these was in the form of a letter to the King of Tabaristan. Now this very letter by a lucky chance has been preserved to us. Translated from the Pahlavi into Arabic by Ibnu l'Muqaffa', it fell into the hands of a certain Muhammadu bnu l'Hasan, who translated it into Persian, and prefixed it to a history of Tabaristan; and in this way "we obtain the most ancient monument of Persia after the Achaemenid inscriptions and the Avesta, and Tansar is of all the writers of the Sassanian period the only one who is known to us directly by his work." The letter puts us in the possession of certain details of the life of Tansar unknown to or omitted by Ma'sūdī; but it is, above all, important for the light it throws upon the policy of Ardashîr. The latter "directs a double reaction: a reaction against the political anarchy which marks the Arsacid period, and a reaction against the moral and social anarchy brought about by the political anarchy.”

We have no space to dwell upon the political side of the work of Ardashîr. We are more immediately concerned with its moral side: that is, with the measures taken by the King of kings to restore Paoiryô tkaêshô or "the ancient order." And at the outset one thing is clear from the words of Tansar; and that is, that in correcting the present by the past, Ardashîr must have dealt very freely with the latter. Says Tansar:

You know that Alexander had burnt our books of religious laws written upon twelve thousand skins of oxen. The mass of legends, traditions, laws, and ordinances were completely forgotten. . . . It is then peremptorily necessary that a wise and virtuous man should re-establish the religion. Now, have you ever seen or heard tell of a man more worthy than the Shâhinshâh to put himself at the head of this enterprise?

Now this, as M. Darmesteter remarks, is equivalent to the admission that the Avesta cannot pretend to be authentic. It does not, of course, follow from the fact that the documents were forgotten that they must have been destroyed; some of them, on the contrary, may have been recovered. Nevertheless, as it was part of the policy of Ardashîr to reform the abuses even of the ancient law, he must, doubtless, have exercised the right of making additions as well as excisions.

Lastly, with regard to the tradition that certain scientific treatises dispersed among the Indians and Greeks were recovered and in

corporated with the Avesta, two hypotheses seem to suggest themselves: either certain parts of the Avesta were actually borrowed from Greek sources by the Magi in the time of Sapor I; or else they took advantage of the legend about the Nasks translated into Greek to invest certain texts with an authority to which they could otherwise have had no claim. However, our imperfect knowledge of the contents of the Avesta, as a whole, renders it impossible to choose definitely between the two hypotheses.

If, then, as we have seen, the first attempt at the recovery or restoration of the Avesta was made by an Arsacid king, it is natural to inquire, in the second place, whether the religious influences which must-or, at any rate, may-have acted from without upon the Iran of the Arsacids, have left their mark in the Avesta. These influences are four in number-the Brahmanical, the Buddhist, the Greek, and the Jewish.

In the case of Brahmanism, M. Darmesteter rejects the old theory at first sight so plausible, which explained the contradiction between the Avestic daêva and ahura, on the one hand, and the Vedic deva and asura, on the other, as the result of an early religious revolution which separated the Iranian from the Indian member of the family group.

As soon as one enters into detail, one perceives that this hypothesis explains nothing, for it appears that Iran possesses the principal gods and the principal myths of the Vedas. The supreme god of the Avesta, Ahura Mazda, "the lord omniscient," the ancient sky-god, analogous to Zeus and to Jupiter, finds his parallel in the supreme god of the Vedas, Varuna, the Asura Viçvavedas, "the Asura who knows all things." Mithra, the Iranian Apollo, is identical with the Vedic Mitra, and, like him, closely associated with the sky-god. . . . Yama, son of Vivasvat, the first mortal, the first to die, the institutor of the cult, is recognized in Yima, son of Vivanhañt, son of the first priest of Haoma, the creator of civilization. The centre of the cult is, in one religion as in the other, the sacrifice of Soma-Haoma, and has as its focus the sacred fire, in one case Atar, in the other Agni.

In the same way, the fact that names of Vedic gods, such as Indra and Nâsatya, are borne by demons in the Avesta, is simply "the sign of an antipathy between two neighbouring religions in an historical epoch."

Again, the traces of Buddhism, though less numerous and at first sight less obvious, are none the less real. At the birth of Zoroaster,

Ahriman despatches the demon Bûiti to assail and destroy him; and this Bûiti is identified in the Bundahish with "the demon worshipped in India under the form of idols, the one whom Bûtâsp worshipped." Now Bûtâsp is known to Persian and Arabic legend as the founder of the Buddhist sect, and his name is nothing but a corruption of Bodhisattva. Bûiti, then, must be the object of the Buddhist cult: that is, Buddha. Lastly, it is difficult not to recognize Gotama himself in the impostor Gaoteme, whom we read of in the Yashts as having been overthrown controversially.

The Greek influence has left traces at once deeper and more subtle, for it has penetrated and coloured the very texture of thought. For instance, according to the Bundahish the world endures for twelve thousand years divided into four equal periods; but during the first of these its existence was purely spiritual, that is, "it remained without corruption, without motion, imperceptible." It was only in the second period, and as the result of an attempt on the part of Ahriman to break into the spiritual sphere, that Auhrmazd materialized the world, and motion began. It is true that the Bundahish is a comparatively recent work in point of form; nevertheless, that this conception of an immaterial world formed part of the Avestic system is certain. For the Pahlavi Vendidad, when expounding the same doctrine of the four ages, appeals to the authority of a Zend text, as follows: "How long did the spiritual creation of the god of good endure?"

The Platonic character of these conceptions would at once declare itself even without the tradition-twice repeated by Ma'sūdī -that Tansar, the "restorer" of the Avesta, was a Platonist. But the same influence can be traced with equal clearness outside the impalpable limits of the spiritual world. Vohu Manô, the first-born of creation, through whom Ahura made the world, the religion, and everything that lives, and whom he consults before employing any activity, corresponds, not only in the main, but in detail and completely, to the Aoyos beios of Philo. "First-born of God and his first instrument, ideal man, intercessor, mediator, revealer: such is the Logos of Philo, and such is Vohu Manô." But if the composers or compilers of the Avesta borrowed the Logos, it follows that

The theory of the Amshaspands and the composition of the Gâthâs are subsequent to Alexander; the theory of the Amshaspands, because Vohu

Manô is the type of them; the composition or the Gâthâs, because the glorification of the Amshaspands, or rather of the abstractions called the Amesha Speñtas, fills them from one end to the other.

Lastly, it is in the plan and framework of the composition rather than in the colour and texture of ideas that Jewish influence reveals itself. Creation in successive stages; the descent of humanity from a single pair; its destruction provoked by sin; the division of the earth among three brothers and their descendants: all these features are common to the narratives of the Bible and the Avesta. Moreover, in both cases we are struck by a peculiar fondness for chronological detail. Under these circumstances one of the two versions must have been modelled upon the other; and M. Darmesteter concludes that the Iranian is the later. But this process of borrowing could not have taken place so early as the eighth century B.C., for at that time the Pentateuch was not yet in existence. For the suitable environment we must look later, and we shall find it in the period when,

after the decadence of Judaea and the fall of Jerusalem, the whole moral and intellectual life of the nation had taken refuge on the banks of the Euphrates; when in the Greek towns of Babylonia the doctors of Magism could come in contact at the same time with Platonism and with Judaism.

Want of space has compelled us to leave untouched several important features of this book, such as the discussion of the legend of Zoroaster, and the valuable collection of Zend fragments published and translated for the first time. But the principal thing is the solution of the problem; and of this we have endeavoured to give some idea, if only in rough and rapid outline. That it will be controverted is probable: too many theories and orthodoxies have invested a part of their support in the capacious and convenient explanations of the Avesta. But that it will remain unshaken on its base is, in our judgment, certain. In this book M. Darmesteter has not only crowned the edifice of his previous labours, he has raised a monument worthy of the illustrious traditions of French science the science of Duperron and of Burnouf.

MASPERO'S "DAWN OF CIVILIZATION "1

[1895: AET. 32]

T has been observed that where there is most theology there is sometimes least religion. In other words, it by no means follows that where the professionals are most active the people are most enlightened. The highest debate upon the most urgent of questions, if conducted within. closed doors, has no chance of being borne-even in fragments -upon the wind for the benefit of the man in the field or in the street. Something like the converse of this was a favourite maxim with Renan. We remember an occasion on which he even went so far as to say that the curse of a subject was that the people should take an interest in it. Anyhow, it would seem that this curse, if it be a curse, works far more powerfully in England than in France, and that no area is more affected, or infected, than that of the subject before us. For the people are not content to be led passively by the facts as they are found by experts. There is no knowing in what this might issue, perhaps in the slaughter of their convictions; so, in order that their "convictions may be soothed and strengthened, they require, like children at bedtime, to be told the same story over and over again. The result is that in England at present the teachers are far from being as strong, numerically and otherwise, as they should be in proportion to the monstrous regiment of the preachers. There is a constant demand for "fresh light"; but the groves of Academe produce little fresh fuel. All the more welcome, therefore, is the appearance in an English dress of a work like the present-popular indeed in form, but profoundly scientific in scope and substance-by one who has never come within reach of the temptation to blindfold Science, and then make her prophesy to ignorance and superstition.

1 "Athenæum," October 19th, 1895.