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 1927

INTRODUCTION.
xxxvii
death, when his son succeeded him in the high-priesthood. If Âturpâd were aged eighty-one at his death, he would have been fifty-one at the birth of his son, or approaching old age; and he would have been born in 290, or nineteen years before the king. His grandson may have been born in 365, when his father Zaratast was twenty-four, and may have succeeded that father in the high-priesthood about 400, the second year of king Yazdakard I. As all these dates are reasonably consistent with the few facts that are known, there seems to be no impossibility in the hypothesis that the original chronology of Adshedar's birth may have had some connection with the date of the birth of Åtorpåd's son. The dates assumed, with regard to these three highpriests, which may be slightly varied, are as follows:
Âtūrpad, born 290, high-priest 320, died 371. Zaratûst, 341,
371, , 400. Atûrpâd, 365,
400, 420, or later.
67. On the other hand, we must recollect that the time of the birth of Allshedar was not an isolated date which could be varied at pleasure, to suit any circumstances that might arise ; but it was intimately connected with the dates of birth of three other apostles, which were each placed at the same distance from the ends of three other millenniums. It would perhaps be more difficult to suit a new millennial system of chronology, to the accidental year of a particular child's birth, than to have the child born in a particular year of an old system already existing. And, if so, it may be safer to assume that Âtûrpâd, knowing the year of the expected birth, took measures to secure the fulfilment of the prophecy, so far as the birth was concerned. If the child did not turn out so capable of regenerating the world as had been expected, that was a matter for posterity to explain. Under such circumstances of merely seeming fulfilment of a single particular, fraudulently obtained, the original prediction might be of any age.
68. It does not appear that the priestly councillors assembled by Khûsrð I (Byt. I, 7), made any alteration in
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