It is also stated that this book was in a form of writing invented by Zoroaster, and which the Maga, or priests of this cult called the “writing of religion.”
It was written on twelve thousand cow-hides, in ink of gold and the work was bound together by golden bands.
Various Greek writers, who followed the wake of Alexander’s conquests in Persia, claim to have seen the original, which was preserved in the archives of Persepolis.
Traditional accounts state that there were two copies of this work, one of which was destroyed in the palace of Persepolis, which was burned by order of Alexander, and the other was destroyed by the Greeks in some other way.
There were also copies of the various nosks or parts in the hands of the priesthood, which thus escaped destruction.
After the death of Alexander, the Zoroastrian priests gathered the remaining fragments, putting these into book form.
Five hundred years later, at the close of the Parthian dynasty in Persia, another collection of the Avesta fragments, both oral and written, was instituted, at the command and under the patronage of King Vologases, the last of the Arascids, about A. D. 225.
The work of editing and revising these collections was continued under the early Sassanian kings, with whom the ancient nationality again became ascendant, and with this, the ancient Persian religion and its literature.
The new Avesta thus produced was proclaimed canonical.
Under the later Sassanian kings, the Avesta was transcribed in the later Pehlevi or Parsee script, in which form it has survived to the present day. Of this, however, but a portion remains. The Sassanian dynasty ended with the conquest of Persia by the Mohammedan Arabs in 641 A. D.