Zend Avesta Part 02

SR No.: 007672
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: James Darmesteter
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1883
Total Pages: 2221
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 41 MB

Page 1907

INTRODUCTION.
xvii
(a copy of which has been used), is dated two generations earlier.
25. Regarding the period of Zad-sparam's career we are well informed by the date of the third Epistle of Mandskîhar, corresponding to A.D. 881, at which time Zâd-sparam was probably in the prime of life; but his Selections were certainly compiled as late as A. D. 900, or about the same time as the completion of the Dînkard. So that the Pahlavi texts, from which these three narratives of the Zoroastrian legends have been translated, were no doubt all written about A. D. 900, and the information they contain was nearly all derived from the Pahlavi versions of two of the Nasks.
26. We have reason to believe that the Pahlavi versions of Avesta texts were completed in the fourth century and revised in the sixth, after the downfall of the heretic Mazdak. This may not only be clearly inferred from the traditional account of the compilation and restorations of the Avesta and Zand, preserved in Dk. IV, 21-36, and translated in S. B. E., vol. xxxvii, pp. 412-418; but is also in accordance with the actual condition of the Pahlavi versions of the liturgical Avesta texts. With the exception of a few interpolated passages, the whole of these Pahlavi versions might have been written, or revised, in the time of king Shahpühar II (A. D. 309-379). And the exceptional passages mention no persons or events of a later date than the reign of king Khûsro I (A. D. 531-578); being merely references to such persons as Mazdak, the heretic, and certain commentators who lived about that time.
27. If we examine the Zoroastrian legends, translated in this volume, we shall also find it difficult to discover a passage that clearly alludes to any historical personage of later date than Khûsro I, who is named in Dk. V, iii, 3; VII, vii, 26, although the compiler of the Dînkard had the traditions of 250 years of Arab rule to draw upon for facts, if he had been disposed to continue the statements of the Pahlavi Spend Nask down to his own time. No doubt, these traditions may have intensified his denunciations of
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