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 1932

xlii
PAHLAVI TEXTS.
been before this date that the series of millenniums was arranged for all future history, till Time was expected to merge once more into Eternity at the renovation of the universe.
78. As we have seen that Zoroastrian tradition is very consistent in fixing the date of Zaratůst's activity about the end of the seventh century B.C., it may be asked, why have Avesta scholars so strongly insisted upon its greater antiquity? They may have had several reasons, but three, at least, were important. First, they had the classical statements which, as we have seen ($ 71), generally placed Zaratûst as far back as the seventh millennium B.C., on the testimony of persons who lived from two to four centuries after the traditional date of Zaratûst's death. No one, of course, could believe in the literal accuracy of the number of millenniums, which referred, as we have seen, to an imaginary period of spiritual existence, but this number was considered merely as an exaggeration which might be reduced to any amount that seemed reasonable. At the same time, this evidence for antiquity was quite sufficient, in the second place, to discredit the traditional date, of which these old authorities seemed ignorant, though it was a period then comparatively recent. And, if this discredit had not been sufficient to shake the faith of Avesta scholars in the traditional date of Zaratūst. they still had a third reason for their scepticism, when they discovered that the language of the Avesta was not merely a sister of Sanskrit, but that a large portion of it was sister to the oldest Sanskrit with which they were acquainted, and which appeared to them certainly older than the time of Gautama Buddha, who lived about one generation later than the traditional Zaratust.
79. How far Avesta scholars were justified in their conclusions must be left for future ages to determine; at present we have no really historical information about the origin of Zoroastrianism, and must still consider it as decidedly prehistoric; though, it may be admitted that the Parsi calendar, as used in Persia, so far agrees with tradition, that it still bears witness to its own original institution in
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