Z END is described to have been the Acliremenian or old Persian. Until recent years, orientalists have differed as to the existende of any such language as that called Zend ; but the prevalence of this language is now universally admitted. The term Zend means commentary or explanation, and was the name of the comment which accompanied the Avesta, the law, or the word. What name the languag,e Wilfi known by in ancient times has not been discovered. It is a twin-sister of Sanskrit ; and the common source of the two languages is proved not only by an unmistakeable similarity, but by the many myths and semi-divinities which are common to the oldest writings in both these languages. In what country- and from what language these two great Aryan tongues arose, is a matter for conjecture.
The original texts of the Avesta were not written by Persians, as they aro in a language not used in l'ersia; they prescribe certain customs which were unknown to Persia, and proscribe others which were current in Persia. They were written in Media by the priests of Itaghtt and Atropatene, in the language of Media, and they exhibit the ideas of the aleerdotal class under the Achtemenian dynasty.
If grammars and lexicons of this language ever existed, they have not come down to modern times. Translators have nothing to work upon but the texts themselves. The traditional school seeks to explain them by the writings of later times in other languages; the compandive Pchool approaches them through the old edic Sanskrit. According to this school, the Avesta and the Veda are two echoes of ono and the sante voice, the reflex of one and the sante thought ; the Vedas therefore are both the best lexicon and the best commentary to the Avesta.' At the head of the former school stands Spiegel, and Burnout was the great founder of the latter. Neither of these methods can be implicitly trusted. There is no disputing the close affinity of the Vedic Sanskrit and the language of the Avesta, but these two languages must have existed apart for a long time before the Vedas and the Avesta were composed. They show a great difference in the spelling of words which were once identical ; and if the forms of words changed, their significations could hardly have been exempt from variation, of which two examples are convincing proofs,— Sanskrit, Deva, a god ; Zend, Daeva, a demon ; Sanskrit, Asura, a demon ; Zend, Ahura, a god.
The 'period when the Zend texts were collected and formed into the Avesta has not been ascer tained ; but it seems possible to trace a Zoroastrian literature back to the 3d century before Christ ; and although some portions of the Avesta are evidently later in thne than the rest, no part of them can belong to a. later date' than the 4th
century A.D. The date of the collection nuist have been long posterior to the composition of the component parts. How and when these produc tions first made their appearance is a matter for pure speculation.
The Zend-Avesta is divided into two parts. The Avesta, properly so called, contains the Vendidad, the VispOrad, and the Yacna. The Vendidad is a compilation of religious laws and of mythical tales ; the Visperad is a collection of litanies for the sacrifice ; and the Yacna is composed of litanies of the same kind, and of five hymns or Gathas written in a special dialect, older than the general laricruage of the Avesta. The Khord-Avesta or small Avesta is composed of short prayers, which are recited at certain moments of the day, month, or year, and in presence of the different ele ments. The proper form of the name is Avesta Zend, a softened form of Avesta wa Zend, i.e. text and comment or explanation. Its Pehlevi form is Apistak, the Pastak and Pastakum of the .Mahrati and Telugu.
A Pehlevi translation of the more important books, supposed to have been made under the Sassanidm (A.n. 235-640), is extant, and a Sanskrit translation of the Yacna, made about the end of the 15th century by Nerio Singh.
Anquetil de Perron in 1771 made a translation of it ; Burnouf gave a version of the first and ninth chapters of the Yacna in 1833 ; and Martin Haug, of the Gathas in 1858-60, and other frag ments.
The Zend-Avesta was printed by Westergaard in 1852-54, and printed and translated by Spiegel in 1851-58, and translated in 1880 by Professor James Darmesteter.
The Gatha are songs ; the Yagna consists of prayers, hymns, etc., relating to sacrificial rites, and intended to be used during the perforinance of sacrifice. Several of the Gatha are ascribed to Zoroaster, who, according to Berosus, lived anterior to B.C. 2000. Haug supposed the Zoroastrian Gathas to be as early as the time of Moses. The first Fargard of the Vendidakl must have been composed before the migration of the Medes south ward from the Caspian reoion.—G. Rawlinson, p. 322 ; The Sacred Bookbs of the East.