine The Yasna. beings. It comprises seventy-two chapters (called háiti or há), symbolised by the seventy-two strands which compose the kushtí, or sacred girdle, investiture with which constitutes the formal admission of the young Zoroastrian to the Zoroastrian Church. In it are included the ancient Gáthás to which reference has already been made.

2. The Vispered, comprising 23-27 chapters (called karde), is not an independent, coherent, and self-contained book, but The Vispered. a collection of formulæ and doxologies similar and supplementary to the Yasna, in conjunction with which it is used liturgically.