the genius and perseverance of Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen, and last,
not least, by the comprehensive labours of Rawlinson, from the
ante-historical epoch of Zoroaster down to the age of Darius and
Artaxerxes II. It might have been expected that, after that time, the
contemporaneous historians of Greece would have supplied the sequel.
Unfortunately the Greeks cared nothing for any language except their
own; and little for any other history except as bearing on themselves.
The history of the Persian language after the Macedonian conquest and
during the Parthian occupation is indeed but a blank page. The next
glimpse of an authentic contemporaneous document is the inscription of
Ardeshir, the founder of the new national dynasty of the Sassanians.
It is written, though, it may be, with dialectic difference, in what
was once called 'Pehlevi,' and is now more commonly known as
'Huzvaresh,' this being the proper title of the language of the
translations of the Avesta. The legends of Sassanian coins, the
bilingual inscriptions of Sassanian emperors, and the translation of
the Avesta by Sassanian reformers, represent the Persian language in
its third phase. To judge from the specimens given by Anquetil
Duperron, it was not to be wondered at that this dialect, then called
Pehlevi, should have been pronounced an artificial jargon. Even when
more genuine specimens of it became known, the language seemed so
overgrown with Semitic and barbarous words, that it was expelled from
the Iranian family. Sir W. Jones pronounced it to be a dialect of
Chaldaic. Spiegel, however, who is now publishing the text of these
translations, has established the fact that the language is truly
Aryan, neither Semitic nor barbarous, but Persian in roots and
grammar. He accounts for the large infusion of foreign terms by
pointing to the mixed elements in the intellectual and religious life
of Persia during and before that period. There was the Semitic
influence of Babylonia, clearly discernible even in the characters of
the Achaemenian inscriptions; there was the slow infiltration of Jewish
ideas, customs, and expressions, working sometimes in the palaces of
Persian kings, and always in the bazars of Persian cities, on high
roads and in villages; there was the irresistible power of the Greek
genius, which even under its rude Macedonian garb emboldened oriental
thinkers to a flight into regions undreamed of in their philosophy;
there were the academies, the libraries, the works of art of the
Seleucidae; there was Edessa on the Euphrates, a city where Plato and
Aristotle were studied, where Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist tenets
were discussed, where Ephraem Syrus taught, and Syriac translations
were circulated which have preserved to us the lost originals of Greek
and Christian writers. The title of the Avesta under its Semitic form
Apestako, was known in Syria as well as in Persia, and the true name
of its author, Zarathustra, is not yet changed in Syriac into the
modern Zerdusht. While this intellectual stream, principally flowing
through Semitic channels, was irrigating and inundating the west of
Asia, the Persian language had been left without literary cultivation.
Need we wonder, then, that the men, who at the rising of a new
national dynasty (226) became the reformers, teachers, and prophets of
Persia, should have formed their language and the whole train of
their ideas on a Semitic model. Motley as their language may appear to
a Persian scholar fresh from the Avesta or from Firdusi, there is
hardly a language of modern Europe which, if closely sifted, would not
produce the same impression on a scholar accustomed only to the pure
idiom of Homer, Cicero, Ulfilas, or Caedmon. Moreover; the soul of the
Sassanian language--I mean its grammar--is Persian and nothing but
Persian; and though meagre when compared with the grammar of the
Avesta, it is richer in forms than the later Parsi, the Deri, or the
language of Firdusi. The supposition (once maintained) that Pehlevi
was the dialect of the western provinces of Persia is no longer
necessary. As well might we imagine, (it is Spiegel's apposite
remark,) that a Turkish work, because it is full of Arabic words,
could only have been written on the frontiers of Arabia. We may safely
consider the Huzvaresh of the translations of the Avesta as the
language of the Sassanian court and hierarchy. Works also like the
Bundehesh and Minokhired belong by language and thought to the same
period of mystic incubation, when India and Egypt, Babylonia and
Greece, were sitting together and gossiping like crazy old women,
chattering with toothless gums and silly brains about the dreams and
joys of their youth, yet unable to recall one single thought or
feeling with that vigour which once gave it life and truth. It was a
period of religious and metaphysical delirium, when everything became
everything, when Maya and Sophia, Mitra and Christ, Viraf and Isaiah,
Belus, Zarvan, and Kronos were mixed up in one jumbled system of inane
speculation, from which at last the East was delivered by the
positive doctrines of Mohammed, the West by the pure Christianity of
the Teutonic nations.
In order to judge fairly of the merits of the Huzvaresh as a language,
it must be remembered that we know it only from these speculative
works, and from translations made by men whose very language had
become technical and artificial in the schools. The idiom spoken by
the nation was probably much less infected by this Semitic fashion.
Even the translators sometimes give the Semitic terms only as a
paraphrase or more distinct expression side by side with the Persian.
And, if Spiegel's opinion be right that Parsi, and not Huzvaresh, was
the language of the later Sassanian empire, it furnishes a clear proof
that Persian had recovered itself, had thrown off the Semitic
ingredients, and again become a pure and national speech. This dialect
(the Parsi) also, exists in translations only; and we owe our
knowledge of it to Spiegel, the author of the first Parsi grammar.
This third period in the history of the Persian language,
comprehending the Huzvaresh and Parsi, ends with the downfall of the
Sassanians. The Arab conquest quenched the last sparks of Persian
nationality; and the fire-altars of the Zoroastrians were never to be
lighted again, except in the oasis of Yezd and on the soil of that
country which the Zoroastrians had quitted as the disinherited sons of
Manu. Still the change did not take place at once. Mohl, in his
magnificent edition of the Shahnameh, has treated this period
admirably, and it is from him that I derive the following facts. For a
time, Persian religion, customs, traditions, and songs survived in the
hands of the Persian nobility and landed gentry (the Dihkans) who
lived among the people, particularly in, the eastern provinces, remote
from the capital and the seats of foreign dominion, Baghdad, Kufah,
and Mosul. Where should Firdusi have collected the national strains of
ancient epic poetry which he revived in the Shahnameh (1000 A.D.), if
the Persian peasant and the Persian knight had not preserved the
memory of their old heathen heroes, even under the vigilant oppression
of Mohammedan zealots? True, the first collection of epic traditions
was made under the Sassanians. But this work, commenced under
Nushirvan, and finished under Yezdegird, the last of the Sassanians,
was destroyed by Omar's command. Firdusi himself tells us how this
first collection was made by the Dihkan Danishver. 'There was a
Pehlevan,' he says, 'of the family of the Dihkans, brave and powerful,
wise and illustrious, who loved to study the ancient times, and to
collect the stories of past ages. He summoned from all the provinces
old men who possessed portions of (i. e. who knew) an ancient work in
which many stories were written. He asked them about the origin of
kings and illustrious heroes, and how they governed the world which
they left to us in this wretched state. These old men recited before
him, one after the other, the traditions of the kings and the changes
in the empire. The Dihkan listened, and composed a book worthy of his
fame. This is the monument he left to mankind, and great and small
have celebrated his name.'
The collector of this first epic poem, under Yezdegird, is called a
Dihkan by Firdusi. Dihkan, according to the Persian dictionaries,
means (1) farmer, (2) historian; and the reason commonly assigned for
this double meaning is, that the Persian farmers happened to be well
read in history. Quatremere, however, has proved that the Dihkans were
the landed nobility of Persia; that they kept up a certain
independence, even under the sway of the Mohammedan Khalifs, and
exercised in the country a sort of jurisdiction in spite of the
commissioners sent from Baghdad, the seat of the government. Thus
Danishver even is called a Dihkan, although he lived previous to the
Arab conquest. With him, the title was only intended to show that it
was in the country and among the peasants that he picked up the
traditions and songs about Jemshid, Feridun, and Rustem. Of his work,
however, we know nothing. It was destroyed by Omar; and, though it
survived in an Arabic translation, even this was lost in later times.
The work, therefore, had to be recommenced when in the eastern
provinces of Persia a national, though no longer a Zoroastrian,
feeling began to revive. The governors of these provinces became
independent as soon as the power of the Khalifs, after its rapid rise,
began to show signs of weakness. Though the Mohammedan religion had
taken root, even among the national party, yet Arabic was no longer
countenanced by the governors of the eastern provinces. Persian was
spoken again at their courts, Persian poets were encouraged, and
ancient national traditions, stripped of their religious garb, began
to be collected anew. It is said that Jacob, the son of Leis (870),
the first prince of Persian blood who declared himself independent of
the Khalifs, procured fragments of Danishver's epic, and had it
rearranged and continued. Then followed the dynasty of the Samanians,
who claimed descent from the Sassanian kings. They, as well as the
later dynasty of the Gaznevides, pursued the same popular policy. They
were strong because they rested on the support of a national Persian
spirit. The national epic poet of the Samanians was Dakiki, by birth a
Zoroastrian. Firdusi possessed fragments of his work, and has given a
specimen of it in the story of Gushtasp. The final accomplishment,
however, of an idea, first cherished by Nushirvan, was reserved for
Mahmud the Great, the second king of the Gaznevide dynasty. By his
command collections of old books were made all over the empire. Men
who knew ancient poems were summoned to the court. One of them was
Ader Berzin, who had spent his whole life in collecting popular
accounts of the ancient kings of Persia. Another was Serv Azad, from
Merv, who claimed descent from Neriman, and knew all the tales
concerning Sam, Zal, and Rustem, which had been preserved in his
family. It was from these materials that Firdusi composed his great
epic, the Shahnameh. He himself declares, in many passages of his
poem, that he always followed tradition. 'Traditions,' he says, 'have
been given by me; nothing of what is worth knowing has been forgotten.
All that I shall say, others have said before me: they plucked before
me the fruits in the garden of knowledge.' He speaks in detail of his
predecessors: he even indicates the sources from which he derives
different episodes, and it is his constant endeavour to convince his
readers that what he relates are not poetical inventions of his own.
Thus only can we account for the fact, first pointed out by Burnouf,
that many of the heroes in the Shahnameh still exhibit the traits,
sadly distorted, it is true, but still unmistakeable, of Vaidik
deities, which had passed through the Zoroastrian schism, the
Achaemenian reign, the Macedonian occupation, the Parthian wars, the
Sassanian revival, and the Mohammedan conquest, and of which the
Dihkans could still sing and tell, when Firdusi's poem impressed the
last stamp on the language of Zarathustra. Bopp had discovered
already, in his edition of Nalas (1832), that the Zend Viva_n_hvat was
the same as the Sanskrit Vivasvat; and Burnouf, in his 'Observations
sur la Grammaire Comparee de M. Bopp,' had identified a second
personage, the Zend Kere_s_a_s_pa with the Sanskrit K_r_i_s_a_s_va.
But the similarity between the Zend Kere_s_a_s_pa and the Garshasp of
the Shahnameh opened a new and wide prospect to Burnouf, and
afterwards led him on to the most striking and valuable results. Some
of these were published in his last work on Zend, 'Etudes sur la
Langue et les Textes Zends.' This is a collection of articles
published originally in the 'Journal Asiatique' between 1840 and 1846;
and it is particularly the fourth essay, 'Le Dieu Homa,' which has
opened an entirely new mine for researches into the ancient state of
religion and tradition common to the Aryans before their schism.
Burnouf showed that three of the most famous names in the Shahnameh,
Jemshid, Feridun, and Garshasp, can be traced back to three heroes
mentioned in the Zend-Avesta as the representatives of the three
earliest generations of mankind, Yima Kshaeta, Thraetaona, and
Kere_s_a_s_pa; and that the prototypes of these Zoroastrian heroes
could be found again in the Yama, Trita, and K_r_i_s_a_s_va of the
Veda. He went even beyond this. He showed that, as in Sanskrit, the
father of Yama is Vivasvat, the father of Yima in the Avesta is
Viva_n_hvat. He showed that as Thraetaona in Persia is the son of
Athwya, the patronymic of Trita in the Veda is Aptya. He explained the
transition of Thraetaona into Feridun by pointing to the Pehlevi form
of the name, as given by Neriosengh, Fredun. This change of an
aspirated dental into an aspirated labial, which by many is considered
a flaw in this argument, is of frequent occurrence. We have only to
think of [Greek: pher] and [Greek: ther], of dhuma and fumus, of
modern Greek [Greek: phelo] and [Greek: thelo]--nay, Menenius's 'first
complaint' would suffice to explain it. Burnouf again identified
Zohak, the king of Persia, slain by Feridun, whom even Firdusi still
knows by the name of Ash dahak, with the Azhi dahaka, the biting
serpent, as he translates it, destroyed by Thraetaona in the Avesta;
and with regard to the changes which these names, and the ideas
originally expressed by them, had to undergo on the intellectual stage
of the Aryan nation, he says: 'Il est sans contredit fort curieux de
voir une des Divinites indiennes les plus venerees, donner son nom au
premier souverain de la dynastie ariopersanne; c'est un des faits qui
attestent le plus evidemment l'intime union des deux branches de la
grande famille qui s'est etendue, bien de siecles avant notre ere,
depuis le Gange jusqu'a l'Euphrate.'
The great achievements of Burnouf in this field of research have been
so often ignored, and what by right belongs to him has been so
confidently ascribed to others, that a faithful representation of the
real state of the case, as here given, will not appear superfluous.
There is no intention, while giving his due to Burnouf, to detract
from the merits of other scholars. Some more minute coincidences,
particularly in the story of Feridun, have subsequently been added by
Roth, Benfey, and Weber. The first, particularly, has devoted two most
interesting articles to the identification of Yama-Yima-Jemshid and
Trita-Thraetaona-Feridun. Trita, who has generally been fixed upon as
the Vaidik original of Feridun, because Traitana, whose name
corresponds more accurately, occurs but once in the Rig-veda, is
represented in India as one of the many divine powers ruling the
firmament, destroying darkness, and sending rain, or, as the poets of
the Veda are fond of expressing it, rescuing the cows and slaying the
demons that had carried them off. These cows always move along the
sky, some dark, some bright-coloured. They low over their pasture;
they are gathered by the winds; and milked by the bright rays of the
sun, they drop from their heavy udders a fertilising milk upon the
parched and thirsty earth. But sometimes, the poet says, they are
carried off by robbers and kept in dark caves near the uttermost ends
of the sky. Then the earth is without rain; the pious worshipper
offers up his prayer to Indra, and Indra rises to conquer the cows for
him. He sends his dog to find the scent of the cattle, and after she
has heard their lowing, she returns, and the battle commences. Indra
hurls his thunderbolt; the Maruts ride at his side; the Rudras roar;
till at last the rock is cleft asunder, the demon destroyed, and the
cows brought back to their pasture. This is one of the oldest mythes
or sayings current among the Aryan nations. It appears again in the
mythology of Italy, in Greece, in Germany. In the Avesta, the battle
is fought between Thraetaona and Azhi dahaka, the destroying serpent.
Traitana takes the place of Indra in this battle in one song of the
Veda; more frequently it is Trita, but other gods also share in the
same honour. The demon, again, who fights against the gods is
likewise called Ahi, or the serpent, in the Veda. But the
characteristic change that has taken place between the Veda and Avesta
is that the battle is no longer a conflict of gods and demons for
cows, nor of light and darkness for rain. It is the battle of a pious
man against the power of evil. 'Le Zoroastrisme,' as Burnouf says, 'en
se detachant plus franchement de Dieu et de la nature, a certainement
tenu plus de compte de l'homme que n'a fait le Brahmanisme, et on peut
dire qu'il a regagne en profondeur ce qu'il perdait en etendue. Il ne
m'appartient pas d'indiquer ici ce qu'un systeme qui tend a developper
les instincts les plus nobles de notre nature, et qui impose a
l'homme, comme le plus important de ses devoirs, celui de lutter
constamment contre le principe du mal, a pu exercer d'influence sur
les destinees des peuples de l'Asie, chez lesquels il a ete adopte a
diverses epoques. On peut cependant deja dire que le caractere
religieux et martial tout a la fois, qui parait avec des traits si
heroiques dans la plupart des Jeshts, n'a pas du etre sans action sur
la male discipline sous laquelle ont grandi les commencements de la
monarchie de Cyrus.'
A thousand years after Cyrus (for Zohak is mentioned by Moses of
Khorene in the fifth century) we find all this forgotten once more,
and the vague rumours about Thraetaona and Azhi Dahaka are gathered at
last, and arranged and interpreted into something intelligible to
later ages. Zohak is a three-headed tyrant on the throne of
Persia--three-headed, because the Vaidik Ahi was three-headed, only
that one of Zohak's heads has now become human. Zohak has killed
Jemshid of the Peshdadian dynasty: Feridun now conquers Zohak on the
banks of the Tigris. He then strikes him down with his cow-headed
mace, and is on the point of killing him, when, as Firdusi says, a
supernatural voice whispered in his ear--[39]
Slay him not now, his time is not yet come,
His punishment must be prolonged awhile;
And as he cannot now survive the wound,
Bind him with heavy chains--convey him straight
Upon the mountain, there within a cave,
Deep, dark, and horrible--with none to soothe
His sufferings, let the murderer lingering die.
The work of heaven performing, Feridun
First purified the world from sin and crime.
Yet Feridun was not an angel, nor
Composed of musk and ambergris. By justice
And generosity he gained his fame.
Do thou but exercise these princely virtues,
And thou wilt be renowned as Feridun.
[Footnote 39: Cf. Atkinson's Shahnameh, p. 48.]
As a last stage in the mythe of the Vaidik Traitana we may mention
versions like those given by Sir John Malcolm and others, who see in
Zohak the representative of an Assyrian invasion lasting during the
thousand years of Zohak's reign, and who change Feridun into Arbaces
the Mede, the conqueror of Sardanapalus. We may then look at the whole
with the new light which Burnouf's genius has shed over it, and watch
the retrograde changes of Arbaces into Feridun, of Feridun into
Phredun, of Phredun into Thraetaona, of Thraetaona into
Traitana,--each a separate phase in the dissolving view of mythology.
As to the language of Persia, its biography is at an end with the
Shahnameh. What follows exhibits hardly any signs of either growth or
decay. The language becomes more and more encumbered with foreign
words; but the grammar seems to have arrived at its lowest ebb, and
withstands further change. From this state of grammatical numbness,
languages recover by a secondary formation, which grows up slowly and
imperceptibly at first in the speech of the people; till at last the
reviving spirit rises upwards, and sweeps away, like the waters in
spring, the frozen surface of an effete government, priesthood,
literature, and grammar.
_October, 1853._
IV.
THE AITAREYA-BRAHMANA.[40]
The Sanskrit text, with an English translation of the
Aitareya-brahma_n_a, just published at Bombay by Dr. Martin Haug, the
Superintendent of Sanskrit Studies in the Poona College, constitutes
one of the most important additions lately made to our knowledge of
the ancient literature of India. The work is published by the Director
of Public Instruction, in behalf of Government, and furnishes a new
instance of the liberal and judicious spirit in which Mr. Howard
bestows his patronage on works of real and permanent utility. The
Aitareya-brahma_n_a, containing the earliest speculations of the
Brahmans on the meaning of their sacrificial prayers, and the purport
of their ancient religious rites, is a work which could be properly
edited nowhere but in India. It is only a small work of about two
hundred pages, but it presupposes so thorough a familiarity with all
the externals of the religion of the Brahmans, the various offices of
their priests, the times and seasons of their sacred rites, the form
of their innumerable sacrificial utensils, and the preparation of
their offerings, that no amount of Sanskrit scholarship, such as can
be gained in England, would have been sufficient to unravel the
intricate speculations concerning the matters which form the bulk of
the Aitareya-brahma_n_a. The difficulty was not to translate the text
word for word, but to gain a clear, accurate, and living conception of
the subjects there treated. The work was composed by persons, and for
persons, who, in a general way, knew the performance of the Vedic
sacrifices as well as we know the performance of our own sacred rites.
If we placed the English Prayer-book in the hands of a stranger who
had never assisted at an English service, we should find that, in
spite of the simplicity and plainness of its language, it failed to
convey to the uninitiated a clear idea of what he ought and what he
ought not to do in church. The ancient Indian ceremonial, however, is
one of the most artificial and complicated forms of worship that can
well be imagined; and though its details are, no doubt, most minutely
described in the Brahma_n_as and the Sutras, yet, without having seen
the actual site on which the sacrifices are offered, the altars
constructed for the occasion, the instruments employed by different
priests--the _tout-ensemble_, in fact, of the sacred rites--the reader
seems to deal with words, but with words only, and is unable to
reproduce in his imagination the acts and facts which were intended to
be conveyed by them. Various attempts were made to induce some of the
more learned Brahmans to edit and translate some of their own rituals,
and thus enable European scholars to gain an idea of the actual
performance of their ancient sacrifices, and to enter more easily into
the spirit of the speculations on the mysterious meaning of these
rituals, which are embodied in the so-called Brahma_n_as, or 'the
sayings of the Brahmans.' But although, thanks to the enlightened
exertions of Dr. Ballantyne and his associates in the Sanskrit College
of Benares, Brahmans might have been found knowing English quite
sufficiently for the purpose of a rough and ready translation from
Sanskrit into English, such was their prejudice against divulging the
secrets of their craft that none could be persuaded to undertake the
ungrateful task. Dr. Haug tells us of another difficulty, which we had
hardly suspected,--the great scarcity of Brahmans familiar with the
ancient Vedic ritual: