United States or Åland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Scythians originally settled there, who seem to have been of Mongolian race and akin in their habits and physical appearance to the present inhabitants of Siberia, had been followed up by Sarmatian tribes advancing from east to west, Sauromatae, Roxolani, Jazyges, who are commonly reckoned of Slavonian descent, although the proper names, which we are entitled to ascribe to them, show more affinity with Median and Persian names and those peoples perhaps belonged rather to the great Zend stock.
It approved of and stole from Freemasonry; looted the Latter-day Rosicrucians of half their pet words; took any fragments of Egyptian philosophy that it found in the Encyclopaedia Britannica; annexed as many of the Vedas as had been translated into French or English, and talked of all the rest; built in the German versions of what is left of the Zend Avesta; encouraged White, Grey and Black Magic, including spiritualism, palmistry, fortune-telling by cards, hot chestnuts, double-kerneled nuts and tallow droppings; would have adopted Voodoo and Oboe had it known anything about them, and showed itself, in every way, one of the most accommodating arrangements that had ever been invented since the birth of the Sea.
As to the system of its sounds, Zend approaches Persian rather than Sanscrit; and as to its grammatical forms, if they often remind one of Sanscrit, they also often remind one of Greek and Latin, and frequently have a special character of their own.
It reached its perfection under the dynasty of the Sassanides, 229-636 A.D. It has great analogy with the Zend, Pehlvi, and Sanskrit, and is endowed with peculiar grace and sweetness. Fourth. The period of the modern Persian. After the conquest of Persia, and the introduction of the Mohammedan faith in the seventh century A.D., the ancient Parsee language became greatly modified by the Arabic.
The notion that Zend and Sanscrit are two kindred languages was the only new idea that had been acquired, but no practical advantage for the interpretation of the texts had resulted from it.
This is the Bible of the Zarathustrians and of their modern representatives, the Parsees, who flourish for the most part in Bombay. The title "Zend Avesta" is an anomaly, for "Zend" is not the name of a language at all, but means "commentary," the word "Avesta" connoting the original text on which the commentary is written.
But it is in the Maccabaean Daniel and in the apocryphal Tobit that this doctrine of angels, in its more precise form, first appears; and it is evidently a product of the influence of the Zend religion of the Persians on the Jewish mind. Dr. Leviticus, part ii., pp. 284-287.
In other words, they adored the great moving force throughout Nature, a force which they venerated as the Great Mother. Before the Zend and Sanskrit branches of the Aryan race had separated, their religion was doubtless that given them by their Cushite civilizers.
They came from France, from Greece, from the famous University of Bologna; the Sultan of Egypt had sent a sage learned in all the lore of that ancient civilization; and a wise Arab had brought to this consultation the secrets of every herb that grew; while a holy man from Persia, steeped in the wisdom of the Zend Avestar and in the doctrines of Zarathrustra, stood ready to use his mystic comfort in behalf of the sufferer.
Thus we may connect all the few words which are known as Median with forms contained in the Zend, which was either the mother or the elder sister of the ancient Persian. That the Medes were acquainted with the art of writing, and practised it at least from the time that they succeeded to the dominion of the Assyrians scarcely admits of a doubt.
Word Of The Day