This text is unedited and unformatted. It is simply auto-extracted from the PDF online at http://bahai-library.com/browne_literary_history . Persian (Sctscinian) King, said to be Khusraw Par& (AD. 590-6-27), going a-hawking, jrom a modern bas-relitf painting by Muhammad Bdqi'r called Td'L("ThePeacock"). A LITERARY'; HISTORY OF PERSIA i VOLUMEI From the Earliest Tines until Firdnwsi CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1956 A LITERARY HISTORY OF PERSIA IN FOUR YOLUMEB VOLUME I Persian (Sdsdnian) King, said to be Khusraw Padz (A.D. 590-6-27), going a-hawking, from a modern bas-relief painting by Muhammad Bdqi'realled Td'L(" ThePeacock "). A LITERARY" , HISTORY OF PERSIA From the Earliest Thes until Fti-dawsi CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1956 PUBLISHED BY THE SYNDICS OF THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS London Office: Bentley House, N.W.I American Branch: New York First edition (T.Fisher Unwin) 1902 Reprinted 1908, 1909, 1919, 1925 Re-issue (Cambridge University Prcss) 1928 Reprinted 1929 19.51 1956 First printed in Great Britain at The Utziversity Press, Cambridge Reprinted by Spottiswoode, Ballaniyne C8 Co., Lid., Colchester FORmany years I had cherished a desire to write s 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 EpgZish 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 sum- mary 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Persia those of Sir John Malcolm and Clelnents Markham are still the chief works of reference in English, though they no longer represent, even approximately, the present level of knowledge (enormously raised in recent times by the unremit- ting labours of an ever-increasing band of students and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 con- tinued to postpone indefinitely an attempt for which I felt rll viii PREFACE 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 remunera- tion, 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 tl~c English People, the conception and execution of which (for reasons morc fillly explained in the I~~trotluctorychapter 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 manifesta- tions 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 Pahlawi, Arabic, or sorne other language. It was originally intended that the work should be com- pleted in one volume, carrying the history down to the present day. But I soon convinced myself (and, with more difficulty, my ~ublisher)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 PREFA CE ix down to the Mongol Invasion and the extinction of the Cali- phate of Baghdad in the thirteenth century, which, as I have elsewhere observed (pp. 210-211infra), is the great turning- point in the history of Is16m ;but even this finally proved impracticable within the limits assigned to me, and I ulti- mately found myself obliged to conclude this part of my work with the immediate precursors of Firdawsi, the writers and poets of the S6m4nid 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 stipula- tions 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, x PREFACE 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 inclina- tion 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 opportut~itynor 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 transcrip- tion 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 com- pelled me to write Hificlh, NifiLmi, 'Umar, Firdawsi, &c., for the more popular Hifiz, Nizimi, 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 spell- ing in the original character of the naines 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 hLdharbPyj6n, ~zarbi~jin)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 no7 as 'UthmPn, now as 'UsmLn, and again as (Osrnin, 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, 1 hope I may add, to the not less benevolent critic. Of its many defects, alike in plan and execution, I am fully con- scious, and to others, no doubt, my attention will soon be called. But "wharo '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. SEPTEMBER14, 1902. 1, /I i, <,i' !j I 1,I \,,1 11' I:1.: 1.; jjj I/! /j ,I! !/I *:i j,! 1.: /1jIi1 \i!I Contents PAGE 0 .vii ON THE ORIGINS AND GENERAL HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE, LANGUAGES, AND LITERATURES OF PERSIA CHAPTER PAGE I. INTRODUCTORY. . 3 11. THEDISCOVERYAND INTERPRETATIONOF THE IN- SCRIPTIONS AND DOCUAIENTSOF ANCIENTPERSIA, WITH OTHER PHILOLOGICALMATTER . 39 111. THEPRE-MUHAMMADANLITERATUREOF THE PERSIANS, WITH SOME ACCOUNTOF THEIR LEGENDARYHIS- TORY, AS SET FORTH IN THE BOOKOF THE KINGS 88 BOOK I1 ON THE HISTORY OF PERSIA FROM THE RISE OF THE SASAN~ANTO THE FALL OF THE UNAY- YAD DYNASTY (AS. 220-750.) IV. THESASLNIANPERIOD(A.D. 226-652) . . 127 V. THEARABINVASION , . . 185 VI. THEUIIIAYYADPERIOD(A.D. 661-749) . a 209 xiii xiv CONTENTS ON THE EARLY LABBASIDPERIOD, OR GOLDEN AGE OF ISLAM CHAPTER PAGE VII. GENERALCHARACTERISTICSOF THE GOLDENAGE OF ISL~M (A.D. 749-847) FROM THE ACCESSIONOF AS-ZAFFAH TO THE DEATHOF AL-W~THIQ. . 251 VIII. THE DEVELOPMENTSOF RELIGIONAND PHILOSOPHY IN THE GOLDENAGE OF ISL~M . =79 IX. THE GREATPERSIANHERESIARCHSOF THIS PERIOD. 308 ON THE FIRST PERIOD OF THE DECLINE OF THE CALIPHATE, FROA4 THE ACCESSION OF AL- MUTA~VAKKILTO THE ACCESSION OF SULTAN MAHM~~DOF GHAZNA (A.D. 85+1000) XI. THE STATE OF MUSLIMLITERATUREAND SCIENCE AT THE BEGINNINGOF THE GHAZNAW~PERIOD. 377 XII. RELIGIOUSMOVEMENTSOF THIS PERIOD . 39' I. The Ismb'ilis and Carmathians, or the "Sect of the Seven " XIII. RELIGIOUSMOVEMENTSOF THIS PERIOD . . 416 11. The $6fi Mysticis111 XIV. THE LITERATUREOF PERSIADURINGTHIS PERIOD. 445 BIBLIOGRAPHY. . . . 481 INDEX . 497 ON T~EORIGINS AND GENERAL iiTISTORY OF THE PEOPLE, LANGUAGES, AND LrTERATURES OF PERSIA CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY THISbook, as its title implies, is a history, not of the different dynasties which have ruled in Persia and of the kings who composed those dynasties, but of the Persian Scope of work. 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 zsthetic- 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 con- sideration 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 3 4 INTROD UCTORY language almost to the exclusion of their own in writing on certain subjects, notably theology and philosophy ;while during the two centuries immediately succeeding tlie 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- nification than that which it originally bore. DIcaningterm Persian.of the The Persians call themselves hdni and their land &&,I and of this land Pn'rsa, the Persis of the Greeks, the modern FArs,2 is one province out of several. But because that province gave birth to the two great dynasties (the Achzmenian in the sixth century before, and the SAsinian irdia, I?rdtt, Air611, the Airzymra of the Ayesta, is the land of the Aryans (Ariya, Airiya of the Avesta, Sanskrit Arya), and had therefore a wider signification than the term Persia, which is equivalent to irkn in the modern s&nse,has now. Bactria (Balkh), Sogdiana (Sughd),and Khmirazm were Irinian lands, and the Afghans and Kurds are irinian peoples. 'The $-sound does not exist in Arabic, and is replaced by f. Firs, Isfahin, &c., are silnply the arabicised forms of Pirs, Ispahin. Theadjective Fkrsi (or Pn'rsi) denotes the official language of Persia (which is at the same time the mother-tongue of the great majority of its inhabi- tants, and the national language in as lull a sense as English is the national languag~of Great Britain and Ireland), and in this application is equiva- lent to Ircirti. As applied to a man, however, Fril-si means a native of the province of Firs. In India Pkvsi (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 Firs Firsistin," as is sometimes done by European writers, is quite incorrect, for the termina- tion -isfin ("place of," "land of ") is added to the name of a people to denote the country which they inhabit (e.g., Afghiniskin, Bal&chistin),but not to the name of a country or province. THE OLD PERSIAN LANGUAGE i 5 in the third century after Christ) which made their arms for- midable 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 frin 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 it1 his time "almost of the same speech," 611dyXwrsor rap; ,ulrcp6v)3 in one Persian tongue. The Persian language of to-day, FArsi, the language of Firs, is then the lineal offspring of the language which Cyrus and Darius spoke, and in which the ThelanguagePersianof proclamations engraved by their commands on Achzmeniantimes. the rocks of Behistun (now called Bi-sittin) and Naqsh-i-Rustam, and the walls and columns of Persepolis, are drawn up. These inscriptions of the Achz- 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- tunately, present an unbroken series. On the Interruptions in the series of contrary, their continuity is broken between the written monn- rnentsoft~~e~er-sian language. Achzmenian 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 positioll 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 SAsAnian 3 Strabo, xv, 724. 6 INTROD UCTORY dynasty, embraces a period of about five centuries and a half (B.c. ~~o-A.D.226). The second, beginning with the Arab invasion and Muhammadan Conquest, which destroyed the Sisinian 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 Noldeke says, "never touched more than the surface of Persian life, but irhn was penetrated to the core by Arabian rkligion and Arab ways." The Arab con- quest, though presaged by earlier events,I may be said to have begun with the battles of Buwayb and Qhdisiyya (A.D. 635- 637), and to have been completed and confirmed by the dcnth of the last Shshnian king, Yazdigird 111, 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-Mustac~imbi'llLli, the last 'Abbhsid Caliph, in A.D. 1258 by the Mongols under HulAgii Khiin, the grandson of Changiz Khin. 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 imme- diate 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 ot local dynasties which yielded at most a merely nominal obedience to the 'Abbiisid court. Ot these dynasties the TBhirids (A.D. 820) are sonletilnes accounted tlie first; but they may more truly be considered to begin with the Saffhrids (A.D. 867)) Shmhnids (A.D. 874), and Buwa~hids(A.D. 932), and to reach their full development in the Gliaznawids and Seljiiqs. Notably by the Battle of Dhh Q6r in the reign of Rhu~ram~Parwiz (A.D. 604-610). PERlODS OF THE PERSIAN LANGUAGE 7 The history of the Persian language falls, therefore, into three well-defined periods, as follows :- dk,;i,","l~g:h~I. Tl~eAchemenian Feriod (B.c. 550-330), repre- . sented 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 Old Persian. more than 400 separate words.' The language represented by these inscriptions, and by them only, is gene- rally called Old Persian.1 11. The Shsrinian Period (A.D. 226-652)) represented by inscriptions on monuments, medals, gems, seals, and coins, and by a literature estimated as, roughly speaking, equal Mlddle Persian, or Pahlawi, in bulk to the Old Testament3 This literature is entirely Zoroastrian and almost entirely theo!ogical and liturgical. The language in which it is written, when disentangled from the extraordil~arygraphic system, known as Huzvsresh (Zuwirishn), used to represent it, is little more than a very archaic form of the present speech of Persia devoid of the ~rabic'element. It is generally known as Pahlawi, sometimes as Middle Persian. Properly speaking, the term Pahlawi applies rather to the script than the language, but, following the general usage, we shall retain it in speaking of the ofic~allanguage of Shshnian Persia. This script continued Darmesieter, kfudes Iraiziertrtes,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 transla- tion in Latin. In the lalter the tests are transliterated and the translatiori I is in German. 3 West, "0?$tlze Exfe?tt, Lal?gtlafe, alzd Afe of Pahlawi Liferafure," o. 402 :also the excellent account of Pahlawi Literafzrre by the same writerI .. , in Geiger and Iiuhn's Gruizdriss der Iranisclten Pbilologie, vol. ii, pp. 75-129. West divides the Pahlawi 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 8 INTROD UCTORY to be used on the coins of the early Caliphs and the independent Sphlzpats or Ispahbadhs of Tabaristin 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 Pahlawi literature, but the latest of them hardly extend beyond the ninth century of our era.I Practically speaking the natural use of what we understand as Pahlawi ceased about a thousand years ago. 111. Y'he Muham?nadan Period (from about A.D. goo until the present day). When we talk of "Modern Persian," we mean simply the Persian language as it reappears Modern or Neo-after the Arab Conquest, and after the adoption of the Muhammadan religion by thc vast majority of the inhabitants of Persia. The difference between late Pahlawi 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 a question of religion. In the East, even at the Dislike of w~itten charac-present day, there is a tendency to associate ters associated with other written characters much more than language with religions. 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 'West places the compilatio~lof the Dinkart, Btcrzdalzisk, and Arda Virif Ndrnak in the ninth century of our era (loc.cit., pp. 433, 436, 437), and regards it as "unliltcly that any of the commentntors quoted in tlie Pahlawi translations of tlie Avesta could have written later than the sixth century." The compilation of the Bnlt~~zn~tYasltt, however, is placed by Professor Darmesleter as late as A.D. 1099-1350 (EfzrdesImlzicrzrtes, vol. ii, p. 69). The interesting Glrjnsfak Abn'lislt (edited and translated by A. Barthklemy, Paris, 1887) describes a co~~troversybetween a Zoro- astrian priest and the herelic Abilish held in the presence of the Caliph al-Ma'mGn (A.D. 813-833), and therefore obviously cannot have been composed earlier than the ninth century. DISUSE OF PANLA Wf SCRIPT 9 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 character.1 The Pahlawi script was even more Re:~sonswhy the Pahlawiscript closely associated in the Eastern mind with the rapidly fell into desuetude. Zoroastrian religion than was the Arabic character with the faith of Islim ; 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 read- ing) was probably a rare accomplishment amongst the Persians when the Pahlawi character was the means of written com- munication, save amongst the Zoroastrian magopats and dastobars and the professional scribes (dapir). We read in the Krirnrimak-i-Artakhshir-i-Phpakrin,~or Book of the Deeds of Ardashir,, the son of Pripak (the founder of the Sisinian dynasty)-one of the three Pahlawi romances or "historical novels" which time has spared to us in the original forms that when this prince "reached the age for the higher It is even said that a debased Arabic script is still used by the peasants inhabiting the valleys of the Alpurarras rnountai~~sin their love-letters. 'Translated into German by Professor Noldeke of Strassburg, and published in vol. iv of the Beitrdge zur Kunde des Indogermatciscken Spraclien on the occasion of Professor Benfey's attainment of the fiftieth year of his Doctorate, as well as in the form of the tirage b part (Giittingen, 1879)here cited (pp. 38-9, and n. 3 on former). The Pahlawi text in the original ant in the Roman characters, with Gujariti translation, edited by Kaikobgd Adarb5d Nosherw;n, was published at Bombay in 1596. 3 The others are the Book of Zarir and the Story of K1:usraw Kawa'dhdn and ltis Page. The fornier has been translated by Geiger in the Siizungs- bericltte d. p1tilos.-j5lzilolog. u. Izistar. Class, 1890, and reviewed by Nijldeke in vol. xlvi (1892) of the Zeihclzrift d. D. Mougenldnd. Gesellschaft, pp. 136-145. See also Noldeke's Persisclze Studien, 11, in vol. cxxvi of the Sifztingsber. d. K. Akad. in Wicn, plti1os.-histor. Class. pp. 1-11 10 INTROD UCTOR Y education, he attained such proficiency in Writing, Riding, and other accomplishments that he became famous throughout all Prirs." So also we read in the account which the great historian Tabari~gives of the reign of ShLpiir, the son and successor of Ardashir, that "when he came to the place where he wished to found the city of GundE-Shripiir, he met there an old man named BC1, of whom he enquired whether it would be permitted him to build a town on this site. B61 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 Noldeke has pointed out, he meant to imply (though it1 the issuc hc proved mistaken) that both things were impossible. To the l'alilawi script, in short, might well be applied the Frenchman's well-known definition of speech as 'k ,,I:, ., ,ilj I I;! [I I! I' ,1! 1;.:;)!, I,!, .: , , .I! I, ,, ;! ,!! 4: 1' I,:I1 ., /: '1 ,:; , ,, '1. . I!'1, !: < ,. I 'I // .I; .! -?, i :?,I....:.:zj :.?I .h ,: $1 i.? ,; c: ,. , m,,-I%i ('j, ~k: "11 '.ii 12 INTROD UCTOR Y 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'hn (Cambridge University Library, Mm. 4. 15) I 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 the native biographers (a.g., Dawlatshdh in his Poetry. Live, of the Poets), ascribes the first Persian couplet to the joint invention of Bahr5m Gilr the Shsinian (A.D. 420-438), and his mistress Dil-5rhm.2 Another quotes (on the authority of Abii T5hir al-Khgtiini, a writer of the twelfth century of our era) a Persian couplet engraved on the walls of the 2a;r-i-Shirin (" Palace of Shirin," the beloved of Khusraw Parwiz, A.D. 590-628), said to have been still legible in the time of 'Adudu'd-Dawla the Buwayhid (tenth century of our era).3 Another tells how one day in Nishipiir the Amir 'Abdu'llhh b. T5hir (died A.D. 844) was presented with an old book containing the Romance of Whmiq and 'Adhra, "a pleasing tale, which wise men com- piled, and dedicated to. King Niishirw5n " (A.D. 531-579) ; and how he ordered its destruction, saying that the Qur'hn 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."-+ Yet another story given by Dawlatshiih attributes the first line of metrical Persian to the See my Descyififiorr of an Old Persian Cotnnrentary in the Jou~izalof flzc Royal Asiatic Society for July, 1894, pp. 417-524; and my Catalogz~cof llze Persian MSS. iit the Cambridge University Library, pp. 13-37. Dawlatshih (ed. Browne), pp. 28-29. See also Blochmann's Prosody of the Peysians, p. 2 ; Darmesteter's Origines de la Poisie Persane, first paragraph. 3 See A. de Biberstein Kazimirski's Divan de Menoutchehri (Paris, 1886), p. 7, and Dawlatshih, p. 29. 4 Kazimirski, pp. 6-7. Dawlatshih, p. 30. BEGIWGS OF PERSIAN POETRY 13 gleeful utterance of a little child at play, the child being the son of Ya'qiib b. Layth "the Coppersmith," founder of the SaffAr?'("Brazier") dynasty (A.D.868-878).1 Muhammad 'Awfi, the author of the oldest extant Biography of Persian Poets,* who flourished early in the thirteenth century of our era (A.D. 1210--1z35), asserts that the first Persian poem was composed by one 'Abbds of Merv in honour of the Caliph - al-Ma'miin, the son of Hdrdnu'r-Rashid, 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,3 the scepticism of others4 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 KhurdsAn during the first half of the tenth century, especially during the reign of the SAmdnid prince Nasr I1 (A.D. 913- qq2), 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 Rildagi 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 ' See A. de Biberstein Kazimirski's hferto14tclrehri (Paris, 1886)~pp. 7-8, and Dawlatshih (ed. Browne), pp. 30-31. The Luba'bu'l-Albrib, 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 Jourrial of tlte Royal Asiatic Society (1846), pp. 111-126. See also Sprenger's Cafalogz4e of the Libraries of the King of Oude, pp. 1-6. 3 E.g., Dr. Eth6 : RidagE's Vorldrrfcr und Zeitgenossen (in the Morgeiz- lilirdisclze Forschuizge~rfor 1873)) pp. 36-38 ; also the article on Morierii Persiait Liferatu~eby the same scholar in vol. ii of Geiger and Kuhn's Gruizdriss der Zraitischen Philologie, p. 218. 4 E.g., A. de Biberstein Kazimirski, Menoufclzelzri, pp. 8-9. 14 INTROD UCTORY certainly merit little more credence than the assertion of serious and careful Arab writers, like Tabari (~A.D.923),and Mas'Gdi (~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 rendering1 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 1 That Fiend nccurscd, unfailing, Undyil~g,ever at our side doll1 loo~llI" To which the Devil is alleged to have retorted thus :- "Renounce these lands and those who dwell upon them I 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 I 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 I" Nevertheless there is one legend indicating the existence of Persian poetry even in Sdsinian times which, partly from the persistency with which it reappears in various old s.L!::$fn. writers of credit,2 partly from a difference in the stre1&"j59" form of the minstrel's name which can hardly be explained save on the assumption that both forms I Tabari, vol. i, p. 146 ; Mas'hdi, Afu~lijtr'dlt-DIa1(ed. Barbier de Meynard), vol. i, pp. 65-67 ; Tha'klibi, Qiyaslr'l-Al~biyd(ed. Cairo, A.H. 1306),pp. 29-30 ; Dawlatsllil~(ed. Browne),p. 20. a Amongst Arabic writers, the earliest mention of Balilabad which I have found is made in a poem by Iillilid b. Fayyicl (circ. A.D. 71S), cited by Hamadhini, YiqGt and Qazwini, and tra~lslatedat pp. 59-60 of the 7.R. A. S. for January, 1899. Accounts,more or less det~iled,are given of BARBAD THE JZINSTREL , 15 - were transcribed from a Pahlawi original, appears to me worthy of more serious attention. According to this legend, one of the chief ornaments of the court of Khusraw Parwiz, the Sdsdnian king (A.D. 590-627), was a minstrel named by Persian writers Birbad, but by Arabic authors Bahlabad, Balahbad or Fahlabad, forms of which the first and third point to a Persian original Pahlapat. Bahlabad and Bdrbad when written in the Arabic character are not easily confounded; but if written in the Pahlawi 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 Pahlawi, in other words to records almost contemporary. Now this B%rbad (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,= a striking resemblance to the Sriminid poet Riidagi, who flourished in the early part of the tenth century him by Ibn Qutayba (~A.D.889)in his lUyriiru'l-aklzbLiv(MS.of St. Petersburg Asiatic Museum, No. 691) ;al-JIhia (~A.D. 869) in his Ififdbu'l-Hayawrin (Cambridge MS., Qq. 224) ; Hamadhini (circ.A.D. 903), ed. de Goeje ;the author of the Kitdbu'l-Maqisin wa'l-Addad (ed. Van Vloten, pp. 363-64), probably al-Bayhaqi (circ. A.D. 925) ; Ibn 'Abd Rabbihi (~A.D. 940)~vol. i, p. 192 or 188 of another edition ;Abu'l-Paraj al-Isfahini (~A.D.957),in the KiMbu'l-Aglzdni; Yiqit (t~.?.1229), vol. iii, pp. 250 ef seqq.; and al- Qazwini (~A.D.1283),in his Atl~drtr'l-Bildd(pp. 154-55, 230-231, 295-297). Of Persian writers who allude to him we may mention Sharif-i-Mujallidi (date uncertain : cited by Ni&imi-i-'Ar6di-i-Samarqandi in the Clzaha'r Maq~irila); Firdawsi (tcirc. A.D. 415)~in the Skdhiiii;lza; Niakmi of Ganja(tcirc. A.D. 1203)in his Ifliusraw wa Shiriti, and the other Ni&imiahove cited (tcirc. A.D. 1160) ;iliul;ammad 'Awfi (circ.A.D. 1228);and Hamdu'llih ilfustawfi of Qazwin (circ. AD. 1340) in the Tdn'klr-i-Girkda. I am in- debted 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 Daullalsl~dlz;with soiire re~narkson the Materzals avail- able for a Literary Hislory of Persia, and an Excurstrs on Barbad and Rudati. 16 ZNTRODUCTORI.' of our era ;and indeed the two are already associated by an early poet, Sharif-i-Mujallidi of Gurghn, who sings :- "From all the treasures hoarded by the Houses Of Skin and of Simin, in our days Nothing survives except the song of Birbad, Nothing is left save RGdagi's sweet lays." For in ail the accounts of Riidagi which we possess his most remarkable achievement is the song which he composed and sung in the presence of the Shmdnid Amir Nasr b. Ahmad to induce that Prince to abandon the charms of Herht and its environs, and to return to his native Bukhhri, which he had neglected for four years. The extreme simplicity of this song and its elltire lack of rhetorical adornment, have been noticed by most of those who have described this incident, by some (e.g. Nia5mi-i-'ArGdi of Samarqand) with approval, by others, such as Dawlatshhh, 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 DawlatshLh 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 JG-yi-M61iyin 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 Bulihiri ! Be thou of good cheer I Joyous towards thee hasteth our Amir ! The Moon's the Prince, Bukhiri is the sky; 0Sky, the Moon shall light thee by and by 1 Bukhiri is the Mead, the Cypress he; Receive at last, 0Mead, thy Cypress-tree I" BARBADAND R ~DA~f, I7 "When Rtdagi reached this verse," adds the oldest authority for this narrative (NiGirni-i-'Ar6di of Samarqand), "the Amir was so much affected that he descended from his throne, bestrode the horse of the sentinel on duty, and set off for Bukhiri in such haste that they carried his riding boots after him for two parasangs, as far as BurGna, where he put them on ;neither did he draw rein anywhere till he reached Bukhiri; and RGdagi received from the army the double of that five thousand dinirs [which they had promised him in the event of his success]." Thus RGdagi was as much harper, ballad singer, and impro- visatore as poet, resembling, probably, the minstrels whose tarnifi, 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 B6rbad or Bahlabad of the old S6shnian 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 Parwiz which none other dared utter for terror of the royal displeasure, B6rbad would weave it dexterously into a song, and sing it before the king. Parwiz had a horse called Shabdiz, beautiful and intelligent beyond all others ;and so greatly did the king love Shabdiz that he swore to slay that man who should bring the tidings of his death. So when Shabdiz died, the Master of the Horse prayed Bahlabad to make it known to the king in a song, of which Parwiz listening divined the purport and cried, "Woe unto thee ! Shabdiz 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, KhLlid b. Fayyid, who lived little more. than a century after Khusraw Parwiz :- "And Khusraw, King of kings, him too an arrow Plumed from the wings of Death did sorely smite, E'en as he slept in Shirin's soft embraces Amidst brocades and perfumes, through the night Dreaming of Shabdiz whom lie used to ride, His noble steed, his glory and his pride. 3 I 8 INTR ODUCTORY He with an oath most solemn and most binding, Not to be loosed, had sworn upon the Fire That whoso first should say, 'Shabdiz hath perislied, 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 tile strings vibrated, Chanted a wailing Persian threnody, Till the King cried, 'My horse Shabdiz is dead I ' 'It is the Icing that sayetli it,' they said." Other minstrels of this old time ar,e mentioned, whose names alone are preserved to us : Afarin, KhusrawPni, Mridharistini,~ and the harper Sakisi,a beings yet more shadowy than Barbad, of whose notes not so much as an echo has reached our time. Yet can we hardly doubt that those old S66nian 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 (rubric!) and the narrative poem in doublets (mathnawi) -which are to all appearance indigenous. Whether, as Darmesteter seems to think,3 there is sufficient evidence to warrant us in believing that romantic poetry existed in Persia even in Achzmenian 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 Widel; view of term. We have now to exten: the field of inquiry th3 I~dilian SO as to include the whole Iranian people and people. their literary remains. The ground on which we A1,BayhaqilsICitdbti'l-Mafidsirt (ed. Van Vloten),p. 363. Niclllimi of Ganja's Klzusr-aw wa Sltiuiit. 3 Darmesteter's Origilres de la P oksie Persane (Paris, 18871,p. 2. THE MEDES 1 19 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 Achzmenian, with which we began our retrospect of Persiatl history, rose by the fall of a power not less famous than itself, that of The Medes. 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, llot of the South, having their centre and capital at Ecbatana (H~~gnatdnaof the Old Persian inscriptions, now Hanzadrin), not at Persepolis (SBsinian Istakhr, near Shirriz, the present chief town of FArs). The actual boundaries of Media cannot be precisely defin~d,but, roughly speaking, it extended from the Mountains of Azarbriyjin (Atropatene) on the north to Susiana (Khuzisthn) on the south, and from the Zagros Mountains on the east to about the line of the modern Tihrin- Isfahan road; with a north-eastern prolongation including the whole or part of Mizandarhn. In modern phraseology, there- fore, it comprised Kurdistiin, LuristLn the northern part of IChuzistbn, the western part of 'Iriq-i-'Ajami, and the southern part of Azarbdyjin. 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 Mdh (Old Persian Mdda) to enter into certain place names, such as Mrih-Kbfa, Mrih-Basra, Mrih-Nahriwand.1 Already, however, in A.D. 1700,the celebrated Cambridge scholar and rupil of Abraham Wheelock, Dr. Hyde, who in later life became attached fo the University of Oiford as Professor of Hebrew, Laudian Professor of Arabic, and Keeper of the Bodleian Library, had recognised the identity of Jfrilz with Mrida (see Vet. Pcrs. Rclig. Hisf., ed. 1760,p. 424). 20 INTROD UCTOR Y The Medes, unfortunately, unlike the Persians, have left no records of their achievements, and we are consequelltly dependent for information concerning them on Sources of hledichistoty. the records of other nations who had direct or indirect knowledge of them, notably the Assyrians, Jews, and Greeks. As regards tlle Assyrian records, Amadana (Hamadin), the capital of the Medes, is mentioned in an inscription of Tiglath Pileser (circ. B.C. I loo) Assyrianrecords. as a subject territory I ;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 referred to by his successor Sennacherib, and by Jewishrecordn. Esar-haddon (B.c. 680-669). In 2 Kings xvii, 6 we read that "in tlie 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.= Of the three Greek historians whose works are primary sources for this period, Herodotus merits the first mention, both on account of his veracity (to which the cuneiform Greek records. inscriptions bear abundant testimony) and becauseHerodotus. ctesias. 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 statenlent at least affords evidence of the existence of such documents, which are also referred to in tlie Book of Esther, where we read (chap. vi, I) 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 al~dTeresh Spiegel, Eririische Alferflzu~lzskt~rzde,ii, 246. Noldeke, Aufsdtze zur Persiscltetz Gesclziclzte (Leipzig, 1887), p. 5. THE MEDES 21 I I and disclosed by Mordecai awas written in the book of the chronicles before the King." Whether because Ctesias im-I perfectly 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 fragmentary condition by much later writers, Berosus. such as Photius (A.D. 820-891). Berosus was a Chaldzean priest who lived in the time of Alexander the Great and his immediate successors, and translated into Greek, for his patron Antiochus of Syria, tlle 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. This took place about B.C. 700, and a yearDeioces. 1 or two later Deioces (A~jid~~~),the first of the four Medic kings mentioned by Herodotus, estab- lished himself on the throne. An Assyrian record of B.C. 715 mentions a Dayaukku (= Deioces) who had been led away captive; and in B.C. 713 King Sargon of Phraortes. Assyria subdued the Bit Dayaukku, or "Land of Deioces." Phraortes (Fravartish in the Old Persian inscriptions) succeeded in B.C. 647, and extended his rule over the Persians as well as his own countrymen, the Medes. cyawek He in turn was succeeded in B.C. 625 by Cyaxares (Huvakhshatara), who, in conjunction with the Babylonian king, destroyed Nineveh in B.C. 607, and con- cluded peace with the Lydians in B.C. 585, in consequence of a total eclipse of the sun which took place on May 28th of that year, and which was regarded by both sides as an indication of Divine displeasure. In the same year, probably, 22 INTROD UCTORY he died, and was followed by his son Astyages, who was overthrown by Cyrus the Achzmenian in B.C. Astyages. 550, when the power passed from the West- irinian Medes to the South-Irinian Persians. 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 assumcd, in accordailce with the most ~revalent, and, in the opinion of the writer, the, most probable view, tha; the Medes were an Irhian T"et~~~~~~,ofrace speaking an Irinian language closely akin to Old Persian. This is the view taken, for instance, by Noldeke, who, in concluding his account of the Medic Empire, says I :- "Perhaps careful exanlinations of the neighbourhood of Hamadin. or excavations, may still son~eday 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, ~ouldbe quite similar to those of the Persian Icings." 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," savs he,' after adducing evidence in favour of his view, "c'est que la tradition parsie et YAvesta, confirm6s par des t6moignages Ctrangers, voielit le centre et le At~fsllfzezzcr P:vsisclt. Gesclt. (Leipzig, 1887), p. 12. Darmesteter, Elrrdes Irartierzitcs, vol. i, pp. 12, 13. M. de Harlez (Martile1 de la Larzgiie de I'Avesia, 1882, pp. xi, and Ii~tvodzrctioizb I'Crzide de l'dvesfaet de la ueligiort Biazd6etze, 1881, PP. slv. ef seqq.) taltes the same view. "Nous croyons avoir dkmontrC que 1'Avesta doit Stre attribuk 5 la Mkdie, que sa langue Btait celle des Mages. Tontelois,comme cette opinion n'est point encore universellernent admise, nous prkfkrons employer, i I'exemple des Parses, le terlne 'Avestiq~~e'exempt certainement de tout erreur. Le mot ' Zend' mbme est prkl6rable B 'Vieux-Bactrien,' parce que c'est un terme de convention dont l'emploi ne prkjuge rien." THE MEDES . 23 berceau du Zoroastrisme, soit en Atropatene, soit a Rai, dans l'un et l'autre cas en Mhdie. ...Je crois que les droits de l'Atropat8ne sont mieux Btablis, et que c'est de 1i que le Zoroastrisme a pris sa course de 1'Ouest l'Est. En tout cas, le Zolaastrisnre esl urae clrose ntkdique, el Z'Avesla esl T~uvredes pritres mides. ...I1 suit ...par le tknloignage extcrne des classiques joint au tkmoignage intrinskque des livres zends et de la tradition native, que l'dvesia est l'euvre des Mages, que le zertd esl la lartgue de la Midie ancienrze, et que l'on aurait le droit de remplacer le noln ilnpropre de latrgz~ezeride par le terme de laizgzre mkdique." A totally different view, which ought not to pass unnoticed, is held by Oppert, and set forth at length in his work Le Peuple et la Langue des Mkdes. The inscriptionstftf$2z%:sof the Ach~emeniankings, as is well known, are were a,,,Turanian 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 (Mrida) 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 uRRu (law), the Aryanized or Persianized form of which was probably DrihyuRa, " le rCunisseur des pays " ; while the Persian translation of the same was the form given by Ctesias, Apr&oC, which "recalls to us the Persian Artcfyu, from arta, 'law,' and hyu, 'reuniting."' Of the six tribes of the Medes mentioned by Herodotus (bk. i, ch. ci), Oppert admits that the names are Aryan ; but he contends that in the case of two at least, the Boirual and the Zrptvxarqq, we have to do with Aryan translations of the original names, which he believes 24 INTR ODUCTORY to have been Tdrdnian, and to have denoted respectively "autochthones " and "vivant dans les tentes." There are but very few scholars who are qualified to re- survey the ground traversed by M. Oppert and to form an independent judgment of his results in matters of Darmesteter's detail ; but, as regards his general conclusions, weview. concur with Darmesteter in the summary state- ment of objections to M. Oppert's theory wherewith he closes his review of the book in question I :- "Nous ne voyons don~pas de raison suffisante pour abandonner l'opinion traditionelle, que la langue des Mkdes Ctait une langue aryenne, opinioll qui a pour elle, en somme, le tCmoignage direct de Strabon, er le tCrnoignage indirect cl'H6rodote, sans parler des raisons trks fortes qui font de la M6die le lieu d'origine du Zend Avesta et par suite la patrie du zend." In the absence of further discoveries, the, theory that the I Medes were an Irdnian people speaking an Irdnian language closely akin to Old Persian is the view which we must con- tinue to regard as most probable. It has already been said that the Medic kings, unlike the Achzmenians, left no records of their achievements ;while, as regards their language, some scholars, like Noldeke, The Avesta. 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. I That the language of the Avesta is an IrBnian 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 Irhn where it flourished, there is not, however, the dtudes Ivartrennes, ii, p. 14 ; reprinted from the Revuc Critique for Tune 21, 1880. LANG UAGE OF THE A VESTA 35 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 be,come fashionable to speak of it as <' Old Bactrian " and "East Irhian." Darmesteter, ill his usual clear and concise way, sums up the arguments of the East 1rhnian or Bactrian theory before proceeding to refute them, as follows~:- (I) Zend is not the language of Persia. (2) It is in Bactria that, according to tradition, Zoroaster made his first important conquest, King Gushtiisp. (3) The geography of the Avesta only knows the east of irin. "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 Irin. "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 Irinians against the idolatrous Thrinians, of which Bactria, by its geographical position, was the natural theatre, must nqcessarily have drawn the thoughts of the faithful to this part of Irin, where the worshippers of Ahura Mazda were at death- grips with, the worshippers of the da~vas,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 Gushtisp bequeath to us a historic recollection of the con- quests of Zoroastrianism in the East. Nowhere, however, is Bactria represented as the cradle of Zoroaster and Zoroastrianism; Pirsi tradition is unanimous and consistent in placing this cradle, not in the East, in Bactria, but in the West, in Atropatene ;and not only Pirsi tradition, but the Avesta itself, for- "The third fpct adducedis incorrect : the Avesta knows the North and West of Irin as well 9s the East: the first chapter of the Vendidgd, which describes Ir6n as it was knpwn to the authors of t$e VendidPd, opens the enumeration of the Irinian reginons by the Errin-V&, washed by the Good DPitya (I, 3) ;now the Errirt-V$ is on the borders of Atropatene, and the Good DPitya is the Araxes.' It is equally familiar with the North, for it cites Rhagz, the 'Pa7ai of the Greeks, the Ray of the moderns, in Media." dtudes Iranicnnes, vol. i, pp. 10-12. This view is by no means uniyersally admitted. Geiger, for instance, places the Airydna Vatja, or Erdn-Vtj, in the region of the Pamirs. 26 INTROD UCTORY One piece of philological evidence is adduced by Darmrs- 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,^ the existence of an Old Persian form saka (not actually occurring in the meagre docu~nentson which we depend for our direct knowledge of the ancient language of Pirs). Herodotus, however, mentions (I, I 10) that in the langunge of the Medes the dog was called crs&a, which rather resembles the Avestic word span (San- skrit wan, Greek K~WV). And it is curious that this word, in the form ispa, still exists 2 in some of the Persian dialects, such as those of Qohrhd (near Krishin) and Natanz. M. ClCment Huart, who has contributed to the Journal Huart's dcrelop- mentof~ar,ne-Asiatique3 a number of very ingenious and steter'sview. interesting papers on various Persian dialects, such as those of Yazd, Siwand, and the curious Jdwiddn-i-Kabir (the principal work of the heretical Huriifi sect,4 which arnse in Persia in the fifteenth century of our era), has still further developed Darmesteter's views, and has endeavoured to show that several of the dialects spoken in remote and mountainous places in Persia (especially in the West, i.e., in Media) are descended from the language of the Avesta; and to these dialects he proposes to apply the term "Modern Medic," or According to his interpretation of the dala contained in ch. i of the Vendidid, the most western regions known to the Avesta are I.'eltrkn'?ia (Hyrcania, the modern GurgAn or Jurjin), Ralrglza (Rhagie, or Ray, near Tihdn, the modern capital), and Varerta " the four-cornered," cor- responding, according to his view, to the eastern portion of Mjzan- c1arAn. Loc. cit., p. 13. CJ my Year artzortgst Nze Pe~sial~s,p. 189 ; ~olak'sPersien, vol. i, p. 26j. 3 J.A. for 1885, vol. vi, pp. 502-j4j, les Qrlatr-airrs de Bdbd Tn'lzir; ibid. for 1888, vol. xi, pp. 298-302, Note szcr lep~~e'terzdrcDhf dcs Pdrsis dcs Yezd , ihid. 1889, xiv, pp. 238-270, Nofice d'irfz nzaizrrscrit Pclilevi-AIzrszrl~izarr; ibid. 1893, vol. i, pp. 241-265, Le Dialecfe Persalt de Sftwhrd. 4 See my article on the Liierafi~reatld Doclri7tes of tlte H~cvzifiSect in the 7.IZ.A.S. for January, 1898, pp. 61-94. PERSIAN DIALECTS 27 "Pehlevi-Musulman." 1 He remarks that, amongst other differences, the root kar-underlies the whole verb which signifies "to do," "to make," in the Avestic language ;while in Old Persian the aorist, or imperative, stem of this verb (as in Modern Persian) is kun-;and again that the root sig- nifying "to speak," "to say," in Avestic is aoj-, vach-, while in Old Persian it is gaub-. Now while in Modern Persian (which, as we have seen, is the lineal descendant of Old Persian) the verbs signifying "to do," "to say," are kardan (imperative kun) and gujtan (imperative g!~,gtiy), in those dialects which he calls "Modern Medic" the stem kar-is preserved throughout (aorist Rnra~n instead of kunam, &c.), and words denoting "speech," "to speak," are derived from a root vdj-or some similar basis corresponding to the Avestic aoj-, vach-. This test is employed by M. Huart in classifying a given dialect as "Medic " or cc Persian." According to this ingenious theory the language of the Avesta is still represented in Persia by a number of dialects, such as those used in the quatrains of BAbh Tahir (beginning of the eleventh century), in the JAwilZrin-i-Kabir (fifteenth century), and, at the present day, in the districts of Qolirrid and Siwand, and amongst the Zoroastrians of Yazd and Kirmin. It is also to be noted that the word for "I" in the Tjlish dialect is, according to BerCsine,~az, which appears to be a survival of the Avestic azem (Old Persian adam). It is to be expected that a fuller and more exhaustive study of the dialects still spoken in various parts of Persia (which, notwithstanding the rich materials collected, and in part published, by Zhukovski,s are still inadequately known to us) will throw inore light on this question. Darmesteter, however, in another work (Chansons They are, in fact, commonly called Pahlawi by the Persians, and were so as early as the fourteenth century of our era-eg., by Hamdu'llih Mus- tawii of Qazwin. Cf. Polak, lac. cit. Recherches szrr les Dialectes Persaizs, Kazan, 1853, pp. 31, etscqq. 3 Afalerialy dld izucltcnia Persidskiklz Nnr6clzij, part i (Dialects of Kishin, Vinishiin, Qohriid, Keshe, and Zefre), St. Petersburg, 1888. popukzirt des Afghans, pp. Ixii-lxv), has endeavoured to show that the PashtB or PakhtB language of Afghanistan represents the chief surviving descendant of the old Avestic tongue, which theory seems to militate against the view set forth in his Atudes Iraniennes. It is possible, however, that the two are really compatible ;that Zoroaster, of the Medic tribeof the Magians (Magush), brought his doctrine from Atropatene (~zarba~jin) in the extreme north-west of IrPn to Ractria in the extreme north-east, where he achieved his first signal success by con- verting King Vishtispa (Gushtisp) ; that the dialects of Atropatene and Bactria, and, indeed, of all North frin, were very similar; and that in the Avesta, as suggested by De Harlez, the so-called G5thP dialect represents the latter, and the ordinary Avestic of the VendidLd the former. All this, however, is mere conjecture, which at best can only be regarded as a plausible hypothesis. It is not less difficult to speak with certainty as to the religion of the Medes than as to their language ; nay, in spite of their numerous inscriptions it has not yet been Rq"$$:ei:thedecided whether or no the Achzmenians who 1rbnians.- zo,,,,t,, 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 GithPs, 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 Tra- durtion nauvellc (Annales du Musie Guimet, vols. xxi-xxiv, DATE OF THE A VESTA : 29 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 co;rageous traveller, M. HalCvy, 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 Darmesteter7s 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 un- molested even these high levels where passion should have no r place ! To enter these lists is not fbr 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 I those arid fields of a remote antiquity, striving with infinite I 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 some- thing 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 combinatio~lof 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 adinirable papers published in the Proceedi7zgs of the Ailzerican 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 Zoro- astrianism ;and has finally summed up his views in a work, at once most scho1:~rlyand nlost readable, entitled Zoronster, the Propliet of Ancitnt fmhn (New York, 1899). His principal conclusions are as follows :- I. That Zoroaster was a perfectly historical personage, a member of the Mccliall tribe of the Magi. z.That he flo~irisliedabout the nliddle of the seventh , ProfessorWi,li:,,,,s jack-century before Christ-that is, during the do~ninio~lof son's the hlccles and before the rise of the Achzn~enianconclusions. power-and dicd 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 Icing Vishtispa (Gushtisp). 4. That the Gitliis (acl~i~ittccllythe oltlcst portion of the Avesta) reflect with fidelity the subslalicc of his orighal preachi~lgin Ballih. 5. That from Bactria the religion of Zoroaster spread rapidly throughout Persia, and was dominant in Pirs (Persis proper) under the later,Ach;emenians, bul that the date of its introduction into this part of 11611'and its acloption by llic people and rulers of I'irs 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 inlmediately succeeding the Muhammadan Con- quest, which is derived mainly from the tradition current in T'CRIME OF " MAGICIDE" 3 I Shbnian times. And it may be remarked that since it is not the habit of writers of this class to understate facts, it appears unlikely that they should concur in assign- Reasonableness of these ing to Zoroaster too modern a date. As regardsconc~usions. 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 Pirsi tradition indicates, introduced there by Medic dthravans, or fire-priests, these Lithravans being uniformly repre- sented as wanderers and missionaries in the north-east, whose home was in Ragha (Ray) and Media. Darmesteter,~in this connection, has called attention to the interesting fact that the word Mighu (from which we get "Magian ") u~~~~::~~,,only occurs in one passage in the Avesta (Yasna "hf'~;~S~~.nthe xliv, 25),in the compound Mb'ghu!bish, "a hater" or "injurer of the Magi "; for it was as Magi of Medic race, not as dthravans of Zoroastrian faith, that they were exposed to the hatred and jealousy of the Persians proper, whose po&er succeeded that of the Medes, and whose supre- macy was threatened from time to time in early Achaemenian days by Medic insurrections, notably by that of Th,:s~iBD GaumAta 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, Gaurn2ta by name; froin PisiySuvSdi did he arise, from a mountain there named Arakadris. In the nionlh 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 of8Cambyses (Kambu- jiya).' Thereupon all the people revoltcd against Cambyses, they went over to him, both Persia and Media, and likewise the other Translation of the ~vesta("01. i, pp. li-lii) in the Sacred Books of the East (Oxford. 18801. 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 Gaumdta the Magian took away from Cambyses,this Throne was from of old in our Family. Citation from So GaumPta the Magian took away frorn Cambyses the inscription both Persia and Media and the other provinces, he of Darius. 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 Gaumita 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 Ganmdta the Magian until I came. Thcn I callcd on Ahnramazdn for Ilclp :A11ur:~nlazclab~ougllt nlc Iiclp :in the nio11l11of Uigayidisll, on the tenth day, then it was that I with a few men slew that Gau- mjta the Magian, and those who were the foremost of his followers. In Media is a fortress named Cikathauvatish, in the district named Niy2ya: there slew I him: I toolr 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 GaumPta the Magian overthrew I restored to the people, the markets, and the flocks, and the dwellings according to clans which GaumPta 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 Gaumgta 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, Gaumita the Magian, who "made Persia (PBrs) 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 Hamadin (Ecbatana, the old Medic capital), claimed to be L'of the race of Huvakhshatara" (Cyaxares, the third Medic king of Herodotus), and so did Chitratakhma, who rebelled in Sagar- tia, and was crucified at Arbil (Arbira). We find, it is true, Medic generals and soldiers, fighting ""p:z: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- 6pdyXorro~rap; plrpdv-and ~robabl~the same in religion, the jealousy between Mede and Persian was at this time a powerful factor in history, and, as Darmesteter says, the Magiarl priest of Media, though respected and feared in his priestly capacity, and even held indispe~lsablefor the proper celebratio11 of religious rites, was none the less liable to the hatred and enmity of the southern Persian. As it is the aim of this book to trace the developments of post-Muhammadan literature and thought in Persia, or in other words the literary history of the last thousand years, Periods earlier thand~stingu~shablethe, Xiedic with only such reference to earlier times as is in the I+story of requisite for a proper understanding of this subject, the Peislall race. 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 Erdnische AIterthumskunde (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- fr~nianrace located somewhere in the Panjgb. The pretty theory as to the causes which led to the cleavage of this com- munity which was so ingeniously advanced by Max Miiller 1 See Max Miiller's Selected Essays (London,1881),vol. ii, pp. 132-134. 4 34 INTROD UCTORY is, 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 Hindiis and the Avesta of the Zoroastrians of certain theological terms, which, though identical Ifax bfiiller's theory. as regards etymology, are here diametrically opposed. Deva in Sanskrit means "bright," and he Devas, or "Bright ones," are the Hind6 gods. In the Avesta, on the other hand, the daivas (Modern Persian div) are devils, and the Zoroastrian, in his confession of faith, solemnly declares :"I cease to be a worshipper of the daivas; " he renounces these daivas, devas, or Hindh gotls, and becomes the servant of Alzura fizda. Now it is a phonetic law that Persian 11 corresponds to Sanskrit s (c.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 Al~uraof the Avesta is equivalent to asura in Sanskrit, which means an evil spirit or devil. And so, from these two little words, Max Miiller conjures up a most convincing picture of Zoroaster, the re,former and prophet, rising up amongst the still united Indo-Irdnian community to protest against the degradation of a polytheistic nature-worship which had gradually replaced the purer conceptions of an earlier time ; emphasising his dis- approval 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 hcra from the stiff-necked "worshippers of the daivas " 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 Vendidbd, 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 Vendidid is that portion of it which contains GEOGRAPHY OF TNE A VESTA 35 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 : (I) " The Airyana Fa44 by the good river Dkitya" (a mythical region, identified in Sbinian times with the region of the River Araxes, that is, with the modern Azarbiyjin) ; (2) SugIlda (Sogdiana, Sughd) ; (3) MSuru (Margiana, Merv) ; (4) Bdkhdi (Bactria, Balkh) ; (5) NisAya (?N~aaia,the capital of Parthia, the 1noder11 Nasi in KhurisLn, two days' journey from Sarakhs and five from Merv) ; (6) Hariyu (Her5t) ;(7) YaMercta (identified with KLbul in the Pahlawi commentary) ; (8) Urva (identified with Tiis) ; (9) Yehrkbna (Hyrcania, the modern Gurgin or Jurjin) ; (10) Harahwaiti ('AphXwros), and (11) Hae"tument, both in the region of the Helmand river ; (12) Ragha (Ray, 'Payai, near the modern capital, Tihrin) ; (13) Chakhm (?Shargh or Jargh of Ibn Khur- didhbih,~ four parasangs from Bukh6ri) ; (14) "the four- cornered yarenu (?Elburz region) ; (IS) the Hapta-Hefidu, or Seven Rivers (the Panjib) ; (16) "the land by the floods of the Ranha, where people live without a head" (i.e., a ruler). In this list Geiger and some other scholars, suppose that we have an itinerary of the migrations of the Irdnians on their entry into Persia after the fission of the original Indo- Irdnian community, which was located in the region of the Pamirs, whence the first stream of migration flowed mainly westwards to Sughd, Merv, Balkh, Nasi, and Herit ; another stream south and south-west to the Panjib, Kibul, and the Helmand region ;while some adventurous spirits continued the westward migration as far as GurgAn and Ray. But it is doubtful if much stress can be laid on the order observed in this 'Ed. de Goeje (vol. vi of Bibl. Geog. Arab.), pp. 25,203. 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 r Irinian people, which hypothesis would be much strengthened if the identification of the Airyana Vaej8 with Atropatene (Azarbiyjin) 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 con- quests in the extreme north-east. Did we need any proof that a prophet is often without honour in his own country, the history of Islrim would supply it, and Balkh may well have been the Medina of the Zoroastrian faith. rAnother period, subsequent alike to the Indo-Iranian and the primitive Irinian epochs, has been distinguished and discussed with care and acumen by Spiegel,~who placesPeriod of Assyrlanin-its beginning about B.C. 1000, namely, the periodfluence. of Assyrian influence-an influence salient to all eyes in the sculptures and inscriptions of the Ach~rnenians, 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 Sisinian and Muhammadan time ; Aramaic in earlier Sisinian 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. ' E~dilische Altcr.il'rrf~~sI:r~?~~fc,vol. i, pp. 446485, '' Beginn der er5nischen Selbstandigkeit. Die altesten Ueriihru~lgen mit den Serniten." SEMITIC INFLUENCES , 37 Greek is tar pore 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 Pahlawi, 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 practi- cally of very little use, and even in the interpretation of the Avesta it must be employed with some reserve and due regard to the Pahlawi tradition. In concluding this introductory chapter it may be well to recapitulate the periods in Persian history of which Recapitulation. we have s~oken. I. The 1ndo-frhnian period. 11. The early irinian period. 111. The period of Assyrian influence (B.c. IOOO).~ IV. The Medic period (B.c. 700). V. The Old Persian (Achzmenian) period (B.c. 550). VI. Interregnum, from the Invasion of Alexander to the Shshnian Restoratiorl (B.c. 330-A.D. 226). VI1. The Sisinian period (A.D. 226-652). VIII. The Muhammadan period, extending from the fall ot the Sisinian Dynasty to the present day. It is with the last of these periods that we are principally Or even earlier. See p. 20, szipra. 38 INTROD UCTORY concerned, and, as will in due time appear, it comprises numerous important subdivisions. Before approaching it, how- ever, 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. I I CHAPTER I1 THE DISCOVERY AND INTERPRETATION OF THE INSCRIPTIONS AND DOCUMENTS OF ANCIENT PERSIA, WITH OTHER PHILOLOGICAL MATTER. THElanguage of Modern, that is to say ot Post-Muham- madan, Persia, was naturally, for practical reasons, an object of interest and study in Europe long before any Brief sketch of thedevelopment serious attempt was made to solve the enigmas of Oriental rtudiesinBurope presented by the three ancient languages of which ,this chapter will briefly trace the discovery and decipherment : to wit, the Old Persian of the Achzemenian inscriptions, the Avestic idiom, and the Pahlawi of S5dnian 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 European languages were made about the be- Twelfth century. ginning of the twelfth century ot-our era by Jews and Moors converted to Christianity,= who were 1 A great deal of interesting information concerning the early Oriental- ists is contained in the Gnllia Oriefztalisof Paul Colombs (Opcra, Hainburg, 1709, pp. I-z~z),and also in the excellent Esqrrisse Historique prefixed by Gustave Dugat to his useful Histoire des Ovieizfnlisfcsde 1'Europe du XI1 atc SIX, sitcle (Paris, 1868), to which I am largely indebted in this portion 40 HISTORY OF PERSIAN PHILOLOGY 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-FAribi, Ibn Sin5 (Avicenna), and al-Ghazz5li ; and Michael Scot, who appears to have studied Arabic at Toledo in A.D. 1217. Roger Bacon and Raymond Lull (thirteenth century) alsocentury. called attention to the importance, for philosophic and scientific purposes, of a study of Oriental languages. In A.D. 1311-1312 it was ordained by Pope Clement FOurtecnt'lcentury. the Fifth that Professorships of Hebrew, Chaldean, and Arabic should be established at Rome, Paris, Bologna, Oxford and Salamanca, wl~oseteacl~ing,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 translationsof 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 was actually done to further the study of Arabic until the establishment of the CollZge de France in A.D. 1530 by Francis the Fifth. Armegand of Montpellier I had already, in A.D. 1274, translated portions of the works of Avicenna and Averroes into Latin, but that remarkable scholar and traveller, Guillaume Postel 2 may, of my subject. See also M. Jonrdain's Rccl~erdcescrifiqucs suv I'6ge ct l'origine des tradtrctiofzs lafirzes ~'AI-isfofcef sur les co~~z~~zcrzturiesgrccs ou arabes enzfiloj~isfiav les docf~zrrsscltolnsiiques. This is the first biography given in the Gnllin Oricrtfalis. " Gallorum primus," Sayb .he author, "quod sciam, qui Linguas Orientales ab anno millesirno ducentesimo excoluerit, fuit Armegandos Rlasii, Doctor Medicus, regnante Philippo, Ludovici cognomine Sancti filio." He died in 1581 at the age of gj or 96. See Gnllta 0i.ierrtalis. PP 59-66. ARABIC CHAIRS FOUNDED : 4I according to M. Dugat, be called "the first French Orien- talist" ; 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 Collsge de France, and a few years subse- quently Savary de RrZves, who is said to have had a fine taste in 01,iental 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 IEthiopic), 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, how- ever, may be said to date from the seventeenth century, since which epoch progress has been steady and con- Seventeenthcentury. tinuous. 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-Saxo~l,combined the function ot University Librarian. Amongst his pupils was rhomas Hyde. that distinguished scholar, Thomas Hyde, after- wards Professor of both the Hebrew and the Arabic lan- guages 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,^ may be taken as representing the high-water-mark of knowledge on this subject at the close of the seventeenth century, and, indeed, 1 He died on February 18,1702, having resigned the Librarianship of the Bodleian in April, 1701. The second edition of his VcferzrmPersarzrlrr ... Religion,is Hisforia, published in 1760, is that to which reference ia here made. 4.2 HISTORY OF PERSIAN PHILOLOGY until the publication of Anquetil du Perron's epoch-making memoirs (I 763-1 77 1), 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. I-Iyde 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 Relijrion of tlrc Parsees I (1630), Sanson's De llodierno statu Persiu ( 1683), and the narratives of the travellers Pedro Texeira (1604), Pere 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 remark- able 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 full title of this tract (lor it comprises but 53 pages) is Tlte Religio~zof tlze Peficcs, as if ?was Coii~fiilc~i.F.ol?r a Booke of theirs, con- tayrzirrg il~eFonlrc of their Wol.shifific, zoritterl irr the Persinit Cltaracter; u1zd by fltcnt called tlzeiv Zz~~rdavastazw,whereirt is shewed tlte Szcpersfitious Cerellzotzics used n~~rollgsiflzeiiz,morc especially tlzei? Idolatroirs TYorslzifipe of Fire. The author's inlor~nationwas derived from a Pirsi of Surat "whose long employment, in the Cotnpanies service, had brought him to a mediocrily in the Ef~glislztongue." The book COII~X~~Sbut meagre inform- ation c:olicerning the Zoroastria~~tenets, a~~di11dic;tlesnot even an indirect 1;nowlcdge of the contents nl tl~eAvesta. THOMAS H YDE I 43 the Arabic Mdh prefixed to certain place-names (p. 424), was aware ot the existence amongst the Zoroastrians of Persia of a peculiar "gabri" dialect (pp. 364, 429), knew the Hurlifi sect as a revived form of Manichzanism (p. 283), made free use of the rare Arabic translation of the Shdh-ndma of al-Bundiri, and was acquainted with the so-called Zend character,^ and with such later P5rsi writings as the Zardtusht-ndma, the Sad-dar (of which he gives a complete Latin translation), and the Persian translation of the Book of Arda Yirdif: On the other hand he had no knowledge whatever ot the Avestic or Pahlawi languages, entirely misunderstood the meaning of the term Zend Avesta or Avesta va ~;;~l~;~,","f Zend, and endeavoured to prove that the Old ~~,","~,",f~~Persian inscriptions were not writing at all, but languages of mere architectural ornamentation. Anquetil du Perron at the end of his Discours Prkliminaire (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 cite'd from late Pirsi 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 aboht the middle of the seventeenth century ;a and is quite certain that he would It would appear from a remark of Sir W. Jones in the Leftre h Monsieur A . . . dzr P . . . hereafter cited (p. 602), that Dr. Hyde caused the "Zend " characters employed in h~sbook to be cast for his own usc. The fount is an excellent one-much more artistic than that used in the latest edition of the Avcsta (Geldner's). See Hyde, ofi. 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 completr, ending ch. 1. 2 (Westergaard), and lacking the last quarter ; not dated ; probably middle of the seventeenth century. Though not old, it is accu- I* 44 HISTORY OF PERSIAN PHILOLOGY 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- Chaldzan eskta, "fire " (of. 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 the111 (p. 546), and declared in the most positive fashion that tllcy 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 Pahlawi inscriptions of Naqsh-i- Rajab lie equally refuses to recognise any form of Persian script. "As regards Nos. I and 4 " (the SAsAnian Pahlawi), he says, "I assert that these characters cannot be ancient Persian, which are perceived, it1 their ancient books, which I myself possess, to differ from them toto cmlo" (p. 548.) Such, then, was the state of knowledge in 1754. NO further advance had been made towards the understanding of the Avesta, though several new MSS. had Anquetil du Perron (1754-been brought to England : to wit, a MS. of the 1771). Yendidbd obtained from the Phis 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 Pahlawi languages. But in the rately written froln a good MS. It agrees with the bcst MSS., but not entirely with any ; most closely with I<. 11. The orthography is very consistent, and it is important for critical purposes, being an independent codex. ANQUETIL DU PERRON 45 year above mentioned a facsimile of four leaves of the Bodleian MS. of the Yendiddd 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 PBrsi 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 dis- couragement, suffering, sickness, opposition, perils by sea and I perils of war, he persevered for seven years and a half, until, on March 15, 1762, having at length regained Paris after his I long and adventurous exile, he deposited his precious manu- scripts, the fruits of his incredible labours, in the Bib1i0th;~ue 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 idker thkoZogiques, I physiques, et ?norales de ce legislateur, les ckrkmonies du culte religieux qu'il a ktabli, et plusieurs traits importans reIatifs d r'ancienne histoire des Ferses, traduit en Franfais sur /'original Zend avec des Remarques : et accnmpagnk de plusieurs traitks propres h CcZaircir les matikres qui en sont I'objet. This work was in the fullest sense of the word epoch-making, or, as the Germans say, "bahn-brechend." Anquetil completely accom- plished the great task he had set himself. Much remained to be doie in detail by his successors, many inaccuracies are 46 HISTORY OF PERSIAN PHILOLOGY naturally to be found in his work ;1 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, ethno- logical, 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 first volume of his work (pp. i-cccclxxviii), and Anquci'"sad-ventures. include, in truth, a rnnss 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 sllortly to be exposed. Briefly, Anquetil quitted I'aris with his " pctit equipage " (containing, except for a few books, only two shirts, two handkerchiefs and a pair of socks), without the knowledge or any one except his brother, who was bound to secrecy, on November 7, 1754, and nlarched with his company-men little to his taste, whom he speaks of as "ces brutauxU--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 turther accorded a first-class passage to India. Sailing from L'Orient on February 7, 1755, he reached Pondichery on August 9th ot 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 co~nmunicationbetween himself and the Zoroastrian priests. More than three years elapsed, however, ere he reached Surat (May I, 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 For an example,, see Haug's Essays on tlce Pdrsts, edited by West (third edition, London, 1884), p. 24. immediately concerned the Zoroastrian religion), partly by the political complications of that time. After numerous adven- tures, however, he ultimately arrived at Surat on the date indicated above. He at once put himself in relation with two Phi dastu'rs, or priests, named DLrLb and Kd'iis, from whom, three months later, he received, after many vexatious delays and attempts at extortion and evasion, a professedly complete copy of the Vendidid. Fully aware of the necessity for caution, he succeeded in borrowing from another dastu'r, Manhchihrji (who, owing to religious differences, was not on terms of intercourse wit11 Dhr4b and Ki'fis) another good and ancient manusc~-iptof the same work ;and, on collating this with the other, he was not long in discovering that his two dasttirs 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 Sanja'n (of which Anquetil gives an abstract at pp. cccxviii-cccxxiv of his work), an account of the descent of all copies of the VendidSd and its Pahlawi commentary preserved in India from a Persian original brought thither from Sist6n by a dasthr named Ardashir 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 Pahlawi-Persian vocabulary, and six days later began, the translation of the Vendidid, which, together with Anquetil's work. 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 dastirr DirLb. During this time he received much help and friendly ~rotectionfrom the English, notably from Mr. Spencer, ot 48 HISTORY OF PERSIAN PHILOLOGY whom he speaks in the highest terms (p, cccxlvi), and Mr Erskine. Having completed the translation of the Yasna, Vispered, and Vendiddd, the Pahlawi Bundalahish, the Sf-rhza, Rivdyats, kc., and visited the sacred fire in its temple, and the dakhmar, 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, "gCnCreux quand on les [vend par un certain cat&" (p. ccccxxxi), he sailed from Surat to Bombay, where, after, a sojourr~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 or his work) on board the Bristal.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), 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 ot 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 inspectio~~of the Avestic manuscripts there preserved. "Je dbclarai net," he says Ip. ccccliv), "que je ne quitterais pas 1'Angleterre sans avoir vu Oxford, puis qu'o~lm'y avait retenu prisonnier contre le droit des gens. Le dEsir de cornparer mes manuscrits avec ceux de cette cCl2bre Universitd n'avait pas peu ajoutt aux raisons clui m'avaient cornme ford de prendre, pour revenir en Europe, la voie Anglaise." Well furnislled with letters ot introduction, he arrived at Oxford on January 17, 1762, SIR WZLIAM JONES ' , 49 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 Biblioth2que du Roi. The appearance of AnquetiI's work in I771 was far from at once convincing the whole learned world of the great services which he had rendered to science. In ReceptionAt~nue[ilduof place of the wisdom expected from a sage like Perron's work. 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 formulz, wearisome repetitions, and grotesque prescriptions. The general disappointment (which, indeed, Anquetil Sir,~~~,amhad 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.= 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, I 799). 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 sorne- what egotistic strain which, it must be admitted, runs through the narrative portion of his work, and by certain of his reflec- tions 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 I Me 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. r 50 HISTOX Y OF PERSIAN PHILOLOGY taste, but absolutely refused to recognise the immense import- ance, ana 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 wrote, in time of war, when he had seen his Vindication of 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 glow- ing 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 hospi- tality and delicacy of feeling (pp. ccccxxxvii-xxxix), and the like ;while his railleries at one or two of the Oxford doctors- at the ccm&chantbonnet gras i trois corries " of Dr. Swinton, the ill-judged pleasantry of Dr. Hunt, the haughty and magis- terial 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 reqevoir cette lettre d'un inconnu, qui aime les vrais talens, et qui sait apprkcierSpecimens of Sir \V. Jones's les vbtres. letter to Anquetil. "Souffrez qu'on vous fklicite de vos heureuses dkcouvcrtcs. Vous avcz souvent procligud votre prd- cieuse vie; vous avcz frauchi tlcs tncrs oragcuses, des montagnes remplies de tigres ; vous avez fl6tri votre teint, que vous nous dites, avec autant d'klggance que de modestie, avoir Bt6 compos6 SIR W. JONES AND ANQ UETIL 5 I de lis ct de roses;vous avez essuy6 des maux encore plus cruels ; et tout cela uniquement pour le bien de la littkrature, et de ceux qui ont le rare bonheur de vous ressembler. "Vous avez appris deux langues anciennes, que 1'Europe entikre ignorait ;vous avez rapport6 en France le fruit de vos travaux, les livres du c&l&breZoroastre; vous avez charm6 le public par votre agr6able traduction de cet ouvrage ;et vous avez atteint le comble de votre ambition, on plut8t l'objet de vos ardens dksirs ;vous &tes Meinbre de l'Acadkmie des Inscriptions. "Nous respectons, comme nous le devons, cette illustre et savante Acadkmie ;mais vous mkritez, ce nous semble, un titre plus dis- tingu6. ...Plus grand voyageur que Cadmus, vous avez rapport&, comme lui, de nouveaux caractbres, et de nouveaux dieux. . . . A parler franchement, ou cloit vous faire pour le moilis l'Archirnagc, ou grand prEtre des GuGbres, c1'aut:ult plus que, clans ce nouveau poste, vous auriez l'occasion cle mettre un peu plus de feu dans vos Bcrits. "Voyageur, Savant, Antiquaire, Nhros, Libellisle, quels titres ne mCritez-vous pas ? . .. "Pernlettez maintenant, Monsieur, qu'on vous dise skrieusement 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 rkserve. . . . On doit aimer le vrai savoir : rnais toutes choses ne valeut pas la peine d'btre sues. "Socrate disait, en voyant 1'6talage d'un bijoutier, 'De combien de clloses je n'ai pas besoin !' On peut de mdme s16crier,en con- templant les ouvrages de nos Brudits, Combien de connaissances il m'importe peu d'acqukrir ! "Si vous aviez fait cette dernikre rkflexion, vous n'auriez pas affront6 la mort pour nous procurer des lumikres inutiles. . . . "Si ces raisonnemens, Monsieur, ne portent pas absolument i faux, il en rksulte que votre objet &hit ni beau ni important; que 1'Europe Cclair6e n'avait nu1 besoin de votre Zetlde Vasta ;que vous l'avez traduit pure perte ; et que vous avez prodigu6 inutilement pendant dix-huit ans un temps qui devait vous btre prkcieux. .. . Quelle petite gloire que de savoir ce clue personne ne sait, et n'a que faire de savoir I . .. On veut m&me croire que vous avez dans la tdte plus de mots Zendes, c'est-&dire, plus de mots durs, trkinans, barbares, que tous les savans de I'Europe. Ne savez-vous pas que lcs langues n'ont ancune valeur intrins&que?. .. D'ailleurs, 6tes- vous bien stir que vous poss6dcz les anciennes langues de la Perse? . . . On ne saura jamais, ne vous en diplaise, les anciens dialectes de la Perse, tandis qu'ils n'existent que dans les prk- 52 HISTORY OF PERSIAN PHILOLOGY tendus livres de Zoroastre, qui d'ailleurs sont remplis de rkpititions inutiles. I' 'Mais,' direz vous, 'me soupqonne-t-on d'avoir voulu tromper le public ?' Non, Monsieur, on ne dit pas cela. Vous vous 6tes tromp6 vous-mbme. . .. "Jusqulici, Monsieur, nous n'avons d'autre plainte envers voos, que celle de nous avoir endor~nis;ce qui n'est pas certainement un crime en soi-mbme : quant iceux qui craignent ces vapeurs sopori- fiques, il est facile ou de ne pas lire un livre qui les donne, ou de l'oublier ; le remide est aussi nature1 que la prkcaution est bonne. "On ne dira rien de votre style dur, bas, inklkgant, souvent ampoule, rarcment confor~neau sujet, et jamais agrkable. . . . Nous aurons plus & dire sur la fin cle votre discours. . .. Quelle pilllition votre Zoroaslre ordonne-t-il pour les ingrats? Comhien d'trrirte tie bamf sont ils obliges cl'avaler ? On vous conseille, Monsieur, de prendre une dose cle cette sainte et purifiante liqueur. ... "Nous avons, Monsieur, l'honneur de connaitre le Docteur Hunt, et nous faisons gloire de le respecter. I1 est incapable de trornper qui que ce soit. I1 Ite Ptozrs a jawtais dif,il n'a pu vous dire, qu'il entendait les langues anciennes de la Perse. I1 est persuadk, aussi bien que nous, que personne ne les sait, et ne les saura jamais, moins qu'on ne recouvre toutes les histoires, les poemes, et les ouvrages de religion, que le Calife Omar et ses g6nkraux cherchkrent i dktruire avec tant d'acharnement ;ce qui rend inutile la peine de courir le monde aux dkpens de l'kclat d'un visage f7euri. 11 ne regrette pas A la veritk son ignorance de ces langues ; il en est assez dkdommagk par sa rare connaissance du Persan moderne, la langue des Sadi, des Cashefi, des Nkzamis, dans les livres desquels on ne trouve ni le Barsom, ni le Lingam, ni des observances ridicules, ni des idkes fantastiques, mais beaucoup de rtflesions piquantes contre l'ingratitude et la fausset&.. . . "Vous triomphez, Monsieur, de ce que le Docteur Hyde ne savait pas les langues allciennes de la Perse ; ct vous ne dites rien de nouveau. . . . Vous reprenez le Docteur I-lyde de ce qu'il igllorait que les cinq gahs signifiassent les cinq parties du jour; de ce qu'il dit 2oz~au lien de ion; et de ce qu'il ne savait pas qu' Altclnza?~,le nom de votre diable Persan, Btait un abr6viation du mot mSlodieux Errgltri ~nertioscli;car vous savez qu'en cllangeant Enghri ell Aher et ~isetriosclien ?Itarton fait ARenr~ail. De la m6me rna~li&re on peut iaire le mot diable en changeant Englrri en rli, et ineizoisch en able." SIR JONES AND 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'kcrivit pas le livre que vous luiattrib~~ez;s'il n'avait pas le sens cornrnun, il fallait le laisser dans la foule, et dans l'obscurit6 ;s'il n18crivit pas ce livre, il 6tait impudent de le publier sous son nom. Ainsi, ou vous avez insult6 le goat du public en lui prksentant des sottises, ou vous l'avez tromp6 en lui debitant des fausset8s : et de chaque c5t6 vous mkritez son mkpris." Sir William Jones's letter, though it served to mar Anquetil du Perron's legitimate triumph, and (which was more serious) to blind a certain number of scholars and men of Anquetilavenged. 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 recdgnise 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 Desdtlr-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 MullP K5'Gs about the year 1773, was only published by the son of the purchaser, Mull5 Firiiz, in I 8I8 ;1 his knowledge of Its full title is : 3%~Dcsatir ot Sacred Writirigs oj the Ancierlt Persian Propltets; in the Original Toizgzre; fogether wifh tlrc Ancient Persian Version and Commentary of flte Fzyth Susan; carefully Publisltcd by Mulla Firm bin Kaus, wlto has subjoirted a copious Glossary of the Obsolete and Tecltrzicnl Persian Tem~s:to which is added an Eitglish Translatiolr of the Dcsatit and Conmmenlavy. Iiz two voltrnies. (Bombay, 1818.) Particulars concerning the unique manuscript will be found at p. vii of the Preface to the second volume. The Desdtir was examined, and the futility of its pre- tensions exposed, by de Sacy in the Jozmml dcs Savarzls (pp.16-31 and 54 HISTORY OF PERSIAN PH~LOLOGY 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 Dabistdn- i-Madlzdhib or "School of Sects," a treatise composed in India about the middle of the seventeenth century of our era.1 Of this work Sir William Jones spoke in 17892 in the following terms of exaggerated eulogy :- "A fortunate discovery, for which I was first indebted to Mir Sir W,Jones,s Muhammed Husain, one of the most intelligent Musel- credulity epuals mins in India, has at once dissipated the cloud,?nd his sceptic~sm, and is as cast a gleam of light on the primeval history of Irin mispiaced. and of the human race, of which I had long despaired,-- and which could hardly have dawned fro111any other quarter. "This rare and interesting tract on twelve different religioits, entitled the Dabistrin, and composed by a Mohammedan traveller, a native of Caslzmir, named Mohsan, but distinguishede:!$rA::$~, by the assumed surname of Fini, or Perishable, begins of the v;~loeot with a wonderfully curious chapter on the religion of the Desitir and ~~bi~ti,,. Hlishang, which was long anterior to that of Zeritusht, 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, disselltillg in many points from the GaDrs, and persecuted by the ruling powers of their country, had retired to India; where they compiled a number of boolrs, now extremely scarce, which Mohsan had perused, and with the writers of which. or 67-79) for January-February, 1821. See also Nos. 6, 12, 13, 18, and 20 of the Heidelberger Jalcrbilclter det Lifterahr for 1823 (vol. i), by H. E. G. Paulus ;and Erskine in vol. ii. of the Transacfiotts of ilte Boiizbay 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 UIZGraitd Miitre des Assassiizs flu fenlps de Saladilz, published in the Jowrr~alAsinfiqzre for 1S77, viz., that it was the work, and contains the doctrines, of the Isma'ilis. See pp. 141-142 of Rieu's Catalogz~cof the Persian Manuscripts in the British dlzrsezrm. 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 011 the Persians, delivered at a meeting of the Asiatic Society, in Calcutta, on February 19, 1789 (Works, vol. i, PP. 73-94). SIR WILLIAM JONES ; with many of them, he had contracted an intimate friendship : from them he !earned that a powerful monarchy had been established for ages in Irin before the accession of Caylimers, that it was called the Mahibidian, for a reason which will soon be mentioned, and that many princes, of whom seven or eight only are named in the Dabistdn, and among them Mahbul or Mahi Beli, had raised their empire to the zenith of human glory. If we can rely ?n this evidence, which to me appears unexceptionable, the Irinian 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 Irin belonged, or whether they sprang from a fourllz 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 laizguagesand letters, religion and philosophy, and incidentally into the arts and sciences, of the ancient Persians. "In the new and important remarlrs, which I am going to offer,-- on the ancient laitguages and characters of irin, I am sensible, that you must give me credit for many assertions, which on Sir W. Jones's th notionsabout is occasion it is impossible to prove ;for I should ill the history of deserve your indulgent attention, if I were to abuse it Ancient Persia. by repeating a dry list of detached words, and present- ing you with avocabulary instead of a dissertation ;but, since I have no system to maintain, and have not suffered imagination to delnde my judgmerit, 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 ~zaiul-allknowledge; and since I have maturely considered the questions which I mean to discuss ;you will not, I am persuaded, suspect my testi~nony,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, and too often equally unfortunate in both. He S1rbE"j,"r'8confidently, and "without fear of contradiction," identified Cyrus with the entirely legendary Kay-Khusraw of the Persian Epic (the Kawa Husrawa or Husrawanh of the Avesta), and the legendary Pishdidi kings with the Assyrians ; derived the name of Cambyses (the Kambujiya of the Old Persian inscriptions) from the Modern Persian Kdm-bakhsh, "granting desires," which he regarded as 56 HISTORY OF PERSIAN PHILOLOGY "a title rather than a name," and Xerxes (the Khshaya'rshA 01 the inscriptions) from Shiru'l (and this after his scomful rejection of Anquetil's correct derivation of Ahriman from Atira Mainyush !) ;continued to see "strong reasons to doubt the existence of genuine books in Zend or Pahlawi," on the ground that "the well-informed author of the Dabistdn affirms the work of Zer5tusht to have been lost, and its place supplied by a recent compilation ;" held "that the oldest discoverable languages of Persia were Chaldairk and Sanscrit, and that, when they had ceased to be vernacular, the Pahlawi and Zend were deduced from them respectivel!., and the Phrsl either from the Zend, or immediately from the dialect of the BrPhmans ;" believed (with the Persians) that Jamshid (the Tima of the Avesta and Yama of the Hind6 mytklogy, a shadowy personality belonging to the common Indo-IrLnian legend) built Persepolis, and that the Achzmenian 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 Deshtir-" a sacred book in a heavenly language" (which proves, in fact, to be no language at all, but mere gibberish, slavishly modelled on theordinary 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 BrPhmans . . . prevailed in Persia before the accession of Cayiimers, whom the Phis, 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 VINDICATJON OF ANQUETIL i 5 7 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 especially in his own country ; and consequently sir^.views.Jones's 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 ;"1 while in France, on the other hand, it from the first commanded that general recogni- tion 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 Awestajorschung) of Geiger and Kuhn's Grundriss der Iranischen Philologie (Strassburg, I 896). The first important step in the vindication of Anquetil was made by his illustrious compatriot, Sylvestre de Sacy, who, in I 793, published in the Journal des Savants De SRCY'S Ytmoircssfrt his five celebrated Mkmoires sur diverse5 AntiquitksdrverscsAn- tiqtcitks d~la de la Persc, which dealt chiefly with the Pahlawi Pcrse (1793). inscriptions of the Sgs6nian kings, for the decipher- See West's third edition of Haug's Essays on the Pdrsis, pp. 16-53, and Darmesteter's Introduction to his translation of the Avesfa in Max Miiller's Sacrcd 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 58 HISTORY OF PERSIAN PHILOLOGY ment of which he chiefly relied, apart from the Greek translations which accompany some of them, on the Pahlawi vocabulary given by Anquetil (vol. iii, pp. 432-5z6), "whose work," as Darmesteter well says, "vindicated itself thus- better than by heaping up arguments-by promoting dis- coveries." For the oldest extant manuscripts of the Avesta date only from the fourteenth century of our era, while the SPs5nian 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 furr~isheda key to these, it was manifest that the Pahlawi which he had learned from his dastirrs was the genuine language of Sgsinian times ;and that the occurrence in it of Semitic words, such as malka' "king," shanat "year," ab "father," shamsa' "sun," la' "not," which Sir William Jones, regarding them as Arabic I (though he afterwards recognised them as Chaldzan),~cited as proof of the fictitious antiquity of the language in which they occurred, of Anquetil's credulity, and of his Pirsi 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 Pahlawi was used during the reign of the Sisinides, for it was fro111them that these inscriptions emanated, as it was by them-nay, by the first of them, Ardashir Bibag6n-that the doctrine of Zoroaster was revived. One can now understand why the Zend books were translated into Pahlawi. Here, too, everything agrees, and speaks loudly for their antiquity and genuineness."3 The Pahlawi inscriptions thus deciphered by de Sacy had been Lettre h Jiorzsieuv A . .. du P . . ., p. 610: "Lorsque nous voyons les mots Arabes corrumpus . . . donnCs pour des mots Zendes et Pehlevis, nous disons hardiment que ce charlatan [le rkvkrend Docteur Darab] vous % tromp&,et que vous avez tic116 de tromper vos lecteurs." 'Sir W. Jones's Worlts, vol. i, p. 81. 3 Cited by Darmesteter in his Introdnction (pp. xix-xx) to tlte Trans- lation of the Vendidid (see n. I 0x1 the previous page). DECIPHERMENT OR INSCRIPTIONS 59 known in Europe since Samuel Flower published in the PhiIosophicaI Transactions for June, 1693 (pp. 775-7) the copies of them which he had made in 1667, Pahla;:dr"p while further copies appeared in the works of Chardin (171I), Niebuhr (1778), and, at a later date, of other travellers ; 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 MJmoircs (1798), the Carmelite father, Paul de St. Barthklemy, published at Rome his essay, De antiquitate et afinitate ling#& St. Barth6lemy. samscredamicrc et gel-manic&, 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.2 The first important step in the next, and perhaps the greatest, achievement of Persian scholarship-to wit, the decipherment of the Persian cuneiform inscriptions Deciphermentor theold (writings of which the character and language~~f~~,"~,"~k~.&ere 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 Gottingen 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 sn September 4, 1802, the second on October znd, the Sce West's account of the Sisinian Inscriptions in his article on Pahlawi Literaturein Geiger and Kuhn's Grtcndriss d. Irnnisckcn Philologie, vol. ii, pp. 76-79 ; and also Haug's Essay on Pahlowi (Bombay and London, 1870), which begins with a very full account of the progress of Pahlawi studies in Europe. Darmesteter (op. cit.), p. xxi. The same conception, now universallyaccepted (viz., that the Avestic language and Sanskrit were sister-tongues), was very clearly formulated by de Sacy in the Journal des Savaqris for March, 1821, p. 136. 60 HISTORY OF PERSIAN PHILOLOGY third on November 13th of the same year, and the fourth on May 20, 1803. Till this time, though Tychsen and Miinter 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 in~pelledto 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 : (I) That the figures constituti~~gthesc inscriptions Grotefcnd's general con-were graphic symbols ; (2) that the inscriptions clusions 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 fiom left to right. From these general conclusions (all of which have since paved to be perfectly correct) Grotefend proceeded to examine more minutely two inscriptions of the Grotefend's method of first class, which he believed to be written in the procedure. so-called Zend (i.e., Avestic) language-a con- jecture 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 Achamenians.~ An examination of the Pahlawi inscriptions The fact that the inscriptions of the first class were in the language of the Achzemenian 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. DECIPHERMENT OF INSCRIPTIONS 61 of the Sisinians, 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 Shsinian inscrip- tions) he rightly assumed to signify "King of Icings," 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 Malkhsch, appeared to him to square best 'with Darius, whose name in the Books of Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah occurs in the form Da'riydvush (" Darjavesch ") ; another, read by Tychsen as Osch patscha, with Xerxes ("Khschh&rschC). 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 Gushtisp, Vishthsp, &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 62 HISTORY OF PERSIAN PHILOLOGY represent T, S, and P respectively. Thc re 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. 0.instead of V. I. Such were the great and definite results of Grotefend's discoveries. Further than this he endeavoured to go ; but, on the one hand, he was misled by his belief that G;:~;;J;;: 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, P1. xxiv ; Spiegel's Keilinschriften, ed. 1862, p. 48, B), is now known to read as follows :- Ddrayauuslt .k~lzsltdyafhiya.vnzraka . Klzshdyatltiya . Kl~shdynfltr- ydrldm . k'lrshdynlhiya . dul~yr~trrinz. Vislridspalrya .putm .Haklzdnzc;. ~iislriya.Ilya .imajit . facharam .akzrnausla. That is to say :- "Darius, the great king, the king of kings, the king of the pro- vinces,the son of Vishtispa, the Achzemenian,who made this temple." Grotefend's transcription and translation were as follows :- Dri rlzelisch . Klzsltt?lti~?t. egltrt! . Kltsh$lzi61~ . Klzshi;rioh$tciz -$ ACNZMENIAN INSCRIPTIONS 91 produce what I should regard as an essentially defective and misleading book, false to my conception of what is meant by i the Literary History of a people, and faulty not only in execution but in conception, I have decided to set forth briefly in this chapter the main facts about the Achzmenian Inscrip- tions, the Avesta, the Pahlawi monuments and literature, and the Zoroastrian religion, to know which is important even for those whose main interest lies in Modern Persian. Of the Shsinian period, and therefore incidentally of Pahlawi, the official language of that time in Persia, I shall speak in greater detail in the next chapter, since in it lie the roots of so much that attracts our attention in the early Muhammadan days, and the gulf which severs it from what precedes is so much harder to bridge satisfactorily than that which divides it from what follows. And since, for literary purposes, the legendary is nearly as important as the actual history of a people, I shall also discuss in this chapter the Persian Epos or National Legend, which, as will be seen, only approaches the real National History at the beginning of the Shsinian period. This chaGer will therefore be divided into four sections, which may be briefly characterised as follows :(I) Achzemenian ; (2) Avestic ;(3) Pahlawi; and (4) National Legend. $ I. LITERARYREMNANTSOF THE ACHRMENIANS. Our fullest knowledge of that first great Persian dynasty which began with Cyrus in B.C. 559, and ended with the defeat of the last Darius by Alexander, and his tragic death at the hands of his two treacherous satraps, Bessus and Barzaentes, in B.C. 330, is derived from Greek historians, notably Herodotus, Ctesias, and Xenophon (Anabasis, Cyropmdia, Agesilaus), while some sidelights may be derived from such works as the %rsm of Eschylus. Of these external sources, however, which have been fully used by those who have written the history of the Achxmenians (such as Rawlinson, Spiegel, and Justi), I do 92 LITERATURES OF ANCIENT PERSIA not propose to speak further, since they lie rather in the domain of the classical scholar than of the Orientalist. Raw- linson, however, in his admirable translation of Herodotus, points out how much the authority of that great historian is strengthened, not only by the Achaemenian inscriptions, but also by the true and convincing portraits of the national cha- racter which his work contains. But for him, indeed, the inscriptions, even if deciphered, n~usthave remained obscure in many points which by his help are clear, as, for example, the words in 11. 8-1 I of the first portion of Darius's great Behistun inscription : "Saith Darius the king : 'Eight of my race who were aforetime were kings; I am the ninth : we are kings by double descent " [or, "in a double line "1. In the light of the following genealogical tree deducible froin Herodotus fPolymnia, vii, 10) the meaning of this becomes evident :- (I) Achaemenes (Haklzdfnalzish) I (2) Teispes (Clzliishpish) I (6) AriJramnes (Ariydrdvttza) (3) Calhbyses (Kambujiya) I (7) Arsames (Avshdvza) I (4) Cyrus (Kurush) I (8) Hystaspes (Vislttdspa) I(5) Cambyses (Kan%bujiya) I Ordinarily, of course, Cyrus (B.c. 559-529) is reckoned the first king of the line ;his son Cambyses (B.c. 529-522) the second, and Darius (B.c. 521-485) the third ; but Darius himself counts his own ancestors up to Achzemenes, as well as the three kings (for he evidently includes Cambyses the father of Cyrus as well as Cambyses the son) of the collateral branch, and so the mear~ingsof duvitdtaranam, "in a double line " (it was formerly translated "from a very ancient time "), and of Darius's "I am the ninth" become perfectly plain. Any observant traveller who visits Persepolis and its sur- roundings will remark with some surprise that the inscriptions of the oldest period are the best preserved, while the most modern are the least legible. The Achaemenian cuneiform is so clear and sharp that we can hardly believe that nearly two thousand four hundred years have elapsed since the chisel which cut it rested from its labour. The Shinian (Pahlawi) inscriptions, though younger by some seven hundred and fifty years, are blurred and faint in comparison ; while the quite recent inscriptions in Modern Persian are almost obliterated. This seems to me a type of the three epochs represented by them, and to be reflected in the literary style of their contents. The great Darius is content to call himselfu the Great King, the King of kings, King in Persia, King of the provinces, the son of Vishtisp, the grandson of Arshima, the Achaemenian." Ship6r the Sisinian calls himself in the Pahlawi inscription at Hhji-ibid, "the Mazda-worshipping divine being Shahpiihar, I King of kings of Irhn and non-Irin, of spiritual descent from God,'son of the Mazda-worshipping divine being Artakhshatr, King of ,kings of Irin, of spiritual descent from God, grandson of the divine being Pipak the King." As for the mass of empty, high-sounding titles with which the most petty Persian rulers of later Muhammadan times thought it necessary to bedeck their names, they are but too familiar to every Persian student, and I will not weary others by such vain repetitions. I have said that we should rather speak of the Achamenian inscriptions as historical than as literary monuments of the Old Persian language, yet there is in thein a directness, a dignity, a simplicity and straightforwardness of diction, which entitle us to regard them as having a real literary style. The portion of Darius's great inscription from Behistun translated at pp. 31-32 wpra, will serve as one specimen, and here is another, emanating from the same killg, from Persepolis :- "A great god is Ahuramazda, who hath created this earth, who hath created that heaven, who hath created man, who created the 94 LITERATURES OF ANCIENT PERSIA gladness of man, who made Darius king, sole king of many, sole lawgiver of many. "I am Darius, the great King, the ICing of kings, King of lands peopled by all races, for long King of this great earth, the son of Vishtisp, the Achamenian, a Persian, son of a Persian, an Aryan of Aryan descent. "Saith Darius the Icing : By tl~egrace of Ahuramazda, these are the rands of which I held possessio~ibeyond Persis, over which I held sway, which brought me tribute, which did that which was com~na~iclcdlllcnl by me, a11d wh~sri~l111yLaw was maintained : Media, Snsiana, I'nrLllia, 1I:lrniva [IIcsiC], Unctsia [IJalkl~],Suglld, I