Just as Zend is the “explanation” of an Avestic text in Pahlawí, so is Pázend (= paiti-zainti) a “re-explanation” of Pázend and Pársí. a Pahlawí text by transcribing it into a character less ambiguous than the Pahlawí script, and substituting the proper Persian words for their respective Huzvárish equivalents. When the Avesta character is used for this transcription, the result is called “Pázend”; when the Persian (i.e., the Arabic) character is adopted, the term “Pársí” is often substituted. In either case the product is simply an archaic or archaistic (for unfortunately, owing to the defective character of the Parsee tradition, no great reliance can be placed on its accuracy in points of detail) form of “modern” (i.e., post-Muhammadan) Persian, from which the whole Aramaic element has disappeared. Of several books such as the Mainyo-i-Khirad, or “Spirit of Wisdom,” we have both Pahlawí and Pázend or Pársí manuscripts,* but all genuine Pázend texts ultimately go back to a Pahlawí original (though in some cases this is lost), since naturally no “re-explanation” was felt to be needful until, from long disuse, the true nature of Pahlawí began to be forgotten, and the scribes and scholars skilled in its use became nearly extinct.

When we speak of Modern Persian or simply Persian, we merely mean post-Muhammadan Persian for the writing of Modern Persian. which the Arabic character is used. “Old Persian” (Achæmenian), “Middle Persian” (Sásánian), and “Modern Persian” (Musulmán) are terms quite analogous to the expressions “Old English” (i.e., Anglo-Saxon), “Middle English,” and “Modern English” now commonly used to denote the different stages of develop­ment of our own tongue. In this sense we may without objection apply the term “Modern Persian” to the language of poets like Rúdagí who flourished nearly a thousand years ago, just as we may say that Shakespeare wrote “Modern English”; but if the application of this epithet to a language which goes back at least as far as the ninth century of our era be disliked, we can only suggest that it should be called “Musulmán Persian,” a term, however, which is not wholly beyond criticism. This language, as has been already pointed out, has changed less in ten centuries than English has in three, and archaisms of a distinctive character are almost confined to books composed before that great turning-point of Muhammadan history, the Mongol Invasion of the thirteenth century.

Before concluding this chapter, a few words may be fitly added concerning the dialects of Modern Persian, to which reference has already been repeatedly made: I mean dialects Dialects of Persia. belonging to Persia proper, and confined to it, not the interesting Íránian tongues of Afghán­istán, Balúchistán, Kurdistán and the Pamirs, together with Ossetic, concerning which full information and references will be found in the last portion of the first volume of the excellent Grundriss der Iranischen Philologie of Geiger and Kuhn, to which reference has already been made so fre­quently. More work remains to be done here than in any other branch of Persian philology, notwithstanding the labours of Berésine, Dorn, Salemann, and especially Zhukovski in Russia; Geiger, Socin, Hübschmann, and Houtum-Schindler in Germany; Huart and Querry in France; and, to a very small extent, by myself in England. These dialects, which will, without doubt, when better understood, throw an altogether new light on many dark problems of Persian philology, may be studied either orally on the spot (as has been done notably by Dorn in Mázandarán and Gílán; Zhukovski in Central Persia, especially in the Káshán and Isfahán districts; Socin in Kurdistán; Houtum-Schindler at Yazd and Kirmán, &c.), or in the scanty literary remains, which, nevertheless, are far more abundant than is generally supposed. Of the poets who wrote in dialect on a large scale only two are widely Amír Pázawárí and Bábá Ṭáhir. and generally known, viz., Amír Pázawárí (whose poems have been published by Dorn) in Mázandarání, and Bábá Ṭáhir-i-'Uryán, whose quatrains (composed in what is variously described as “the dialect of Hamadán” or “the Lurí dialect”) are widely cited and sung in Persia, and have been repeatedly published there, as well as by Huart (with a French translation) in the Journal Asiatique for 1885. The popularity of Bábá Ṭáhir, who may be called the Burns of Persia, is due, no doubt, in large measure to the simplicity of his thoughts, the nearness of the dialect in which he writes to standard Persian, the easy and melodious flow of his words, and their simple, uniform metre (that fully styled Hazaj-i-musaddas-i-mahdhúf, i.e., the hexameter Hazaj, of which the last foot in each hemistich is apocopated, or deprived of its last syllable, and which runs: four times repeated in the quatrain). Here are three of his best-known quatrains:—