History of the Parsis : including their manners, customs, religion and present position : with coloured and other illustrations : in two volumes

148 HISTORY OF THE PARSTS. [CHAP. III.

Dr. Haug says, “ Under no circumstances can we assign him a later date than B.c. 1000, and one may find even reasons for placing his era much earlier.” Mr. Kharshedji Rastamji Kama, a well-known Oriental scholar among the Parsis, has, on the authority of Greek and Jewish writers and on that of the Cuneiform inscriptions, very clearly shown in his Zarthosht- Nama (i.e. The Life of Zoroaster) that Zoroaster lived at least 1300 years before Christ, or nearly 3200 years ago.

Before the light of new scholarship fell upon this point it was the accepted belief among the learned that Zoroaster flourished in the sixth century before Christ. The mistake arose from the fact that they took the Kayanian king Gushtasp, in whose reign the prophet flourished, to be the same as Darius Hystaspes, the well-known king of the later Achzeemenian dynasty who lived about p.c. 521. Not only did the two kings belong to different dynasties, but the latest researches have shown that a period of more than eight hundred years intervened between them. This fact affixes as the earliest possible date to the reign of Gushtasp, and in consequence to the birth of Zoroaster also, the year B.c. 1300.

That Zoroaster flourished long before the time of the Achzemenian kings is also satisfactorily established by the fact that the current language spoken in the country at that age (as may be judged from