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

156 HISTORY OF THE PARSIS. [cwar. mu.

The Avesta language is erroneously called Zend. This word Zend, as its root, zan, “to know,” implies, must be applied only to that portion of the Avesta which is explanatory of the original text. The word generally used for the Parsi Scriptures is ZendAvesta, a compound of these two words.

Scholars are agreed in the opinion that the language in which the Parsi Scriptures are written originated in the province of Bactria, which in the first chapter of the Vendidad is called Bakhdhi, and which, of the sixteen places mentioned therein as created by God, is the fourth in point of order. Sanserit was first spoken in the country adjoining the East of Bactria, and hence the similarity between the two languages.

The celebrated Professor Bopp is of opinion that the Avesta is a much more improved language than the Sanscrit, and is as old as the laneuage of the Vedas, which were composed three or four thousand years ago. This learned author, who has compiled a comparative grammar of several European and Asiatic classical languages on the basis of the Avesta, says “that the Zend (Avesta) displays that independence of the Sanserit which Rask claims for it perhaps in too high a degree,” and adds that “we are unwilling to receive the Zend (Avesta) as a mere dialect of the Sanscrit, and to which we are compelled to ascribe an independent existence, resembling that of the Latin