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accounts contained in Arabian and Persian writers, there was, until the middle of the last century, no certain information concerning Zoroaster and his teachings. But the enterprise, energy, and scientific devotion of a young Frenchman changed the whole aspect of the subject, and we are now enabled to speak with some degree of certainty concerning this great teacher and his doctrines.

§ 3. Anquetil du Perron and his Discovery of the Zend Avesta.

Anquetil du Perron, born at Paris in 1731, devoted himself early to the study of Oriental literature. He mastered the Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian languages, and by his ardor in these studies attracted the attention of Oriental scholars. Meeting one day in the Royal Library with a fragment of the Zend Avesta, he was seized with the desire of visiting India, to recover the lost books of Zoroaster, "and to learn the Zend language in which they were written, and also the Sanskrit, so as to be able to read the manuscripts in the Bibliothèque du Roi, which no one in Paris understood." * His friends endeavored to procure him a situation in an expedition just about to sail; but their efforts not succeeding, Du Perron enlisted as a private soldier, telling no one of his intention till the day before setting out, lest he should be prevented from going. He then sent for his brother and took leave of him with many tears, resisting all the efforts made to dissuade him from his purpose. His baggage consisted of a little linen, a Hebrew Bible, a case of mathematical instruments, and the works of Montaigne and Charron. A ten days' march, with other recruits, through wet and cold, brought him to the port from whence the expedition was to sail. Here he found that the government, struck with his extraordinary zeal for science, had directed that he should have his discharge and a small salary of five hundred livres. The East India Company (French) gave him a passage gratis, and he set sail for India, February 7, 1755, being then twenty-four years old. The first two years in

* Anq. du Perron, Zend Avesta; Disc. Prélim., p. vi.

India were almost lost to him for purposes of science, on account of his sicknesses, travels, and the state of the country disturbed by war between England and France.* He travelled afoot and on horseback over a great part of Hindostan, saw the worship of Juggernaut and the monumental caves of Ellora, and, in 1759, arrived at Surat, where was the Pârst community from which he hoped for help in obtaining the object of his pursuit. By perseverance and patience he succeeded in persuading the Destours, or priests, of these fire-worshippers, to teach him. the Zend language and to furnish him with manuscripts of the Avesta. With one hundred and eighty valuable manuscripts he returned to Europe, and published, in 1771, his great work, — the Avesta translated into French, with notes and dissertations. He lived through the French Revolution, shut up with his books, and immersed in his Oriental studies, and died, after a life of continued labor, in 1805. Immense erudition and indomitable industry were joined in Anquetil du Perron to a pure love of truth and an excellent heart.

For many years after the publication of the Avesta its genuineness and authenticity were a matter of dispute among the learned men of Europe; Sir William Jones especially denying it to be an ancient work, or the production of Zoroaster. But almost all modern writers of eminence now admit both. Already in 1826 Heeren said that these books had " stood the fiery ordeal of criticism." "Few remains of antiquity," he remarks, "have undergone such attentive examination as the books of the Zend Avesta. This criticism has turned out to their advantage; the genuineness of the principal compositions, especially of the Vendidad and Izeschne (Yaçna), has been demonstrated; and we may consider as completely ascertained all that regards the rank of each book of the Zend Avesta."

* At the time Anquetil du Perron was thus laboring in the cause of science in India, two other men were in the same region devoting themselves with equal ardor to very different objects. Clive was laying the foundations of the British dominion in India; Schwartz was giving himself up to a life of toil in preaching the Gospel to the Hindoos. How little would these three men have sympathized with each other, or appreciated each other's work! And yet how important to the progress of humanity was

that of each !

Rhode (one of the first of scholars of his day in this departinent) says: "There is not the least doubt that these are the books ascribed in the most ancient times to Zoroaster." Of the Vendidad he says: "It has both the inward and outward marks of the highest antiquity, so that we fear not to say that only prejudice or ignorance could doubt it." *

§4. Epoch of Zoroaster.

What do we know of him?

As to the age of these books, however, and the period at which Zoroaster lived, there is the greatest difference of opinion. He is mentioned by Plato (Alcibiades, I. 37), who speaks of "the magic (or religious doctrines) of Zoroaster the Ormazdian ” (μαγείαν — Ζωροάστρου του Ωρομάζου). As Plato speaks of his religion as something established in the form of Magism, or the system of the Medes, in West Iran, while the Avesta appears to have originated in Bactria, or East Iran,‡ this already carries the age of Zoroaster back to at least the sixth or seventh century before Christ. When the Avesta was written, Bactria was an independent monarchy. Zoroaster is represented as teaching under King Vistacpa. But the Assyrians conquered Bactria B. C. 1200, which was the last of the Iranic kingdoms, they having previously vanquished the Medes, Hyrcanians, Parthians, Persians, etc. As Zoroaster must have lived before this conquest, his period is taken back to a still more remote time, about B. C. 1300 or B. C. 1250. §

* And with this conclusion the later scholars agree. Burnouf, Lassen, Spiegel, Westergaard, Haug, Bunsen, Max Müller, Roth, all accept the Zend Avesta as containing in the main, if not the actual words of Zoroaster, yet authentic reminiscences of his teaching. The Gâthâs of the Yaçna are now considered to be the oldest part of the Avesta, as appears from the investigations of Haug and others. (See Dr. Martin Haug's translation and commentary of the Five Gâthâs of Zarathustra. Leipzig, 1860.)

Even good scholars often follow each other in a false direction for want of a little independent thinking. The Greek of Plato was translated by a long succession of writers, "Zoroaster the son of Oromazes," until some one happened to think that this genitive might imply a different relation.

Duncker (Gesch. des Alterthums, B. II.) gives at length the reasons which prove Zoroaster and the Avesta to have originated in Bactria. & Duncker (B. II. s. 483). So Döllinger.

It is difficult to be more precise than this. Bunsen indeed * suggests that "the date of Zoroaster, as fixed by Aristotle, cannot be said to be so very irrational. He and Eudoxus, according to Pliny, place him six thousand years before the death of Plato; Hermippus, five thousand years before the Trojan war," or about B. C. 6300 or B. C. 6350. But Bunsen adds: “At the present stage of the inquiry the question whether this date is set too high cannot be answered either in the negative or affirmative.” Spiegel, in one of his latest works,† considers Zoroaster as a neighbor and contemporary of Abraham, therefore as living B. C. 2000 instead of B. C. 6350. Professor Whitney of New Haven places the epoch of Zoroaster at “least B. C. 1000," and adds that all attempts to reconstruct Persian chronology or history prior to the reign of the first Sassanid have been relinquished as futile.‡ Döllinger thinks he may have been "somewhat later than Moses, perhaps about B. C. 1300,” but says, “it is impossible to fix precisely" when he lived. Rawlinson || merely remarks that Berosus places him anterior to B. C. 2234. Haug is inclined to date the Gâthâs, the oldest songs of the Avesta, as early as the time of Moses. Rapp, ** after a thorough comparison of ancient writers, concludes that Zoroaster lived B. c. 1200 or 1300. In this he agrees with Duncker, who, as we have seen, decided upon the same date. It is not far from the period given by the oldest Greek writer who speaks of Zoroaster,-Xanthus of Sardis, a contemporary of Darius. It is the period given by Cephalion, a writer of the second century, who takes it from three independent sources. We have no sources now open to us which enable us to come nearer than this to the time in which he lived.

Nor is anything known with certainty of the place where he lived or the events of his life. Most modern

* Egypt's Place in Universal History, Vol. III. p. 471.

+ Eran, das Land zwischen dem Indus und Tigris.

Journal of the Am. Or. Soc., Vol. V. No. 2, p. 353.

§ The Gentile and Jew, Vol. I. p. 380.

Five Great Monarchies, Vol. III. p. 94.

Essays, &c., by Martin Hang, p. 255.

** Die Religion und Sitte der Perser. Von Dr. Adolf Rapp. (1865.)

writers suppose that he resided in Bactria. Haug maintains that the language of the Zend books is Bactrian.* A highly mythological and fabulous life of Zoroaster, translated by Anquetil du Perron, called the ZartushtNamah,† describes him as going to Iran in his thirtieth year, spending twenty years in the desert, working miracles during ten years, and giving lessons of philosophy in Babylon, with Pythagoras as his pupil. All this is based on the theory (now proved to be false) of his living in the time of Darius. "The language of the Avesta," says Max Müller, "is so much more primitive than the inscriptions of Darius, that many centuries must have passed between the two periods represented by these two strata of language."+ These inscriptions are in the Achæmenian dialect, which is the Zend in a later stage of linguistic growth.

§ 5. Spirit of Zoroaster and of his Religion

It is not likely that Zoroaster ever saw Pythagoras or even Abraham. But though absolutely nothing is known of the events of his life, there is not the least doubt of his existence nor of his character. He has left the impress of his commanding genius on great regions, various races, and long periods of time. His religion, like that of the Buddha, is essentially a moral religion. Each of them was a revolt from the Pantheism of India, in the interest of morality, human freedom, and the progress of the race. They differ in this, that each takes hold of one side. of morality, and lets go the opposite. Zoroaster bases his law on the eternal distinction between right and wrong; Sakya-muni, on the natural laws and their consequences, either good or evil. Zoroaster's law is, therefore, the law of justice; Sakya-muni's, the law of mercy. The one makes the supreme good to consist in truth, duty, right; the other, in love, benevolence, and kindness. Zoroaster teaches providence: the monk of India teaches prudence.

Bunsen, Egypt, Vol. III. p. 455.

Written in the thirteenth century after Christ. An English transla tion may be found in Dr. J. Wilson's "Pârsî Religion."

Chips, Vol. I. p. 88.

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