VENDÎDÂD.

Sauraseni¹. To Erskine, Zend was a Sanskrit dialect, imported from India by the founders of Mazdeism, but never spoken in Persia². His main argument was that Zend is not mentioned among the seven dialects that were current in ancient Persia according to the Farhang-i Jehangiri³, and that Pahlavi and Persian exhibit no close relationship with Zend.

In Germany, Meiners had found no followers. The theologians appealed to the Avesta in their polemics⁴, and Rhode sketched the religious history of Persia after the translations of Anquetil⁵.

Erskine’s essay provoked a decisive answer⁶ from Emmanuel Rask, one of the most gifted minds in the new school of philology, who had the honour of being a precursor of both Grimm and Burnouf. He showed that the list of the Jehangiri referred to an epoch later than that to which Zend must have belonged, and to parts of Persia different from those where it must have been spoken; he showed further that modern Persian is not derived from Zend, but from a dialect closely connected with it; and, lastly, he showed what was still more important, that Zend was not derived from Sanskrit. As to the system of its sounds, Zend approaches Persian rather than Sanskrit; and as to its grammatical forms, if they often remind one of Sanskrit, they also often remind one of Greek and Latin, and frequently have a special character of their own. Rask also gave the paradigm of three Zend nouns, belonging to different declensions, as well as the right pronunciation of the Zend letters, several of which had been incorrectly given by Anquetil. This was the first essay on Zend grammar, and it was a masterly one.

¹ Asiatic Researches, X.                                ² Ibid. X.
³ A large Persian dictionary compiled in India in the reign of Jehangir.
⁴ ‘Erläuterungen zum Neuen Testament aus einer neueröffneten Morgenländischen Quelle, Ἰδοὺ μάγοι ἀπὸ ἀνατολῶν’ (Explanations of the New Testament from a newly opened Oriental source, "Behold, magi from the east"), Riga, 1775.
⁵ ‘Die Heilige Sage . . . des Zend-Volks’ (The Holy Saga... of the Zend-People), Frankfurt, 1820.
⁶ ‘Ueber das Alter und die Echtheit der Zend-Sprache und des Zend Avesta’ (On the Age and Authenticity of the Zend Language and the Zend-Avesta), Berlin, 1826. Remarks on the Zend Language and the Zend-Avesta (Transactions of the Bombay branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, III, 524).