FOR many years I had cherished a desire to write a history of the intellectual and literary achievements of the Persians, somewhat on the lines of that most admirable work, Green's Short History of the English People, a work which any writer may be proud to adopt as a model, but which few can hope to rival and none to surpass. Considering the immense number of books which have been written about Persia, it is strange that so few attempts should hitherto have been made to set forth in a comprehensive yet comparatively concise and summary form the history of that ancient and most interesting kingdom. Excellent monographs on particular periods and dynasties do indeed exist in plenty; but of general histories of Persia those of Sir John Malcolm and Clements Markham are still the chief works of reference in English, though they no longer represent, even approximately, the present level of knowledge (enormously raised in recent times by the unremitting labours of an ever-increasing band of students and scholars), in addition to which they both deal rather with the external political conditions of Persia than with the inner life of her people.
Conscious of the magnitude and difficulty of the task, and constantly engaged in examining and digesting the abundant and almost unexplored materials which every large collection of Oriental manuscripts yields, I might probably have continued to postpone indefinitely an attempt for which I felt myself ever more rather than less unprepared, had I not received almost simultaneously two separate invitations to contribute a volume on Persian Literature or Literary History to a series which in each case was of conspicuous merit, though in plan, scope, and treatment the difference between the two was considerable. In choosing between the two, I was less influenced by priority of appeal, extent of remuneration, or personal predilection, than by the desire to secure for myself the ampler field and the broader—I had almost said the more philosophical—plan. The model placed before me in the one case was Jusserand's charming Literary History of the English People, the conception and execution of which (for reasons more fully explained in the Introductory chapter of the following work) so delighted me that I thereupon decided to make for the series to which it belonged the effort which I had long contemplated. For it was the intellectual history of the Persians which I desired to write, and not merely the history of the poets and authors who expressed their thoughts through the medium of the Persian language; the manifestations of the national genius in the fields of Religion, Philosophy, and Science interested me at least as much as those belonging to the domain of Literature in the narrower sense; while the linguistic vehicle through which they sought expression was, from my point of view, indifferent. I trust that my readers will realise this at the outset, so that they may not suffer disappointment, nor feel themselves aggrieved, because in this volume more is said about movements than books, and less about books written in Persian than about those written in Pahlawí, Arabic, or some other language.
It was originally intended that the work should be completed in one volume, carrying the history down to the present day. But I soon convinced myself (and, with more difficulty, my publisher) that this was impossible without grave modification (and, from my point of view, mutilation) of my original plan. At first I hoped to carry this volume down to the Mongol Invasion and the extinction of the Caliphate of Baghdad in the thirteenth century, which, as I have elsewhere observed (pp. 210-211 infra), is the great turning-point in the history of Islám; but even this finally proved impracticable within the limits assigned to me, and I ultimately found myself obliged to conclude this part of my work with the immediate precursors of Firdawsí, the writers and poets of the Sámánid and Buwayhid dynasties.
This division is, perhaps, after all the best, since the Prolegomena with which the student of Persian literature ought to be acquainted are thus comprised in the present volume, while the field of Persian literature in the narrower sense will, with the aid of one chapter of recapitulation, be entirely covered by the second, with which it is intended that this should be supplemented. Thus, agreeably to the stipulations imposed by my publisher, the two volumes will be independent one of the other, this containing the Prolegomena, and that the History of Persian Literature within the strict meaning of the term.
My chief fear is lest, in endeavouring to present to the general reader the results attained by Oriental scholarship, and embodied for the most part in books and periodicals which he is unlikely to read, or even to meet with, I may have fallen, so to speak, between two stools, and ended by producing a book which is too technical for the ordinary reader, yet too popular for the Orientalist by profession. To the former rather than the latter it is addressed; but most of all to that small but growing body of amateurs who, having learned to love the Persian poets in translation, desire to know more of the language, literature, history, and thought of one of the most ancient, gifted, and original peoples in the world. In a country which offers so few inducements as England to what may be called the professional study of Oriental letters and languages, and which consequently lacks well-organised Oriental schools such as exist at Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg, and other Continental capitals, it is chiefly with the amateur (and I use the word in no disparaging sense, but as meaning one whose studies are prompted by taste and natural inclination rather than by necessity) that the future extension and development of these studies lies. To him (or her), therefore, this book is especially addressed; and should it prove of use to any of those whose interest in the East is more real and abiding than that of the ordinary reader, but who have neither the opportunity nor the apparatus of study necessary to the professional student, I shall deem myself amply rewarded for my labour in compiling it.
Concerning the system of transliteration of Oriental names and words here adopted little need be said; it is essentially that approved by the Royal Asiatic Society for the transcription of the Arabic character, and will be readily understood by all who are familiar with that script. That consistency (or, as I fear may be said by some of my critics, pedantry) has compelled me to write Ḥáfidh, Nidhámí, 'Umar, Firdawsí, &c., for the more popular Háfiz, Nizámí, Omar, and Ferdousi may be regretted from some points of view, but will at least generally save the student from doubts as to the correct spelling in the original character of the names occurring in the following pages. I only regret that this consistency has not been more complete, and that I have in a few cases (notably Ádharbáyján, Ázarbáyján) allowed myself to be swayed by actual usage at the expense of uniformity. But at least the reader will not as a rule be puzzled by finding the same name appearing now as 'Uthmán, now as 'Usmán, and again as 'Osmán, according as it is sought to represent its Arabic, its Persian, or its Turkish pronunciation.
And so I commend my book to the benevolent reader, and, I hope I may add, to the not less benevolent critic. Of its many defects, alike in plan and execution, I am fully conscious, and to others, no doubt, my attention will soon be called. But “whose desireth a faultless friend remains friend-less,” says a well-known Eastern adage, and it is no less true that he who would write a flawless book writes nothing. I have admitted that I felt myself unprepared for so great a task; but I should have felt equally unprepared ten or twenty years hence, the subject ever widening before our eyes more rapidly than the knowledge of it grows in our minds. Even the most imperfect book, if it breaks fresh ground, may, though itself doomed to oblivion, prepare the way for a better.
EDWARD G. BROWNE.
SEPTEMBER 14, 1902.
OF THE PEOPLE, LANGUAGES, AND
LITERATURES OF PERSIA
THIS book, as its title implies, is a history, not of the different dynasties which have ruled in Persia and of the kings who Scope of work. composed those dynasties, but of the Persian people. It is, moreover, the history of that people written from a particular point of view—the literary. In other words, it is an attempt to portray the subjective— that is to say, the religious, intellectual, and æsthetic— characteristics of the Persians as manifested in their own writings, or sometimes, when these fail, in those of their neighbours. It is not, however, precisely a history of Persian Literature; since, on the one hand, it will exclude from consideration the writings of those who, while using the Persian language as the vehicle of their thought, were not of Persian race; and, on the other hand, it will include what has been written by Persians who chose as their medium of expression some language other than their mother-tongue. India, for example, has produced an extensive literature of which the language is Persian, but which is not a reflex of the Persian mind, and the same holds good in lesser degree of several branches of the Turkish race, but with this literature we are in no wise concerned. Persians, on the other hand, have continued ever since the Muhammadan Conquest—that is to say, for more than twelve hundred years—to use the Arabic language almost to the exclusion of their own in writing on certain subjects, notably theology and philosophy; while during the two centuries immediately succeeding the Arab invasion the language of the conquerors was, save amongst those who still adhered to the ancient national faith of Zoroaster, almost the sole literary medium employed in Persia. To ignore this literature would be to ignore many of the most important and characteristic manifestations of the Persian genius, and to form an altogether inadequate judgment of the intellectual activity of that ingenious and talented people.
The term “Persian” as used by us, and by the Greeks,
Jews, Syrians, Arabs, and other foreigners, has a wider sig-
Meaning of the
term Persian.
nification than that which it originally bore.
The Persians call themselves Írání and their
land Írán,4a
and of this land Pársa, the Persis of
the Greeks, the modern Fárs,4b
is one province out of several.
But because that province gave birth to the two great dynasties
(the Achæmenian in the sixth century before, and the Sásánian
in the third century after Christ) which made their arms formidable
and their name famous in the West, its meaning was
extended so as to include the whole people and country which we
call Persian; just as the tribe of Angles, though numerically
inferior to the Saxons, gave their name to England and all
that the term English now connotes. As in our own country
Angles, Saxons, and Jutes merged in one English people, and
the dialects of Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex in one
English language, so in Írán the inhabitants of Parthia,
Media, and Persis became in course of time blended in one
Persian people, and their kindred dialects (for already Strabo
found them in his time “almost of the same speech,”
The Persian language of to-day, Fársí, the language of Fárs, is then the lineal offspring of the language which The Persian language of Achæmenian times. Cyrus and Darius spoke, and in which the proclamations engraved by their commands on the rocks of Behistun (now called Bí-sitún) and Naqsh-i-Rustam, and the walls and columns of Persepolis, are drawn up. These inscriptions of the Achæ-menian kings, who ruled in Persia from B.C. 550 until the last Darius was overthrown by Alexander the Great, B.C. 330, are sufficiently extensive and well understood to show us what the Persian language was more than 2,400 years ago.
Remote as is the period from which the earliest written monuments of the Persian language date, they do not, unfor- Interruptions in the series of written monuments of the Persian language. tunately, present an unbroken series. On the contrary, their continuity is broken between the Achæmenian period and the present day by two great gaps corresponding with two great foreign invasions which shattered the Persian power and reduced the Persian people to the position of a subject race. The first of these, beginning with the Greek invasion under Alexander and ending with the overthrow of the Parthian by the Sásánian dynasty, embraces a period of about five centuries and a half (B.C. 330-A.D. 226). The second, beginning with the Arab invasion and Muhammadan Conquest, which destroyed the Sásánian dynasty and overthrew the Zoroastrian religion, though much shorter, had far deeper and more permanent effects on the people, thought, and language of Persia. “Hellenism,” as Nöldeke says, “never touched more than the surface of Persian life, but Írán was penetrated to the core by Arabian religion and Arab ways.” The Arab conquest, though presaged by earlier events,6a may be said to have begun with the battles of Buwayb and Qádisiyya (A.D. 635-637), and to have been completed and confirmed by the death of the last Sásánian king, Yazdigird III, A.D. 651 or 652. The end of the Arabian period cannot be so definitely fixed. In a certain sense it endured till the sack of Baghdad and murder of al-Musta'ṣim bi'lláh, the last 'Abbásid Caliph, in A.D. 1258 by the Mongols under Hulágú Khán, the grandson of Changíz Khán. Long before this, however, the Arab power had passed into the hands of Persian and Turkish vassals, and the Caliph, whom they sometimes cajoled and conciliated, but more often coerced or ignored, had ceased to exercise aught beyond a spiritual authority save in the immediate neighbourhood of Baghdad. Broadly speaking, however, the revival of the Persian language proceeded pari passu with the detachment of the Persian provinces from the direct control of the Caliph's administration, and the uprising of local dynasties which yielded at most a merely nominal obedience to the 'Abbásid court. Of these dynasties the Ṭáhirids (A.D. 820) are sometimes accounted the first; but they may more truly be considered to begin with the Ṣaffárids (A.D. 867), Sámánids (A.D. 874), and Buwayhids (A.D. 932), and to reach their full development in the Ghaznawids and Seljúqs.
The history of the Persian language falls, therefore, into Periods in the development of the Persian Language. three well-defined periods, as follows:—
I. The Achœmenian Period (B.C. 550-330), represented by the edicts and proclamations contained in the Persian cuneiform inscriptions, which, though of considerable extent, are similar in character and style, and yield a vocabulary of not much more than 400 separate words.7a The language represented by these inscriptions, and by them only, is generally Old Persian. called Old Persian.7b
II. The Sásánian Period (A.D. 226-652), represented by inscriptions on monuments, medals, gems, seals, and coins, and Middle Persian, or Pahlawí. by a literature estimated as, roughly speaking, equal in bulk to the Old Testament.7c This literature is entirely Zoroastrian and almost entirely theological and liturgical. The language in which it is written, when disentangled from the extraordinary graphic system, known as Huzváresh (Zuwárishn), used to represent it, is little more than a very archaic form of the present speech of Persia devoid of the Arabic element. It is generally known as Pahlawí, sometimes as Middle Persian. Properly speaking, the term Pahlawí applies rather to the script than the language, but, following the general usage, we shall retain it in speaking of the official language of Sásánian Persia. This script continued to be used on the coins of the early Caliphs and the independent Spáhpats or Ispahbadhs of Ṭabaristán for more than a century after the Arab conquest; and for at least as long additions continued to be made by the Zoroastrians of Persia to the Pahlawí literature, but the latest of them hardly extend beyond the ninth century of our era.8a Practically speaking the natural use of what we understand as Pahlawí ceased about a thousand years ago.
III. The Muhammadan Period (from about A.D. 900 until the present day). When we talk of “Modern Persian,” we Modern or NeoPersian. mean simply the Persian language as it reappears after the Arab Conquest, and after the adoption of the Muhammadan religion by the vast majority of the inhabitants of Persia. The difference between late Pahlawí and the earliest form of Modern Persian was, save for the Arabic element generally contained in the latter, merely a difference of script, and script in this case was, at this transition period (the ninth century of our era), mainly Dislike of written characters associated with other religions. a question of religion. In the East, even at the present day, there is a tendency to associate written characters much more than language with religion. There are Syrian Christians whose language is Arabic, but who prefer to write their Arabic in the Syriac character; and these Karshuni writings (for so they are called) form a considerable literature. So also Turkish-speaking Armenians and Greeks often employ the Armenian and Greek characters respectively when they write Turkish. Similarly the Jews of Persia have a pretty extensive literature written in the Persian language but in the Hebrew character, while Moors of Spain who had forgotten how to speak Arabic wrote Spanish treatises in the Arabic Reasons why the Pahlawí script rapidly fell into desuetude. character.9a The Pahlawí script was even more closely associated in the Eastern mind with the Zoroastrian religion than was the Arabic character with the faith of Islám; and when a Persian was converted from the former to the latter creed he gave up, as a rule, once and for all a method of writing which was not only cumbrous and ambiguous in the highest degree, but also fraught with heathen associations. Moreover, writing (and even reading) was probably a rare accomplishment amongst the Persians when the Pahlawí character was the means of written communication, save amongst the Zoroastrian magopats and dastobars and the professional scribes (dapír). We read in the Kárnámak-i-Artakhshír-i-Pápakán,9b or Book of the Deeds of Ardashír, the son of Pápak (the founder of the Sásánian dynasty)—one of the three Pahlawí romances or “historical novels” which time has spared to us in the original form9c — that when this prince “reached the age for the higher education, he attained such proficiency in Writing, Riding, and other accomplishments that he became famous throughout all Párs.” So also we read in the account which the great historian Ṭabarí10a gives of the reign of Shápúr, the son and successor of Ardashír, that “when he came to the place where he wished to found the city of Gundê-Shápúr, he met there an old man named Bêl, of whom he enquired whether it would be permitted him to build a town on this site. Bêl answered, ‘If I at my advanced age can learn to write, then is it also permitted thee to build a town on this spot,’” by which answer, as Nöldeke has pointed out, he meant to imply (though in the issue he proved mistaken) that both things were impossible. To the Pahlawí script, in short, might well be applied the Frenchman's well-known definition of speech as “the art of concealing thought”; it had no intrinsic merits save as a unique philological puzzle; and, once deprived of the support of religion, ancient custom, and a conservative priesthood, it could not hold its own against the far more legible and convenient Arabic character, of which, moreover, a knowledge was essential to every Muslim. But the fact cannot be too strongly insisted upon that the peculiarity of Pahlawí (as will be more fully explained presently) lay in the script only, and that a Pahlawí book read aloud by a Zoroastrian priest or scribe of the ninth century of our era would have been perfectly intelligible to a contemporary Persian Muhammadan; and that if the latter had taken it down in the Arabic character as he heard it read, what he wrote would have been simply “Modern Persian” in its most archaic form without admixture of Arabic words. Indeed, so comparatively slight (so far as we can judge) are the changes which the Persian spoken language has undergone since the Sásánian period, that if it were possible for an educated Persian of the present day to be suddenly thrust back over a period of fourteen or fifteen hundred years, he would probably be able to understand at least a good deal of what his countrymen of that period were saying. The gulf which separates that speech from Old Persian is far wider, and the first Sásánian king, notwithstanding the accomplishments which made him “famous throughout all Párs,” if he could similarly have travelled backwards in time for some six centuries, would have comprehended hardly a word of what was said at the Achæmenian court.
It is impossible to fix a definite date at which Modern Persian literature may be said to have begun. Probably Beginning of Modern Persian Literature. Persian converts to Islám began to write their language in the Arabic character very soon after the Arab Conquest—that is to say, some time in the eighth century of our era. The first attempts of this sort were probably mere memoranda and notes, Prose. followed, perhaps, by small manuals of instruction in the doctrines of Islám. Fragmentary utterances in Persian, and even brief narratives, are recorded here and there in the pages of early Arabic writers, and these at least serve to show us that the Persian of late Sásánian and early Muhammadan times was essentially the same as that with which we meet in the earliest monuments of Modern Persian literature. Of actual books of any extent, the Persian translation of Ṭabarí's history made for Manṣúr I, the Sámánid prince, in A.D. 963 by his minister Bal'amí; the Materia Medica of Abú Manṣúr Muwaffaq b. 'Alí of Herát (preserved to us in the unique MS. of Vienna dated A.D. 1055, of which a beautiful reprint was published by Seligmann in 1859) composed for the same royal patron; and the second volume of an old commentary on the Qur'án (Cambridge University Library, Mm. 4. 15)12a belonging, apparently, to about the same period, are, so far as is known, the oldest surviving specimens.
It is very generally assumed, however, that in Persian, as in Arabic, verse preceded prose. One story, cited by several of Poetry. the native biographers (e.g., Dawlatsháh in his Lives of the Poets), ascribes the first Persian couplet to the joint invention of Bahrám Gúr the Sásánian (A.D. 420-438), and his mistress Dil-árám.12b Another quotes (on the authority of Abú Ṭáhir al-Khátúní, a writer of the twelfth century of our era) a Persian couplet engraved on the walls of the Qaṣr-i-Shírín (“Palace of Shírín,” the beloved of Khusraw Parwíz, A.D. 590-628), said to have been still legible in the time of 'Aḍudu'd-Dawla the Buwayhid (tenth century of our era).12c Another tells how one day in Níshápúr the Amír 'Abdu'lláh b. Ṭáhir (died A.D. 844) was presented with an old book containing the Romance of Wámiq and 'Adhra, “a pleasing tale, which wise men compiled, and dedicated to King Núshírwán” (A.D. 531-579); and how he ordered its destruction, saying that the Qur'án and Traditions of the Prophet ought to suffice for good Muslims, and adding, “this book was written by Magians and is accursed in our eyes.”12d Yet another story given by Dawlatsháh attributes the first line of metrical Persian to the gleeful utterance of a little child at play, the child being the son of Ya'qúb b. Layth “the Coppersmith,” founder of the Ṣaffárí (“Brazier”) dynasty (A.D. 868-878).13a Muḥammad 'Awfí, the author of the oldest extant Biography of Persian Poets,13b who flourished early in the thirteenth century of our era (A.D. 1210-1235), asserts that the first Persian poem was composed by one 'Abbás of Merv in honour of the Caliph al-Ma'mún, the son of Hárúnu'r-Rashíd, on the occasion of his entry into that city in A.D. 809, and even cites some verses of the poem in question; but, though this assertion has been accepted as a historical fact by some scholars of repute,13c the scepticism of others13d appears to the writer well justified. All that can be safely asserted is that modern Persian literature, especially poetry, had begun to flourish considerably in Khurásán during the first half of the tenth century, especially during the reign of the Sámánid prince Naṣr II (A.D. 913-942), and thus covers a period of nearly a thousand years, during which time the language has changed so little that the verses of an early poet like Rúdagí are at least as plain to a Persian of to-day as is Shakespear to a modern Englishman.
Most of the legends as to the origin of Persian poetry are, as we have seen, unworthy of very serious attention, and certainly merit little more credence than the assertion of serious and careful Arab writers, like Ṭabarí (†A.D. 923), and Mas'údí (†A.D. 957), that the first poem ever written was an elegy composed in Syriac by Adam on the death of Abel, of which poem they even give an Arabic metrical rendering14a to this effect:—
“The lands are changed and those who dwell upon them;
The face of earth is marred and girt with gloom;
All that was fair and fragrant now hath faded,
Gone from that comely face the joyous bloom.
Alas for my dear son, alas for Abel,
A victim murdered, thrust within the tomb!
How can we rest? That Fiend accursed, unfailing,
Undying, ever at our side doth loom!”
To which the Devil is alleged to have retorted thus:—
“Renounce these lands and those who dwell upon them!
By me was cramped in Paradise thy room,
Wherein thy wife and thou were set and stablished,
Thy heart unheeding of the world's dark doom!
Yet did'st thou not escape my snares and scheming,
Till that great gift on which thou did'st presume
Was lost to thee, and blasts of wind from Eden,
But for God's grace, had swept thee like a broom!”
Nevertheless there is one legend indicating the existence of Persian poetry even in Sásánian times which, partly from the Bárbad the Sásánian minstrel (A.D. 590- 627.) persistency with which it reappears in various old writers of credit,14b partly from a difference in the form of the minstrel's name which can hardly be explained save on the assumption that both forms were transcribed from a Pahlawí original, appears to me worthy of more serious attention. According to this legend, one of the chief ornaments of the court of Khusraw Parwíz, the Sásánian king (A.D. 590-627), was a minstrel named by Persian writers Bárbad, but by Arabic authors Bahlabad, Balahbad or Fahlabad, forms of which the first and third point to a Persian original Pahlapat. Bahlabad and Bárbad when written in the Arabic character are not easily confounded; but if written in the Pahlawí character, which has but one sign for A and H on the one hand, and for R and L on the other, they are identical, which fact affords strong evidence that the legends concerning this singer go back ultimately to books written in Pahlawí, in other words to records almost contemporary. Now this Bárbad (for simplicity the modern Persian form of the name is adopted here, save in citations from Arabic texts) presents, as I have elsewhere pointed out,15a a striking resemblance to the Sámánid poet Rúdagí, who flourished in the early part of the tenth century of our era; and indeed the two are already associated by an early poet, Sharíf-i-Mujallidí of Gurgán, who sings:—
“From all the treasures hoarded by the Houses
Of Sásán and of Sámán, in our days
Nothing survives except the song of Bárbad,
Nothing is left save Rúdagí's sweet lays.”
For in all the accounts of Rúdagí which we possess his most remarkable achievement is the song which he composed and sung in the presence of the Sámánid Amír Naṣr b. Aḥmad to induce that Prince to abandon the charms of Herát and its environs, and to return to his native Bukhárá, which he had neglected for four years. The extreme simplicity of this song and its entire lack of rhetorical adornment, have been noticed by most of those who have described this incident, by some (e.g. Nidhámí-i-'Arúḍí of Samarqand) with approval, by others, such as Dawlatsháh, with disapprobation, mixed with surprise that words so simple could produce so powerful an effect. And indeed it is rather a ballad than a formal poem of the artificial and rather stilted type most admired in those decadent days to which Dawlatsháh belongs, and in which, as he says, “If any one were to produce such a poem in the presence of kings or nobles, it would meet with the reprobation of all.” To the musical skill of the minstrel, and his cunning on the harp wherewith he accompanied his singing, the simple ballad, of which a paraphrase is here offered, no doubt owed much:—
“The Jú-yi-Múliyán we call to mind,
We long for those dear friends long left behind.
The sands of Oxus, toilsome though they be,
Beneath my feet were soft as silk to me.
Glad at the friends' return, the Oxus deep
Up to our girths in laughing waves shall leap.
Long live Bukhárá! Be thou of good cheer!
Joyous towards thee hasteth our Amír!
The Moon's the Prince, Bukhárá is the sky;
O Sky, the Moon shall light thee by and by!
Bukhárá is the Mead, the Cypress he;
Receive at last, O Mead, thy Cypress-tree!”
“When Rúdagí reached this verse,” adds the oldest authority for this narrative (Nidhámí-i-'Arúḍí of Samarqand), “the Amír was so much affected that he descended from his throne, bestrode the horse of the sentinel on duty, and set off for Bukhárá in such haste that they carried his riding boots after him for two parasangs, as far as Burúna, where he put them on; neither did he draw rein anywhere till he reached Bukhárá; and Rúdagí received from the army the double of that five thousand dínárs [which they had promised him in the event of his success].”
Thus Rúdagí was as much harper, ballad singer, and improvisatore as poet, resembling, probably, the minstrels whose taṣnífs, or topical ballads, may be heard to-day at any Persian entertainment of which music and singing form a part; resembling also, as has been pointed out, that dimly visible Bárbad or Bahlabad of the old Sásánian days. Of the ten men reckoned by the Persians incomparable each in his own way, he was one; and herein lay his special virtue and merit, that when aught must be made known to King Khusraw Parwíz which none other dared utter for terror of the royal displeasure, Bárbad would weave it dexterously into a song, and sing it before the king. Parwíz had a horse called Shabdíz, beautiful and intelligent beyond all others; and so greatly did the king love Shabdíz that he swore to slay that man who should bring the tidings of his death. So when Shabdíz died, the Master of the Horse prayed Bahlabad to make it known to the king in a song, of which Parwíz listening divined the purport and cried, “Woe unto thee! Shabdíz is dead!” “It is the king who sayeth it,” replied the minstrel; and so escaped the threatened death and made the king's oath of no effect. Thus is the tale told by the Arab poet, Khálid b. Fayyáḍ, who lived little more than a century after Khusraw Parwíz:—
“And Khusraw, King of kings, him too an arrow
Plumed from the wings of Death did sorely smite,
E'en as he slept in Shírín's soft embraces
Amidst brocades and perfumes, through the night
Dreaming of Shabdíz whom he used to ride,
His noble steed, his glory and his pride.He with an oath most solemn and most binding,
Not to be loosed, had sworn upon the Fire
That whoso first should say, ‘Shabdíz hath perished,’
Should die upon the cross in torments dire;
Until one morn that horse lay low in death
Like whom no horse hath been since man drew breath.Four strings wailed o'er him, while the minstrel kindled
Pity and passion by the witchery
Of his left hand, and, while the strings vibrated,
Chanted a wailing Persian threnody,
Till the King cried, ‘My horse Shabdíz is dead!’
‘It is the King that sayeth it,’ they said.”
Other minstrels of this old time are mentioned, whose names alone are preserved to us: Áfarín, Khusrawání, Mádharástání,18a and the harper Sakísá,18b beings yet more shadowy than Bárbad, of whose notes not so much as an echo has reached our time. Yet can we hardly doubt that those old Sásánian halls and palaces lacked not this ornament of song, whereof some reflex at least passed over into Muhammadan times. For though the modern Persian prosody be modelled on that of the Arabs, there are types of verse—notably the quatrain (rubá'í) and the narrative poem in doublets (mathnawí) —which are to all appearance indigenous. Whether, as Darmesteter seems to think,18c there is sufficient evidence to warrant us in believing that romantic poetry existed in Persia even in Achæmenian times is too problematical a question to be discussed in this place.
Hitherto we have considered only the history of the Persian language and the Persian power in the narrower sense of the Wider view of the Íránian people. term. We have now to extend the field of inquiry so as to include the whole Íránian people and their literary remains. The ground on which we now enter is, unfortunately, much less sure than that which we have hitherto traversed; the problems which we shall encounter are far more complicated, and their solutions are, in many cases, uncertain and conjectural.
The oldest Persian dynasty, the Achæmenian, with which we began our retrospect of Persian history, rose by the fall of The Medes. a power not less famous than itself, that of the Medes, whom from our earliest days we are accustomed to associate with the Persians. In the modern sense of the term, indeed, they were Persians, but of the West, not of the South, having their centre and capital at Ecbatana (Hagmatána of the Old Persian inscriptions, now Hamadán), not at Persepolis (Sásánian Istakhr, near Shíráz, the present chief town of Fárs). The actual boundaries of Media cannot be precisely defined, but, roughly speaking, it extended from the Mountains of Ázarbáyján (Atropatene) on the north to Susiana (Khuzistán) on the south, and from the Zagros Mountains on the east to about the line of the modern Tihrán-Isfahán road, with a north-eastern prolongation including the whole or part of Mázandarán. In modern phraseology, therefore, it comprised Kurdistán, Luristán the northern part of Khuzistán, the western part of 'Iráq-i-'Ajamí, and the southern part of Ázarbáyján. Amongst the hardy mountaineers of this wide region arose the Medic power. The name of Media does not, like that of Persia, still survive in the land to which it originally belonged, but, as has been shown by de Lagarde and Olshausen, it continued, even in Muhammadan times, under the form Máh (Old Persian Máda) to enter into certain place names, such as Máh-Kúfa, Máh-Baṣra, Máh-Naháwand.
19aThe Medes, unfortunately, unlike the Persians, have left no records of their achievements, and we are consequently Sources of Medic history. dependent for information concerning them on the records of other nations who had direct or indirect knowledge of them, notably the Assyrians, Jews, and Greeks. As regards the Assyrian records, Amadana (Hamadán), the capital of the Medes, is mentioned in an Assyrian records. inscription of Tiglath Pileser (circ. B.C. 1100) as a subject territory;20a and it is again mentioned in an inscription of the ninth century before Christ. Salmonassar-Sargon (B.C. 731-713) boasts that he had made his name feared in distant Media, and the same region is Jewish records. referred to by his successor Sennacherib, and by Esar-haddon (B.C. 680-669). In 2 Kings xvii, 6 we read that “in the ninth year of Hoshea” (B.C. 722) “the King of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes;” and this statement is repeated in verse 11 of the next chapter.
20bOf the three Greek historians whose works are primary sources for this period, Herodotus merits the first mention, both Greek records. Herodotus. Ctesias. on account of his veracity (to which the cuneiform inscriptions bear abundant testimony) and because his history alone of the three is preserved to us in its entirety. Ctesias, who flourished in the fifth century before Christ, was physician to Artaxerxes Mnemon, and professed to derive his information from the Persian royal archives. This statement at least affords evidence of the existence of such documents, which are also referred to in the Book of Esther, where we read (chap. vi, 1) that King Ahasueras, being unable to sleep, “commanded to bring the book of records of the chronicles;” and (chap. ii, 23) that the plot against the king's life devised by Bigthan and Teresh and disclosed by Mordecai “was written in the book of the chronicles before the King.” Whether because Ctesias imperfectly understood or deliberately misrepresented these records, or because the records themselves were falsified (a thing which modern analogies render conceivable), the prevailing view is that little reliance can be placed on his narrative, which, moreover, is only preserved to us in a Berosus. fragmentary condition by much later writers, such as Photius (A.D. 820-891). Berosus was a Chaldæan priest who lived in the time of Alexander the Great and his immediate successors, and translated into Greek, for his patron Antiochus of Syria, the records of his country. Of his work also fragments only are preserved to us by later writers, Polyhistor and Apollodorus (first century before Christ), who are cited by Eusebius and Syncellus.
The Medes, according to Herodotus, were the first of the
peoples subject to Assyria who succeeded in securing their
independence, after they had borne the yoke for 520 years.
Deioces.
This took place about B.C. 700, and a year
or two later Deioces (
With the exploits of the Medes, however, we are not here concerned. The two questions in connection with them which are of importance from our present point of view are— first, what was their language? second, what was their religion?
It has been hitherto assumed, in accordance with the most prevalent, and, in the opinion of the writer, the most The language of the Medes. probable view, that the Medes were an Íránian race speaking an Íránian language closely akin to Old Persian. This is the view taken, for instance, by Nöldeke, who, in concluding his account of the Medic Empire, says:22a —
“Perhaps careful examinations of the neighbourhood of Hamadán, or excavations, may still some day bring to light other traces of that ancient time. It would be of the greatest value if inscriptions of the Medic kings should chance to be found; I should conjecture that these, both in language and script, would be quite similar to those of the Persian kings.”
Darmesteter, whose views will be discussed at greater length presently, goes further, and declares that the language of the Avesta, the so-called Zend language, is the language of Media, the Medic tongue.
“La conclusion qui s'impose,” says he,22b after adducing evidence in favour of his view, “c'est que la tradition parsie et l'Avesta, confirmés par des témoignages étrangers, voient le centre et le berceau du Zoroastrisme, soit en Atropatene, soit a Raï, dans l'un et l'autre cas en Médie… Je crois que les droits de l'Atropatène sont mieux établis, et que c'est de là que le Zoroastrisme a pris sa course de l'Ouest à l'Est. En tout cas, le Zoroastrisme est une chose médique, et l'Avesta est l'œuvre des prêtres mèdes… Il suit … par le témoignage externe des classiques joint au témoignage intrinsèque des livres zends et de la tradition native, que l'Avesta est l'œuvre des Mages, que le zend est la langue de la Médie ancienne, et que l'on aurait le droit de remplacer le nom impropre de langue zende par le terme de langue médique.”
A totally different view, which ought not to pass unnoticed,
is held by Oppert, and set forth at length in his work Le
Oppert's view
that the Medes
were a Turanian
race.
Peuple et la Langue des Mèdes. The inscriptions
of the Achæmenian kings, as is well known, are
drawn up in three different languages, of which
the first is Old Persian and the third Assyrian.
As to the second, concerning the nature of which much doubt
has prevailed, M. Oppert holds that it is Medic, and that it is
not an Aryan but a Turanian tongue; which astonishing
opinion he supports by many ingenious arguments. The
very name of Media (Máda) he explains by a Sumerian
word mada, meaning “country”; and the names of the
Medic kings given by Ctesias he regards as the Aryan
equivalents of the Aryanized Turanian names given by
Herodotus and in the Old Persian inscriptions. Thus, for
instance, in his view, the name of the first Medic king of
Herodotus was compounded of daya (other) and ukku (law),
the Aryanized or Persianized form of which was probably
Dáhyuka, “le réunisseur des pays”; while the Persian
translation of the same was the form given by Ctesias,
There are but very few scholars who are qualified to resurvey the ground traversed by M. Oppert and to form an Darmesteter's view. independent judgment of his results in matters of detail; but, as regards his general conclusions, we concur with Darmesteter in the summary statement of objections to M. Oppert's theory wherewith he closes his review of the book in question:24a —
“Nous ne voyons donc pas de raison suffisante pour abandonner l'opinion traditionelle, que la langue des Mèdes était une langue aryenne, opinion qui a pour elle, en somme, le témoignage direct de Strabon, er le témoignage indirect d'Hérodote, sans parler des raisons très fortes qui font de la Médie le lieu d'origine du Zend Avesta et par suite la patrie du zend.”
In the absence of further discoveries, the theory that the Medes were an Íránian people speaking an Íránian language closely akin to Old Persian is the view which we must continue to regard as most probable.
It has already been said that the Medic kings, unlike the Achæmenians, left no records of their achievements; while, as The Avesta. regards their language, some scholars, like Nöldeke, think that, though specimens of it may be brought to light by future discoveries, none are at present accessible; others, like Oppert, find such specimens in the cuneiform inscriptions of the second class; while others, like Darmesteter, believe that we possess in the ancient scriptures of the Zoroastrians, the Zend-Avesta, an ample specimen not only of the language, but also of the literature, of the Medes. That the language of the Avesta is an Íránian language, standing to Old Persian in the relation of sister, not of daughter or mother, is proved beyond all reasonable doubt. As to the part of Írán where it flourished, there is not, however, the same unanimity; for while Darmesteter, as we have seen, regards it as the language of Media, the opinion prevalent in Germany is that it was the language of Bactria, and it has even become fashionable to speak of it as “Old Bactrian” and “East Íránian.” Darmesteter, in his usual clear and concise way, sums up the arguments of the East Íránian or Bactrian theory before proceeding to refute them, as follows:25a —
(1) Zend is not the language of Persia.
(2) It is in Bactria that, according to tradition, Zoroaster made his first important conquest, King Gushtásp.
(3) The geography of the Avesta only knows the east of Írán.
“The first fact,” he continues, “is correct, but purely negative; it excludes Persia [i.e., Persis proper] from the question, but leaves free all the rest of Írán.
“The second fact is correct, but only proves that Bactria plays a great part in the religious Epic of Zoroastrianism; the struggles maintained by the Íránians against the idolatrous Túránians, of which Bactria, by its geographical position, was the natural theatre, must necessarily have drawn the thoughts of the faithful to this part of Írán, where the worshippers of Ahura Mazda were at death-grips with the worshippers of the daêvas, and which formed the frontier-post of Ormazd against barbarous idolatry; it is even very probable that the legends concerning the conversion of Bactria and of King Gushtásp bequeath to us a historic recollection of the conquests of Zoroastrianism in the East. Nowhere, however, is Bactria represented as the cradle of Zoroaster and Zoroastrianism; Pársí tradition is unanimous and consistent in placing this cradle, not in the East, in Bactria, but in the West, in Atropatene; and not only Pársí tradition, but the Avesta itself, for—
“The third fact adduced is incorrect: the Avesta knows the North
and West of Írán as well as the East: the first chapter of the
Vendidâd, which describes Írán as it was known to the authors of
the Vendidâd, opens the enumeration of the Íránian regions by the
Êrân-Vêj, washed by the Good Dâitya (I, 3); now the Êrân-Vêj is
on the borders of Atropatene, and the Good Dâitya is the Araxes.25b
It is equally familiar with the North, for it cites Rhagæ, the
One piece o?? philological evidence is adduced by Darme-steter
in support of his opinion that the language of the
Avesta is the language of the Medes. The modern Persian
word for dog, sag, implies, says he,26a
the existence of an Old
Persian form saka (not actually occurring in the meagre
documents on which we depend for our direct knowledge of
the ancient language of Párs). Herodotus, however, mentions
(I, 110) that in the language of the Medes the dog was called
It is not less difficult to speak with certainty as to the religion of the Medes than as to their language; nay, in spite Religion of the ancient Íránians.— Zoroaster. of their numerous inscriptions it has not yet been decided whether or no the Achæmenians who succeeded them did or did not hold the faith of Zoroaster, as to whose personality, date, and native land likewise the most various opinions have been emitted. By some the very existence of a historical Zoroaster has been denied; by others his personality has been found clearly and sharply revealed in the Gáthás, which they hold to be, if not his actual utterances, at least the words of his immediate disciples. By some his date has been fixed in the Vedic period—1,800, 2,000, even 6,000 years before Christ, while by others he is placed in the seventh century B.C. By some he is, as we have seen, regarded as of Bactria, in the extreme north-east of Persia, by others of Atropatene, in the extreme north-west. So too with the Avesta, the sacred scripture of his adherents, which Darmesteter in his Traduction nouvelle (Annales du Musée Guimet, vols. xxi-xxiv, Paris, 1892-3) has striven to drag down—at least in part— from a remote antiquity even into post-Christian times. Not only has opinion varied thus widely; feeling has run high; nay, in the opinion of that eminent scholar and courageous traveller, M. Halévy, expressed in conversation with the writer, the calm domain of Science has been invaded by racial prejudices and national antipathies. We had been discussing the views set forth in Darmesteter's work above mentioned, at that time just published; and I had expressed surprise at the very recent date therein assigned to the Avesta, and inquired whether those numerous and eminent scholars who maintained its great antiquity had no reason for their assertion. “Reason enough,” was the answer; “their hatred of the Semitic races, their pride in their Aryan descent. Loath to accord to the Jews any priority or excellence over the Aryan peoples, they belittle Moses to glorify Zoroaster, and with one hand drag down the Pentateuch while with the other they raise up the Avesta!” Sad enough, if true, that this accursed racial feeling, responsible for so many crimes, should not leave unmolested even these high levels where passion should have no place!
To enter these lists is not for those who, like the writer, have devoted themselves to the literature and thought of Muhammadan times, a field sufficiently vast and sufficiently unexplored to satisfy the most ambitious and the most industrious; preferable, moreover, in this, that here we stand on firm historic ground, and deal not with dates which oscillate over centuries and scenes which swing from Bactria to Atro-patene. Yet all honour to those who so courageously labour in those arid fields of a remote antiquity, striving with infinite toil and tact to bring history out of legend, and order out of chaos! From such must we needs choose a guide in forming our views about that time and those events which, though strongly appealing to our curiosity, lie beyond the range of our own studies. Sanest and skilfulest of such guides, trained in the profundity of the German school, yet gifted with something of that clearness as to the issues and alternatives of every question which gives so great a charm to French science, and adding to these that combination of fairness and decision with which we are wont to credit the Anglo-Saxon genius, is Professor A. V. Williams Jackson of Columbia University, New York. In a series of admirable papers published in the Proceedings of the American Oriental Society, the American Journal of Philology, &c., he has successively dealt with most of the difficult questions above alluded to, and with many other points connected with the history and doctrine of Zoroastrianism; and has finally summed up his views in a work, at once most scholarly and most readable, entitled Zoroaster, the Prophet of Ancient Írán (New York, 1899). His principal conclusions are as follows:—
1. That Zoroaster was a perfectly historical personage, a member of the Median tribe of the Magi. Professor Williams Jackson's conclusions.
2. That he flourished about the middle of the seventh century before Christ—that is, during the dominion of the Medes and before the rise of the Achæmenian power—and died about B.C. 583, aged 77.
3. That he was a native of Western Persia (Atropatene or Media), but that his first notable success was gained in Bactria (Balkh), where he succeeded in converting King Vishtáspa (Gushtásp).
4. That the Gáthás (admittedly the oldest portion of the Avesta) reflect with fidelity the substance of his original preaching in Balkh.
5. That from Bactria the religion of Zoroaster spread rapidly throughout Persia, and was dominant in Párs (Persis proper) under the later Achæmenians, but that the date of its introduction into this part of Írán and its adoption by the people and rulers of Párs is uncertain.
Though these conclusions are not universally accepted, the evidence, in the opinion of the writer, is strongly in their favour, more particularly the evidence of native tradition in the period immediately succeeding the Muhammadan Conquest, which is derived mainly from the tradition current in Sásánian times. And it may be remarked that since it is not the habit of writers of this class to understate facts, it Reasonableness of these conclusions. appears unlikely that they should concur in assigning to Zoroaster too modern a date. As regards the Medic origin of Zoroastrianism, Geiger, who is in full accord with both Darmesteter and jackson on this point, remarks that though the language of the Avesta belongs, in his opinion, to the north-east of Persia (Bactria), the doctrines were, as all Pársí tradition indicates, introduced there by Medic áthravans, or fire-priests, these áthravans being uniformly represented as wanderers and missionaries in the north-east, whose home was in Ragha (Ray) and Media. Darmesteter,31a in this connection, has called attention to the interesting fact that the Noteworthy use of the term “Magian” in the Avesta. word Môghu (from which we get “Magian”) only occurs in one passage in the Avesta (Yasna xliv, 25), in the compound Môghuṭbish, “a hater” or “injurer of the Magi”; for it was as Magi of Medic race, not as áthravans of Zoroastrian faith, that they were exposed to the hatred and jealousy of the Persians proper, whose power succeeded that of the Medes, and whose supremacy was threatened from time to time in early Achæmenian The PseudoSmerdes. days by Medic insurrections, notably by that of Gaumáta the Magian (Magush), the impersonator of Bardiya (Smerdes) the son of Cyrus, whom Darius slew, as he himself relates in his inscription at Behistun in the following words:—
“Says Darius the King: Thereafter was a man, a Magian, Gaumâta by name; from Pisiyâuvâdâ did he arise, from a mountain there named Arakadris. In the month of Viyakhna, on the fourteenth day, then was it that he rose. Thus did he deceive the people [saying], ‘I am Bardiya, son of Cyrus (Kuru), brother of Cambyses (Kambu-jiya ).’ Thereupon all the people revolted against Cambyses, they went over to him, both Persia and Media, and likewise the other provinces. He seized the Throne: in the month of Garmapada, on the ninth day, then was it that he seized the Throne. Thereupon Cambyses died, slain by his own hand.
“Says Darius the King: This Throne which Gaumâta the Magian took away from Cambyses, this Throne was from of old in our Family. Citation from the inscription of Darius. So Gaumâta the Magian took away from Cambyses both Persia and Media and the other provinces, he appropriated them to himself, he was king.
“Says Darius the King: There was no one, neither Persian, nor Mede, nor any one of our family, who could wrest the kingdom from this Gaumâta the Magian: the people feared him, for many people did Bardiya slay who had known him formerly: for this cause did he slay the people, ‘lest they should recognise me [and know] that I am not Bardiya the son of Cyrus.’ None dared say aught concerning Gaumâta the Magian until I came. Then I called on Ahuramazda for help: Ahuramazda brought me help: in the month of Bágayádish, on the tenth day, then it was that I with a few men slew that Gaumâta the Magian, and those who were the foremost of his followers. In Media is a fortress named Çikathauvatish, in the district named Niçâya: there slew I him: I took from him the kingdom; by the Grace of Ahuramazda I became King; Ahuramazda gave to me the kingdom.
“Says Darius the King: The kingdom which had been alienated from our house, that I restored: in its place did I establish it: as [it was] before, so I made it: the temples which Gaumâta the Magian overthrew I restored to the people, the markets, and the flocks, and the dwellings according to clans which Gaumâta the Magian had taken away from them. I established the people in their [former] places, Persia, Media, and the other provinces. Thus did I restore that which had been taken away as it was before: by the Grace of Ahuramazda have I done this, I laboured until I restored this our clan to its position as it was before, so, by the Grace of Ahuramazda, did I restore our clan as [it was] when Gaumâta the Magian had not eaten it up.
“Says Darius the King: This is what I did when I became king.”
Of the nine rebel kings whom, in nineteen battles, Darius
defeated and took captive, Gaumâta the Magian, who “made
Persia (Párs) revolt,” was the first but not the only Mede.
Fravartish (Phraortes), who “made Media revolt,” and was
taken prisoner at Ray, mutilated, and finally crucified at
Hamadán (Ecbatana, the old Medic capital), claimed to be “of
the race of Huvakhshatara” (Cyaxares, the third Medic king
of Herodotus), and so did Chitratakhma, who rebelled in Sagar-
Other Medic
pretenders
suppressed by
Darius.
tia, and was crucified at Arbíl (Arbira). We find,
it is true, Medic generals and soldiers fighting
loyally for Darius, but nevertheless between the
Mede and the Persian at this time such antagonism
must have existed as between Scotch and English in the
days of the Edwards. Almost the same in race and language—
As it is the aim of this book to trace the developments of post-Muhammadan literature and thought in Persia, or in other Periods earlier than the Medic distinguishable in the history of the Persian race. words the literary history of the last thousand years, with only such reference to earlier times as is requisite for a proper understanding of this subject, a more detailed discussion of the ancient times of which we have been speaking would be out of place. In this chapter we have gone back to the beginning of the Medic power (about B.C. 700), at which point the historical period may be said to commence; but it is possible to distinguish, in the dim light of antiquity, still earlier periods, as has been done by Spiegel in his excellent Erânische Alterthumskunde (3 vols., Leipzig, 1871-78). Putting aside the vexed question of an original Aryan race spreading outwards in all directions from a common centre, it at least seems pretty certain that the Indians and Persians were once united in a common Indo-Íránian race located somewhere in the Panjáb. The pretty theory as to the causes which led to the cleavage of this community which was so ingeniously advanced by Max Müller
33ais, I believe, generally abandoned, but it is so attractive that it seems a pity to pass it over.
Briefly stated, this theory hinges upon the occurrence in the Vedas of the Hindús and the Avesta of the Zoroastrians of Max Müller's theory. certain theological terms, which, though identical as regards etymology, are here diametrically opposed. Deva in Sanskrit means “bright,” and the Devas, or “Bright ones,” are the Hindú gods. In the Avesta, on the other hand, the daêvas (Modern Persian dív) are devils, and the Zoroastrian, in his confession of faith, solemnly declares: “I cease to be a worshipper of the daêvas;” he renounces these daêvas, devas, or Hindú gods, and becomes the servant of Ahura Mazda. Now it is a phonetic law that Persian h corresponds to Sanskrit s (e.g., Hind, whence we get our name for India, represents Sind, that being naturally the part of India best known to the Persians), so the Ahura of the Avesta is equivalent to asura in Sanskrit, which means an evil spirit or devil. And so, from these two little words, Max Müller conjures up a most convincing picture of Zoroaster, the reformer and prophet, rising up amongst the still united Indo-Íránian community to protest against the degradation of a polytheistic nature-worship which had gradually replaced the purer conceptions of an earlier time; emphasising his disapproval by making the gods of the system he laboured to overthrow the devils of his own; and finally, with his faithful following, breaking away in an ancient hijra from the stiff-necked “worshippers of the daêvas” to find a new home in that more Western land to which we now give the common name of Persia. This theory, it may be remarked, depended in great measure on the Bactrian hypothesis of Zoroaster's origin, which, based on Fargard I of the Vendidâd, so long held sway, especially in Germany.
Concerning the composition of the Avesta we shall say
something in another place; for the present it is sufficient to
state that the Vendidâd is that portion of it which contains
the religious laws and the mythology—a sort of Zoroastrian
Pentateuch—and that it is divided into twenty-two Fargards,
or chapters. Of these the first describes the creations of
Ahura Mazda, and the counter-creations of Anra Mainyu,
the Evil Spirit (Ahriman), and includes an enumeration of the
following sixteen lands created by the former: (1) “The
Airyana Vaêjô, by the good river Dâitya” (a mythical region,
identified in Sásánian times with the region of the River Araxes,
that is, with the modern Ázarbáyján); (2) Sughda (Sogdiana,
Sughd); (3) Môuru (Margiana, Merv); (4) Bâkhdi (Bactria,
Balkh); (5) Nisâya (?
In this list Geiger and some other scholars suppose that we have an itinerary of the migrations of the Íránians on their entry into Persia after the fission of the original Indo-Íránian community, which was located in the region of the Pamirs, whence the first stream of migration flowed mainly westwards to Sughd, Merv, Balkh, Nasá, and Herát; another stream south and south-west to the Panjáb, Kábul, and the Helmand region; while some adventurous spirits continued the westward migration as far as Gurgán and Ray. But it is doubtful if much stress can be laid on the order observed in this enumeration, that order being in any case almost indefensible (even excluding all doubtful identifications) on geographical grounds. And it seems at least possible that it may represent the conquests of the Zoroastrian faith rather than of the Íránian people, which hypothesis would be much strengthened if the identification of the Airyana Vaêjô with Atropatene (Ázarbáyján) could be established more surely: we should then have a fairly clear confirmation of that theory which we regarded as most probable: to wit, a religion having its source and home in the extreme north-west, but making its first conquests in the extreme north-east. Did we need any proof that a prophet is often without honour in his own country, the history of Islám would supply it, and Balkh may well have been the Medína of the Zoroastrian faith.
Another period, subsequent alike to the Indo-Íránian and the primitive Íránian epochs, has been distinguished and discussed Period of Assyrian influence. with care and acumen by Spiegel,36a who places its beginning about B.C. 1000, namely, the period of Assyrian influence—an influence salient to all eyes in the sculptures and inscriptions of the Achæmenians, and discernible also, as Spiegel has shown, in many Persian myths, legends, and doctrines reflecting a Semitic rather than an Aryan tradition. It is a remarkable thing how great at all periods of history has been Semitic influence on Persia; Arabian in the late Sásánian and Muḥammadan time; Aramaic in earlier Sásánian and later Parthian days; Assyrian at a yet more ancient epoch. And indeed this fact can scarcely be insisted upon too strongly; for the study of Persian has suffered from nothing so much as from the purely philological view which regards mere linguistic and racial affinities as infinitely more important and significant than the much deeper and more potent influences of literary and religious contact. Greek is far more widely studied in England than Hebrew, but for the understanding of the motives and conduct of a Scottish Covenanter or English Puritan, not to mention Milton's verse, a knowledge of the Bible is at least as necessary as a familiarity with the Classics; and in Persia, where both literary and religious influences have generally been in large measure Semitic, the same holds good to a much greater extent. If, as an adjunct to my equipment for the study of Persian thought and literature, I were offered my choice between a thorough knowledge of the Semitic and the Aryan languages, I should, from this point of view alone, unhesitatingly choose the former. A good knowledge of the Aramaic languages is essential for the study of Pahlawí, and a fruitful investigation of the post-Muhammadan literature and thought of Persia is impossible without a wide acquaintance with Arabic books; while in both these fields a knowledge of Sanskrit is practically of very little use, and even in the interpretation of the Avesta it must be employed with some reserve and due regard to the Pahlawí tradition.
In concluding this introductory chapter it may be well to Recapitulation. recapitulate the periods in Persian history of which we have spoken.
| I. | The Indo-Íránian period. |
| II. | The early Íránian period. |
| III. | The period of Assyrian influence (B.C. 1000).1 |
| IV. | The Medic period (B.C. 700). |
| V. | The Old Persian (Achæmenian) period (B.C. 550). |
| VI. | Interregnum, from the Invasion of Alexander to the Sásánian Restoration (B.C. 330—A.D. 226). |
| VII. | The Sásánian period (A.D. 226-652). |
| VIII. | The Muhammadan period, extending from the fall of the Sásánian Dynasty to the present day. |
It is with the last of these periods that we are principally concerned, and, as will in due time appear, it comprises numerous important subdivisions. Before approaching it, however, something more remains to be said of the older Persian literature and its discovery, and sundry other matters germane thereto, which will be discussed in the next chapter.
THE DISCOVERY AND INTERPRETATION OF THE INSCRIPTIONS AND DOCUMENTS OF ANCIENT PERSIA, WITH OTHER PHILOLOGICAL MATTER.
THE language of Modern, that is to say of Post-Muhammadan, Persia, was naturally, for practical reasons, an object of Brief sketch of the development of Oriental studies in Europe interest and study in Europe long before any serious attempt was made to solve the enigmas presented by the three ancient languages of which this chapter will briefly trace the discovery and decipherment: to wit, the Old Persian of the Achæmenian inscriptions, the Avestic idiom, and the Pahlawí of Sásánian times. The study of Modern Persian, again, was preceded by that of Arabic; which, as the vehicle whereby the Philosophy of the Greeks, especially of Aristotle, first became clearly known to Western Europe, commanded in a far higher degree the attention and interest of men of learning. The first translations from the Arabic into Twelfth century. European languages were made about the beginning of the twelfth century of our era by Jews and Moors converted to Christianity,39a who were soon followed by native Europeans, such as Gerard of Cremona (b. A.D. 1114); Albertus Magnus (b. A.D. 1193), who, dressed as an Arab, expounded at Paris the teachings of Aristotle from the works of al-Fárábí, Ibn Síná (Avicenna), and al-Ghazzálí; and Michael Scot, who appears to have studied Thirteenth century. Arabic at Toledo in A.D. 1217. Roger Bacon and Raymond Lull (thirteenth century) also called attention to the importance, for philosophic and scientific purposes, of a study of Oriental languages. In Fourteenth century. A.D. 1311-1312 it was ordained by Pope Clement the Fifth that Professorships of Hebrew, Chaldean, and Arabic should be established at Rome, Paris, Bologna, Oxford and Salamanca, whose teaching, however, was soon afterwards (A.D. 1325) placed by the Church under a rigorous supervision, lest it should tend to endanger Christian orthodoxy. At each of these five seats of learning there were to be two professors, paid by the State or the Church, who were to make faithful Latin translations of the principal works written in these languages, and to train their pupils to speak them sufficiently well for missionary purposes.
It does not appear, however, that these laudable proposals met at first with any great measure of success, or that much Sixteenth century. was actually done to further the study of Arabic until the establishment of the Collège de France in A.D. 1530 by Francis the Fifth. Armegand of Montpellier40a had already, in A.D. 1274, translated portions of the works of Avicenna and Averroes into Latin, but that remarkable scholar and traveller, Guillaume Postel40b may, according to M. Dugat, be called “the first French Orientalist”; and he, apparently, was the first who caused Arabic types to be cut. In A.D. 1587 Henry the Third founded an Arabic chair at the Collège de France, and a few years subsequently Savary de Brèves, who is said to have had a fine taste in Oriental literature, and who later brought to Paris excellent founts of type which he had caused to be engraved in the East, was appointed French Ambassador at Constantinople. On his death these founts of type (Arabic, Syriac, Persian, Armenian, and Æthiopic), together with his Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and Syriac MSS., were bought by Louis the Thirteenth (assisted financially by the clergy), and passed into the possession of the Imprimerie Royale.
The full development of Oriental studies in Europe, however, may be said to date from the seventeenth century, since Seventeenth century. which epoch progress has been steady and continuous. This century saw, for example, in England the establishment, by Sir Thomas Adams and Archbishop Laud respectively, of Arabic chairs at both Cambridge (A.D. 1632) and Oxford (A.D. 1636), of which the latter was filled by the illustrious Pococke and the former by the equally illustrious Abraham Wheelock, who, with the teaching of Arabic and Anglo-Saxon, combined the function of Thomas Hyde. University Librarian. Amongst his pupils was that distinguished scholar, Thomas Hyde, afterwards Professor of both the Hebrew and the Arabic languages at Oxford, whose work on the History of the Religion of the Ancient Persians, Parthians, and Medes, published in 1700, little more than a year before his death,41a may be taken as representing the high-water-mark of knowledge on this subject at the close of the seventeenth century, and, indeed, until the publication of Anquetil du Perron's epoch-making memoirs (1763-1771), of which we shall shortly have to speak. A brief statement, therefore, of Hyde's views may appropriately form the starting-point of this survey; for his industry, his scholarship, and his linguistic attainments, added to the facilities which he enjoyed as Librarian of the Bodleian, rendered his work as complete and comprehensive an account of the ancient Persian religion as was possible with the materials then available. Hyde not only used the works of his predecessors, such as Barnaby de Brisson's De Regio Persarum Principatu Libri Tres (Paris, 1606)—a book based entirely on the statements of Greek and Latin authors,—Henry Lord's Religion of the Parsees42a (1630), Sanson's De hodierno statu Persiæ (1683), and the narratives of the travellers Pedro Texeira (1604), Père Gabriel de Chinon (1608-1650), Tavernier (1629-1675), Olearius (1637-1638), Thevenot (1664-1667), Chardin (1665-1677), Petits de la Croix (1674-1676), and Samuel Flower (1667), but also a number of Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Hebrew, and Syriac manuscripts, which he manipulated with a skill deserving of the highest praise; and the knowledge thus acquired was supplemented in some cases by information verbally obtained by his friends in India from the Parsees. His work, in short, is a monument of erudition, most remarkable when we consider the time at which it was written and the few facilities then existing for research of this kind; and in some cases his acumen anticipated discoveries not confirmed till a much later date. Thus he recognised the name of Media in the Arabic Máh prefixed to certain place-names (p. 424), was aware of the existence amongst the Zoroastrians of Persia of a peculiar “gabrí” dialect (pp. 364, 429), knew the Ḥurúfí sect as a revived form of Manichæanism (p. 283), made free use of the rare Arabic translation of the Sháh-náma of al-Bundárí, and was acquainted with the so-called Zend character,43a and with such later Pársí writings as the Zarátusht-náma, the Sad-dar (of which he gives a complete Latin translation), and the Persian translation of the Book of Arda Viráf.
On the other hand he had no knowledge whatever of the Avestic or Pahlawí languages, entirely misunderstood the Hyde had no knowledge of any one of the three ancient languages of Persia. meaning of the term Zend Avesta or Avesta va Zend, and endeavoured to prove that the Old Persian inscriptions were not writing at all, but mere architectural ornamentation. Anquetil du Perron at the end of his Discours Préliminaire (pp. cccclxxxix-ccccxcviii) is at some pains to prove the first of these statements, and points out that throughout Hyde's work the Zend character merely serves to cloak Persian sentences cited from late Pársí writings. But in fact proof is unnecessary, for Hyde had in his own possession a MS. of part of the Avesta, and was also acquainted with the MS. of the Yasna presented to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, by an English merchant named Moody about the middle of the seventeenth century;43b and is quite certain that he would have made use of documents so important for his purpose had he been able to read them. Now since he was conversant with the character in which they were written, and even, as we have seen, employed it in his work, it is evident that he could make nothing whatever of the language. As regards the title of the sacred book of the Zoroastrians, he regarded it as “exotic and hybrid,” supposing that it consisted of the Arabic word Zend (an implement for kindling fire), and the Hebrew-Chaldæan eshta, “fire” (op. laud., pp. 335 et seqq.). Lastly, he regarded the Old Persian inscriptions as trifles, hardly worthy of attention but for the curiosity already aroused by them (p. 546), and declared in the most positive fashion that they were not Old Persian (p. 547), and, indeed, not inscriptions at all, but mere fanciful designs of the original architect (pp. 556-557). In the adjacent Pahlawí inscriptions of Naqsh-i-Rajab he equally refuses to recognise any form of Persian script. “As regards Nos. 1 and 4” (the Sásánian Pahlawí), he says, “I assert that these characters cannot be ancient Persian, which are perceived, in their ancient books, which I myself possess, to differ from them toto cœlo” (p. 548.)
Such, then, was the state of knowledge in 1754. No further advance had been made towards the understanding Anquetil du Perron (1754- 1771). of the Avesta, though several new MSS. had been brought to England: to wit, a MS. of the Vendidâd obtained from the Pársís of India by George Bourchier (or Bowcher) in 1718, conveyed to England by Richard Cobbe in 1723, and presented to the Bodleian, where it is now preserved (BODL. OR. 321); and two MSS. of the Yasna bought at Surat by Frazer, who also endeavoured, but vainly, to induce the Zoroastrian priests to teach him the Avestic and Pahlawí languages. But in the year above mentioned a facsimile of four leaves of the Bodleian MS. of the Vendidâd fell into the hands of a young Frenchman, Anquetil du Perron, then not much more than twenty years of age; and he, with an impulsiveness and devotion to science truly Gallic, at once resolved to win for his country the glory of wresting from the suspicious priesthood who guarded them the keys to these hidden secrets of an old-world faith, and of laying before the learned world a complete account of the Zoroastrian doctrines, based, not on the statements of non-Zoroastrian or even modern Pársí writers, but on the actual testimony of the ancient Scriptures themselves. So eager was his haste that, though assured of help and pecuniary assistance in his projected journey to India, his impatience to begin his work impelled him to enlist as a common soldier of the French East India Company; so firm was his purpose and so steadfast his resolve that, in face of every kind of difficulty and discouragement, suffering, sickness, opposition, perils by sea and perils of war, he persevered for seven years and a half, until, on March 15, 1762, having at length regained Paris after his long and adventurous exile, he deposited his precious manuscripts, the fruits of his incredible labours, in the Bibliothèque du Roi. Yet still nine years' laborious, but now tranquil, work lay before him ere, in 1771, he was able to offer to the world the assured and final outcome of his endeavour—a great work in three volumes bearing the following cumbrous title: Zend-Avesta, ouvrage de Zoroastre, contenant les idées théologiques, physiques, et morales de ce legislateur, les cérémonies du culte religieux qu'il a établi, et plusieurs traits importans relatifs à l'ancienne histoire des Perses, traduit en Français sur l'original Zend avec des Remarques: et accompagné de plusieurs traités propres à éclaircir les matières qui en sont l'objet. This work was in the fullest sense of the word epoch-making, or, as the Germans say, “bahn-brechend.” Anquetil completely accomplished the great task he had set himself. Much remained to be done in detail by his successors, many inaccuracies are naturally to be found in his work;46a yet we may fairly say that to him in chief belongs the merit of those discoveries as to the religion and language of the ancient Zoroastrians from which so many important results, literary, philological, ethnological, and philosophical, have since been drawn.
Of the details of Anquetil's journey this is hardly the place to speak. They are narrated with great minuteness in the Anquetil's adventures. first volume of his work (pp. i-cccclxxviii), and include, in truth, a mass of purely personal details which might, perhaps, as well have been omitted, and which certainly rendered the book an easier target for the derision to which it was destined shortly to be exposed. Briefly, Anquetil quitted Paris with his “petit equipage” (containing, except for a few books, only two shirts, two handkerchiefs and a pair of socks), without the knowledge of any one except his brother, who was bound to secrecy, on November 7, 1754, and marched with his company—men little to his taste, whom he speaks of as “ces brutaux”—to L'Orient, which he reached on the 16th. Here he was informed that the King had been graciously pleased to grant him an allowance of five hundred livres, and he was further accorded a first-class passage to India. Sailing from L'Orient on February 7, 1755, he reached Pondichery on August 9th of the same year, and there was hospitably received by M. Goupil, the Commandant of the troops. He at once set himself to learn Persian, which afterwards served as the means of communication between himself and the Zoroastrian priests. More than three years elapsed, however, ere he reached Surat (May 1, 1758), shortly before it passed into the hands of the English (March, 1759). This long delay in the prosecution of his plan was caused, apparently, partly by his insatiable curiosity as to the antiquities, religions, customs, and languages of India (for his original scheme extended far beyond what immediately concerned the Zoroastrian religion), partly by the political complications of that time. After numerous adventures, however, he ultimately arrived at Surat on the date indicated above. He at once put himself in relation with two Pársí dastúrs, or priests, named Dáráb and Ká'ús, from whom, three months later, he received, after many vexatious delays and attempts at extortion and evasion, a professedly complete copy of the Vendidâd. Fully aware of the necessity for caution, he succeeded in borrowing from another dastúr, Manúchihrjí (who, owing to religious differences, was not on terms of intercourse with Dáráb and Ká'ús) another good and ancient manuscript of the same work; and, on collating this with the other, he was not long in discovering that his two dastúrs had deliberately supplied him with a defective copy. They, on being convicted of this fraud, became at once more communicative, and less disposed to attempt any further imposition, and furnished him with other works, such as the Persian Story of Sanján (of which Anquetil gives an abstract at pp. cccxviii-cccxxiv of his work), an account of the descent of all copies of the Vendidâd and its Pahlawí commentary preserved in India from a Persian original brought thither from Sístán by a dastúr named Ardashír about the fourteenth century of our era, and a further account of the relations maintained from time to time by the Zoroastrians of Persia with those of India.
On March 24, 1759, Anquetil completed his translation of the Pahlawí-Persian vocabulary, and six days later began the Anquetil's work. translation of the Vendidâd, which, together with the collation of the two MSS., he finished on June 16th of the same year. A severe illness, followed by a savage attack by a compatriot, interrupted his work for five months, and it was not till November 20th that he was able to continue his labours with the help of the dastúr Dáráb. During this time he received much help and friendly protection from the English, notably from Mr. Spencer, of whom he speaks in the highest terms (p. cccxlvi), and Mr. Erskine. Having completed the translation of the Yasna, Vispered, and Vendidâd, the Pahlawí Bundahish, the Sí-rúza, Riváyats, &c., and visited the sacred fire in its temple, and the dakhmas, or “towers of silence,” Anquetil, again attacked by illness, and fearful of risking the loss of the precious harvest of his labours, resolved to renounce his further projects of travel, which included a journey to China. Again assisted by the English, to whom, notwithstanding the state of war which existed between his country and theirs, he did not fear to appeal, knowing them, as he says, “généreux quand on les prend par un certain côté” (p. ccccxxxi), he sailed from Surat to Bombay, where, after, a sojourn of more than a month, he shipped himself and his precious manuscripts (180 in number, enumerated in detail at pp. dxxix-dxli of the first volume of his work) on board the Bristol on April 28, 1761, and arrived at Portsmouth on November 17th of the same year. There he was compelled, greatly to his displeasure, to leave his manuscripts in the custom-house, while he himself was sent with other French prisoners to Wickham. As, however, he was not a prisoner of war (being, indeed, under English protection), permission was soon accorded him to return to France; but, eagerly as he desired to see his native country after so long an absence, and, above all, to secure the safety of those precious and hardly-won documents which still chiefly occupied his thoughts, he would not quit this country without a brief visit to Oxford, and a hasty inspection of the Avestic manuscripts there preserved. “Je déclarai net,” he says (p. ccccliv), “que je ne quitterais pas l'Angleterre sans avoir vu Oxford, puis qu'on m'y avait retenu prisonnier contre le droit des gens. Le désir de comparer mes manuscrits avec ceux de cette célèbre Université n'avait pas peu ajouté aux raisons qui m'avaient comme forcé de prendre, pour revenir en Europe, la voie Anglaise.” Well furnished with letters of introduction, he arrived at Oxford on January 17, 1762, whence, after a stay of two days, he returned, by way of Wickham, Portsmouth, and London, to Gravesend, where he embarked for Ostend on February 14th. He finally reached Paris on March 14, 1762, and on the following day at length deposited his manuscripts at the Bibliothèque du Roi.
The appearance of Anquetil's work in 1771 was far from at once convincing the whole learned world of the great Reception of Anquetil du Perron's work. services which he had rendered to science. In place of the wisdom expected from a sage like Zoroaster, who, even in classical times, enjoyed so great a reputation for profound philosophic thought, the curious and the learned were confronted with what appeared to them to be a farrago of puerile fables, tedious formulæ, wearisome repetitions, and grotesque prescriptions. The Sir William Jones. general disappointment (which, indeed, Anquetil had himself foreseen and foretold, pp. i-ii), found its most ferocious expression in the famous letter of Sir William Jones, at that time a young graduate of Oxford.49a This letter, written in French on the model of Voltaire, will be found at the end of the fourth volume (pp. 583-613) of his works (London, 1799). It was penned in 1771, the year in which Anquetil's work appeared, and is equally remarkable for the vigour and grace of its style, and the deplorable violence and injustice of its contents. The writer's fastidious taste was offended by Anquetil's prolixity and lack of style; while his anger was kindled by the somewhat egotistic strain which, it must be admitted, runs through the narrative portion of his work, and by certain of his reflections on the English in general and the learned doctors of Oxford in particular; and he suffered himself to be so blinded by these sentiments that he not only overwhelmed Anquetil with satire and invective which are not always in the best taste, but absolutely refused to recognise the immense importance, and even the reality, of discoveries which might have condoned far more serious shortcomings. As Darmesteter happily puts it, “the Zend-Avesta suffered for the fault of its introducer, Zoroaster for Anquetil.”
As a matter of fact Anquetil's remarks about the English are (when we remember the circumstances under which he Vindication of Anquetil. wrote, in time of war, when he had seen his nation worsted by ours, and had himself been held captive, not being a prisoner of war, within our borders) extremely fair and moderate, nay, most gratifying, on the whole, to our amour propre, as may be seen in his glowing eulogy of Mr. Spencer (p. cccxlvi), his remarks on the generosity of the English towards the unfortunate of even a hostile nation (p. ccccxxxi), his recognition of their hospitality and delicacy of feeling (pp. ccccxxxvii-xxxix), and the like; while his railleries at one or two of the Oxford doctors— at the “méchant bonnet gras à trois cornes” of Dr. Swinton, the ill-judged pleasantry of Dr. Hunt, the haughty and magisterial bearing of Dr. Barton—are in reality very harmless, and quite devoid of malice. In short, there is nothing in Anque-til's book to justify Sir William Jones's bitter irony and ferocious invective, much less his attempt to deny the great services rendered to science by the object of his attack, and to extinguish the new-born light destined to illuminate in so unexpected a manner so many problems of history, philology, and comparative theology. Here are a few specimens sufficient to illustrate the general tone of his letter:—
“Ne soyez point surpris, Monsieur, de reçevoir cette lettre d'un Specimens of Sir W. Jones's letter to Anquetil. inconnu, qui aime les vrais talens, et qui sait apprécier les vôtres.
“Souffrez qu'on vous félicite de vos heureuses découvertes. Vous avez souvent prodigué votre pré-cieuse vie; vous avez franchi des mers orageuses, des montagnes remplies de tigres; vous avez flétri votre teint, que vous nous dîtes, avec autant d'élégance que de modestie, avoir été composé de lis et de roses; vous avez essuyé des maux encore plus cruels; et tout cela uniquement pour le bien de la littérature, et de ceux qui ont le rare bonheur de vous ressembler.
“Vous avez appris deux langues anciennes, que l'Europe entière ignorait; vous avez rapporté en France le fruit de vos travaux, les livres du célèbre Zoroastre; vous avez charmé le public par votre agréable traduction de cet ouvrage; et vous avez atteint le comble de votre ambition, on plutôt l'objet de vos ardens désirs; vous êtes Membre de l'Académie des Inscriptions.
“Nous respectons, comme nous le devons, cette illustre et savante Académie; mais vous méritez, ce nous semble, un titre plus distingué… Plus grand voyageur que Cadmus, vous avez rapporté, comme lui, de nouveaux caractères, et de nouveaux dieux… À parler franchement, ou doit vous faire pour le moins l'Archimage, ou grand prêtre des Guèbres, d'autant plus que, dans ce nouveau poste, vous auriez l'occasion de mettre un peu plus de feu dans vos écrits.
“Voyageur, Savant, Antiquaire, Héros, Libelliste, quels titres ne méritez-vous pas? …
“Permettez maintenant, Monsieur, qu'on vous dise sérieusement ce que des gens de lettres pensent de votre entreprise, de vos voyages, de vos trois gros volumes, et de votre savoir que vous vantez avec si peu de réserve… On doit aimer le vrai savoir: mais toutes choses ne valent pas la peine d'être sues.
“Socrate disait, en voyant l'étalage d'un bijoutier, ‘De combien de choses je n'ai pas besoin!’ On peut de même s'écrier, en contemplant les ouvrages de nos érudits, Combien de connaissances il m'importe peu d'acquérir!
“Si vous aviez fait cette dernière réflexion, vous n'auriez pas affronté la mort pour nous procurer des lumières inutiles…
“Si ces raisonnemens, Monsieur, ne portent pas absolument à faux, il en résulte que votre objet était ni beau ni important; que l'Europe éclairée n'avait nul besoin de votre Zende Vasta; que vous l'avez traduit à pure perte; et que vous avez prodigué inutilement pendant dix-huit ans un temps qui devait vous être précieux… Quelle petite gloire que de savoir ce que personne ne sait, et n'a que faire de savoir! … On veut même croire que vous avez dans la tête plus de mots Zendes, c'est-à-dire, plus de mots durs, trâinans, barbares, que tous les savans de l'Europe. Ne savez-vous pas que les langues n'ont ancune valeur intrinsèque? … D'ailleurs, êtes-vous bien sûr que vous possédez les anciennes langues de la Perse? … On ne saura jamais, ne vous en déplaise, les anciens dialectes de la Perse, tandis qu'ils n'existent que dans les pré-tendus livres de Zoroastre, qui d'ailleurs sont remplis de répétitions inutiles.
“‘Mais,’ direz vous, ‘me soupçonne-t-on d'avoir voulu tromper le public?’ Non, Monsieur, on ne dit pas cela. Vous vous êtes trompé vous-même…
“Jusqu'ici, Monsieur, nous n'avons d'autre plainte envers vous, que celle de nous avoir endormis; ce qui n'est pas certainement un crime en soi-même: quant à ceux qui craignent ces vapeurs sopori-fiques, il est facile ou de ne pas lire un livre qui les donne, ou de l'oublier; le remède est aussi naturel que la précaution est bonne.
“On ne dira rien de votre style dur, bas, inélégant, souvent ampoulé, rarement conforme au sujet, et jamais agréable… Nous aurons plus à dire sur la fin de votre discours… Quelle punition votre Zoroastre ordonne-t-il pour les ingrats? Combien d'urine de bœuf sont ils obligés d'avaler? On vous conseille, Monsieur, de prendre une dose de cette sainte et purifiante liqueur…
“Nous avons, Monsieur, l'honneur de connaître le Docteur Hunt, et nous faisons gloire de le respecter. Il est incapable de tromper qui que ce soit. Il ne nous a jamais dit, il n'a pu vous dire, qu'il entendait les langues anciennes de la Perse. Il est persuadé, aussi bien que nous, que personne ne les sait, et ne les saura jamais, à moins qu'on ne recouvre toutes les histoires, les poëmes, et les ouvrages de religion, que le Calife Omar et ses généraux cherchèrent à détruire avec tant d'acharnement; ce qui rend inutile la peine de courir le monde aux dépens de l'éclat d'un visage fleuri. Il ne regrette pas à la verité son ignorance de ces langues; il en est assez dédommagé par sa rare connaissance du Persan moderne, la langue des Sadi, des Cashefi, des Nézamis, dans les livres desquels on ne trouve ni le Barsom, ni le Lingam, ni des observances ridicules, ni des idées fantastiques, mais beaucoup de réflexions piquantes contre l'ingratitude et la fausseté…
“Vous triomphez, Monsieur, de ce que le Docteur Hyde ne savait pas les langues anciennes de la Perse; et vous ne dîtes rien de nouveau… Vous reprenez le Docteur Hyde de ce qu'il ignorait que les cinq gahs signifiassent les cinq parties du jour; de ce qu'il dit tou au lien de ton; et de ce qu'il ne savait pas qu' Aherman, le nom de votre diable Persan, était un abréviation du mot mélodieux Enghri meniosch; car vous savez qu'en changeant Enghri en Aher et meniosch en man on fait Aherman. De la même manière on peut faire le mot diable en changeant Enghri en di, et menoisch en able.”
Sir William Jones then proceeds to make merry at the expense of Anquetil's translation—no difficult feat even with a better rendering of a work containing so much that is to us grotesque and puerile, as must, in some degree, be the case with what is produced by any people in its infancy—and thus sums up his reasonings:—
“Ou Zoroastre n'avait pas le sens commun, ou il n'écrivit pas le livre que vous lui attribuez; s'il n'avait pas le sens commun, il fallait le laisser dans la foule, et dans l'obscurité; s'il n'écrivit pas ce livre, il était impudent de le publier sous son nom. Ainsi, ou vous avez insulté le goût du public en lui présentant des sottises, ou vous l'avez trompé en lui débitant des faussetés: et de chaque côté vous méritez son mépris.”
Sir William Jones's letter, though it served to mar Anquetil du Perron's legitimate triumph, and (which was more serious) Anquetil avenged. to blind a certain number of scholars and men of letters to the real importance of his discoveries, has now only a historic interest. Time, which has so fully vindicated the latter that no competent judge now fails to recognise the merit of his work, also took its revenge on the former; and he who strained at the gnat of the Zend Avesta was destined to swallow the camel of the Desátír—one of the most impudent forgeries ever perpetrated. With the original of this egregious work he was, indeed, unacquainted, for the only known manuscript of it, though brought from Persia to India by Mullá Ká'ús about the year 1773, was only published by the son of the purchaser, Mullá Fírúz, in 1818;53a his knowledge of its contents was derived from a curious but quite modern Persian book (to which, however, it was his incontestable merit first to direct attention in Europe) entitled the Dabistáni-Madháhib or “School of Sects,” a treatise composed in India about the middle of the seventeenth century of our era.54a Of this work Sir William Jones spoke in 178954b in the following terms of exaggerated eulogy:—
“A fortunate discovery, for which I was first indebted to Mír Sir W. Jones's credulity equals his scepticism, and is as misplaced. Muhammed Husain, one of the most intelligent Musel-máns in India, has at once dissipated the cloud, and cast a gleam of light on the primeval history of Írán and of the human race, of which I had long despaired, and which could hardly have dawned from any other quarter.
“This rare and interesting tract on twelve different religions, entitled the Dabistán, and composed by a Mohammedan traveller, Sir W. Jones's exaggerated idea of the value of the Desátír and Dabistán. a native of Cashmír, named Mohsan, but distinguished by the assumed surname of Fání, or Perishable, begins with a wonderfully curious chapter on the religion of Húshang, which was long anterior to that of Zerátusht, but had continued to be secretly professed by many learned Persians even to the author's time; and several of the most eminent of them, dissenting in many points from the Gabrs, and persecuted by the ruling powers of their country, had retired to India; where they compiled a number of books, now extremely scarce, which Mohsan had perused, and with the writers of which, or with many of them, he had contracted an intimate friendship: from them he learned that a powerful monarchy had been established for ages in Írán before the accession of Cayúmers, that it was called the Mahábádian, for a reason which will soon be mentioned, and that many princes, of whom seven or eight only are named in the Dabistán, and among them Mahbul or Mahá Beli, had raised their empire to the zenith of human glory. If we can rely on this evidence, which to me appears unexceptionable, the Íránian monarchy must have been the oldest in the world; but it will remain dubious to which of the stocks, Hindu, Arabian, or Tartar, the first Kings of Írán belonged, or whether they sprang from a fourth race, distinct from any of the others; and these are questions which we shall be able, I imagine, to answer precisely when we have carefully inquired into the languages and letters, religion and philosophy, and incidentally into the arts and sciences, of the ancient Persians.
“In the new and important remarks, which I am going to offer, on the ancient languages and characters of Írán, I am sensible, that Sir W. Jones's notions about the history of Ancient Persia. you must give me credit for many assertions, which on this occasion it is impossible to prove; for I should ill deserve your indulgent attention, if I were to abuse it by repeating a dry list of detached words, and presenting you with a vocabulary instead of a dissertation; but, since I have no system to maintain, and have not suffered imagination to delude my judgment, since I have habituated myself to form opinions of men and things from evidence, which is the only solid basis of civil, as experiment is of natural, knowledge; and since I have maturely considered the questions which I mean to discuss; you will not, I am persuaded, suspect my testimony, or think I go too far, when I assure you, that I will assert nothing positively, which I am not able satisfactorily to demonstrate.”
It will be seen from the above citation that Sir William Jones was just as positive in his affirmations as in his negations, Sir W. Jones's blunders. and too often equally unfortunate in both. He confidently, and “without fear of contradiction,” identified Cyrus with the entirely legendary Kay-Khusraw of the Persian Epic (the Kawa Husrawa or Husrawaṅh of the Avesta), and the legendary Píshdádí kings with the Assyrians; derived the name of Cambyses (the Kambujiya of the Old Persian inscriptions) from the Modern Persian Kám-bakhsh, “granting desires,” which he regarded as “a title rather than a name,” and Xerxes (the Khshayárshá of the inscriptions) from Shíru'í (and this after his scornful rejection of Anquetil's correct derivation of Ahriman from Aṅra Mainyush!); continued to see “strong reasons to doubt the existence of genuine books in Zend or Pahlawí,” on the ground that “the well-informed author of the Dabistán affirms the work of Zerátusht to have been lost, and its place supplied by a recent compilation;” held “that the oldest discoverable languages of Persia were Chaldaick and Sanscrit, and that, when they had ceased to be vernacular, the Pahlawí and Zend were deduced from them respectively, and the Pársí either from the Zend, or immediately from the dialect of the Bráhmans;” believed (with the Persians) that Jamshíd (the Yima of the Avesta and Yama of the Hindú mythology, a shadowy personality belonging to the common Indo-Íránian legend) built Persepolis, and that the Achæmenian inscriptions there visible “if really alphabetical, were probably secret and sacerdotal, or a mere cypher, perhaps, of which the priests only had the key”; and finally accepted the absurd Desátír—“a sacred book in a heavenly language” (which proves, in fact, to be no language at all, but mere gibberish, slavishly modelled on the ordinary Persian in which the “Commentary” is written)— as an ancient historical document of capital importance, destined to throw an entirely new light on the earliest history of the Aryan people, and to prove “that the religion of the Bráhmans … prevailed in Persia before the accession of Cayúmers, whom the Pársís, from respect to his memory, consider as the first of men, although they believe in an universal deluge before his reign.” Truly Anquetil was abundantly avenged, and the proposition that misplaced scepticism often coexists with misplaced credulity received a striking illustration!
But Sir William Jones, however greatly he may have fallen into error in matters connected with the ancient history and languages of Persia, was so eminent in his public career, so catholic in his interests, so able a man of letters, and so elegant a scholar, that his opinion was bound to carry great weight, Influence of Sir W. Jones's views. especially in his own country; and consequently we find his scepticism as to the genuineness of the Avesta echoed in England by Sir John Chardin and Richardson (the celebrated Persian Lexicographer) and in Germany by Meiners and, at first, Tychsen, who, however, afterwards became one of Anquetil's strongest supporters, an attitude assumed from the first by another German scholar, Kleuker, who translated Anquetil's work into his own language, and added to it several appendices. In England, for the moment, Sir William Jones's opinion carried everything before it, and Anquetil's translation “was laid aside as spurious and not deserving any attention;”57a while in France, on the other hand, it from the first commanded that general recognition and assent which are now universally accorded to it. To trace in detail the steps whereby this recognition was secured is not within the scope of this book, and we can only notice a few of the most important. Such as desire to follow them in detail will find all the information they require in the excellent accounts of Haug and Darmesteter referred to in the footnote on this page, as well as in Geldner's article, Awestalitteratur, in vol. ii (pp. 1-53, especially p. 40, Geschichte der Awestaforschung) of Geiger and Kuhn's Grundriss der Iranischen Philologie (Strassburg, 1896).
The first important step in the vindication of Anquetil was made by his illustrious compatriot, Sylvestre de Sacy, De Sacy's Mémoires sur diverses Antiquités de la Perse (1793). who, in 1793, published in the Journal des Savants his five celebrated Mémoires sur diverses Antiquités de la Perse, which dealt chiefly with the Pahlawí inscriptions of the Sásánian kings, for the decipherment of which he chiefly relied, apart from the Greek translations which accompany some of them, on the Pahlawí vocabulary given by Anquetil (vol. iii, pp. 432-526), “whose work,” as Darmesteter well says, “vindicated itself thus— better than by heaping up arguments—by promoting discoveries.” For the oldest extant manuscripts of the Avesta date only from the fourteenth century of our era, while the Sásánian inscriptions go back to the third, and could not, therefore, be set aside, even for a moment, as late forgeries; and if Anquetil's vocabulary furnished a key to these, it was manifest that the Pahlawí which he had learned from his dastúrs was the genuine language of Sásánian times; and that the occurrence in it of Semitic words, such as malká “king,” shanat “year,” ab “father,” shamsá “sun,” lá “not,” which Sir William Jones, regarding them as Arabic58a (though he afterwards recognised them as Chaldæan),58b cited as proof of the fictitious antiquity of the language in which they occurred, of Anquetil's credulity, and of his Pársí instructor's fraud, was an indisputable fact, whatever might be its true explanation. Tychsen insisted strongly on this point.
“This,” said he, “is a proof that the Pahlawí was used during the reign of the Sásánides, for it was from them that these inscriptions emanated, as it was by them—nay, by the first of them, Ardashír Bábagán—that the doctrine of Zoroaster was revived. One can now understand why the Zend books were translated into Pahlawí. Here, too, everything agrees, and speaks loudly for their antiquity and genuineness.”
58cThe Pahlawí inscriptions thus deciphered by de Sacy had been known in Europe since Samuel Flower published in the Philosophical Transactions for June, 1693 (pp. 775-7) the Pahlawí inscriptions. copies of them which he had made in 1667, while further copies appeared in the works of Chardin (1711), Niebuhr (1778), and, at a later date, of other travellers;59a but, though Hyde reproduced them in his book, de Sacy was the first to attempt with any success their interpretation.
Five years after the publication of de Sacy's Mémoires (1798), the Carmelite father, Paul de St. Barthélemy, published at St. Barthélemy. Rome his essay, De antiquitate et affinitate linguæ samscredamicæ et germanicæ, in which he defended the antiquity of the Avesta, and even uttered a conjecture as to the affinity of the language in which it is written with Sanskrit.
59bThe first important step in the next, and perhaps the greatest, achievement of Persian scholarship—to wit, the Decipherment of the Old Persian Inscriptions.-Grotefend. decipherment of the Persian cuneiform inscriptions (writings of which the character and language were alike unknown)—was made early in the nineteenth century by Grotefend, whose papers on this subject—models of clear reasoning and acute insight— have only recently been unearthed from the Archives of the Göttingen Royal Society of Sciences and published in the Nachrichten of that Society (September 13, 1893, pp. 571-616) by W. Meyer. Of these papers the first was originally read on September 4, 1802, the second on October 2nd, the third on November 13th of the same year, and the fourth on May 20, 1803. Till this time, though Tychsen and Münter had made vain attempts at decipherment, it was, as we have seen when examining Hyde's work, very generally held, even by men of learning, that these characters were not writing at all, but were either architectural ornaments, the work of worms or insects, or mason's marks and numerical signs. Grotefend, primarily impelled to this inquiry by a dispute with his friend Fiorillo as to the possibility of arriving at the meaning of inscriptions whereof the script and language were alike unknown or buried in oblivion, arrived in his first communication at the following important general conclusions: Grotefend's general conclusions. (1) That the figures constituting these inscriptions were graphic symbols; (2) that the inscriptions were trilingual, that is, that they consisted, as a rule, of three versions, each in a different language and script; (3) that the inscriptions which he proposed to explain, that is, those of the first class (the Old Persian) in particular, and also those of the second, consisted of actual letters, not of ideograms or logograms comparable to those employed in Assyrian and Chinese; (4) that all known cuneiform inscriptions were constant in direction, being in every case written horizontally from left to right.
From these general conclusions (all of which have since proved to be perfectly correct) Grotefend proceeded to Grotefend's method of procedure. examine more minutely two inscriptions of the first class, which he believed to be written in the so-called Zend (i.e., Avestic) language—a conjecture which, though not the truth, was near the truth—and which he correctly referred to “some ancient king of the Persians between Cyrus and Alexander,” in other words, to the Achæmenians.60a An examination of the Pahlawí inscriptions of the Sásánians, already deciphered by de Sacy, suggested to him the probability that the first word in the inscription was the name of a king of this dynasty, and the second his title. He then observed that that name which stood at the beginning of the second inscription was in the first placed after the title, which (again guided by the analogy of the Sásánian inscriptions) he rightly assumed to signify “King of Kings,” with a slight final modification, which he correctly conjectured to be the inflexion of the genitive case, from which he gathered that the two names in the first inscription were those of father and son. One of these names, which Tychsen had read Malkéusch, appeared to him to square best with Darius, whose name in the Books of Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah occurs in the form Dáriyávush (“Darjavesch”); another, read by Tychsen as Osch patscha, with Xerxes (“Khschhêrschê). For both these names consisted, in the Old Persian inscriptions, of seven separate characters (these being, as we now know, in the first, D. A. R. Y. V. U. SH, and in the second, K. SH. Y. A. R. SH. A), of which one (A) occurred three times, and three (R, Y, SH) twice, in the two names; and the assumption as to the reading of these names was confirmed by the order of the component letters of each. Now it was known from the accounts of the Greek historians that Darius was the son of Hystaspes, which name appeared in Anquetil's work in the native forms Gushtásp, Vishtásp, &c. and, from the analogy of the inscription of Xerxes, it appeared probable that Darius also in his inscription would mention this, his father's name. And, in effect, there occurred in the proper place in this inscription of Darius a group of ten letters, of which the last three (now known to represent H. Y. A.) had already been recognised as the case-ending of the genitive. Of the remaining seven, two—the third (SH) and fifth (A)—were already known, while, from what was common to the Greek and Avestic forms of the name, the fourth, sixth, and seventh might fairly be assumed to represent T, S, and P respectively. There remained the two initial letters, of which it was pretty evident that the first was a consonant (G or V), and the second a vowel (not U, already known, and therefore presumably I); but Grotefend actually read them as G. O. instead of V. I.
Such were the great and definite results of Grotefend's discoveries. Further than this he endeavoured to go; but, Grotefend's results. on the one hand, he was misled by his belief that the language of the inscriptions was identical with that of the Avesta, and by the fact that Anquetil's account of the latter was imperfect and in many details erroneous; and, on the other hand, the materials at his disposal were inadequate and did not supply sufficient data for full decipherment and interpretation. Hence his scheme of the values of the letters was, as we now know, scarcely even half correct, while his interpretations and transcriptions of the texts which he attacked were but approximations. Thus one of the Persepolitan inscriptions with which he especially dealt (Niebuhr, Pl. xxiv; Spiegel's Keilinschriften, ed. 1862, p. 48, B), is now known to read as follows:—
Dárayavush . Khsháyathiya . vazraka . Khsháyathiya . Khsháyathi-yánám . Khsháyathiya . dahyunám . Vishtáspahya . putra . Hakháma-nishiya . hya . imam . tacharam . akunaush.
That is to say:—
“Darius, the great king, the king of kings, the king of the provinces, the son of Vishtáspa, the Achæmenian, who made this temple.”
Grotefend's transcription and translation were as follows:—
Dârheûsch . Khshêhiôh . eghré . Khshêhiôh . Khshêhiohêtchâo . Khshehioh . Dâhûtchâo . Gòschtâspâhê . bûn . âkhêotchôschôh . Âh . ôoo . Môro . êzûtchûsch.
“Darius, rex fortis, rex regum, rex Daharum (filius) Hystaspis,
stirps mundi rectoris. In constellatione mascula. Môro
Yet, though Grotefend failed to accomplish all he attempted, few would have ventured even to attempt what he accom- Estimation of Grotefend's achievement. plished; and his method, and the discoveries to which it led, formed the starting-point of the further researches which ultimately resulted in the complete solution of this difficult enigma. De Sacy, whose discoveries had prepared the way for those of Grotefend, was the first to recognise the immense value of his results, and to make them more widely known, while the rival system of interpretation proposed by Saint-Martin met with but little acceptance.
63aThe next great advances in decipherment were made almost simultaneously in the years 1836-1837 by Lassen, Burnouf, Work of Rawlinson, Burnouf, and Lassen. and Rawlinson, the last of whom, working independently in Persia, without knowledge of what had been effected by Grotefend, succeeded in reading the names of Arsháma, Ariyárámna, Chaishpish, and Hakhámanish in the first paragraph of the great Behistun inscription of Darius. Burnouf had already made use of his knowledge of Sanskrit to elucidate the Avesta, both by the comparative method and by the use of Neriosengh's Sanskrit translation; and he now turned from the completion of his great work on the Yasna63b to an examination of the Persian cuneiform inscriptions, for the study of which the labours of the unfortunate traveller Schultz had furnished him with fresh materials from Alvand and Ván.63c His work was to some extent thrown into the shade by the more brilliant results of Lassen; but, besides reading the name of the Supreme Being, Ahuramazda, and some other words, and pointing out that the language of the inscriptions, though akin to that of the Avesta, was not identical with it, and that the writing did not, as a rule, express the short vowels except when they were initial, he first called attention to the list of names of countries contained in the great inscription of Darius. This last indication, communicated to Lassen in the summer of 1835, was fruitfully utilised by the latter for the fuller and more accurate determination of the values of the letters, and the demonstration of the existence of an inherent short a (as in Sanskrit) in many of the consonants, so that, for example, S.P.R.D. was shown by him to stand for Sparda. Within the next four years (up to 1840) Lassen's results had been further extended, elucidated, and corrected by Beer and Jacquet, while new materials collected by the late Claude James Rich, British Resident at Baghdad, had been rendered available by publication, and Westergaard had brought back fresh and more accurate copies of the Persepolitan inscriptions.
It is unnecessary in this place to trace further the progress of this branch of Persian studies, or to do more than mention the Further progress of the study of Old Persian. later discoveries of Loftus (1852) and Dieulafoy (1884) at Susa; the photographs taken at Persepolis in 1876 and the following years by Stolze, and published at Berlin in 1882 in two volumes entitled Persepolis; and the additional light thrown on the Old Persian language and script by such scholars as Bang, Bartholomae, Bollensen, Foy, Halévy, Hitzig, Hübschmann, Kern, Müller, Ménant, Sayce, Thumb, and others. Nor need the wild theories as to the talismanic character of the inscriptions propounded by M. le Comte de Gobineau in his Traité des écritures cunéiformes (Paris, 1864) detain us even for a moment. A few words must, however, be said as to Oppert's ingenious theory as to the origin and nature of the script.
From the Old Persian character the Assyrian differs in one most essential respect, in spite of the superficial resemblance of Oppert's theory as to the origin of the Persian cuneiform alphabet. these two cuneiform scripts. The former, as we have seen, is truly alphabetical (the alphabet consisting of forty-one symbols, whereof four are logograms, or abbreviations for the constantly-occurring words “Ahuramazda,” “King,” “Land,” and “Earth,” while one is a mark of punctuation to separate the words from one another); the latter is a syllabary, or rather an immense collection of ideograms or logograms, comparable to the Chinese or Egyptian hieroglyphics. An Assyrian graphic symbol usually connotes, in other words, an idea, not the sound representing that idea, and has, therefore, only a casual relation to its phonetic equivalent, so that, for instance, an ideogram from the older Akkadian could continue to be used in Assyrian with the same meaning but with a different phonetic value. Oppert's theory is that the Old Persian letters, invented about the time of the fall of the Medic and rise of the Persian (Achæmenian) power, were derived from the Assyrian ideograms as follows. An Assyrian ideogram was given its Persian phonetic equivalent, or, in other words, read as a Persian ideogram; this ideogram was then simplified and used as a letter having the value of the initial sound of the Persian word; and this process was continued until enough graphic symbols, or letters, had been formed to represent all the Persian phonetic elements. Thus the Persians, in the sixth century before Christ, made this great advance from a system of ideograms (probably hieroglyphic or pictorial in their first origin) to a real alphabet; but their analysis stopped short at the separation of a short vowel following a consonant, and therefore they employed separate characters, for example, for the syllables ka, ku; ga, gu; ja, ji; da, di, du; ma, mi, mu, &c.
We see here another illustration of the extent to which Persia, from very early times, has been under Semitic influence, first Assyrian, then Aramaic, and lastly Arabian. The Assyrian influence is as unmistakable in the sculptures of Persepolis Assyrian influence on Persian. and Behistun as in the inscriptions; and, as Spiegel has well shown (Eranische Alterthumskunde, vol. i, pp. 446-485), it can be traced with equal clearness in the domain of religion, probably also of politics, social organisation, jurisprudence, and war. “The great King, the King of kings, the King in Persia, the King of the Provinces,” was heir in far more than mere style and title to “the great King, the King of Assyria,” with whose might Rabshakeh threatened Hezekiah. And this relation perhaps explains the enigma presented by the Huzvárish element in Pahlawí which so long misled students as to the true character of the latter.
Why did the Pahlawí scribe, fully acquainted with the alphabetical use of the Pahlawí character, write the old title “King Discussion of a peculiarity of the Pahlawí script. of kings” as Malkán-malká when (as we know from the contemporary historian Ammianus Mar-cellinus) his soldiers and people hailed him (as they still hail their monarch) as Sháhán-sháh—the later equivalent of the old Khsháyathiya Khsháyathiyánám? Why did he write bisrá for meat and lahmá for bread when (as we learn from the author of the Fihrist, and other well-informed writers of the early Muhammadan period) he read these Aramaic words into Persian as gúsht and nán? To us it seems unnatural enough, though even we do pretty much the same thing when we read “i.e.” as “that is,” “e.g.” as “for example,” and “&” or “&” as “and.” Yet how much easier and more natural was such a procedure to a people accustomed to scripts wholly composed of ideograms and symbols appealing directly to the intelligence without invoking aid from the auditory sense? If the Assyrian adopted the Akkadian logogram connoting the idea of “father,” and read for it his own and not the original foreign equivalent, why should the Persian hesitate to treat the Aramaic words malká, bisrá, lahmá and the like, in the same way, as though they too were mere ideograms rather than groups of letters? The general use of Pahlawí, it is true, belongs, as we have already seen, to a time when Assyria had long passed away, viz., the Sásánian period (A.D. 226-640), and the early Muhammadan times immediately succeeding it, but it has been traced back to the third and fourth centuries before Christ, and may in all likelihood have existed at a yet earlier date. In the essentially conservative East there is nothing very wonderful in this; and the siyáq, universally used for keeping accounts even at the present day in Persia, presents a somewhat analogous phenomenon, for the symbols used therein instead of the ordinary Arabic numerals are in reality mutilated and abbreviated forms of the Arabic names of the different numbers, a fact which the Persian accountant who uses them often forgets and occasionally does not know.
Before speaking further of Pahlawí, however, something more must be said of the continued progress of Avestic studies. Further progress of Avesta studies. We have seen what help was derived from Sanskrit by Burnouf and Lassen in their study of the Achæmenian Inscriptions, and have already alluded incidentally to the monumental work on the Yasna published by the former in 1833-1835. Working with the copious materials collected by Anquetil, which had long lain neglected in the Bibliothèque Nationale, he first set himself, by careful collation of the MSS., to establish a correct text of this portion of the Avesta. For the elucidation of this he relied chiefly on Neriosengh's Sanskrit translation, as representing the oldest traditional interpretation available to him, which, however, he weighed, tested, and proved with the most careful and judicious criticism; while at the same time he sought to establish the grammar and lexicography of the Avestic language. But he was content to show the way to others, and to place the study of the Avesta on a really sound and scientific basis: the large volume which he published elucidates primarily only the first of the seventy-two chapters composing the Yasna, which is itself but one of the five divisions (the liturgical) of the Zoroastrian Scriptures; and though at a later date (1844-1846), he subjected the ninth chapter of the Yasna to a similar though briefer examination, he carried no further his investigations in this field.
The appearance of Bopp's great work on the Comparative Grammar of the Aryan, or Indo-Europæan, languages about “The War of the Methods.” this period brings us to the next great controversy which raged round the Avesta—that of the Traditional and Comparative Schools. By this time no sane and competent scholar had any doubt as to the genuineness of the book itself; the question now was as to the worth of the traditional interpretation of the Zoroastrians. Burnouf, in so far as he relied on the traditional explanation of Neriosengh (for the older Pahlawí translations were not at that time sufficiently understood to be of much use), belonged to the former school; Bopp, pre-eminently a Sanskritist and Comparative Philologist, to whom the study of the Avesta was a mere branch of Sanskrit Philology, to the latter. The publication (1852-1858) of Westergaard's and Spiegel's editions of the text greatly enlarged the circle of students who were able to attack on their own account the problems presented by the Avesta; and what Darmesteter calls “the war of the methods” (i.e., the Traditional and the Comparative) soon broke out on all sides. Of the Traditional School the most prominent representatives were, after Burnouf, Spiegel, and Justi, and, in a lesser degree, de Harlez and Geiger: of the Comparative School, Benfey and Roth. Windischmann held a middle position, while Haug, at first an ardent follower of Benfey, returned from India fully convinced of the value of the Pársí tradition, and thereafter became one of the pioneers of Pahlawí studies, a path in which he was followed with even more signal success by West, “whose unparalleled learning and acumen,” as Geldner says,69a “have raised up Pahlawí studies from the lowest grade of science,” so that “indirectly he Geldner's encomium on Darmesteter and his “historical method.” became the reformer of Avesta studies.” But it was by that incomparable man, the late James Darmesteter, that the judicious and almost exhaustive use of the traditional materials (combined, of course, with a careful study of the texts themselves) was carried to its fullest extent, and it is pleasant to find Geldner, whose methods of textual criticism he had so severely criticised, describing his work and methods in the following generous words:—”
69b“From the beginning an eager partisan of the Sásánian translation and thoroughly grounded in Pahlawí, he in no wise based his interpretation on this alone, but recognised that, amidst the strife as to the best method, only a comprehensive enlargement of the field of vision could lead from groping and guessing to clear and certain knowledge. His immediate sources of help are the native translations, carefully used in detail, and thoroughly studied as a whole, and the entire learning accumulated therein. His indirect means of help is the entire tradition from Sásánian times down to the present day, the whole Pahlawí and Pázand literature, the Sháhnáma, the Arabian chroniclers and historical notices of the Ancients, personal information derived from living Pársís, their customs and ideas, the ritual of the present time, which is likewise a piece of unfalsified tradition, and, on the linguistic side, the entire material of Íránian philology in all its degrees of development and dialectical variations, and likewise Sanskrit, especially that of the Vedas. The dispositions and beginnings had, for the most part, been already made before him, although imperfectly, and with insufficient means, but Darmesteter combined them and carried them on to a certain conclusion. The ripest fruit of these endeavours is his most recent monumental work: le Zend-Avesta, traduction nouvelle avec commen-taire historique et philologique (Annales du Musée Guimet, vols. xxi, xxii, xxiv, Paris, 1892-3). Darmesteter rejuvenated the traditional school, and is properly speaking the creator of what he calls the historical method of the study of the Avesta, for the elucidation of which he collected an incomparably rich material. How far indeed he succeeded in this, how far as regards points of detail he overshot the mark, the Future must decide.”
Let us now return to the history of the decipherment of the Pahlawí inscriptions and texts—that branch of Persian philology Continuation of the decipherment of Pahlawí. in which, despite the fruitful labours of de Sacy and his successors, of whom we shall speak immediately, and the copious illumination of this difficult study which we owe in recent times to West, Andreas, Nöldeke, Darmesteter, Salemann, and others, most yet remains to be achieved.
De Sacy's brilliant attempt to read some of the Sásánian inscriptions at Naqsh-i-Rustam (situated on the cliffs which The Naqsh-iRustam Sásánian inscriptions. lie to the right of the Pulwár river, at the point where the valley through which its course has hitherto lain debouches into the Marv-Dasht plain between Síwand and Zargún, and consequently opposite Perse-polis, which lies across the river, some two or three miles eastward) has been already mentioned (pp. 57-8 supra). The inscription which he especially studied was one of the oldest, if not the oldest, of those which the Sásánian monarchs cut on these rocks in imitation of their Achæmenian predecessors, for it dates from the reign of Ardashír (Artakhshatr) the son of Pápak, the founder of this dynasty (A.D. 226-241). It is written in two forms of Pahlawí (the so-called Chaldæan and Sásánian), each having its own peculiar script, and is accompanied by a Greek translation, which runs as follows:—
70a “
The Sásánian Pahlawí, when transliterated, runs something like this:—
“PATKARÍ ZANÁ MAZDAYASN BAGÍ ARTAKHSHATR, MALKÁN MALKÁ AÍRÁN, MINÚ CHITRÍ MIN YAZTÁN, BARÁ PÁPAKÍ MALKÁ.”
71aThe English translation is:—
“THE EFFIGY OF THAT MAZDA-WORSHIPPING DIVI-NITY ARTAKHSHATR, KING OF KINGS OF ÍRÁN (PERSIA), OF SPIRITUAL ORIGIN FROM THE GODS, SON OF PÁPAK THE KING.”
Encouraged by the results of this investigation, de Sacy proceeded in his third and fourth memoirs to examine the Application of de Sacy's results to numismatology. Pahlawí legends on certain Sásánian coins, as well as other inscriptions from Behistun of the same period. How his labours formed the starting-point for Grotefend's attempt to decipher the Old Persian cuneiform inscriptions we have already seen (pp. 60-61 supra). The numismatic portion of his work was continued by Ouseley (1801), who succeeded in reading the legends on some twoscore Sásánian coins; and also (1808-1813) by Tychsen.
The character in which the Pahlawí books are written differs considerably from that of the contemporary monuments Pahlawí of inscriptions and books. (inscriptions and coins) of the Sásánians, and is far more ambiguous. It must be remembered that, with the exception of the fragments of Pahlawí papyrus discovered some twenty-two years ago in the Fayyúm in Egypt, and hitherto unpublished and but partially deciphered, the oldest specimen of written Pahlawí goes back only to A.D. 1323—that is, is subsequent by more than a thousand years to the inscription cited above. During this period (for the last half of which the Pahlawí script had ceased to be used save by the Zoroastrian priests for the transcription of works already extant) the written character had undergone considerable degeneration, so that characters originally quite distinct had gradually assumed the same form, thus giving rise to polyphony, or the multiple values of single characters. This polyphony already existed to some extent in the inscriptions, but in the book-Pahlawí it has undergone so great an extension that, to take only one instance, a single character now stands for the four values z, d, g, y, each of which had in the inscriptions its separate graphic symbol. Hence the difficulty of the book-Pahlawí, and hence the value of the Sásánian inscriptions in its elucidation. This value Marc Müller's essay. Joseph Müller, professor at Munich, thoroughly recognised in his Essai sur la langue Pehlvie, published in the Journal Asiatique of April, 1839, which essay, as Haug says, marks a fresh epoch in Pahlawí studies. Amongst the Zoroastrians, especially amongst the Pársís of Bombay, a traditional but corrupt method of reading the Pahlawí books had been preserved, which resulted in a monstrous birth of utterly fictitious words, never used by any nation either in speech or writing, such as boman (really bará) “son,” modá (really malyá) “word,” Anhoma (really Awharmazd) “God,” jamnuntan (really yemaleluntan) “to speak,” and the like. In each instance the ambiguous Pahlawí character admitted of this reading, as it admitted of a dozen others, but a comparison with the less ambiguous inscriptional Pahlawí sufficed in many cases to establish the correct form, and this control it was Müller's merit to have introduced, though naturally it was not in every case vouchsafed to him to arrive at the correct reading.
Before going further, it will be proper to say something more as to the essential peculiarity of Pahlawí to which we have already repeatedly alluded, namely, its Huzvárish or Zavárishn element of Aramaic words more or less defaced in many cases by the addition of Persian inflexional terminations and “phonetic complements.” When a Pahlawí text is read, a large proportion of the words composing it are found to be Semitic, not Íránian, and, to be more precise, to be drawn from an Aramaic dialect closely akin to Syriac and Chaldæan. Now since an ordinary modern Persian text also contains a large proportion of Semitic (in this case Arabic) words, which are actually read as they are written, and are, in fact, foreign words as completely incorporated in Persian as are the Greek, Latin, French, and other exotic words which together constitute so large a portion of the modern English vocabulary in our own language, it was at first thought that the Aramaic element in Pahlawí was wholly comparable to the Arabic element in modern Persian. But a more careful examination showed that there was an essential difference between the two cases. However extensively one language may borrow from another, there is a limit which cannot be exceeded. It would be easy to pick out sentences of modern Persian written in the high-flown style of certain ornate writers in which all the substantives, all the adjectives, and all the verbal nouns were Arabic, and in which, moreover, Arabic citations and phrases abounded; yet the general structure of the sentence, the pronouns, and the auxiliary verbs would and must continue to be Persian. Similarly in a sentence like “I regard this expression of opinion as dangerous,” only four of the eight words employed are really of English descent, yet the sentence is thoroughly English, and it is inconceivable that the pronouns “I” and “this,” or the particles “of” and “as,” should be replaced by equivalents of foreign extraction. In Pahlawí, however, the case is quite different. Haug goes, perhaps, a trifle too far when he says (Essay on Pahlawí, pp. 120-121) “all the case-signs and even the plural suffixes in the nouns; all the personal, demonstrative, interrogative and relative pronouns; all the numerals from one to ten; the most common verbs (including the auxiliaries) such as ‘to be, to go, to come, to wish, to eat, to sleep, to write, &c.’; almost all the prepositions, adverbs, and conjunctions, and several important terminations for the formation of nouns, as well as a large majority of the words in general (at all events in the Sásánian inscriptions), are of Semitic origin;” yet in the main such is the case, and “the verbal terminations, the suffixed pronouns and the construction of the sentence” are often the only Íránian part of the Pahlawí phrase, though they are its essential and characteristic part. But in addition to this we have a number of monstrous, hybrid words, half Aramaic, half Persian, which no rational being can imagine were ever really current in speech. Thus the Semitic root meaning “to write” consists of the three radicals K, T, B, and the third person plural of the imperfect is yektibún (Arabic, yaktubún), while the Persian verb is nabishtan, napishtan, or navishtan. The Pahlawí scribe, however, wrote yektibún-tan, but assuredly never so read it: to him yektibún, though a significant inflected word in Aramaic, was a mere logogram or ideogram standing for napish-, to which he then added the appropriate Persian termination. So likewise for the Persian word mard, “man,” he wrote the Semitic gabrá, but when he wished the alternative form mardum to be read, he indicated this by the addition of the “phonetic complement,” and wrote gabrá-um.
The analogies to this extraordinary procedure which exist in Assyrian have already been pointed out. In the older Túránian language of Akkad “father” was adda. “When the Assyrians,” says Haug, “wished to write ‘father,’ they used the first character, ad or at, of adda, but pronounced it ab, which was their own word for ‘father’; and to express ‘my father,’ they wrote atuya, but read it abuya; u being the Assyrian nominative termination, and ya the suffix meaning ‘my,’ which, in the writing, were added to the foreign word at.” So in like manner the Pahlawí scribe who wished to write “father” wrote abitar for pitar (pidar), the Assyrian ab being used as a mere ideogram, of which the Persian equivalent was indicated by the “phonetic complement” -tar.
Another curious (and, in this instance, valuable) feature of the Pahlawí script was that in the case of a Persian word recognised at that time as compound and capable of analysis, each separate element was represented by a Semitic or Huzvárish equivalent. Take, for instance, the common Persian verb pindáshtan, “to think, deem.” A modern Persian has no idea that it is capable of analysis, or is other than a simple verb; but the Pahlawí scribe was conscious of its compound character, and wrote accordingly pavan (= pa, “for”) háná (= in, “this”) yakhsanún-tan (= dáshtan, “to hold”); and Nöldeke has called attention to a similar analysis of the common word magar (“unless,” “if not”), which is represented by two Aramaic words, or Huzvárish elements, of which the first signifies “not” and the second “if.” And this principle has another curious and instructive application. The modern Persian pronoun of the first person singular is man, which is derived from the stem of the oblique cases of the corresponding Old Persian pronoun adam (= Avestic azem), whereof the genitive is maná. Of this fact the Pahlawí script takes cognisance in writing the Semitic lí, “to me” (or “of me”), as the Huzvárish equivalent of man.
These considerations, apart from external evidence, might have suggested to a very acute mind the belief that the peculiarities of Pahlawí lay almost entirely in the script, and that they disappeared when it was read aloud. Fortunately, however, there is sufficient external evidence to prove that this was actually the case.
First, we have the direct testimony of Ammianus Marcellinus, who says (xix, 2, 11): “Persis Saporem et Saansaan [i.e., Sháhán-sháh] adpellantibus et Pyrosen [i.e., Piruz or Pêrôz], quod rex regibus imperans et bellorum victor interpretatur.” This notice refers to Shápúr II (A.D. 309-379), whose title stands on his coins Malkán malká, but was in the actual speech of the people, then as now, Sháhán-sháh.
Secondly, we have the direct testimony of the learned author of the Fihrist, Muḥammad b. Isḥáq (A.D. 987-8), who relies here, as in other places where he speaks of matters appertaining to Sásánian Persia, on the authority of that remarkable man Ibnu'l Muqaffa'. Ibnu'l-Muqaffa', a Persian Zoroastrian who flourished about the middle of the eighth century of our era, made a doubtfully sincere profession of Islám, and was put to death about A.D. 760. He was reckoned by Ibn Muqla, the wazír and calligraphist († A.H. 939), as one of the ten most eloquent speakers and writers of Arabic, and Ibn Khaldún the Moor pays a similar tribute to his command of that language; and with this he combined a thorough knowledge of Pahlawí, and translated several important works from that language into Arabic, of which, unfortunately, only one of the least interesting (the Book of Kalíla and Dimna) has survived to our time. Relying on the authority of this learned man, the author of the Fihrist, after describing seven different scripts (Kitába) used in pre-Muhammadan times by the Persians, continues as follows, in a passage to which Quatremère first called attention in 1835, but of which the original text was not published till 1866, when Charles Ganneau printed it with a new translation and some critical remarks on Quatremère's rendering:—
“And they have likewise a syllabary [hijá, “a spelling,” not kitába, “a script”] called Zawárishn [or Huzvárish], wherein they write the letters either joined or separate, comprising about a thousand vocables, that thereby they may distinguish words otherwise ambiguous. For instance, when one desires to write gúsht, which means ‘meat,’ he writes bisrá like this [here follows the word written in the Pahlawí script], but reads it as gúsht; and similarly when one desires to write nán, which means bread, he writes lahmá like this [again follows the Pahlawí word], but reads it nán; and so whatever they wish to write, save such things as have no need of a like substitution, which you write as they are pronounced.”
77aThirdly, we have the fact of the complete disappearance of the whole Aramaic or Huzvárish element in even the earliest specimens of Persian written in the Arabic character, which could hardly have occurred if these words had ever been used in speech, but which was natural enough if they belonged to the script only, and were mere ideograms.
Fourthly, we have the tradition surviving amongst the Zoroastrians to the present day, a tradition faulty enough in detail, as we have already seen, but quite clear on the general principle that Huzvárish words ought to be read as Persian. Hence the so-called Pázend and Pársí books, which are merely transcriptions of Pahlawí books into the unambiguous Avestic and Arabic characters respectively, all the Huzvárish, or Aramaic, words being replaced by their Persian equivalents, or supposed equivalents.
It may be well that we should conclude this chapter with Definition of terms. a recapitulation of the various terms that have been used in speaking of the ancient languages of Persia, an explanation of their precise meaning, and a statement of their etymology, where this is known.
Medic, the language of Media, i.e., the western part of what Medic. we now call Persia, the Máda of Darius's inscription, the Máhát (plural of Máh, which occurs as a prefix in Máh-Baṣra, Máh-Kúfa, Mah-Naháwand, &c.) of the early Arabian geographers, a region having for its capital the ancient Ecbatana (Hagmatána of the inscriptions), now called Hamadán. Of this language we have no remains, unless we accept Darmesteter's view, that it is identical with the language of the Avesta, or Oppert's, that it is the language which occupies the second place (between the Old Persian and the Assyrian versions) in the Achæmenian trilingual inscriptions. It was in all probability very closely akin to Old Persian, and certain words of it preserved by writers like Herodotus make it appear likely that from it are descended some of the modern dialects of Persian.
Avestic, the language of the Avesta, often improperly called “Zend,” sometimes also termed “Old Bactrian,” a most Avestic. undesirable name, since it is, as we have seen, quite as likely that its home was in Atropatene (Ázarbáyján) in the north-west as in Bactria in the north-east. In it is written the Avesta, and the Avesta only; of which, however, certain ancient hymns called Gáthás are in a different dialect, much more archaic than that in which the remaining portions of the book are composed. A special character, constructed from, but far superior to, the Pahlawí script, is used for writing it. The word Avesta can scarcely be traced back beyond Sásánian times, though Oppert believes it to be intended by the word abastám in Darius's Behistun inscription (iv, 64). It appears in Pahlawí as Avisták (Darmesteter, Apasták), in Syriac as Apastágá, in Arabic as Abastáq. Andreas is inclined to derive it from the Old Persian upastá (“help, support”) and to interpret it as meaning “ground-text.” This, at any rate, is its “Zend.” signification in the term “Avesta and Zend,” which gave rise to the misleading “Zend-Avesta”: the “Avesta” is the original text of the Zoroastrian scripture, and the “Zend” is the running Pahlawí “explanation” (translation and commentary) which generally accompanies it. If, therefore, the term “Zend language” be used at all, it should mean the language of the Zend, or explanation, i.e., the Pahlawí language; but as it was applied in Europe, owing to a misunderstanding of the terms, to the language of the original text, it is best to drop the expression “Zend language” altogether.
Old Persian is the term which denotes the ancient language of Persia proper (Persis, Fárs), the official language of the Old Persian. Achæmenian inscriptions, and without doubt the speech of Darius, Xerxes, and the other kings of this house. It is known to us by the inscriptions, and by them only.
Pahlawí, as shown by Olshausen, properly means Parthian; for as the ancient mithra, chithra, go into mihr, chihr, so Pahlawí. Parthava, the Old Persian name for Parthia, goes through the analogous but hypothetical forms Parhav, Palhav, into Pahlav, a term applied, under its Arabic form Fahlav, by the old Arabian geographers to a certain region of Central and Western Persia said to include the towns of Isfahán, Ray, Hamadán and Naháwand, and a part of Ázarbáyján. As has been already said, we know but little of the Parthians from native sources; so little that it is not certain whether they were an Íránian or a Túránian race; the national legend takes so little account of them—whom it calls Mulúku'ṭ-ṭawá'if, “tribal kings”—that one single page of the Sháhnáma amply suffices to contain all that Firdawsí (who speaks of them as illiterate barbarians unworthy of commemoration) has to say of them; and the Sásánian claim to have revived the national life and faith crushed by Alexander is to some extent borne out by the Greek inscriptions of the earlier Parthian coins, and the title “Phil-Hellenes” which it pleased their kings to assume. Yet the name of the “Pahlavas” was known in India, and survives to the present day in Persia as an epithet of the speech and the deeds of the old heroic days—the days of the pahlawáns, “heroes,” or mighty warriors. As applied to the language, however, it has a much less precise signification in Persia than in Europe, where its application is definitely restricted to Sásánian or “Middle” Persian written in its appropriate script with the Aramaic or Huzvárish element of which we have spoken. But the “Pahlawí” in which Firdawsí's legendary monarchs and heroes indite their letters, the “high-piping Pahlaví” of 'Umar Khayyám and Háfiz, the Fahlaviyyát, or verses in dialect, cited in many Persian works, and the “Pahlawí” mentioned by Ḥamdu'llah Mustawfí of Qazwín, a historical and geographical writer of the fourteenth century, as being spoken in various parts of Persia, especially in the north-west, is a much less definite thing. Tahmúrath, “the Binder of Demons” (Dív-band), was the first, according to Firdawsí, to reduce to writing “not one but nearly thirty tongues, such as Greek (Rúmí), Arabic (Tází), Persian (Pársí), Indian, Chinese and Pahlawí, to express in writing that which thou hearest spoken.”80a Now Tahmúrath was the predecessor of Jamshíd, the Yima of the Avesta and Yama of the Hindú books, an entirely mythical personage belonging to the common Indo-Íránian Legend, that is to say, to the remotest Aryan times, long before Avestic or Old Persian, let alone Middle Persian, were differentiated from the primitive Aryan tongue. When, on the other hand, a writer like the above-mentioned Ḥamdu'lláh Mustawfí says that “Pahlawí” is spoken in a certain village, he means no more than did a villager of Quhrúd (a district in the mountains situated one stage south of Káshán) who, in reply to the writer's inquiry as to the dialect there spoken, described it as “Furs-i-qadím,” “Ancient Persian.” With the Persians themselves (except the Zoroastrians) the term Pahlawí, as a rule, means nothing more precise than this; but in this book it is, unless otherwise specified, employed in the narrower acceptation of “Middle” or “Sásánian Persian.” It is only so far Parthian that the earliest traces of it occur on the 'Abd Zohar and sub-Parthian coins of the third and fourth centuries before Christ, that is, during the Parthian period.
81aHuzvárish, Zawárish, or Zawárishn has been already explained, but the derivation of the word itself is more doubtful. Huzvárish. Many rather wild etymologies have been proposed, such as Dastúr Húshangjí's huzván-ásúr, “tongue of Assyria,” and Derenbourg's “há Súrsí,” “this is Syriac”; but Haug's explanation, that it is a Persian verbal noun from a verb zuvárídan, “to grow old, obsolete,” or a similar verb, supposed by Darmesteter to have “grown old and obsolete” to such an extent that it is only preserved in its original sense in the Arabic zawwara (verbal noun tazwír), “he forced, concealed, distorted, or falsified [the meaning of a text], he deceived, tricked, misled,” is the most probable. Anyhow a graphic system which writes, for example, “aêtûno yemalelûnt aigh” for words intended to be read “êtûn goyand ku” (which is the Pázend or Pársí equivalent of the Huzvárish) may fairly be described as a “forcing,” “concealing” or “distorting” of the speech which it is intended to represent.
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,82a 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:—
Chi khush bí mihrabúní az du sar bí,
Ki yak-sar mihrabúní dard-i-sar bí!
Agar Majnún dil-i-shúrída'í dásht,
Dil-i-Laylá az un shúrída-tar bí!“How sweet is love on either side confessed!
One-sided love is ache of brain at best.
Though Majnún bore a heart distraught with love,
Not less distraught the heart in Laylá's breast!”
In this quatrain the only dialect-forms are bí (= buvad, “is, will be”), and the substitution (common to most of the dialects, and prevalent to a great extent in the standard Persian speech of the present day, especially in the South) of the ú-sound for á in un, mihrabúní.
Magar shír u palangí, ay dil, ay dil!
Ba-mú dá'im bi-jangí, ay dil, ay dil!
Agar dastum futí, khúnat vi-rízhum:
Vi-vínum tá chi rangí, ay dil, ay dil!“Lion or leopard fierce thou surely art,
Ever at war with us, O heart, O heart!
If I can catch thee, I will spill thy blood,
And see of what strange hue thou art, O heart!”
Here ba-mú = bá má, “with us”; while dastum, vi-rízhum, and vi-vínum are equivalent respectively to dastam (for bi-dastam, “into my hand”), bi-rízam “I will shed”), and bi-bínam (“I will see”).
Vi-shum, váshum, azín 'álam ba-dar shum!
Vi-shum, az Chín u Má-chín dír-tar shum!
Vi-shum, az Ḥájiyán-i-Ḥaj bi-pursum
Ki ‘í' dírí bas-é', yá dír-tar shum?’“Out of this world I will arise, and fare
To China and beyond; and when I'm there
I'll ask the Pilgrims of the Pilgrimage,
‘Is here enough? If not, direct me where!’”
Here vi-shum = bi-shavam, “I will go”; vásham = either básham, “I will stay, abide,” or báz shavam, “I will again go,” or “I will go back”; dír-tar = dúr-tar, “further”; í' = ín, “this”; bas-é = bas-ast, “is enough.”
Besides these, however, many other well-known poets, such as Sa'dí, Ḥáfidh, Pindár or Bundár of Ray, Bus-ḥáq (Abú Isḥáq), the gastronomic poet and parodist of Shíráz, and others enumerated in my article in the Royal Asiatic Society's Journal for October, 1895 (pp. 773-825), on “the Poetry of the Persian Dialects,” composed occasional verses in various forms of patois, though these present, save in the best and most ancient manuscripts, so hopelessly corrupt a text that it is very difficult to make anything of them. One very good and ancient manuscript, dated A.H. 635, of a probably unique Persian work on the history of the Seljúqs, entitled Kitábu Ráḥati'ṣ-Ṣudúr … fí tawáríkhi Kay-Khusraw wa Ál-i-Saljúq, composed by Najmu'd-Dín Abú Bakr Muḥammad b. 'Alí b. Sulaymán b. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. al-Ḥusayn b. Himmat ar-Ráwandí, and now forming part of the magnificent library of the late M. Charles Schefer, contains numerous Fahlawiyyát, or verses in dialect, which appeared to me, on a cursory examination, to merit, in spite of their difficulty, a careful study on account of the age of the manuscript and the presumable correctness of the text.
In the notices of poets and poetesses (eighty-nine in number) contained in ch. v, § 6 of Ḥamdu'lláh Mustawfí's excellent Táríkh-i-guzída, or “Select History,” compiled in A.D. 1330, the following are mentioned as having composed verses in dialect (where such verses are actually cited, an asterisk is prefixed to the poet's name):—*Abu'l-Májid Ráyagání of the Qazwín district (late thirteenth century); Amír Ká', also of Qazwín; *Utánj Zanjání(?); Pindár or Bundár of Ray; *Júláha (“the Weaver”) of Abhar; *'Izzu'd-Dín of Hamadán; *Káfí-i-Karachí (thirteenth century). The celebrated poet, traveller, and Isma'ílí propagandist Náṣir-i-Khusraw mentions in his Travels (Safar-náma, edited with a French translation by Schefer, Paris, 1881, p. 6 of the text) that on his westward journey in A.D. 1046 he was questioned by the poet Qaṭrán at Tabríz as to the meaning of certain verses in dialect of the poet Manjík, so that we have definite proof that such dialect-poetry has existed in Persia from the eleventh century till the present day. Asadí's Persian Lexicon (Lughat-i-Furs), edited by Dr. Paul Horn from the unique Vatican MS. (Berlin, 1897), another eleventh century work, also cites here and there verses in dialect, called, as usual, “Pahlawí.” Of prose works in dialect the two most remarkable are both heterodox, viz., the Jáwidán-i-Kabír, one of the principal books of the Ḥurúfí sect which arose in the days of Tamerlane (fourteenth century), and is partly written in a West Persian dialect;86a and a romantic history of the Bábí insurrection in Mázandarán in 1849, written in the dialect of that province, and published by Dorn, with a translation in vol. v of the Mélanges Asiatiques (St. Petersburg, 1866), pp. 377, et seqq.
The best-known dialects of Persian spoken at the present day are those of Mázandarán, Gílán, and Tálish in the north; List of the more important dialects. Samnán in the north-east; Káshán, Quhrúd, and Ná'in in the centre, with the peculiar Gabrí dialect of the Zoroastrians inhabiting Yazd, Kirmán, Rafsinján, &c. Síwand in the south; Luristán, Behbehán (which possesses a real poet, Riḍá-quli Khán by name), and Kurdistán in the west; but many other dialects, some entirely unknown to Europeans, doubtless exist in out-of-the-way places. Of those hitherto hardly studied the Bakhtiyárí idiom in the west and the Sístání in the east most deserve careful attention.
Írán, Êrân, Airân, the Airiyana of the Avesta, is the land of the Aryans (Ariya, Airiya of the Avesta, Sanskrit Árya), and had therefore a wider signification than the term Persia, which is equivalent to Írán in the modern sense, has now. Bactria (Balkh), Sogdiana (Sughd), and Khwárazm were Íránian lands, and the Afghans and Kurds are Íránian peoples.
↩The p-sound does not exist in Arabic, and is replaced by f. Fárs, Isfahán, &c., are simply the arabicised forms of Párs, Ispahán. The adjective Fársí (or Pársi) denotes the official language of Persia (which is at the same time the mother-tongue of the great majority of its inhabitants, and the national language in as full a sense as English is the national language of Great Britain and Ireland), and in this application is equivalent to Írání. As applied to a man, however, Fársí means a native of the province of Fárs. In India Pársí (Parsee) means of the Persian (i.e., the ancient Persian, or Zoroastrian) religion, and the term has been re-imported in this sense into Persia. To call the province of Fárs “Fársistán,” as is sometimes done by European writers, is quite incorrect, for the termination -istán (“place of,” “land of”) is added to the name of a people to denote the country which they inhabit (e.g., Afghánistán, Balúchistán), but not to the name of a country or province.
↩Strabo, xv, 724.
↩Notably by the Battle of Dhú Qár in the reign of Khusraw Parwíz (A.D. 604-610).
↩Darmesteter, Études Iraniennes, vol. i, p. 7.
↩The best editions of these inscriptions are those of Kossowicz (St. Petersburg, 1872) and Spiegel (Leipsic, 1862). In the former the texts are given both in the cuneiform and in the Roman character and the translation in Latin. In the latter the texts are transliterated and the translation is in German.
↩West, “On the Extent, Language, and Age of Pahlawi Literature,” p. 402; also the excellent account of Pahlawi Literature by the same writer in Geiger and Kuhn's Grundriss der Iranischen Philologie, vol. ii, pp. 75-129. West divides the Pahlawí literature into translations of Avesta texts (141,000 words), texts on religious subjects (446,000 words), and texts on non-religious subjects (41,000 words): total, about 628,000 words.
↩West places the compilation of the Dînkart, Bundahish, and Arda Virâf Nâmak in the ninth century of our era (loc. cit., pp. 433, 436, 437), and regards it as “unlikely that any of the commentators quoted in the Pahlawí translations of the Avesta could have written later than the sixth century.” The compilation of the Bahman Yasht, however, is placed by Professor Darmesteter as late as A.D. 1099-1350 (Études Iraniennes, vol. ii, p. 69). The interesting Gujastak Abálish (edited and translated by A. Barthélemy, Paris, 1887) describes a controversy between a Zoroastrian priest and the heretic Abálish held in the presence of the Caliph al-Ma'mún (A.D. 813-833), and therefore obviously cannot have been composed earlier than the ninth century.
↩It is even said that a debased Arabic script is still used by the peasants inhabiting the valleys of the Alpuxarras mountains in their love-letters.
↩Translated into German by Professor Nöldeke of Strassburg, and published in vol. iv of the Beiträge zur Kunde des Indogermanischen Sprachen on the occasion of Professor Benfey's attainment of the fiftieth year of his Doctorate, as well as in the form of the tirage à part (Göttingen, 1879) here cited (pp. 38-9, and n. 3 on former). The Pahlawí text in the original and in the Roman characters, with Gujarátí translation, edited by Kaikobâd Âdarbâd Nosherwân, was published at Bombay in 1896.
↩The others are the Book of Zarír and the Story of Khusraw Kawádhán and his Page. The former has been translated by Geiger in the Sitzungs-berichte d. philos.-philolog. u. histor. Class, 1890, and reviewed by Nöldeke in vol. xlvi (1892) of the Zeitschrift d. D. Morgenländ. Gesellschaft, pp. 136-145. See also Nöldeke's Persische Studien, II, in vol. cxxvi of the Sitzungsber. d. K. Akad. in Wien, philos.-histor. Class. pp. 1-12.
↩See the excellent article on Ṭabarí (Abú Ja'far Muḥammad b. Jarír of Ámul in Ṭabaristán, b. A.D. 839, d. A.D. 923) in the ninth edition of the Encyclopœdia Britannica. The publication of the text of this immense and most precious chronicle by Professor de Goeje of Leyden and other distinguished Arabic scholars is one of the greatest recent achievements of Oriental learning. A German translation of the portion of this chronicle which deals with the history of the Sásánian period, accompanied by a most valuable Introduction and copious notes and appendices, has been published by Professor Nöldeke (Leyden, 1879) under the title Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sasaniden. The story here cited will be found in its entirety at p. 41 of the last-named work.
↩See my Description of an Old Persian Commentary in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for July, 1894, pp. 417-524; and my Catalogue of the Persian MSS. in the Cambridge University Library, pp. 13-37.
↩Dawlatsháh (ed. Browne), pp. 28-29. See also Blochmann's Prosody of the Persians, p. 2; Darmesteter's Origines de la Poésie Persane, first paragraph.
↩See A. de Biberstein Kazimirski's Divan de Menoutchehri (Paris, 1886), p. 7, and Dawlatsháh, p. 29.
↩Kazimirski, pp. 6-7. Dawlatsháh, p. 30.
↩See A. de Biberstein Kazimirski's Menoutchehri (Paris, 1886), pp. 7-8, and Dawlatsháh (ed. Browne), pp. 30-31.
↩The Lubábu'l-Albáb, a very rare book, represented, so far as is known, only by two MSS., one (Sprenger 318; No. 637 of Pertsch's Catalogue) in the Berlin Library, the other in the possession of Lord Crawford and Balcarres, whose generosity has entrusted to my hands this priceless treasure, which I propose to publish in my series of Persian historical texts. This MS. formerly belonged to John Bardoe Elliot, by whom it was lent to Nathaniel Bland, who described its contents and scope in vol. ix of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1846), pp. 111-126. See also Sprenger's Catalogue of the Libraries of the King of Oude, pp. 1-6.
↩E.g., Dr. Ethé: Rûdagî's Vorläufer und Zeitgenossen (in the Morgen-ländische Forschungen for 1873), pp. 36-38; also the article on Modern Persian Literature by the same scholar in vol. ii of Geiger and Kuhn's Grundriss der Iranischen Philologie, p. 218.
↩E.g., A. de Biberstein Kazimirski, Menoutchehri, pp. 8-9.
↩Ṭabarí, vol. i, p. 146; Mas'údí, Murúju'dh-Dhahab (ed. Barbier de Meynard), vol. i, pp. 65-67; Tha'álibí, Qiṣaṣu'l-Anbiyá (ed. Cairo, A.H. 1306), pp. 29-30; Dawlatsháh (ed. Browne), p. 20.
↩Amongst Arabic writers, the earliest mention of Bahlabad which I have found is made in a poem by Khálid b. Fayyáḍ (circ. A.D. 718), cited by Hamadhání, Yáqút and Qazwíní, and translated at pp. 59-60 of the J. R. A. S. for January, 1899. Accounts, more or less detailed, are given of him by Ibn Qutayba (†A.D. 889) in his 'Uyúnu'l-akhbár (MS. of St. Petersburg Asiatic Museum, No. 691); al-Jāhidh (†A.D. 869) in his Kitábu'l-Hayawán (Cambridge MS., Qq. 224); Hamadhání (circ. A.D. 903), ed. de Goeje; the author of the Kitábu'l-Maḥásin wa'l-Aḍdad (ed. Van Vloten, pp. 363-64), probably al-Bayhaqí (circ. A.D. 925); Ibn 'Abd Rabbihi (†A.D. 940), vol. i, p. 192 or 188 of another edition; Abu'l-Faraj al-Isfahání (†A.D. 957), in the Kitábu'l-Aghání; Yáqút (†A.D. 1229), vol. iii, pp. 250 et seqq.; and al-Qazwíní (†A.D. 1283), in his Átháru'l-Bilád (pp. 154-55, 230-231, 295-297). Of Persian writers who allude to him we may mention Sharíf-i-Mujallidí (date uncertain: cited by Nidhámí-i-'Arúḍí-i-Samarqandí in the Chahár Maqála); Firdawsí (†circ. A.D. 415), in the Sháhnáma; Nidhámí of Ganja († circ. A.D. 1203) in his Khusraw wa Shírín, and the other Nidhámí above cited († circ. A.D. 1160); Muḥammad 'Awfí (circ. A.D. 1228); and Ḥamdu'lláh Mustawfí of Qazwín (circ. A.D. 1340) in the Táríkh-i-Guzída. I am indebted to Baron V. Rosen, of St. Petersburg, for calling my attention to several of the above references, which I had overlooked when writing the article referred to in the next note.
↩See my article in the J. R. A. S. for January, 1899 (pp. 37-69), on The Sources of Dawlatsháh; with some remarks on the Materials available for a Literary History of Persia, and an Excursus on Bárbad and Rúdagí.
↩Al-Bayhaqí's Kitábu'l-Maḥásin (ed. Van Vloten), p. 363.
↩Nidhámí of Ganja's Khusraw wa Shírín.
↩Darmesteter's Origines de la Poésie Persane (Paris, 1887), p. 2.
↩Already, however, in A.D. 1700, the celebrated Cambridge scholar and pupil of Abraham Wheelock, Dr. Hyde, who in later life became attached to the University of Oxford as Professor of Hebrew, Laudian Professor of Arabic, and Keeper of the Bodleian Library, had recognised the identity of Máh with Máda (see Vet. Pers. Relig. Hist., ed. 1760, p. 424).
↩Spiegel, Erânische Alterthumskunde, ii, 246.
↩Nöldeke, Aufsätze zur Persischen Geschichte (Leipzig, 1887), p. 5.
↩Aufsätze zur Persisch. Gesch. (Leipzig, 1887), p. 12.
↩Darmesteter, Études Iraniennes, vol. i, pp. 12, 13. M. de Harlez (Manuel de la Langue de l'Avesta, 1882, pp. xi, and Introduction à l'étude de l'Avesta et de la religion Mazdéene, 1881, pp. xlv. et seqq.) takes the same view. “Nous croyons avoir démontré que l'Avesta doit être attribué à la Médie, que sa langue était celle des Mages. Toutefois, comme cette opinion n'est point encore universellement admise, nous préférons employer, à l'exemple des Parses, le terme ‘Avestique’ exempt certainement de tout erreur. Le mot ‘Zend’ même est préférable à ‘Vieux-Bactrien,’ parce que c'est un terme de convention dont l'emploi ne préjuge rien.”
↩Études Iraniennes, ii, p. 14; reprinted from the Revue Critique for June 21, 1880.
↩Études Iraniennes, vol. i, pp. 10-12.
↩This view is by no means universally admitted. Geiger, for instance, places the Airyâna Vaêja, or Êrân-Vêj, in the region of the Pamirs. According to his interpretation of the data contained in ch. i of the Vendidâd, the most western regions known to the Avesta are Vehrkána (Hyrcania, the modern Gurgán or Jurján), Rangha (Rhagæ, or Ray, near Tihrán, the modern capital), and Varena “the four-cornered,” corresponding, according to his view, to the eastern portion of Mázan-darán.
↩Loc. cit., p. 13.
↩Cf. my Year amongst the Persians, p. 189; Polak's Persien, vol. i, p. 265.
↩J.A. for 1885, vol. vi, pp. 502-545, les Quatrains de Bábá Ṭáhir; ibid. for 1888, vol. xi, pp. 298-302, Note sur le prétendu Dérî des Pársís des Yezd; ibid. 1889, xiv, pp. 238-270, Notice d'un manuscrit Pehlevi-Musulman; ibid. 1893, vol. i, pp. 241-265, Le Dialecte Persan de Sîwénd.
↩See my article on the Literature and Doctrines of the Ḥurúfí Sect in the J.R.A.S. for January, 1898, pp. 61-94.
↩They are, in fact, commonly called Pahlawí by the Persians, and were so as early as the fourteenth century of our era—c.g., by Ḥamdu'lláh Mus-tawfí of Qazwín. Cf. Polak, loc. cit.
↩Recherches sur les Dialectes Persans, Kazan, 1853, pp. 31, et seqq.
↩Materialy dlá izuchenia Persidskikh Narêchij, part i (Dialects of Káshán, Váníshún, Qohrúd, Keshe, and Zefre), St. Petersburg, 1888.
↩Translation of the Avesta (vol. i, pp. li-lii) in the Sacred Books of the East (Oxford, 1880).
↩See Max Müller's Selected Essays (London, 1881), vol. ii, pp. 132-134.
↩Ed. de Goeje (vol. vi of Bibl. Geog. Arab.), pp. 25, 203.
↩Erânische Alterthumskunde, vol. i, pp. 446-485, “Beginn der erânischen Selbständigkeit. Die ältesten Berührungen mit den Semiten.”
↩Or even earlier. See p. 20, supra.
↩A great deal of interesting information concerning the early Oriental-ists is contained in the Gallia Orientalis of Paul Colomès (Opera, Hamburg, 1709, pp. 1-272), and also in the excellent Esquisse Historique prefixed by Gustave Dugat to his useful Histoire des Orientalistes de l'Europe du XII au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1868), to which I am largely indebted in this portion of my subject. See also M. Jourdain's Recherches critiques sur l'âge et l'origine des traductions latines d'Aristote et sur les commentaries grecs ou arabes employés par les docteurs scholastiques.
↩This is the first biography given in the Gallia Orientalis. “Gallorum primus,” says the author, “quod sciam, qui Linguas Orientales ab anno millesimo ducentesimo excoluerit, fuit Armegandus Blasii, Doctor Medicus, regnante Philippo, Ludovici cognomine Sancti filio.”
↩He died in 1581 at the age of 95 or 96. See Gallia Orientalis, pp. 59-66.
↩He died on February 18, 1702, having resigned the Librarianship of the Bodleian in April, 1701. The second edition of his Veterum Persarum … Religionis Historia, published in 1760, is that to which reference is here made.
↩The full title of this tract (for it comprises but 53 pages) is The Religion of the Persees, as it was Compiled from a Booke of theirs, con-tayning the Forme of their Worshippe, written in the Persian Character, and by them called their Zundavastaw, wherein is shewed the Superstitious Ceremonies used amongst them, more especially their Idolatrous Worshippe of Fire. The author's information was derived from a Pársí of Surat “whose long employment, in the Companies service, had brought him to a mediocrity in the English tongue.” The book contains but meagre information concerning the Zoroastrian tenets, and indicates not even an indirect knowledge of the contents of the Avesta.
↩It would appear from a remark of Sir W. Jones in the Lettre à Monsieur A … du P … hereafter cited (p. 602), that Dr. Hyde caused the “Zend” characters employed in his book to be cast for his own use. The fount is an excellent one—much more artistic than that used in the latest edition of the Avesta (Geldner's).
↩See Hyde, op. laud., p. 344 ad calc. The Emmanuel MS. now bears the class-mark 3. 2. 6., and contains the following inscription in English: “This Booke is called Ejessney, written in the language Jenwista, and containes ye Religion of ye Antient Parsyes.” A note in German on a loose sheet of paper describes it as a copy of the Yasna, not quite complete, ending ch. l. 2 (Westergaard), and lacking the last quarter; not dated; probably middle of the seventeenth century. Though not old, it is accurately written from a good MS. It agrees with the best MSS., but not entirely with any; most closely with K. 11. The orthography is very consistent, and it is important for critical purposes, being an independent codex.
↩For an example, see Haug's Essays on the Pársís, edited by West (third edition, London, 1884), p. 24.
↩He was at this time about twenty-five years of age, a Fellow of University College, and a B.A. of three years' standing. He died in 1794, at the age of forty-eight.
↩Its full title is: The Desatir or Sacred Writings of the Ancient Persian Prophets; in the Original Tongue; together with the Ancient Persian Version and Commentary of the Fifth Sasan; carefully published by Mulla Firuz bin Kaus, who has subjoined a copious Glossary of the Obsolete and Technical Persian Terms: to which is added an English Translation of the Desatir and Commentary. In two volumes. (Bombay, 1818.) Particulars concerning the unique manuscript will be found at p. vii of the Preface to the second volume. The Desátír was examined, and the futility of its pretensions exposed, by de Sacy in the Journal des Savants (pp. 16-31 and 67-79) for January-February, 1821. See also Nos. 6, 12, 13, 18, and 20 of the Heidelberger Jahrbücher der Litteratur for 1823 (vol. i), by H. E. G. Paulus; and Erskine in vol. ii. of the Transactions of the Bombay Literary Society. The most probable theory of its origin is that suggested by Stanislas Guyard on pp. 61-62 of the separate reprint of his admirable article Un Grand Mâitre des Assassins au temps de Saladin, published in the Journal Asiatique for 1877, viz., that it was the work, and contains the doctrines, of the Isma'ílís.
↩See pp. 141-142 of Rieu's Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts in the British Museum. There are several Oriental editions of the text, and an English translation by Shea and Troyer, printed at Paris in 1843 for the Oriental Translation Fund.
↩In his Sixth Anniversary Discourse on the Persians, delivered at a meeting of the Asiatic Society, in Calcutta, on February 19, 1789 (Works, vol. i, pp. 73-94).
↩See West's third edition of Haug's Essays on the Pársís, pp. 16-53, and Darmesteter's Introduction to his translation of the Avesta in Max Müller's Sacred Books of the East (Oxford, 1880), vol. iv, pp. xiii-xxv, to both of which I have been greatly indebted in this portion of my subject.
↩Lettre à Monsieur A … du P …, p. 610: “Lorsque nous voyons les mots Arabes corrumpus … donnés pour des mots Zendes et Pehlevis, nous disons hardiment que ce charlatan [le révérend Docteur Darab] vous à trompé, et que vous avez tâché de tromper vos lecteurs.”
↩Sir W. Jones's Works, vol. i, p. 81.
↩Cited by Darmesteter in his Introduction (pp. xix-xx) to the Translation of the Vendidâd (see n. 1 on the previous page).
↩See West's account of the Sásánian Inscriptions in his article on Pahlawí Literature in Geiger and Kuhn's Grundriss d. Iranischen Philologie, vol. ii, pp. 76-79; and also Haug's Essay on Pahlawí (Bombay and London, 1870), which begins with a very full account of the progress of Pahlawí studies in Europe.
↩Darmesteter (op. cit.), p. xxi. The same conception, now universally accepted (viz., that the Avestic language and Sanskrit were sister-tongues), was very clearly formulated by de Sacy in the Journal des Savants for March, 1821, p. 136.
↩The fact that the inscriptions of the first class were in the language of the Achæmenian kings—in other words, in an Old Persian language—was suggested to Grotefend by the position of honour always occupied by them in the trilingual tablets.
↩For further details and references as to the progress of the decipher ment, see Spiegel's Kurze Geschichte der Entzifferung at pp. 119-132, of the already-cited edition of his Keilinschriften; also Geiger and Kuhn's Grundriss der Iranischen Philologie, vol. ii, pp. 64-74, Geschichte d. Entzifferung und Erklärung d. Inschriften.
↩Commentaire sur le Yaçna, l'un des livres religieux des Parses: ouvrage contenant le texte zend expliqué pour la première fois, les variantes des quatre manuscrits de la Bibliothèque royale et la version sanscrite inédité de Neriosengh (Paris, 1833-1835).
↩Mémoire sur deux Inscriptions cunéiformes (Paris, 1836.)
↩See Geldner's excellent article (Geschichte der Awestaforschung) in vol. ii of Geiger and Kuhn's Grundriss der Iranischen Philologie, pp. 40-46, where full particulars and references concerning the study of the Avesta will be found.
↩Op. laud., p. 45.
↩I have taken the texts from Haug's Essay on Pahlawí (Stuttgart, 1870), pp. 4-5, and have followed his method of representing the obliterated letters of the Greek inscription by using small type instead of capitals. When I saw and examined the inscription in March, 1888, when on my way from the north to Shíráz, it had suffered still further defacement.
↩The words printed in italics are Huzvárish (a term which will be explained presently), and, in reading, the Persian would replace the Aramaic equivalent. Thus zaná (“that”) would be read án; Malkán-malká (King of kings”), Sháhán-sháh; min (“from”), az; bará (“son”), púr or púhar; and malká, sháh.
↩See Haug's Essay on Pahlawí, pp. 37 et seqq.; Journal Asiatique for 1835 (p. 256) and 1866 (p. 430); Fihrist, ed. Flügel, p. 14. I differ from Haug's rendering in several particulars, especially as regards the sense of mutashábihát, which he translates “[words] which have the same meaning,” whereas I take it to mean “Persian words which would be ambiguous if written in the Pahlawí character,” but of which the Huzvárish equivalents are not so ambiguous. Any one who will write nán in Pahlawí script, and then consider in how many different ways it can be read, will easily see where the “ambiguity” lies.
↩Sháhnáma, ed. Macan, vol. i, p. 18.
↩See Haug's Essay, pp. 30-31, and West's article on Pahlawí Literature in vol. ii of the Grundriss d. Iran. Philolog., p. 75.
↩A facsimile of the Pahlawí text of the Mainyo-i-Khirad has been lithographed by Andreas (Kiel, 1882); the Pázend transcription has been printed in the Roman character with the Sanskrit version and an English translation and glossary by West (Stuttgart, 1871).
↩See my Cat. of the Persian MSS. in the Cambridge University Library, pp. 69-86; and my article in the J. R. A. S. for Jan., 1898 (pp. 61-94), on the Literature and Doctrines of the Ḥurúfí Sect.
↩