his mystic tendencies are not yet so fully developed. Of philosophy we
find but little, and what we find is still in its germ. The active
side of life is more prominent, and we meet occasionally with wars of
kings, with rivalries of ministers, with triumphs and defeats, with
war-songs and imprecations. Moral sentiments and worldly wisdom are
not yet absorbed by phantastic intuitions. Still the child betrays the
passions of the man, and there are hymns, though few in number, in the
Veda, so full of thought and speculation that at this early period no
poet in any other nation could have conceived them. I give but one
specimen, the 129th hymn of the tenth book of the Rig-veda. It is a
hymn which long ago attracted the attention of that eminent scholar H.
T. Colebrooke, and of which, by the kind assistance of a friend, I am
enabled to offer a metrical translation. In judging it we should bear
in mind that it was not written by a gnostic or by a pantheistic
philosopher, but by a poet who felt all these doubts and problems as
his own, without any wish to convince or to startle, only uttering
what had been weighing on his mind, just as later poets would sing the
doubts and sorrows of their heart.
Nor Aught nor Nought existed; yon bright sky
Was not, nor heaven's broad woof outstretched above.
What covered all? what sheltered? what concealed?
Was it the water's fathomless abyss?
There was not death--yet was there nought immortal,
There was no confine betwixt day and night;
The only One breathed breathless by itself,
Other than It there nothing since has been.
Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled
In gloom profound--an ocean without light--
The germ that still lay covered in the husk
Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat.
Then first came love upon it, the new spring
Of mind--yea, poets in their hearts discerned,
Pondering, this bond between created things
And uncreated. Comes this spark from earth
Piercing and all-pervading, or from heaven?
Then seeds were sown, and mighty powers arose--
Nature below, and power and will above--
Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here,
Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang?
The Gods themselves came later into being--
Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?
He from whom all this great creation came,
Whether his will created or was mute,
The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven,
He knows it--or perchance even He knows not.
The grammar of the Veda (to turn from the contents to the structure of
the work) is important in many respects. The difference between it and
the grammar of the epic poems would be sufficient of itself to fix the
distance between these two periods of language and literature. Many
words have preserved in these early hymns a more primitive form, and
therefore agree more closely with cognate words in Greek or Latin.
Night, for instance, in the later Sanskrit is ni_s_a, which is a form
peculiarly Sanskritic, and agrees in its derivation neither with nox
nor with [Greek: nyx]. The Vaidik na_s_ or nak, night, is as near to
Latin as can be. Thus mouse in the common Sanskrit is mushas or
mushika, both derivative forms if compared with the Latin mus, muris.
The Vaidik Sanskrit has preserved the same primitive noun in the
plural mush-as = Lat. mures. There are other words in the Veda which
were lost altogether in the later Sanskrit, while they were preserved
in Greek and Latin. Dyaus, sky, does not occur as a masculine in the
ordinary Sanskrit; it occurs in the Veda, and thus bears witness to
the early Aryan worship of Dyaus, the Greek Zeus. Ushas, dawn, again
in the later Sanskrit is neuter. In the Veda it is feminine; and even
the secondary Vaidik form Ushasa is proved to be of high antiquity by
the nearly corresponding Latin form Aurora. Declension and conjugation
are richer in forms and more unsettled in their usage. It was a
curious fact, for instance, that no subjunctive mood existed in the
common Sanskrit. The Greeks and Romans had it, and even the language
of the Avesta showed clear traces of it. There could be no doubt that
the Sanskrit also once possessed this mood, and at last it was
discovered in the hymns of the Rig-veda. Discoveries of this kind may
seem trifling, but they are as delightful to the grammarian as the
appearance of a star, long expected and calculated, is to the
astronomer. They prove that there is natural order in language, and
that by a careful induction laws can be established which enable us to
guess with great probability either at the form or meaning of words
where but scanty fragments of the tongue itself have come down to us.
_October, 1853._
THE ZEND-AVESTA.
By means of laws like that of the Correspondence of Letters,
discovered by Rask and Grimm, it has been possible to determine the
exact form of words in Gothic, in cases where no trace of them
occurred in the literary documents of the Gothic nation. Single words
which were not to be found in Ulfilas have been recovered by applying
certain laws to their corresponding forms in Latin or Old High-German,
and thus retranslating them into Gothic. But a much greater conquest
was achieved in Persia. Here comparative philology has actually had to
create and reanimate all the materials of language on which it was
afterwards to work. Little was known of the language of Persia and
Media previous to the Shahnameh of Firdusi, composed about 1000 A.D.,
and it is due entirely to the inductive method of comparative
philology that we have now before us contemporaneous documents of
three periods of Persian language, deciphered, translated, and
explained. We have the language of the Zoroastrians, the language of
the Achaemenians, and the language of the Sassanians, which represent
the history of the Persian tongue in three successive periods--all now
rendered intelligible by the aid of comparative philology, while but
fifty years ago their very name and existence were questioned.
The labours of Anquetil Duperron, who first translated the
Zend-Avesta, were those of a bold adventurer--not of a scholar. Rask
was the first who, with the materials collected by Duperron and
himself, analysed the language of the Avesta scientifically. He
proved--
1. That Zend was not a corrupted Sanskrit, as supposed by W.
Erskine, but that it differed from it as Greek, Latin, or
Lithuanian differed from one another and from Sanskrit.
2. That the modern Persian was really derived from Zend as
Italian was from Latin; and
3. That the Avesta, or the works of Zoroaster, must have
been reduced to writing at least previously to Alexander's
conquest. The opinion that Zend was an artificial language
(an opinion held by men of great eminence in Oriental
philology, beginning with Sir W. Jones) is passed over by
Rask as not deserving of refutation.
The first edition of the Zend texts, the critical restitution of the
MSS., the outlines of a Zend grammar, with the translation and
philological anatomy of considerable portions of the Zoroastrian
writings, were the work of the late Eugene Burnouf. He was the real
founder of Zend philology. It is clear from his works, and from Bopp's
valuable remarks in his 'Comparative Grammar,' that Zend in its
grammar and dictionary is nearer to Sanskrit than any other
Indo-European language. Many Zend words can be retranslated into
Sanskrit simply by changing the Zend letters into their corresponding
forms in Sanskrit. With regard to the Correspondence of Letters in
Grimm's sense of the word, Zend ranges with Sanskrit and the classical
languages. It differs from Sanskrit principally in its sibilants,
nasals, and aspirates. The Sanskrit s, for instance, is represented by
the Zend h, a change analogous to that of an original s into the
Greek aspirate, only that in Greek this change is not general. Thus
the geographical name hapta hendu, which occurs in the Avesta, becomes
intelligible if we retranslate the Zend h into the Sanskrit s. For
sapta sindhu, or the Seven Rivers, is the old Vaidik name of India
itself, derived from the five rivers of the Penjab, together with the
Indus, and the Sarasvati.
Where Sanskrit differs in words or grammatical peculiarities from the
northern members of the Aryan family, it frequently coincides with
Zend. The numerals are the same in all these languages up to 100. The
name for thousand, however, sahasra, is peculiar to Sanskrit, and does
not occur in any of the Indo-European dialects except in Zend, where
it becomes haza_n_ra. In the same manner the German and Slavonic
languages have a word for thousand peculiar to themselves; as also in
Greek and Latin we find many common words which we look for in vain in
any of the other Indo-European dialects. These facts are full of
historical meaning; and with regard to Zend and Sanskrit, they prove
that these two languages continued together long after they were
separated from the common Indo-European stock.
Still more striking is the similarity between Persia and India in
religion and mythology. Gods unknown to any Indo-European nation are
worshipped under the same names in Sanskrit and Zend; and the change
of some of the most sacred expressions in Sanskrit into names of evil
spirits in Zend, only serves to strengthen the conviction that we have
here the usual traces of a schism which separated a community that had
once been united.
Burnouf, who compared the language and religion of the Avesta
principally with the later classical Sanskrit, inclined at first to
the opinion that this schism took place in Persia, and that the
dissenting Brahmans immigrated afterwards into India. This is still
the prevailing opinion, but it requires to be modified in accordance
with new facts elicited from the Veda. Zend, if compared with
classical Sanskrit, exhibits in many points of grammar, features of a
more primitive character than Sanskrit. But it can now be shown, and
Burnouf himself admitted it, that when this is the case, the Vaidik
differs on the very same points from the later Sanskrit, and has
preserved the same primitive and irregular form as the Zend. I still
hold, that the name of Zend was originally a corruption of the
Sanskrit word _k_handas (i. e. metrical language, cf. scandere),[35]
which is the name given to the language of the Veda by Pa_n_ini and
others. When we read in Pa_n_ini's grammar that certain forms occur in
_k_handas, but not in the classical language, we may almost always
translate the word _k_handas by Zend, for nearly all these rules apply
equally to the language of the Avesta.
[Footnote 35: The derivation of _k_handas, metre, from the same root
which yielded the Latin scandere, seems to me still the most
plausible. An account of the various explanations of this word,
proposed by Eastern and Western scholars, is to be found in Spiegel's
'Grammar of the Parsi Language' (preface, and p. 205), and in his
translation of the Vendidad (pp. 44 and 293). That initial _k_h in
Sanskrit may represent an original sk, has never, as far as I am
aware, been denied. (Curtius, 'Grundzuege,' p. 60.) The fact that the
root _k_hand, in the sense of stepping or striding, has not been fixed
in Sanskrit as a verbal, but only as a nominal base, is no real
objection either. The same thing has happened over and over again, and
has been remarked as the necessary result of the dialectic growth of
language by so ancient a scholar as Yaska. ('Zeitschrift der Deutschen
Morgenlaendischen Gesellschaft, vol. viii. p. 373 seq.) That scandere
in Latin, in the sense of scanning is a late word, does not affect the
question at all. What is of real importance is simply this, that the
principal Aryan nations agree in representing metre as a kind of
stepping or striding. Whether this arose from the fact that ancient
poetry was accompanied by dancing or rhythmic choral movements, is a
question which does not concern us here. (Carmen descindentes
tripodaverunt in verba haec: Enos Lases, etc. Orelli, 'Inscript.' No.
2271.) The fact remains that the people of India, Greece, and Italy
agree in calling the component elements of their verses feet or steps
([Greek: pous], pes, Sanskrit pad or pada; padapankti, a row of
feet, and _g_agati, i. e. andante, are names of Sanskrit metres). It
is not too much, therefore, to say that they may have considered metre
as a kind of stepping or striding, and that they may accordingly have
called it 'stride.' If then we find the name for metre in Sanskrit
_k_handas, i. e. skandas, and if we find that scando in Latin (from
which sca(d)la), as we may gather from ascendo and descendo, meant
originally striding, and that skand in Sanskrit means the same as
scando in Latin, surely there can be little doubt as to the original
intention of the Sanskrit name for metre, viz. _k_handas. Hindu
grammarians derive _k_handas either from _k_had, to cover, or from
_k_had, to please. Both derivations are possible, as far as the
letters are concerned. But are we to accept the dogmatic
interpretation of the theologians of the _K_handogas, who tell us that
the metres were called _k_handas because the gods, when afraid of
death, covered themselves with the metres? Or of the Va_g_asaneyins,
who tell us that the _k_handas were so called because they pleased
Pra_g_apati? Such artificial interpretations only show that the
Brahmans had no traditional feeling as to the etymological meaning of
that word, and that we are at liberty to discover by the ordinary
means its original intention. I shall only mention from among much
that has been written on the etymology of _k_handas, a most happy
remark of Professor Kuhn, who traces the Northern skald, poet, back to
the same root as the Sanskrit _k_handas, metre. (Kuhn's 'Zeitschrift,'
vol. iii. p. 428.)]
In mythology also, the 'nomina and numina' of the Avesta appear at
first sight more primitive than in Manu or the Mahabharata. But if
regarded from a Vaidik point of view, this relation shifts at once,
and many of the gods of the Zoroastrians come out once more as mere
reflections and deflections of the primitive and authentic gods of the
Veda. It can now be proved, even by geographical evidence, that the
Zoroastrians had been settled in India before they immigrated into
Persia. I say the Zoroastrians, for we have no evidence to bear us out
in making the same assertion of the nations of Persia and Media in
general. That the Zoroastrians and their ancestors started from India
during the Vaidik period can be proved as distinctly as that the
inhabitants of Massilia started from Greece. The geographical
traditions in the first Fargard of the Vendidad do not interfere with
this opinion. If ancient and genuine, they would embody a remembrance
preserved by the Zoroastrians, but forgotten by the Vaidik poets--a
remembrance of times previous to their first common descent into the
country of the Seven Rivers. If of later origin, and this is more
likely, they may represent a geographical conception of the
Zoroastrians after they had become acquainted with a larger sphere of
countries and nations, subsequent to their emigration from the land of
the Seven Rivers.[36]
[Footnote 36: The purely mythological character of this geographical
chapter has been proved by M. Michel Breal, 'Journal Asiatique,'
1862.]
These and similar questions of the highest importance for the early
history of the Aryan language and mythology, however, must await their
final decision, until the whole of the Veda and the Avesta shall have
been published. Of this Burnouf was fully aware, and this was the
reason why he postponed the publication of his researches into the
antiquities of the Iranian nation. The same conviction is shared by
Westergaard and Spiegel, who are each engaged in an edition of the
Avesta, and who, though they differ on many points, agree in
considering the Veda as the safest key to an understanding of the
Avesta. Professor Roth, of Tuebingen, has well expressed the mutual
relation of the Veda and Zend-Avesta under the following simile: 'The
Veda,' he writes, 'and the Zend-Avesta are two rivers flowing from one
fountain-head: the stream of the Veda is the fuller and purer, and has
remained truer to its original character; that of the Zend-Avesta has
been in various ways polluted, has altered its course, and cannot,
with certainty, be traced back to its source.'
As to the language of the Achaemenians, presented to us in the Persian
text of the cuneiform inscriptions, there was no room for doubt, as
soon as it became legible at all, that it was the same tongue as that
of the Avesta, only in a second stage of its continuous growth. The
process of deciphering these bundles of arrows by means of Zend and
Sanskrit has been very much like deciphering an Italian inscription
without a knowledge of Italian, simply by means of classical and
mediaeval Latin. It would have been impossible, even with the quick
perception and patient combination of a Grotefend, to read more than
the proper names and a few titles on the walls of the Persian palaces,
without the aid of Zend and Sanskrit; and it seems almost
providential, as Lassen remarked, that these inscriptions, which at
any previous period would have been, in the eyes of either classical
or oriental scholars, nothing but a quaint conglomerate of nails,
wedges, or arrows, should have been rescued from the dust of centuries
at the very moment when the discovery and study of Sanskrit and Zend
had enabled the scholars of Europe to grapple successfully with their
difficulties.
Upon a closer inspection of the language and grammar of these mountain
records of the Achaemenian dynasty, a curious fact came to light which
seemed to disturb the historical relation between the language of
Zoroaster and the language of Darius. At first, historians were
satisfied with knowing that the edicts of Darius could be explained by
the language of the Avesta, and that the difference between the two,
which could be proved to imply a considerable interval of time, was
such as to exclude for ever the supposed historical identity of Darius
Hystaspes and Gushtasp, the mythical pupil of Zoroaster. The language
of the Avesta, though certainly not the language of Zarathustra,[37]
displayed a grammar so much more luxuriant, and forms so much more
primitive than the inscriptions, that centuries must have elapsed
between the two periods represented by these two strata of language.
When, however, the forms of these languages were subjected to a more
searching analysis, it became evident that the phonetic system of the
cuneiform inscriptions was more primitive and regular than even that
of the earlier portions of the Avesta. This difficulty, however,
admits of a solution; and, like many difficulties of the kind, it
tends to confirm, if rightly explained, the very facts and views which
at first it seemed to overthrow. The confusion in the phonetic system
of the Zend grammar is no doubt owing to the influence of oral
tradition. Oral tradition, particularly if confided to the safeguard
of a learned priesthood, is able to preserve, during centuries of
growth and change, the sacred accents of a dead language; but it is
liable at least to the slow and imperceptible influences of a corrupt
pronunciation. Nowhere can we see this more clearly than in the Veda,
where grammatical forms that had ceased to be intelligible, were
carefully preserved, while the original pronunciation of vowels was
lost, and the simple structure of the ancient metres destroyed by the
adoption of a more modern pronunciation. The loss of the Digamma in
Homer is another case in point. There are no facts to prove that the
text of the Avesta, in the shape in which the Parsis of Bombay and
Yezd now possess it, was committed to writing previous to the
Sassanian dynasty (226 A.D.). After that time it can indeed be traced,
and to a great extent be controlled and checked by the Huzvaresh
translations made under that dynasty. Additions to it were made, as it
seems, even after these Huzvaresh translations; but their number is
small, and we have no reason to doubt that the text of the Avesta, in
the days of Arda Viraf, was on the whole exactly the same as at
present. At the time when these translations were made, it is clear
from their own evidence that the language of Zarathustra had already
suffered, and that the ideas of the Avesta were no longer fully
understood even by the learned. Before that time we may infer, indeed,
that the doctrine of Zoroaster had been committed to writing, for
Alexander is said to have destroyed the books of the Zoroastrians,
Hermippus of Alexandria is said to have read them.[38] But whether on
the revival of the Persian religion and literature, that is to say 500
years after Alexander, the works of Zoroaster were collected and
restored from extant MSS., or from oral tradition, must remain
uncertain, and the disturbed state of the phonetic system would rather
lead us to suppose a long-continued influence of oral tradition. What
the Zend language might become, if entrusted to the guardianship of
memory alone, unassisted by grammatical study and archaeological
research, may be seen at the present day, when some of the Parsis, who
are unable either to read or write, still mutter hymns and prayers in
their temples, which, though to them mere sound, disclose to the
experienced ear of an European scholar the time-hallowed accents of
Zarathustra's speech.
[Footnote 37: Spiegel states the results of his last researches into
the language of the different parts of the Avesta in the following
words:
'We are now prepared to attempt an arrangement of the different
portions of the Zend-Avesta in the order of their antiquity. First, we
place the second part of the Ya_s_na, as separated in respect to the
language of the Zend-Avesta, yet not composed by Zoroaster himself,
since he is named in the third person; and indeed everything intimates
that neither he nor his disciple Gushtasp was alive. The second place
must unquestionably be assigned to the Vendidad. I do not believe that
the book was originally composed as it now stands: it has suffered
both earlier and later interpolations; still, its present form may be
traced to a considerable antiquity. The antiquity of the work is
proved by its contents, which distinctly show that the sacred
literature was not yet completed.
'The case is different with the writings of the last period, among
which I reckon the first part of the Ya_s_na, and the whole of the
Yeshts. Among these a theological character is unmistakeable, the
separate divinities having their attributes and titles dogmatically
fixed.
'Altogether, it is interesting to trace the progress of religion in
Parsi writings. It is a significant fact, that in the oldest, that is
to say, the second part of the Ya_s_na, nothing is fixed in the
doctrine regarding God. In the writings of the second period, that is
in the Vendidad, we trace the advance to a theological, and, in its
way, mild and scientific system. Out of this, in the last place, there
springs the stern and intolerant religion of the Sassanian
epoch.'--From the Rev. J. Murray Mitchell's Translation.]
[Footnote 38: 'Lectures on the Science of Language,' First Series, p.
95.]