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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
I Have announced as my subject in these introductory lectures the general relation of the Avesta to other systems of theology and philosophy. And I have especially mentioned its interest for Biblical criticism, because a relation, or a supposed relation, between the Avesta and Exilic and post-Exilic books of the Old Testament has been notorious for half a century.
page 271 note 1 This article was read as curtailed on October 20th last, at the Indian Institute in Oxford, as an inaugural to the Professorship of Zend Philology in the University. This lecture was also delivered as curtailed on December 13, 1898, at a meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society.
page 272 note 1 And I would remind the reader that this present writing is merely a popular delineation.
page 272 note 2 It being universally difficult to fix more closely the dates of such documents; compare the differences in opinion as to the age of Homer, of the Ṛig Veda, etc.
page 273 note 1 Putting the death of Heraclitus at 470–478 B.C.
page 275 note 1 It could not be defined and so ‘perceived.’
page 275 note 2 Cf. Y., xxx, 3.
page 275 note 3 A repudiation par eminence.
page 276 note 1 See the Critical Review, Jan., 1896.
page 279 note 1 Yasht, xiii, 83.
page 280 note 1 The motive of the Platonic emanation was the impurity of matter which God could not touch without an intermediary, an idea radically opposed to Zoroastrianism.
page 281 note 1 “Let each one the other devotedly cherish; so the home shall he happy.”
page 283 note 1 “When saw I thee a stranger,” etc., the soul asks; and the answer is, “ Inasmuch as ye did it,” etc.—Matt., xxv, 38, 40.
page 283 note 2 Fargard, xix.
page 283 note 3 “Yea, may be like those who bring on this world's perfection,
As the Ahuras of the Lord bearing gifts with Asha's grace,
For there are our thoughts abiding where wisdom dwells in her home.”
page 284 note page 1 Yasht, xix, 89, and elsewhere.
page 284 note 2 Centuries earlier. That they were closely connected by ties of kindred with these early emigrants is absolutely certain.
page 285 note 1 See SBE., xxx, Introd., p. xxvi.
page 287 note 1 Yasna, xliv, 3 et seq.
page 287 note 2 Some of the most precious parts of the Gāthas are written in trishţup, and others in trishṭup with the simple addition of a line.
page 287 note 3 Since Spiegel's pioneer attempt no second edition of the Pahlavi translation of the Yasna has appeared outside of the Gāthas. Spiegel did the great foundation work here as from the beginning, but most valuable as his contribution was, having been based upon a single manuscript, it was as of course just in so far limited as a means of permanent assistance, and it is now well-nigh half a century old. So also his very valuable text and partial rendering of Neryōsang; it is now, of course, to some degree antiquated, while the exceedingly precious Parsi-Persian rendering, often trie key to the Pahlavi, has not been at all reproduced, except in the Five Zarathushtrian Gāthas. Nor does any full and modern explanation of the Pahlavi of the Vendīdād exist, while partial translations are often silent when we wish them most to speak; and so of the Parsi-Persian version of the Vendīdād. Justi's masterly dictionary, of which Roth could write as the “musterhaft eingerichtetes zweckmässiges Handbuch,” is, of course, now to some degree too old; it was published in 1863, and needs to be supplemented by the labours of scholars who understand all parts of their business. This is only a part of what needs to be done on the texts of the Avesta itself, not to speak of the Pahlavi literature.
page 288 note 1 Who can name more than a very few units ?
page 288 note 2 Writing to others to decipher their texts for them, and, as too often in similar cases, with difficulty forgiving their benefactors for doing them the favour.
page 288 note 3 Let it be kindly remembered on what occasion this paper was first read.
page 289 note 1 See the “ Five Zarathushtrian Gāthas,” Introduction, p. xiv et seq. I am far from underrating the very useful suggestions which have been made by the pupils of Roth (for I am of their number). On the contrary, that very great interpreter did an inestimable service (strange to say) in attempting to read the Gathas (at first only) with a practical disregard of the Asiatic commentaries, even being, as he told me more than once, without “ any experience “ of their chief language (later, however, even writing upon it, in Z.D.M.G.; Zend was with him, let it be remembered, only a secondary study). It was an indispensable service for some scholar of supreme authority to read the Gāthas as pure Sanskrit (so to speak), giving us all the courage to say that the Pahlavi commentaries are by no means slavishly to be followed, and great is my own personal indebtedness to him. I understood from him that Haug was his pupil also on the Zend; and at the date of Haug's great work on the Gāthas he, too, evidently had no knowledge of the Pahlavi language, affording, nevertheless, the most valuable preliminary results; but such provisional and tentative expositions should be followed by others attempted only with a mind prepared by exhausting the materials. (I need hardly remind many of my readers that Haug became later a high authority on Pahlavi, giving us discoveries and hints of inestimable value. Both also, as I have said, later conceded its importance.)
page 290 note 1 “ In the hope of a favourable answer.” The remaining parts of this note are in answer to erroneous statements which are carelessly contradictory to my own printed remarks (see below); these errors have also been given a wide circulation in a publication of an importance of its kind second to none. I gladly take this opportunity to correct them.
In the preface to the thirty-first volume of the “ Sacred Books of the East,” p. 5, I had said: “ My work on the Gathas had been for some time in his [Professor Darmesteter's] hands, and he requested me as a friend to write the still needed volume of the translation … Although deeply appreciating the undesirableness of following one whose scholarship is only surpassed by his genius, I found myself unable to refuse.” Yet there appeared so long afterward as 1895 actually in the Annuaire of the University of Paris the extraordinary remark— “Avec cet oubli de soi (!) qui charactérise le vrai mérite.… il ceda à M. Mills l'honneur d'achever la publication,” and distinctively gave the impression in some other words that I suggested (!) the arrangement. The exclamation points are my own. This very singular version of the facts lingers in Paris to contradict me till this day.
The renderings afterwards puhlished in my Gāthas (let me repeat once for all) were in Professor Darmesteter's possession in an unfinished condition, though provisionally printed, and he wrote pointedly asking me to repeat them in the book which he was urging me to write as his continuator: “ Vous n'avez qu'à détacher de vôtre travail [the Gāthas] la traduction rhythmique avec quelques notes explicatives et le mot-à-mot [Latin] quand vous en écartez trop. Cela vous prendrait infiniment peu de temps, puisque de travail est déjà fait …dans l'espoir d'une réponse favorable.” (Nov. 5, 1883, some sixteen years ago.) I was also so fortunate as to be of service to other distinguished persons; and a somewhat similar occurrence forces me to allude to it to explain to students of Zend who may be using certain books and may wonder why they do not see my name in them. This time it was gentlemen on the other side of the Rhine whom I was able to help. But, unlike my great colleague, these beneficiaries, to whom I had extended assistance immeasurably greater than acts of decipherment, resorted to the strange policy of total silence, combining together to omit all mention of my name in some books bearing on this subject (a course which is considered among scholars one of the most aggravated forms of indignity which it is possible to devise). Darmesteter could speak in noble terms of thankfulness “with Pischel and Justi, and that not in private communications but in leading publications: see the Gött. gelehr. Anz. of May 13, 1893; Revue Critique of Sept. 18, 1893; Z.D.M.G., July, 1896; etc., etc.
But what will an honourable public say of professed old friends, who had received the closest form of personal teaching by long previously advanced copies of an unpublished pioneer work, put often at their own request gratuitously into their hands, and then combining to boycott the scholar who had taught them their rudiments. And this is the explanation of a fact noticed as curious by a very distinguished friend of all Zendists in the London Daily Telegraph of August 10, 1894.
Fortunately the circumstance has been as harmless as it was contemptible. My sole offence, I need hardly say, consisted in the original treatment of things hitherto unattempted, and the very strong expressions of recognition which followed them. Though I was warned by Darmesteter of the fate of all pioneers, and though the actual result has been favourable beyond measure, yet one cannot forget the sting of a degraded ingratitude.
page 292 note 1 Mills’ “Werk, das ergebniss langjähriger Mühe tmd entsagungsvoller Arbeit, vereinigt bis auf ein Wörterbuch das in Aussicht gestellt wird, alles was für die Erklärung der Gâthas nothwendig ist … Immer wird es die Grunlage bilden auf der sich Vede weitere Forschung aufbauen muss. Mills hat mit ihm der Avesta forschung eiuen hervorragenden Dienst geleistet.”—ProfessorPischel, , Zeitsehrift der Deutschen Morgenlcindischen Gesellschaft (Heft ii, 1896)Google Scholar.
page 292 note 1 See Roth's, “Festgrüss,” p. 192Google Scholar.
page 293 note 1 Surely to many of us it is (for instance) of inferior importance whether a sentence means ‘finding the way to God’ or ‘finding His throne’; the ‘way’ must lead to the ‘throne,’ and ‘the throne’ is found by ‘the way’; and yet this uncertainty occurs in a passage of the utmost difficulty, where a positive decision is almost impossible.
page 293 note 2 It was in this year that he published his “Historia Religionis Veterum Persarum.” He was one of the most distinguished Orientalists of his time (born 1636, came to Oxford 1658, made Header of Hebrew 1659, Keeper of the Bodleian in the same year, in 1665 wag appointed Librarian-in-chief, 1673 Archdeacon of Gloucester, 1691 Laudian Professor of Arabic, 1697 Regius Professor of Hebrew, Eastern interpreter at the Court under Charles II, James II, and ‘William III, died in Oxford 1703).