The Zend-Avesta, Part 1: The Vendidad (Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 4)

In the year 1700, a professor at Oxford, Thomas Hyde, the greatest Orientalist of his time in Europe, made the first systematic attempt to restore the history of the old Persian religion by combining the accounts of the Mohammedan writers with 'the true and genuine monuments of ancient Persia¹.' Unfortunately, the so-called genuine monuments of ancient Persia were nothing more than recent compilations referring to the last stage of Parsiism. But notwithstanding this defect, which could hardly be avoided then, and notwithstanding its even worse fault—a strange lack of critical acumen²—the book of Thomas Hyde was the first complete and true picture of modern Parsiism, and it made inquiry into its history the order of the day. A warm appeal made by him to the zeal of travelers, to seek for and procure at any price the sacred books of the Parsis, did not remain ineffectual, and from that time scholars began to think of studying Parsiism in its own home.

Eighteen years later, a countryman of Hyde, George Boucher, received from the Parsis in Surat a copy of the Vendîdâd Sâdah, which was brought to England in 1723 by Richard Cobbe. But the old manuscript was a sealed book, and the most that could then be made of it was to hang it by an iron chain to the wall of the Bodleian Library, as a curiosity to be shown to foreigners. A few years later, a Scotsman named Fraser went to Surat with the view of obtaining from the Parsis not only their books, but also a knowledge of their contents. He was not very successful in the first undertaking and utterly failed in the second.

In 1754, a young man of twenty, Anquetil Duperron, a scholar of the École des Langues Orientales in Paris, happened to see a facsimile of four leaves of the [original text continues].

¹ 'Veterum Persarum et Parthorum et Medorum religionis historia,' Oxford, 1700.
² Thus he recognized in Abraham the first lawgiver of ancient Persia, in Magism a Sabean corruption of the primeval faith, and in Zoroaster a reformer who had learned the forgotten truth from the exiled Jews in Babylon.