Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 1 / Essays on the Science of Religion

by F. Max Müller

ZEND-AVESTA IN INDIA.[45]

anskrit scholars resident in India enjoy considerable advantages over those who devote themselves to the study of the ancient literature of the Brahmans in this country, or in France and Germany. Although Sanskrit is no longer spoken by the great mass of the people, there are few large towns in which we do not meet with some more or less learned natives—the pandits, or, as they used to be called, pundits—men who have passed through a regular apprenticeship in Sanskrit grammar, and who generally devote themselves to the study of some special branch of Sanskrit literature, whether law, or logic, or rhetoric, or astronomy, or anything else. These men, who formerly lived on the liberality of the Rajahs and on the superstition of the people, find it more and more difficult to make a living among their own countrymen, and are glad to be employed by any civilian or officer who takes an interest in their ancient lore. Though not scholars in our sense of the word, and therefore of little use as teachers of the language, they are extremely useful to more advanced students, who are able to set them to do that kind of work for which they are fit, and to check their labours by judicious supervision. All our great Sanskrit scholars, from Sir William Jones to H.H. Wilson, have fully acknowledged their obligations to their native assistants. They used to work in Calcutta, Benares, and Bombay with a pandit at each elbow, instead of the grammar and the dictionary which European scholars have to consult at every difficult passage. Whenever an English Sahib undertook to edit or translate a Sanskrit text, these pandits had to copy and to collate MSS., to make a verbal index, to produce parallel passages from other writers, and, in many cases, to supply a translation into Hindustani, Bengali, or into their own peculiar English. In fact, if it had not been for the assistance thus fully and freely rendered by native scholars, Sanskrit scholarship would never have made the rapid progress which, during less than a century, it has made, not only in India, but in almost every country of Europe.

With this example to follow, it is curious that hardly any attempt should have been made by English residents, particularly in the Bombay Presidency, to avail themselves of the assistance of the Parsis for the purpose of mastering the ancient language and literature of the worshippers of Ormuzd. If it is remembered that, next to Sanskrit, there is no more ancient language than Zend—and that, next to the Veda, there is, among the Aryan nations, no more primitive religious code than the Zend-Avesta, it is surprising that so little should have been done by the members of the Indian Civil Service in this important branch of study. It is well known that such was the enthusiasm kindled in the heart of Anquetil Duperron by the sight of a facsimile of a page of the Zend-Avesta, that in order to secure a passage to India, he enlisted as a private soldier, and spent six years (1754-1761) in different parts of Western India, trying to collect MSS. of the sacred writings of Zoroaster, and to acquire from the Dustoors a knowledge of their contents. His example was followed, though in a less adventurous spirit, by Rask, a learned Dane, who after collecting at Bombay many valuable MSS. for the Danish Government, wrote in 1826 his essay 'On the Age and Genuineness of the Zend Language.' Another Dane, at present one of the most learned Zend scholars in Europe, Westergaard, likewise proceeded to India (1841-1843), before he undertook to publish his edition of the religious books of the Zoroastrians. (Copenhagen, 1852.) During all this time, while French and German scholars, such as Burnouf, Bopp, and Spiegel, were hard at work in deciphering the curious remains of the Magian religion, hardly anything was contributed by English students living in the very heart of Parsiism at Bombay and Poona.

We are all the more pleased, therefore, that a young German scholar, Dr. Haug—who through the judicious recommendation of Mr. Howard, Director of Public Instruction in the Bombay Presidency, was appointed to a Professorship of Sanskrit in the Poona College—should have grasped the opportunity, and devoted himself to a thorough study of the sacred literature of the Parsis. He went to India well prepared for his task, and he has not disappointed the hopes which those who knew him entertained of him on his departure from Germany. Unless he had been master of his subject before he went to Poona, the assistance of the Dustoors would have been of little avail to him. But knowing all that could be known in Europe of the Zend language and literature, he knew what questions to ask, he could check every answer, and he could learn with his eyes what it is almost impossible to learn from books—namely, the religious ceremonial and the ritual observances which form so considerable an element in the Vendidad and Vispered. The result of his studies is now before us in a volume of 'Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of the Parsees,' published at Bombay, 1862. It is a volume of only three hundred and sixty-eight pages, and sells in England for one guinea. Nevertheless, to the student of Zend it is one of the cheapest books ever published. It contains four Essays: 1. History of the Researches into the Sacred Writings and Religion of the Parsees from the earliest times down to the present; 2. Outline of a Grammar of the Zend Language; 3. The Zend-Avesta, or the Scripture of the Parsees; 4. Origin and Development of the Zoroastrian Religion. The most important portion is the Outline of the Zend Grammar; for, though a mere outline, it is the first systematic grammatical analysis of that curious language. In other languages, we generally begin by learning the grammar, and then make our way gradually through the literature. In Zend, the grammatical terminations had first to be discovered by a careful anatomy of the literature. The Parsis themselves possessed no such work. Even their most learned priests are satisfied with learning the Zend-Avesta by heart, and with acquiring some idea of its import by means of a Pehlevi translation, which dates from the Sassanian period, or of a Sanskrit translation of still later date. Hence the translation of the Zend-Avesta published by Anquetil Duperron, with the assistance of Dustoor Dârâb, was by no means trustworthy. It was, in fact, a French translation of a Persian rendering of a Pehlevi version of the Zend original. It was Burnouf who, aided by his knowledge of Sanskrit, and his familiarity with the principles of comparative grammar, approached, for the first time, the very words of the Zend original. He had to conquer every inch of ground for himself, and his 'Commentaire sur le Yasna' is, in fact, like the deciphering of one long inscription, only surpassed in difficulty by his later decipherments of the cuneiform inscriptions of the Achæmenian monarchs of Persia. Aided by the labours of Burnouf and others, Dr. Haug has at last succeeded in putting together the disjecta membra poetæ, and we have now in his Outline, not indeed a grammar like that of Pânini for Sanskrit, yet a sufficient skeleton of what was once a living language, not inferior, in richness and delicacy, even to the idiom of the Vedas.

There are, at present, five editions, more or less complete, of the Zend-Avesta. The first was lithographed under Burnouf's direction, and published at Paris 1829-1843. The second edition of the text, transcribed into Roman characters, appeared at Leipzig 1850, published by Professor Brockhaus. The third edition, in Zend characters, was given to the world by Professor Spiegel, 1851; and about the same time a fourth edition was undertaken by Professor Westergaard, at Copenhagen, 1852 to 1854. There are one or two editions of the Zend-Avesta, published in India, with Guzerati translations, which we have not seen, but which are frequently quoted by native scholars. A German translation of the Zend-Avesta was undertaken by Professor Spiegel, far superior in accuracy to that of Anquetil Duperron, yet in the main based on the Pehlevi version. Portions of the ancient text had been minutely analysed and translated by Dr. Haug, even before his departure for the East.

The Zend-Avesta is not a voluminous work. We still call it the Zend-Avesta, though we are told that its proper title is Avesta Zend, nor does it seem at all likely that the now familiar name will ever be surrendered for the more correct one. Who speaks of Cassius Dio, though we are told that Dio Cassius is wrong? Nor do we feel at all convinced that the name of Avesta Zend is the original and only correct name. According to the Parsis, Avesta means sacred text, Zend its Pehlevi translation. But in the Pehlevi translations themselves, the original work of Zoroaster is spoken of as Avesta Zend. Why it is so called by the Pehlevi translators, we are nowhere told by themselves, and many conjectures have, in consequence, been started by almost every Zend scholar. Dr. Haug supposes that the earliest portions of the Zend-Avesta ought to be called Avesta, the later portions Zend—Zend meaning, according to him, commentary, explanation, gloss. Neither the word Avesta nor Zend, however, occurs in the original Zend texts, and though Avesta seems to be the Sanskrit avasthâ, the Pehlevi apestak, in the sense of 'authorised text,' the etymology of Zend, as derived from a supposed zanti, Sanskrit gnâti, knowledge, is not free from serious objections. Avesta Zend was most likely a traditional name, hardly understood even at the time of the Pehlevi translators, who retained it in their writings. It was possibly misinterpreted by them, as many other Zend words have been at their hands, and may have been originally the Sanskrit word khandas,[46] which is applied by the Brahmans to the sacred hymns of the Veda. Certainty on such a point is impossible; but as it is but fair to give a preference to the conjectures of those who are most familiar with the subject, we quote the following explanation of Dr. Haug:

'The meaning of the term "Zend" varied at different periods. Originally it meant the interpretation of the sacred texts descended from Zarathustra and his disciples by the successors of the prophet. In the course of time, these interpretations being regarded as equally sacred with the original texts, both were then called Avesta. Both having become unintelligible to the majority of the Zoroastrians, in consequence of their language having died out, they required a Zend or explanation again. This new Zend was furnished by the most learned priests of the Sassanian period in the shape of a translation into the vernacular language of Persia (Pehlevi) in those days, which translation being the only source to the priests of the present time whence to derive any knowledge of the old texts, is therefore the only Zend or explanation they know of.... The name Pazend, to be met with frequently in connection with Avesta and Zend, denotes the further explanation of the Zend doctrine..... The Pazend language is the same as the so-called Parsi, i. e. the ancient Persian, as written till about the time of Firdusi, 1000 a.d.'

Whatever we may think of the nomenclature thus advocated by Dr. Haug, we must acknowledge in the fullest manner his great merit in separating for the first time the more ancient from the more modern parts of the Zend-Avesta. Though the existence of different dialects in the ancient texts was pointed out by Spiegel, and although the metrical portions of the Yasna had been clearly marked by Westergaard, it is nevertheless Haug's great achievement to have extracted these early relics, to have collected them, and to have attempted a complete translation of them, as far as such an attempt could be carried out at the present moment. His edition of the Gâthâs—for this is the name of the ancient metrical portions—marks an epoch in the history of Zend scholarship, and the importance of the recovery of these genuine relics of Zoroaster's religion has been well brought out by Bunsen in the least known of his books, 'Gott in der Geschichte.' We by no means think that the translations here offered by Dr. Haug are final. We hope, on the contrary, that he will go on with the work he has so well begun, and that he will not rest till he has removed every dark speck that still covers the image of Zoroaster's primitive faith. Many of the passages as translated by him are as clear as daylight, and carry conviction by their very clearness. Others, however, are obscure, hazy, meaningless. We feel that they must have been intended for something else, something more definite and forcible, though we cannot tell what to do with the words as they stand. Sense, after all, is the great test of translation. We must feel convinced that there was good sense in these ancient poems, otherwise mankind would not have taken the trouble to preserve them; and if we cannot discover good sense in them, it must be either our fault, or the words as we now read them were not the words uttered by the ancient prophets of the world. The following are a few specimens of Dr. Haug's translations, in which the reader will easily discover the different hues of certainty and uncertainty, of sense and mere verbiage:

1. That I will ask Thee, tell me it right, thou living God! whether your friend (Sraosha) be willing to recite his own hymn as prayer to my friend (Frashaostra or Vistâspa), thou Wise! and whether he should come to us with the good mind, to perform for us true actions of friendship.