of the eleventh paragraph of Letter 36 the editors seem to have gone somewhat beyond the strict limits of the evidence. Akizzi himself worshipped the sun, and he says that the ancestors of the King of Egypt did so too. There is nothing in this to indicate that "Akizzi believed that the worship of the sun was introduced into Egypt from Asia." A Mexican or a Peruvian might have said the same thing, if he had had the opportunity of corresponding with the King of Egypt.

The copious bibliography is a useful feature of the book; but we are surprised to find no reference to the valuable paper of Dr. E. T. Harper (the "Academy," May 30th, 1891), containing a free translation of the mythological fragment B, 240, to which, by the way, the editors allude (p. lxxxvi) as if the subject of it were still uncertain.

The editors certainly deserve the thanks of all scholars not only for having thrown open a fruitful field, but for having already mapped it out with tolerable accuracy and completeness so as to guide the first steps of the explorer.

JAMES DARMESTETER'S "ZEND-AVESTA "1

[1893: AET. 30]

HIS, the third and concluding volume of M. Darmesteter's translation of the Avesta, will be welcomed not only by the small group of specialists, but by all those who, from whatever point of view, take a general interest in the religion associated with the great name of Zoroaster. For ever since Anquetil Duperron brought back with him to Europe in an English ship this mysterious literature of the Fire-worshippers, with which until then rumour had been busy in the absence of knowledge, scholars in all parts of the field have been obliged for very different reasons to confront the problem of the origin and character of the Avesta, and their solutions so far have been at least as varied and curious as the learning which supports them, and the assumptions which they support.

At the very outset of its career, the infant science was exposed to the shock-which nearly proved fatal-of the cultivated incredulity of Sir William Jones, in whom for once brilliancy appears to have overbalanced sagacity; but, this danger past, it was enabled, mainly by the support of Burnouf, to subsist in an honourable position of semi-independence, helping to explain the Veda, while being itself explained by the Veda. But its services, as might have been expected, were soon required in another direction. Omnes eodem cogimur: the Israelitish solution of the problem was bound to appear, and it did appear. Accordingly, Zoroastrianism was born in Media of the contact between the Magi and the Jews transported and enslaved by Shalmaneser-a view which sounds somewhat like the inversion, disguised scientifically, of a much

1 "Annales du Musée Guimet.-Le Zend-Avesta." Traduction nouvelle, avec Commentaire Historique et Philologique. Par James Darmesteter. Vol. III. "Academy," June 17th, 1893.

older theory, of which Hyde was an illustrious exponent. Starting from the assumption, by no means unnatural in his day, that the prophetic business could only be learnt from a Jew, Hyde made Zoroaster spend most of his youth in Palestine in the service of a Hebrew prophet. The further question, which prophet had had the honour of instructing Zoroaster before he commenced on his own account, was more complicated, and, indeed, never satisfactorily answered. Hyde thought it was Esdras, Prideaux that it must have been Ezekiel.

But if these different competing theories-to wit, that the Avesta is a modern forgery; that it is the memorial of an ancient revolt against the religion of the Veda; that in its main features it was inspired by, if not borrowed from, the Judaism of the eighth century--are each and all unsatisfactory, in that, while introducing certain things that are unproved or improbable, they fail to take account of certain others that are actual, have we exhausted the possibilities of the case, or can the attributes of the Avesta, peculiar as they are, be made to flow from real causes?

There remains the historical solution, which it is the object of this book to exhibit and demonstrate. According to M. Darmestester, therefore, and in his own words:

The religion of the Avesta represents essentially the religion of the Achaemenid epoch, but deeply penetrated, after the conquest of Alexander, through contact with the Greeks and the Jews, by new principles and elements borrowed from Neo-Platonism and Judaism. In point of form, the whole Avesta, even in its oldest portions, bears the impress of these new principles, and has taken from them its form. It was composed in its entirety after the conquest of Alexander, between the first century before and the fourth century after our era, and the language in which it was written-Zend-was very probably a learned, a dead language.

To those accustomed to dwell in imagination at the calm altitude of say 1500 B.C., it will cause a shock of surprise to find themselves thus suddenly plunged into the midst of the crowd of competing religions and philosophies, in which the Jew of the dispersion bids against the Greek of the decadence. It behoves us, therefore, to examine the foundations of this reconstruction, at first sight so bold and startling.

In the first chapter the author expounds the relation of the Avesta, as we have it, to the Avesta, as it must have been, in the

time of the Sassanids. According to the tradition, the latter was a vast literature divided into twenty-one books or Nasks; but our knowledge of it is not confined to tradition, for in the Dînkart, a sort of summa of Zoroastrian theology composed in the ninth century, we have a Pahlavi analysis of these twenty-one Nasks, as they were known in the Sassanian period, and even so late as the third century after the Arabian conquest. On the other hand, M. Darmesteter has brought together and published in this volume a number of inedited Zend fragments, many of which can be identified with absolute certainty as the originals corresponding to the analysis in different places of the Dînkart. In this way not only do we ascertain the reality and authenticity of the Zend literature analyzed by the Dînkart, but we are enabled to place our actual Avesta side by side with this inferential Avesta, and thus to estimate the proportion of the part that has come down to us to the whole literature. The result of this process of comparison may be briefly indicated.

The twenty-one Nasks are divided into three groups of seven: those relating to the Gâthâs, forming the theological group; those relating to the law; and, thirdly, the Hadhamathra Nasks, forming what may be called the mixed group. And it appears, when our Zend material has been sorted and classified on the plan of the Dînkart, that "we possess specimens more or less considerable of fifteen Nasks out of twenty-one, and that we possess in their integrity the two Nasks which were considered as the most important religiously"—that is to say, the Stôt Yasht, containing the Gâthâs, in the first or theological group, and the Vendidad in the legal group.

In the second chapter the author deals with the traditional account-also preserved in the Dînkart-of the origin and formation of the Avesta. The twenty-one Nasks created in the beginning by Ahura were brought by Zoroaster to the King Vîshtâsp, who caused two copies of them to be made. Of these, one was burnt at the time of the invasion of Alexander; while the other was carried off by the Greeks to be translated into their own language. But at length an attempt was made to recover or to restore the vanished treasure. The Arsacid King Valkhash caused all the scattered fragments, which had been preserved either in writing or by oral tradition, to be sought out and put together. The pious

work was carried on by the founder of the Sassanian dynasty, Ardashîr Bâbagân, who, with the help of the high priest Tansar, completed the collection. A further step was taken by the son of Ardashîr, Sapor I, who caused the medical and other non-religious treatises dispersed among the Greeks and Indians to be brought back and added to the restored Avesta. Lastly, Sapor II, in order to put an end to the sects, held a general disputation, at which Adarbâd, the son of Mahraspand, successfully underwent the ordeal by molten metal, thus proving the truth of orthodoxy to ocular demonstration. "And now," said the king, "that we have seen the religion on earth, we will no longer suffer any false religion."

The name of the first of these restorers of the Avesta, Valkhash, is known to us in its Latin form as Vologeses. Five Arsacid princes bore this name, of whom the most celebrated was Vologeses I, a contemporary of Nero; and M. Darmesteter concludes from the known character of this prince for orthodoxy and piety, as well as from the religious features of the time in which he lived, that it was he who played the part assigned by the Dînkart to Valkhash. And through this identification we are enabled to place the first attempt at the restoration of the Avesta within the third quarter of the first century A.D.

The section to which we now come, treating of the reforms of Ardashîr and Tansar, is one of the most important, as it is one of the most brilliant in the book.

Tansar, though he played an important part at a critical time, has been unlucky in his passage through the hands of the historians, or rather of the copyists. His name is mentioned in the Dînkart; but it was misread both by Haug and by West as Tôsar, while in the pages of Ma'sūdī, who alludes to him on two occasions, he is still further disguised as Bishar. However, M. Darmesteter's restoration of the correct reading Tansar in the Pahlavi enables one to recognize Bishar at a glance as simply Tansar wrongly vocalized; and the importance of this identification will appear immediately. Ma'sūdī informs us that Tansar was one of the provincial kings of Persia, but that having become enamoured of the doctrines of the Platonists, he abdicated in favour of his son, and embraced the religious life. He afterwards identified himself with the imperial policy of Ardashîr, and composed several works dealing with administration both civil and ecclesiastical. One of