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The Pahlavi inscriptions gave the key, as is well-known, to the Persian cuneiform inscriptions, which were in return to put beyond all doubt the genuineness of the Zend language.
Their parting was as tender as their meeting. The moment of meeting and that of parting are the two greatest epochs of life, as sayeth the great book of Zend. Zadig loved the queen with as much ardor as he professed; and the queen more than she thought proper to acknowledge. Meanwhile Zadig spoke thus to Ogul: "My lord, my basilisk is not to be eaten; all its virtues must enter through thy pores.
In the strange characters of the Zend, in the Sanscrit, in the effortless creed of Confucius, in the Aztec coloured-string writings and rayed stones, in the uncertain marks left of the sunken Polynesian continent, hieroglyphs as useless as those of Memphis, nothing. Nothing! They have been tried, and were found an illusion.
One ought not to rely on translations: Confucius should be read in Chinese, the Koran in Arabic, and the few years spent in the acquisition of Persian would be rewarded by a first-hand familiarity with the Zend Avesta. The Old Testament enjoins capital punishment. On what grounds, then, if one is leaning the other way, may a text be set aside that seems to settle the matter positively?
As soon as the French version of the "Avesta" appeared, he published a German translation of it, and also of Anquetil's historical dissertations. Then, in a series of dissertations of his own, he vindicated the authenticity of the Zend books.
As John Fry whispered, so I did, for he was off Smiler by this time; but our two pads were too fagged to go far, and began to nose about and crop, sniffing more than they need have done. I crept to John's side very softly, with the bridle on my arm. 'Let goo braidle; let goo, lad. Plaise God they take them for forest-ponies, or they'll zend a bullet through us.
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.
It may be said here that all the other sacred literature of the world, the Bibles of other systems of religion, the Zend Avesta, the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Koran, and others, had their origin in exactly the same source and manner as did our Bible; and attained sanctity and authority among their respective followers in exactly the same way. But we need not go into it in detail.
There remains, finally, a class of Median names, containing roots not found in any known names of Persians, but easily explicable from Zend, Sanscrit, or other cognate tongues, and therefore not antagonistic to the view that Median and Persian were two closely connected dialects.
His conclusions were that in a far remote antiquity Sanscrit was spoken in Persia and Media, that it gave birth to the Zend language, and that the "Zend-Avesta" is authentic: "Were it but a recent compilation," he writes, "as Jones asserts, how is it that the oldest rites of the Parsis, that the old inscriptions of the Persians, the accounts of the Zoroastrian religion by the classical writers, the liturgic prayers of the Parsis, and, lastly, even their books do not reveal the pure Sanscrit, as written in the land wherein the Parsis live, but a mixed language, which is as different from the other dialects of India as French is from Italian?"
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