Afterward Dr. Rask went to Bombay in the interests of the Danish government and after collecting many valuable manuscripts, wrote his essay “On the Age and Genuineness of the Zend Language.”
About the middle of the present century, Westergaard, who is also a Dane, and one of the most accomplished Zend scholars of Europe, published an edition of the sacred books of the Zoroastrians.
Burnouf, Spiegel and Bopp were also enthusiastic[enthusiastic] students of these books of the Magian literature, and after a time Dr. Haug, a young and enthusiastic German, was appointed to a professorship of Sanskṛit in the Poona College; while here he availed himself of his opportunity to make a thorough study of the literature of the Pārsīs. He contributed a valuable collection of “Essays” on the subject.
There are at present five editions, more or less complete, of the Zend-Avesta. The first was lithographed and published[[157]] under Burnouf’s direction in Paris, and the second was transcribed into Roman characters and published[[158]] at Leipsic by Prof Brockhaus. The third edition was presented in Zend characters, and was prepared[[159]] by Prof. Spiegel, and the fourth was published at Copenhagen,[[160]] by Westergaard; there are also one or two editions of the Zend-Avesta published in India with Gujerātī translations, which are sometimes quoted by native scholars.
The Yasna, being that portion of the Zend-Avesta containing the Gāthas, which are supposed to be the original hymns of Zoroaster, is the oldest and most important part of the Magian literature. Early in the present century,[[161]] Dr. Rask succeeded in bringing to Europe a celebrated manuscript of the Yasna with Pahlavī translation which is now in the University Library of Copenhagen,[[162]] and this is the only document of the kind upon the continent of Europe.
Another priceless manuscript has for centuries been hereditary property in the family of a High Priest of the Pārsīs,[[163]] who has now presented it to the University at Oxford, and through the courtesy of Prof. F. Max Müller we are enabled to give our readers a fac simile representation[[164]] of this famous Yasna manuscript which constitutes one of the fundamental documents of Zend philology. It contains nearly eight hundred pages,[[165]] and was written by Mihirāpān Kaī-Khūsrō, the same copyist who transcribed the Copenhagen manuscript, but it is from a different original.
ZARATHUŚTRA.
Zarathuśtra or Zoroaster[[166]] is supposed to have been the prophet of Īrān, and the author of the earliest hymns or Gāthas, but the fact that the composition of the books of the Zend-Avesta, extended over a period of several centuries, precludes the possibility of their authorship by any one individual. There is no historic record of the birth, the life or the death of Zarathuśtra, and this fact, together with the vast amount of myth and legend which has grown up around his name, has led some Orientalists to question whether or not such a man ever lived at all.
Firdusī teaches in a mythical way that he belonged to the time of Darius. Hyde, Prideaux and several others claim that Zarathuśtra was the same as the Persian Zerdūsht, the great patriarch of the Magi, who lived between the beginning of the reign of Cyrus and the end of that of Darius Hystaspes, while others still claim that the prophet of Īrān belonged to an earlier date.[[167]] It seems probable that he was a veritable personage, who, although not necessarily the author of any considerable portion of the Zend-Avesta, may have led the departure in this direction from the mythology of the Vedas, toward the simpler forms of Mazdeism, but whether he lived and first taught among the mountains of Media, or in the land of Baktriana, is an open question.
Indeed, the controversy which prevails among scholars upon the exegesis of the Zend-Avesta is one of unusual severity, and while the storm seems to center upon the value of the Asiatic translations, there are other questions which are involved; the personality of Zarathuśtra[[168]] is not only questioned, but even amongst those who admit that he was an historical personage, the field of his early labors, the exact time to which he belonged, and many other points are subjects of spirited discussion.