This part evidently consists of the second division of the Yas'na, or the Ofithas,for some of them are quoted several times in the remaining pertions of the Avesta. But whether all the Gathrls precede the first part of the Yas'ua and the rest of the Avesta, and whether the dialect in which they are written differs from the language of the rest merely on account of load peculiarities, as Professor Westergaard holds, or on account of its earlier date, as other scholars assume, is a question which it would be difficult to decide in the present imperfect state of Zend philology. Nor would it be safe to say whether &roaster, to when the original Avesta is ascribed, composed all or any of the rellleill8 in which the present collection has come down to us. Dr. Haug, it is true, who has given us a translation of the GAthAs, says in a lecture he delivered at Poona, on the ]st of 'March, 1861 : "I shall now give the proofs that these collections of ancient songs (the Gtitbas), or at least some of them, were really composed by Zarathustra himself, with some remarks which will throw light on the origin of the religion. 1. Whilst in those portions of the Zend-Avesta which are written in the usual Zend language (or it niight perhaps more properly be called Bactrian) we find Zarathustra spoken of in the third person ; now in these songs he is speaking in the first person, and sometimes calling himself by Ida own name, so says he hi one passage (Yas'na, 43, S) : Zarathustra, I shall show mieelf as a destroyer to the wicked, and a comforter to the good.' 2. }rent the whole tenor of these songs (chiefly of the second collection, called Oatlebustavaiti) we are led to the opinion that a man of quite an extraordinary stamp stands before us, acting a grand part, not only on the stage of Ills country's history, but on that of the universal history of the human race. He says that he is a prophet or a messenger, sent by God to propagate eivilieation, especially agriculture and the blessings of a settled state of life (once he is called a prophet of the spirit of the earth, Heusurva), and to destroy idolatry as ruining the body as well as the soul." But
it is clear that arguments of this kind do not warrant the certainty with which the Inference is propounded that Zoroaster himself composed these songs, and that no Inter writer, according to the tradition he had received, could have 'milted the poetry which has called forth the foregoing remarks. Questions like these it seems pre mature to decide at a time when the grammatical laws of the language of the Avesta are not yet definitely known, when no real dictioniry of this Language is yet in existence, and when the few translators of the Avesta reproach each other, apparently not without good cause, with having misunderstood, or imperfectly understood, the most important parts of the sacred texts, either from clinging too much to tradition, which is not always safe, or from neglecting it altogether and inventing fanciful meanings of words. Those seriously engaged in the study of the old Parsee texts will not be misled by bold assertions of dates and confident interpretations of texts, but to the general reader it is wiser to confess that the time is not yet come to decide whether Zoroaster is the real author of all or any of the fragmentary portions of the Avesta which are the subject of this brief notice, nor to venture upon a guess at the period at which ho may have founded the Parsee religion. All that is really settled by modern investigations is that it would be erroneous to assign to him the date of Darius father, since it is indubitable that the Kavit Vistas'pa of the Zend-Avesta, under whose reign Zoroaster lived, is not the Vistas'pa or Hystaspes, who is the father of the celebrated king Darius, the lineage of the latter being totally different to that of the former. When therefore the modern Parsces assign to their prophet the date of 550 n.c. they must he wrong ; and if Zoroaster really lived at any of the remote dates which have been guessed by European writers, this fact would give us the interesting conclusion that there is a religious community which believes its founder to have existed about 1000 years later than he actually lived.