CHAPTER II.
The Interpretation of the Zend-Avesta.
The peace did not last long, and a year after the death of Burnouf a new controversy broke out, which still continues, the battle of the methods, that is, the dispute between those who, to interpret the Avesta, rely chiefly or exclusively on tradition, and those who rely only on comparison with the Vedas. The cause of the rupture was the rapid progress made in the knowledge of the Vedic language and literature: the deeper one penetrated into that oldest form of Indian words and thoughts, the more striking appeared its close affinity with the Avesta words and thoughts. Many a mysterious line in the Avesta received an unlooked-for light from the poems of the Indian Rishis, and the long-forgotten past and the origin of many gods and heroes, whom the Parsi worships and extols without knowing who they were and whence they came, were suddenly revealed by the Vedas. Emboldened by its bright discoveries, the comparative method took pity on its slower and less brilliant rival, which was then making its first attempts to unravel the Pahlavi traditional books. Is it worth while, said the Vedic scholars[1],to try slowly and painfully to extract the secret of the old book from that uncouth literature? Nay, is there any hope that its secret is there ? Translating the Avesta in accordance with the Pahlavi is not translating the Avesta, but only translating the Pahlavi version, which, wherever it has been deciphered, is found to wander strangely from the true meaning of the original text. Tradition, as a rule, is wont to enforce the ideas of its own ages into the books of past ages. From the time when the Avesta was written to the time when it was translated, many ideas had undergone great changes: such ideas, tradition must needs either
- ↑ Roth, Benfey, Hang. Cf. Revue Critique, 1877, II, 81.
1855) caused forth a refutation only in Bombay (Dhanjibai Framji, 'On the Origin and the Authenticity of the Aryan Family of Languages, the Zend-Avesta and the Huzvarash,' 1861).
