VENDIDAD, the book containing the religious code of the Parsee Zoroastrians. It has under one three various processes of composition, of the Avesta, Zend, and Pa-zend. Tho Avesta is of very ancient date, and is the groundwork of the existing Vendidad, though all of it almost is post-Zertushtrian. In the course of time, several explanations and interpretations of the laws have been made, which acquired as much force as the original, and were incorporated with it. This is the Zend, and the incorporation of further explanations was styled tbe Pa-zend. Avesta means direct higher knowledge, divine revelation. Zend means the explanation of this, and Pa-zend tho supplements to the .Zend, or further explanation of the Zend doctrine. All the three stepa exist in the present Zendavesta, or more properly Avesta-Zend. In recent years, the researches of Chevalier Bunsen and Pro fessors 11. II. Wilson and Max 3fuller and 3fr. 1Vheeler seem to prove that much of the earlier history of two branches of the Aryan race are embocied in the Vendidad of the ancient Persians; and present Parseea, and in the Vedas of the Hindus. According to Dr. Haug, tho opening to the Vendidad, or Code of the Fire-worshippers of Imn, dates from the most ancient times, and its contents are the reminiscences of the pas:saga of the old Aryans into India, on the south and into Persia on the aouth-west. Aeconling to Ch. Bunsen, the Aryan emigration frorn Sogd to Bactria took place prior to a.c. 5000, conse quently before the time of 3fenes ; the immi grations into the Indus country about is.c. 4000 ; and the opening to the Vendidad describes the succession of the foundation of the fourteen kingdoms, the last and most southern of which was the land of the Five Rivers (the Panjab). Also, according to that writer, in the same way that political tradition represents that of the western aborigines, so does the Aryan one re present that of the eastern tribes in the primeval land. The vast climatic change which took place in the northern countries is attributed in the Bible to the action of water. In tho other, the sudden freezing up of rivers is the cause assig,ned. Both may have resulted from the same cause, the up heaving of the land by volcanic action, elevating portions and depressing into basins such as the Caspian Sea- Ten months of winter is now the climate of Western Tibet, Pamir, and Belur at the present day, and corresponds with that of the Altai country, and the district east of the Kouen Lun, the pamdise of the Chinese. The country at the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes, therefore, is supposed to be the most eastern and most northern point whence the Aryans came. Where ever the Indians may have fixed the dwelling places of their northern ancestors, the ITttarukuru, we cannot, he considers, venture to place the primeval seats of the Aryans anywhere but on the slopes of the Belur Tagli, in the high land of Pamir, between lat. 37° and 40° N., and long. 86° and 90° E. On this western slope of the Belur Tag13 and the Mustagh (the Tian Shan or Celestial 3fountains of the Chinese), the 'faro beremiti (Albordsh) is likewise to be looked for, which is invoked in the Zendavesta as the princiral mountain and the primeval source of the waters. At the present day, the old indi
genous inhabitants of that district, and generally those of Kashgar, Yarkand, Khoten, Turfan, and the adjacent highlands, are Tajak, who speak Persian, and who are all agriculturists The Turkoman either came after them and settled at a later period, or else they are aborigines whom the Aryans found there. On this point Chevalier Bunsen likewise remarks that the opening of the sacred code of the Vendidad as certAinly co»tains an historical tradition of the Aryans, as does the 14th chapter of Genesis au historical account of the oldest recorded war between 3lesopotamia and Canaan. The Fargitrd is divided iuto two great parta, one comprising the immigration from ' the eastern and north-eastern primeval countriea Bactria, in e,onsequence of a natural cata strophe and climatic changes, the other the subsequent extension of tho AiTan dominions through Eastern Central Asia, which terminated , in the Panjab. The following passage contains a genuine description of the climate of the primeval land of the Aryans, Iran proper : --‘ There Ingromaniyus (Ahriman), the deadly, created a mighty serpent, and snow, the work of Deva ; ten months of winter are there, two of summer.' The followin 0. passage, which is omitted in the Huzuresh or Pehravi translation, and which Lassen considers an interpolation, is irreconcil able with the above :----.‘ The warm weather lasts seven months, and winter five.' The fathers of the Aryans, therefore, originally inhabited Iran proper, the land of pleasantness, and they left it only in consequence of a convulsion of nature, by which a great alteration ia the climate was caused. They did not follow the course of the Oxus, or they would have come in the first instance to Bactria, and not to Sogd. Their course, therefore, was more northerly. Its present climate is precisely what the record describes it to have been when the changes produced.by the above commotion took place. It has Only two months of warm weather. In the course of the Aryans after their expulsion from the primeval country between Sogdiana and the Sutlej, they formed, by the conquest of fourteen countries, as many kingdoms in the whole of the eastern part of Central Asia and India proper, in the country of the Indus and its confluents. In the interven ing countries they passed amongst the Turanians (Scythians and Turkomans), and there is evidence that the inhabitauts whont they found in India were likewise Tnranians. The main direction of these travellers was southerly, and on the southern bank of the Caspian is a group the nucleus of the Aryan NI edia. Under the headingAryan will be seen Professor Muller's list of the successive settlements of the race.—Wheeler's History of India ; Pro fessor 114uller's Lectures ; Calcutta Review, 1859 ; .Edinburgh Review ; Bunsen's Egypt, iii. iv.