AVES'TA, or ZEND'-AVES'TA. The name under which, as a designation, are comprised the bible and prayer-book of the Zoroastrian reli gion. The Avesta forms to-day the sacred books of the Parris or Fire Worshipers, as they are often termed, a small community living now in India, or still scattered here and there in Persia. The original home of these worshipers and of their holy scriptures was ancient hail, and the faith they profess was that founded many cen turies ago by Zoroaster (q.v.), one of the great religious teachers of the East.
The Avesta is, therefore, an important work, preserving as it does the doctrines of this an cient belief and the customs of the earliest days of Persia. It represents the oldest faith of Iran, just as the Vedas do of India. It stands as the law of ancient Media, and later of Persia, and apparently also of Baetria (q.v.). The religion which the Avesta presents was once one of the greatest, and it has left ineffaceable traces upon the history of the world. It flourished fully six centuries before the Christian Era; it certainly became the religion of the later Aelnemenian kings, if it was not already the creed of Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes: but its power was weak ened by the conquest of Alexander, and many of its sacred books were lost. It revived again during the first centuries of our own era, but was finally broken by the Mohammedans in their victorious invasion. 'Most of the Zoroastrian worshipers were then compelled, through perse cution, to accept the religion of the Koran; many however, fled to India for refuge, and took with them what was left of their sacred writings. A few of the faithful remained behind in Persia, and though persecuted, they continued to prac tice their religion. It is these two scanty peo ples—perhaps 80,000 souls in India and 10,000 in Persia—that have preserved to us the Avesta in the form in which we now have it.
The designation Avesta, for the scriptures, is adopted from the term Avist cilz, regularly employed in the Pahlavi (q.v.) of the Sassanian time. But it is quite uncertain what the exact meaning and derivation of this word may be. Possibly Phl. Avistak, like the Skr. Veda, signi fies 'wisdom, knowledge, the book of knowl edge.' It may, however, mean 'the law.' The designation Zend-Avesta, though made current by Anquetil-Duperron, as described below, is not an accurate title. It arose by mistake from an inversion of the oft-recurring Pahlavi phrase, A ristak va Zand, 'Avesta and Zend,' or 'the Law and Commentary.' The term Zand in Pahlavi (ef. Av. azaiiiti), as the Tarsi priests now rightly comprehend it, properly denotes 'understanding, explanation•' as opposed to the A reala itself, which some maintain signifies 'the unknown' text that needed explanation in order to he understood. It is certain, in any case, that %mu/ is the name of the later version and com mentary of the Avesta texts, the paraphrase which is written in the Pahlavi language. The proper designation for the scriptures, therefore, is .l resin the term Zend should be understood as the Pahlavi version and commentary. It is
to be regretted that the meaning, application, and reading of the word oba§te or alibi ta in the old Persian inscriptions is still a vexed problem.
Discovery and 11 istory of Research of the 1 resta.—Of the religion, manners, and customs of ancient Persia which the Avesta preserves to us, we had but meagre knowledge until about a century ago. Mutt we did know up to that time was gathered from the more or less scat tered and unsatisfactory references of the clas sic Greek and Latin, from some allusions in Oriental writers, or from the later Persian epic literature. To direct sources, however, we could not turn. Allusions to the religion of the the faith of the Avesta, are to be found in the Bible. The Wise Men from the East who came to worship the Saviour, the babe in Bethlehem, were Magi. Centuries before that date, how ever, it was Cyrus, the ancient Persian King, whom God called his anointed and his shep herd (lsa. xlv. I, 13; xliv. 28; 2 Citron. xxxvi. 22, 23; Eira i. I-11), and who gave orders that. the Jews be returned to Jerusalem from cap tivity in Babylon. Darius, moreover (Ezra v. 13-17; vi. the worshiper of Ormazd, fa vored the rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem, as decreed by Cyrus. Allusions to the ancient faith of the Persians are perhaps contained in Ezek. viii. ,16; Isa. xiv. 7, 12. The classical references of Greek and Roman writers to the teachings of Zoroaster (q.v.), which we can now study in the Avesta itself, may be said to begin with the account of the Persian religion given by Herodotns (n.e. 450). To this account may be added references and allusions, though often preserved only in fragments by various other writers, including Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris,' and Pliny down to Agathias, about AM. 560. (See ZOROASTER.) The Armenian writers, Eznik and .Elisus, of the Fifth Century A.D., also refer to the Zoroastrian religion. After the Mohammedan conquest of Persia, we have an allusion by the Arabic writer, Masudi (A.D. 940), who tells of the Avesta of Zeradusht (Zoroaster), and its commentary called Zend, together with a Pozend explanation. The Abasta (Avesta) is also mentioned several times by Al-Birudi (about A.D. 1000 ) . The later Mohammedan author, Shaharastani (A.D. 1150), sketches in outline the creed of the Magi of his day. An in teresting reference is found in the Syriac-Arabic Lexicon of Bar-Bahlul (A.D. 963) to an A rastak, a book of Zardosht (Zoroaster), as composed in seven tongues—Syriac, Persian, Aramtvan, Segestanian, Marvian, Greek, and Hebrew. In an earlier Syriac MS. Commentary on the New Testament (A.D. 852) by Isho`dad, Bishop of lladatha, near Mosul, mention is made of the Ahlitistn as having been written by Zardosht in twelve different languages. These latter allu sions, though late, are all of them important, as showing the continuity during ages of the tra dition of such a work as the Avesta, which con tains the teachings of Zoroaster, the Prophet of Iran. All these allusions, however, it must be remembered, are by foreigners. No direct Ira nian sources had been accessible.