y means of laws like that of the Correspondence of Letters, discovered by Rask and Grimm, it has been possible to determine the exact form of words in Gothic, in cases where no trace of them occurred in the literary documents of the Gothic nation. Single words which were not to be found in Ulfilas have been recovered by applying certain laws to their corresponding forms in Latin or Old High-German, and thus retranslating them into Gothic. But a much greater conquest was achieved in Persia. Here comparative philology has actually had to create and reanimate all the materials of language on which it was afterwards to work. Little was known of the language of Persia and Media previous to the Shahnameh of Firdusi, composed about 1000 a.d., and it is due entirely to the inductive method of comparative philology that we have now before us contemporaneous documents of three periods of Persian language, deciphered, translated, and explained. We have the language of the Zoroastrians, the language of the AchÆmenians, and the language of the Sassanians, which represent the history of the Persian tongue in three successive periods—all now rendered intelligible by the aid of comparative philology, while but fifty years ago their very name and existence were questioned.

The labours of Anquetil Duperron, who first translated the Zend-Avesta, were those of a bold adventurer—not of a scholar. Rask was the first who, with the materials collected by Duperron and himself, analysed the language of the Avesta scientifically. He proved—

The first edition of the Zend texts, the critical restitution of the MSS., the outlines of a Zend grammar, with the translation and philological anatomy of considerable portions of the Zoroastrian writings, were the work of the late EugÈne Burnouf. He was the real founder of Zend philology. It is clear from his works, and from Bopp's valuable remarks in his 'Comparative Grammar,' that Zend in its grammar and dictionary is nearer to Sanskrit than any other Indo-European language. Many Zend words can be retranslated into Sanskrit simply by changing the Zend letters into their corresponding forms in Sanskrit. With regard to the Correspondence of Letters in Grimm's sense of the word, Zend ranges with Sanskrit and the classical languages. It differs from Sanskrit principally in its sibilants, nasals, and aspirates. The Sanskrit s, for instance, is represented by the Zend h, a change analogous to that of an original s into the Greek aspirate, only that in Greek this change is not general. Thus the geographical name hapta hendu, which occurs in the Avesta, becomes intelligible if we retranslate the Zend h into the Sanskrit s. For sapta sindhu, or the Seven Rivers, is the old Vaidik name of India itself, derived from the five rivers of the PenjÂb, together with the Indus, and the SarasvatÎ.

Where Sanskrit differs in words or grammatical peculiarities from the northern members of the Aryan family, it frequently coincides with Zend. The numerals are the same in all these languages up to 100. The name for thousand, however, sahasra, is peculiar to Sanskrit, and does not occur in any of the Indo-European dialects except in Zend, where it becomes hazanra. In the same manner the German and Slavonic languages have a word for thousand peculiar to themselves; as also in Greek and Latin we find many common words which we look for in vain in any of the other Indo-European dialects. These facts are full of historical meaning; and with regard to Zend and Sanskrit, they prove that these two languages continued together long after they were separated from the common Indo-European stock.

Still more striking is the similarity between Persia and India in religion and mythology. Gods unknown to any Indo-European nation are worshipped under the same names in Sanskrit and Zend; and the change of some of the most sacred expressions in Sanskrit into names of evil spirits in Zend, only serves to strengthen the conviction that we have here the usual traces of a schism which separated a community that had once been united.

Burnouf, who compared the language and religion of the Avesta principally with the later classical Sanskrit, inclined at first to the opinion that this schism took place in Persia, and that the dissenting Brahmans immigrated afterwards into India. This is still the prevailing opinion, but it requires to be modified in accordance with new facts elicited from the Veda. Zend, if compared with classical Sanskrit, exhibits in many points of grammar, features of a more primitive character than Sanskrit. But it can now be shown, and Burnouf himself admitted it, that when this is the case, the Vaidik differs on the very same points from the later Sanskrit, and has preserved the same primitive and irregular form as the Zend. I still hold, that the name of Zend was originally a corruption of the Sanskrit word khandas (i. e. metrical language, cf. scandere),[35] which is the name given to the language of the Veda by PÂnini and others. When we read in PÂnini's grammar that certain forms occur in khandas, but not in the classical language, we may almost always translate the word khandas by Zend, for nearly all these rules apply equally to the language of the Avesta.

In mythology also, the 'nomina and numina' of the Avesta appear at first sight more primitive than in Manu or the MahÂbhÂrata. But if regarded from a Vaidik point of view, this relation shifts at once, and many of the gods of the Zoroastrians come out once more as mere reflections and deflections of the primitive and authentic gods of the Veda. It can now be proved, even by geographical evidence, that the Zoroastrians had been settled in India before they immigrated into Persia. I say the Zoroastrians, for we have no evidence to bear us out in making the same assertion of the nations of Persia and Media in general. That the Zoroastrians and their ancestors started from India during the Vaidik period can be proved as distinctly as that the inhabitants of Massilia started from Greece. The geographical traditions in the first Fargard of the Vendidad do not interfere with this opinion. If ancient and genuine, they would embody a remembrance preserved by the Zoroastrians, but forgotten by the Vaidik poets—a remembrance of times previous to their first common descent into the country of the Seven Rivers. If of later origin, and this is more likely, they may represent a geographical conception of the Zoroastrians after they had become acquainted with a larger sphere of countries and nations, subsequent to their emigration from the land of the Seven Rivers.[36]

These and similar questions of the highest importance for the early history of the Aryan language and mythology, however, must await their final decision, until the whole of the Veda and the Avesta shall have been published. Of this Burnouf was fully aware, and this was the reason why he postponed the publication of his researches into the antiquities of the Iranian nation. The same conviction is shared by Westergaard and Spiegel, who are each engaged in an edition of the Avesta, and who, though they differ on many points, agree in considering the Veda as the safest key to an understanding of the Avesta. Professor Roth, of TÜbingen, has well expressed the mutual relation of the Veda and Zend-Avesta under the following simile: 'The Veda,' he writes, 'and the Zend-Avesta are two rivers flowing from one fountain-head: the stream of the Veda is the fuller and purer, and has remained truer to its original character; that of the Zend-Avesta has been in various ways polluted, has altered its course, and cannot, with certainty, be traced back to its source.'

As to the language of the AchÆmenians, presented to us in the Persian text of the cuneiform inscriptions, there was no room for doubt, as soon as it became legible at all, that it was the same tongue as that of the Avesta, only in a second stage of its continuous growth. The process of deciphering these bundles of arrows by means of Zend and Sanskrit has been very much like deciphering an Italian inscription without a knowledge of Italian, simply by means of classical and mediÆval Latin. It would have been impossible, even with the quick perception and patient combination of a Grotefend, to read more than the proper names and a few titles on the walls of the Persian palaces, without the aid of Zend and Sanskrit; and it seems almost providential, as Lassen remarked, that these inscriptions, which at any previous period would have been, in the eyes of either classical or oriental scholars, nothing but a quaint conglomerate of nails, wedges, or arrows, should have been rescued from the dust of centuries at the very moment when the discovery and study of Sanskrit and Zend had enabled the scholars of Europe to grapple successfully with their difficulties.

Upon a closer inspection of the language and grammar of these mountain records of the AchÆmenian dynasty, a curious fact came to light which seemed to disturb the historical relation between the language of Zoroaster and the language of Darius. At first, historians were satisfied with knowing that the edicts of Darius could be explained by the language of the Avesta, and that the difference between the two, which could be proved to imply a considerable interval of time, was such as to exclude for ever the supposed historical identity of Darius Hystaspes and Gushtasp, the mythical pupil of Zoroaster. The language of the Avesta, though certainly not the language of Zarathustra,[37] displayed a grammar so much more luxuriant, and forms so much more primitive than the inscriptions, that centuries must have elapsed between the two periods represented by these two strata of language. When, however, the forms of these languages were subjected to a more searching analysis, it became evident that the phonetic system of the cuneiform inscriptions was more primitive and regular than even that of the earlier portions of the Avesta. This difficulty, however, admits of a solution; and, like many difficulties of the kind, it tends to confirm, if rightly explained, the very facts and views which at first it seemed to overthrow. The confusion in the phonetic system of the Zend grammar is no doubt owing to the influence of oral tradition. Oral tradition, particularly if confided to the safeguard of a learned priesthood, is able to preserve, during centuries of growth and change, the sacred accents of a dead language; but it is liable at least to the slow and imperceptible influences of a corrupt pronunciation. Nowhere can we see this more clearly than in the Veda, where grammatical forms that had ceased to be intelligible, were carefully preserved, while the original pronunciation of vowels was lost, and the simple structure of the ancient metres destroyed by the adoption of a more modern pronunciation. The loss of the Digamma in Homer is another case in point. There are no facts to prove that the text of the Avesta, in the shape in which the Parsis of Bombay and Yezd now possess it, was committed to writing previous to the Sassanian dynasty (226 a.d.). After that time it can indeed be traced, and to a great extent be controlled and checked by the Huzvaresh translations made under that dynasty. Additions to it were made, as it seems, even after these Huzvaresh translations; but their number is small, and we have no reason to doubt that the text of the Avesta, in the days of Arda Viraf, was on the whole exactly the same as at present. At the time when these translations were made, it is clear from their own evidence that the language of Zarathustra had already suffered, and that the ideas of the Avesta were no longer fully understood even by the learned. Before that time we may infer, indeed, that the doctrine of Zoroaster had been committed to writing, for Alexander is said to have destroyed the books of the Zoroastrians, Hermippus of Alexandria is said to have read them.[38] But whether on the revival of the Persian religion and literature, that is to say 500 years after Alexander, the works of Zoroaster were collected and restored from extant MSS., or from oral tradition, must remain uncertain, and the disturbed state of the phonetic system would rather lead us to suppose a long-continued influence of oral tradition. What the Zend language might become, if entrusted to the guardianship of memory alone, unassisted by grammatical study and archÆological research, may be seen at the present day, when some of the Parsis, who are unable either to read or write, still mutter hymns and prayers in their temples, which, though to them mere sound, disclose to the experienced ear of an European scholar the time-hallowed accents of Zarathustra's speech.

Thus far the history of the Persian language had been reconstructed by the genius and perseverance of Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen, and last, not least, by the comprehensive labours of Rawlinson, from the ante-historical epoch of Zoroaster down to the age of Darius and Artaxerxes II. It might have been expected that, after that time, the contemporaneous historians of Greece would have supplied the sequel. Unfortunately the Greeks cared nothing for any language except their own; and little for any other history except as bearing on themselves. The history of the Persian language after the Macedonian conquest and during the Parthian occupation is indeed but a blank page. The next glimpse of an authentic contemporaneous document is the inscription of Ardeshir, the founder of the new national dynasty of the Sassanians. It is written, though, it may be, with dialectic difference, in what was once called 'Pehlevi,' and is now more commonly known as 'Huzvaresh,' this being the proper title of the language of the translations of the Avesta. The legends of Sassanian coins, the bilingual inscriptions of Sassanian emperors, and the translation of the Avesta by Sassanian reformers, represent the Persian language in its third phase. To judge from the specimens given by Anquetil Duperron, it was not to be wondered at that this dialect, then called Pehlevi, should have been pronounced an artificial jargon. Even when more genuine specimens of it became known, the language seemed so overgrown with Semitic and barbarous words, that it was expelled from the Iranian family. Sir W. Jones pronounced it to be a dialect of Chaldaic. Spiegel, however, who is now publishing the text of these translations, has established the fact that the language is truly Aryan, neither Semitic nor barbarous, but Persian in roots and grammar. He accounts for the large infusion of foreign terms by pointing to the mixed elements in the intellectual and religious life of Persia during and before that period. There was the Semitic influence of Babylonia, clearly discernible even in the characters of the AchÆmenian inscriptions; there was the slow infiltration of Jewish ideas, customs, and expressions, working sometimes in the palaces of Persian kings, and always in the bazars of Persian cities, on high roads and in villages; there was the irresistible power of the Greek genius, which even under its rude Macedonian garb emboldened oriental thinkers to a flight into regions undreamed of in their philosophy; there were the academies, the libraries, the works of art of the SeleucidÆ; there was Edessa on the Euphrates, a city where Plato and Aristotle were studied, where Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist tenets were discussed, where Ephraem Syrus taught, and Syriac translations were circulated which have preserved to us the lost originals of Greek and Christian writers. The title of the Avesta under its Semitic form Apestako, was known in Syria as well as in Persia, and the true name of its author, Zarathustra, is not yet changed in Syriac into the modern Zerdusht. While this intellectual stream, principally flowing through Semitic channels, was irrigating and inundating the west of Asia, the Persian language had been left without literary cultivation. Need we wonder, then, that the men, who at the rising of a new national dynasty (226) became the reformers, teachers, and prophets of Persia, should have formed their language and the whole train of their ideas on a Semitic model. Motley as their language may appear to a Persian scholar fresh from the Avesta or from Firdusi, there is hardly a language of modern Europe which, if closely sifted, would not produce the same impression on a scholar accustomed only to the pure idiom of Homer, Cicero, Ulfilas, or CÆdmon. Moreover; the soul of the Sassanian language—I mean its grammar—is Persian and nothing but Persian; and though meagre when compared with the grammar of the Avesta, it is richer in forms than the later Parsi, the Deri, or the language of Firdusi. The supposition (once maintained) that Pehlevi was the dialect of the western provinces of Persia is no longer necessary. As well might we imagine, (it is Spiegel's apposite remark,) that a Turkish work, because it is full of Arabic words, could only have been written on the frontiers of Arabia. We may safely consider the Huzvaresh of the translations of the Avesta as the language of the Sassanian court and hierarchy. Works also like the Bundehesh and Minokhired belong by language and thought to the same period of mystic incubation, when India and Egypt, Babylonia and Greece, were sitting together and gossiping like crazy old women, chattering with toothless gums and silly brains about the dreams and joys of their youth, yet unable to recall one single thought or feeling with that vigour which once gave it life and truth. It was a period of religious and metaphysical delirium, when everything became everything, when MÂy and Sophia, Mitra and Christ, Viraf and Isaiah, Belus, Zarvan, and Kronos were mixed up in one jumbled system of inane speculation, from which at last the East was delivered by the positive doctrines of Mohammed, the West by the pure Christianity of the Teutonic nations.

In order to judge fairly of the merits of the Huzvaresh as a language, it must be remembered that we know it only from these speculative works, and from translations made by men whose very language had become technical and artificial in the schools. The idiom spoken by the nation was probably much less infected by this Semitic fashion. Even the translators sometimes give the Semitic terms only as a paraphrase or more distinct expression side by side with the Persian. And, if Spiegel's opinion be right that Parsi, and not Huzvaresh, was the language of the later Sassanian empire, it furnishes a clear proof that Persian had recovered itself, had thrown off the Semitic ingredients, and again become a pure and national speech. This dialect (the Parsi) also, exists in translations only; and we owe our knowledge of it to Spiegel, the author of the first Parsi grammar.

This third period in the history of the Persian language, comprehending the Huzvaresh and Parsi, ends with the downfall of the Sassanians. The Arab conquest quenched the last sparks of Persian nationality; and the fire-altars of the Zoroastrians were never to be lighted again, except in the oasis of Yezd and on the soil of that country which the Zoroastrians had quitted as the disinherited sons of Manu. Still the change did not take place at once. Mohl, in his magnificent edition of the Shahnameh, has treated this period admirably, and it is from him that I derive the following facts. For a time, Persian religion, customs, traditions, and songs survived in the hands of the Persian nobility and landed gentry (the Dihkans) who lived among the people, particularly in, the eastern provinces, remote from the capital and the seats of foreign dominion, Baghdad, Kufah, and Mosul. Where should Firdusi have collected the national strains of ancient epic poetry which he revived in the Shahnameh (1000 a.d.), if the Persian peasant and the Persian knight had not preserved the memory of their old heathen heroes, even under the vigilant oppression of Mohammedan zealots? True, the first collection of epic traditions was made under the Sassanians. But this work, commenced under Nushirvan, and finished under Yezdegird, the last of the Sassanians, was destroyed by Omar's command. Firdusi himself tells us how this first collection was made by the Dihkan Danishver. 'There was a Pehlevan,' he says, 'of the family of the Dihkans, brave and powerful, wise and illustrious, who loved to study the ancient times, and to collect the stories of past ages. He summoned from all the provinces old men who possessed portions of (i. e. who knew) an ancient work in which many stories were written. He asked them about the origin of kings and illustrious heroes, and how they governed the world which they left to us in this wretched state. These old men recited before him, one after the other, the traditions of the kings and the changes in the empire. The Dihkan listened, and composed a book worthy of his fame. This is the monument he left to mankind, and great and small have celebrated his name.'

The collector of this first epic poem, under Yezdegird, is called a Dihkan by Firdusi. Dihkan, according to the Persian dictionaries, means (1) farmer, (2) historian; and the reason commonly assigned for this double meaning is, that the Persian farmers happened to be well read in history. QuatremÈre, however, has proved that the Dihkans were the landed nobility of Persia; that they kept up a certain independence, even under the sway of the Mohammedan Khalifs, and exercised in the country a sort of jurisdiction in spite of the commissioners sent from Baghdad, the seat of the government. Thus Danishver even is called a Dihkan, although he lived previous to the Arab conquest. With him, the title was only intended to show that it was in the country and among the peasants that he picked up the traditions and songs about Jemshid, Feridun, and Rustem. Of his work, however, we know nothing. It was destroyed by Omar; and, though it survived in an Arabic translation, even this was lost in later times. The work, therefore, had to be recommenced when in the eastern provinces of Persia a national, though no longer a Zoroastrian, feeling began to revive. The governors of these provinces became independent as soon as the power of the Khalifs, after its rapid rise, began to show signs of weakness. Though the Mohammedan religion had taken root, even among the national party, yet Arabic was no longer countenanced by the governors of the eastern provinces. Persian was spoken again at their courts, Persian poets were encouraged, and ancient national traditions, stripped of their religious garb, began to be collected anew. It is said that Jacob, the son of Leis (870), the first prince of Persian blood who declared himself independent of the Khalifs, procured fragments of Danishver's epic, and had it rearranged and continued. Then followed the dynasty of the Samanians, who claimed descent from the Sassanian kings. They, as well as the later dynasty of the Gaznevides, pursued the same popular policy. They were strong because they rested on the support of a national Persian spirit. The national epic poet of the Samanians was Dakiki, by birth a Zoroastrian. Firdusi possessed fragments of his work, and has given a specimen of it in the story of Gushtasp. The final accomplishment, however, of an idea, first cherished by Nushirvan, was reserved for Mahmud the Great, the second king of the Gaznevide dynasty. By his command collections of old books were made all over the empire. Men who knew ancient poems were summoned to the court. One of them was Ader Berzin, who had spent his whole life in collecting popular accounts of the ancient kings of Persia. Another was Serv Azad, from Merv, who claimed descent from Neriman, and knew all the tales concerning Sam, Zal, and Rustem, which had been preserved in his family. It was from these materials that Firdusi composed his great epic, the Shahnameh. He himself declares, in many passages of his poem, that he always followed tradition. 'Traditions,' he says, 'have been given by me; nothing of what is worth knowing has been forgotten. All that I shall say, others have said before me: they plucked before me the fruits in the garden of knowledge.' He speaks in detail of his predecessors: he even indicates the sources from which he derives different episodes, and it is his constant endeavour to convince his readers that what he relates are not poetical inventions of his own. Thus only can we account for the fact, first pointed out by Burnouf, that many of the heroes in the Shahnameh still exhibit the traits, sadly distorted, it is true, but still unmistakeable, of Vaidik deities, which had passed through the Zoroastrian schism, the AchÆmenian reign, the Macedonian occupation, the Parthian wars, the Sassanian revival, and the Mohammedan conquest, and of which the Dihkans could still sing and tell, when Firdusi's poem impressed the last stamp on the language of Zarathustra. Bopp had discovered already, in his edition of Nalas (1832), that the Zend Vivanhvat was the same as the Sanskrit Vivasvat; and Burnouf, in his 'Observations sur la Grammaire ComparÉe de M. Bopp,' had identified a second personage, the Zend KeresÂspa with the Sanskrit KrisÂsva. But the similarity between the Zend KeresÂspa and the Garshasp of the Shahnameh opened a new and wide prospect to Burnouf, and afterwards led him on to the most striking and valuable results. Some of these were published in his last work on Zend, 'Études sur la Langue et les Textes Zends.' This is a collection of articles published originally in the 'Journal Asiatique' between 1840 and 1846; and it is particularly the fourth essay, 'Le Dieu Homa,' which has opened an entirely new mine for researches into the ancient state of religion and tradition common to the Aryans before their schism. Burnouf showed that three of the most famous names in the Shahnameh, Jemshid, Feridun, and Garshasp, can be traced back to three heroes mentioned in the Zend-Avesta as the representatives of the three earliest generations of mankind, Yima KshaÊta, ThraÊtaona, and KeresÂspa; and that the prototypes of these Zoroastrian heroes could be found again in the Yama, Trita, and KrisÂsva of the Veda. He went even beyond this. He showed that, as in Sanskrit, the father of Yama is Vivasvat, the father of Yima in the Avesta is Vivanhvat. He showed that as ThraÊtaona in Persia is the son of Âthwya, the patronymic of Trita in the Veda is Âptya. He explained the transition of ThraÊtaona into Feridun by pointing to the Pehlevi form of the name, as given by Neriosengh, Fredun. This change of an aspirated dental into an aspirated labial, which by many is considered a flaw in this argument, is of frequent occurrence. We have only to think of f?? and ???, of dhÛma and fumus, of modern Greek f??? and ????—nay, Menenius's 'first complaint' would suffice to explain it. Burnouf again identified ZohÂk, the king of Persia, slain by Feridun, whom even Firdusi still knows by the name of Ash dahÂk, with the Azhi dahÂka, the biting serpent, as he translates it, destroyed by ThraÊtaona in the Avesta; and with regard to the changes which these names, and the ideas originally expressed by them, had to undergo on the intellectual stage of the Aryan nation, he says: 'Il est sans contredit fort curieux de voir une des DivinitÉs indiennes les plus vÉnÉrÉes, donner son nom au premier souverain de la dynastie ariopersanne; c'est un des faits qui attestent le plus Évidemment l'intime union des deux branches de la grande famille qui s'est Étendue, bien de siÈcles avant notre Ère, depuis le Gange jusqu'À l'Euphrate.'

The great achievements of Burnouf in this field of research have been so often ignored, and what by right belongs to him has been so confidently ascribed to others, that a faithful representation of the real state of the case, as here given, will not appear superfluous. There is no intention, while giving his due to Burnouf, to detract from the merits of other scholars. Some more minute coincidences, particularly in the story of Feridun, have subsequently been added by Roth, Benfey, and Weber. The first, particularly, has devoted two most interesting articles to the identification of Yama-Yima-Jemshid and Trita-ThraÊtaona-Feridun. Trita, who has generally been fixed upon as the Vaidik original of Feridun, because Traitana, whose name corresponds more accurately, occurs but once in the Rig-veda, is represented in India as one of the many divine powers ruling the firmament, destroying darkness, and sending rain, or, as the poets of the Veda are fond of expressing it, rescuing the cows and slaying the demons that had carried them off. These cows always move along the sky, some dark, some bright-coloured. They low over their pasture; they are gathered by the winds; and milked by the bright rays of the sun, they drop from their heavy udders a fertilising milk upon the parched and thirsty earth. But sometimes, the poet says, they are carried off by robbers and kept in dark caves near the uttermost ends of the sky. Then the earth is without rain; the pious worshipper offers up his prayer to Indra, and Indra rises to conquer the cows for him. He sends his dog to find the scent of the cattle, and after she has heard their lowing, she returns, and the battle commences. Indra hurls his thunderbolt; the Maruts ride at his side; the Rudras roar; till at last the rock is cleft asunder, the demon destroyed, and the cows brought back to their pasture. This is one of the oldest mythes or sayings current among the Aryan nations. It appears again in the mythology of Italy, in Greece, in Germany. In the Avesta, the battle is fought between ThraÊtaona and Azhi dahÂka, the destroying serpent. Traitana takes the place of Indra in this battle in one song of the Veda; more frequently it is Trita, but other gods also share in the same honour. The demon, again, who fights against the gods is likewise called Ahi, or the serpent, in the Veda. But the characteristic change that has taken place between the Veda and Avesta is that the battle is no longer a conflict of gods and demons for cows, nor of light and darkness for rain. It is the battle of a pious man against the power of evil. 'Le Zoroastrisme,' as Burnouf says, 'en se dÉtachant plus franchement de Dieu et de la nature, a certainement tenu plus de compte de l'homme que n'a fait le Brahmanisme, et on peut dire qu'il a regagnÉ en profondeur ce qu'il perdait en Étendue. Il ne m'appartient pas d'indiquer ici ce qu'un systÈme qui tend À dÉvelopper les instincts les plus nobles de notre nature, et qui impose À l'homme, comme le plus important de ses devoirs, celui de lutter constamment contre le principe du mal, a pu exercer d'influence sur les destinÉes des peuples de l'Asie, chez lesquels il a ÉtÉ adoptÉ À diverses Époques. On peut cependant dÉjÀ dire que le caractÈre religieux et martial tout À la fois, qui paraÎt avec des traits si hÉroÏques dans la plupart des Jeshts, n'a pas dÛ Être sans action sur la mÂle discipline sous laquelle ont grandi les commencements de la monarchie de Cyrus.'

A thousand years after Cyrus (for ZohÂk is mentioned by Moses of Khorene in the fifth century) we find all this forgotten once more, and the vague rumours about ThraÊtaona and Azhi DahÂka are gathered at last, and arranged and interpreted into something intelligible to later ages. ZohÂk is a three-headed tyrant on the throne of Persia—three-headed, because the Vaidik Ahi was three-headed, only that one of ZohÂk's heads has now become human. ZohÂk has killed Jemshid of the Peshdadian dynasty: Feridun now conquers ZohÂk on the banks of the Tigris. He then strikes him down with his cow-headed mace, and is on the point of killing him, when, as Firdusi says, a supernatural voice whispered in his ear—[39]

As a last stage in the mythe of the Vaidik Traitana we may mention versions like those given by Sir John Malcolm and others, who see in ZohÂk the representative of an Assyrian invasion lasting during the thousand years of ZohÂk's reign, and who change Feridun into Arbaces the Mede, the conqueror of Sardanapalus. We may then look at the whole with the new light which Burnouf's genius has shed over it, and watch the retrograde changes of Arbaces into Feridun, of Feridun into PhredÛn, of PhredÛn into ThraÊtaona, of ThraÊtaona into Traitana,—each a separate phase in the dissolving view of mythology.

As to the language of Persia, its biography is at an end with the Shahnameh. What follows exhibits hardly any signs of either growth or decay. The language becomes more and more encumbered with foreign words; but the grammar seems to have arrived at its lowest ebb, and withstands further change. From this state of grammatical numbness, languages recover by a secondary formation, which grows up slowly and imperceptibly at first in the speech of the people; till at last the reviving spirit rises upwards, and sweeps away, like the waters in spring, the frozen surface of an effete government, priesthood, literature, and grammar.

October, 1853.