Art. XVII.—Additional Notes upon the Zend Language

Extract

It is alleged that the invention of a language of so much character and grammatical peculiarity as the Zend is an impossibility, as may be proved by reference to the fictitious Formosan language, and that of the Ásmání Zabán of the Desátír. But the analogy does not hold. These pseudo tongues are the products of pure imagination; both unscrupulous inventions; the execution of the last, clumsy and open to instant detection. But the artificial construction of Zend out of Sanskrit materials (allowing for the deception of the act) proceeded on, and was effected in, a very different manner. A real language, with which the operators were well acquainted (see what Burnouf says of the mobed Neriosingh), was to be taken in hand; the work was facilitated by using an alphabet—that of old Persian—corresponding, in its employment of distinct characters for the short vowels, with that of Sanskrit; the business was skilfully performed, and the knowledge of Sanskrit is so successfully applied, as to complete the fabrication of a language in which Sir William Jones, to his surprise, found six words of pure Sanskrit out of ten of the Zend text, with some of its inflexions formed by the rules of the “Vyákaran.” Dr. Wilson observes that Zend shows an approach to Gujarátí idiom and Gujarátí corruption of Sanskrit, which awakened his suspicion. Nevertheless he thinks that none of the exiled and depressed Pársí priests in India could be supposed to have had the ability to invent that language, abounding as it does in analogies with other tongues, but overlooking the fact of Sanskrit being well known among them and used for translations (though the Sanskrit of these translations cannot be called classical) more than three hundred years ago.