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Updated: May 27, 2025
These books are known under the name of the Zend-Avesta, a word which comprises the name of the language, Zend, and the title of the book, Avesta. As the knowledge of Sanskrit increased, however, that branch of science required to be studied afresh by the light of the new method.
The sacred books of Persia are known by the name of "Zend-Avesta," which is an incorrect expression; we ought to say Avesta and Zend. "Avesta," like the kindred word "Veda," signifies knowledge, and the word "Zend" denotes here not the language of that name, but the "commentary" afterwards added to the original knowledge or text.
Among the various nations and peoples of the world no enmity or hatred should remain. All hearts were to be connected one with another. These things are recorded in the Torah, or Old Testament, in the Gospel, the Qur’án, the Zend-Avesta, the books of Buddha and the book of Confucius. They announce that after the world is surrounded by darkness, radiance shall appear.
The Visperad is a collection of litanies for the sacrifice; and the Vendidad is a code of early law, but contains also various religious legends. The Contents of the Zend-Avesta are Composite. In these works the student soon observes that he has before him not one religious system only but several.
Yet we must not forget, to use the words of Lord Bacon, that "judging that means were to be spent upon learning, and not learning to be applied to means," DE PERRON refused the offer of thirty thousand livres for his copy of the "Zend-avesta." Writing to some Bramins, he describes his life at Paris to be much like their own.
On the whole there is a marvellous accordance between the 'Zend-Avesta' and the accounts of the ancients with regard to the doctrine and institutions of Zoroaster. Plutarch agrees so well with the Zend books that I think no one will deny the close resemblance of doctrines and identity of origin.
The belief of the Parsees, as expressed in their Zend-Avesta, had included a place of darkness for the evil soul and a reward for the good in the realm of light. The Hindus had declared, in their Rig-Veda, their beautiful conception of the immortality of the soul, and had written of a future "imperishable world, where there is eternal light and glory."
This is the basis of all the activities of the world and, according to Zoroaster, is to result in a triumph of the good. Zoroaster taught that the life of man has two parts, that on earth and that beyond the grave. After his earthly life each one should be punished or rewarded according to his deeds. The "Zend-Avesta" cannot be dated earlier than the first century before our era.
The article on the Zend-Avesta is taken from the Annual Register for 1762. The long series of articles on the history of philosophy is in effect a reproduction of what he found in Bayle, in Deslandes, and in Brucker. There are one or two considerable exceptions. Perhaps the most important is under the heading of Spinosa, to which we shall return presently.
He had been wounded to the quick by the scornful tone adopted by Anquetil towards Hyde and a few other English scholars: the "Zend-Avesta" suffered for the fault of its introducer, Zoroaster for Anquetil.
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