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

CHAP. IV.] THE ZEND TEXTS. 173

Firoz, high priest of the Kadmi sect of the Parsis. Manuscript copies of these works are also deposited in the Imperial Library, Paris; in the University Library, Oxford; and in the British as well as the Indian Museum, London. Professor N. L. Westergaard of Copenhagen has published all the Zend texts in four parts, the last of which was brought out in the year 1854. Professor Spiegel has also published the Zend texts of the Vendidad, Yasna, and Visparad, together with the original Pehlevi translations. He has also published a German version of the whole of the Zend-Avesta now extant. This was translated in the year 1864 into English by Mr. A, H. Bleek at the request of Mr. Mancherji Hormasji Kama, a devout Zoroastrian and a highly-respected member of the Kama family, who distributed it gratuitously to his co-religionists.

A new and revised edition of Westergaard is being prepared by Dr. Karl Geldner, Professor of Iranian Languages in the University of Tiibingen, of which the new and most striking feature will be the arrangement by the learned professor of the texts in the form of verses. He is of opinion that almost the whole of the Avesta, and not the Gatha portion alone, is a metrical composition. To ensure the correctness of his new publication he has sent for the oldest manuscripts from Bombay. The oldest one in the Mulla Firoz library above referred to has