VENDÎDÂD.

on Plutarch, that the data of the Avesta fully agree with the account of the Magian religion given in the treatise on 'Isis and Osiris.' Kleuker enlarged the circle of comparison to the whole of ancient literature. He also tried to appeal to internal evidence, an attempt in which he was less successful. The strength of his defense was seldom greater than the strength of the attack. Meiners had pointed out the mythical identity of the Mount Alborg of the Parsis with the Mount Meru of the Hindus as a proof that the Parsis had borrowed their mythology from the Hindus; the conclusion was incorrect, but the remark itself was not so. Kleuker fancied he could remove the difficulty by stating that Mount Alborg is a real mountain—nay, a doubly real mountain, since there are two mountains of that name, the one in Persia, the other in Armenia—whereas Mount Meru is only to be found in Fairyland. Seldom were worse arguments used in the service of a good cause. Meiners had said that the name of the Parsi demons was of Indian origin, as both languages knew them by the Latin name 'Deus.' This was an incorrect statement, and yet an important observation. The word which means 'a demon' in Persia means quite the contrary in India, and that radical difference is just a proof of the two systems being independent of one another. Kleuker pointed out the incorrectness of the statement; but, being unable to account for the identity of the words, he flatly denied it.

Kleuker was more successful in the field of philology: he showed, as Anquetil had done, that Zend has no Arabic elements in it, and that Pahlavi itself, which is more modern than Zend, does not contain any Arabic, but only Semitic words of the Aramaic dialect, which are easily accounted for by the close relations of Persia with Aramaic lands in the time of the Sassanian kings. He showed, lastly, that Arabic words appear only in the very books which Parsi tradition itself considers modern.

Another stanch upholder of the Avesta was the numismatologist Tychsen, who, having begun to read the book with a prejudice against its authenticity, quitted it with a conviction to the contrary. "There is nothing in it," he...