INTRODUCTION, I.

The essay published in 1831 by Peter von Bohlen on the origin of the Zend language set the field back forty years. According to him, Zend is a Prakrit dialect, just as it had been claimed by Jones, Leyden, and Erskine. His mistake consisted in taking Anquetil’s transcriptions of the words, which are often so incorrect as to make them look like corrupted forms when compared with Sanskrit. And, what was worse, he took the proper names in their modern Parsi forms, which often led him to comparisons that would have appalled Ménage A French scholar known for his etymological dictionary. Thus Ahriman became a Sanskrit word ariman, which would have meant ‘the fiend.’ Yet, Bohlen might have seen in Anquetil’s own work that Ahriman is nothing but the modern form of Angra Mainyu, words which hardly remind one of the Sanskrit ariman. Again, the angel Vohu-manô, or ‘good thought,’ was reduced, by means of the Parsi form Bahman, to the Sanskrit bâhuman, ‘a long-armed god.’

At last came Burnouf. From the time when Anquetil had published his translation—that is to say, during seventy years—no real progress had been made in the knowledge of the Avesta texts. The notion that Zend and Sanskrit are two kindred languages was the only new idea that had been acquired, but no practical advantage for the interpretation of the texts had resulted from it. Anquetil’s translation was still the only guide, and as the doubts about the authenticity of the texts grew fainter, the authority of the translation became greater, the trust reposed in the Avesta being reflected onto the work of its interpreter. The Parsis had been the teachers of Anquetil; and who could ever understand the holy writ of the Parsis better than the Parsis themselves? There was no one who even tried to read the texts by the light of Anquetil’s translation to obtain a direct understanding of them.

About 1825, Eugène Burnouf was engaged in a course of researches on the geographical extent of the Aryan languages in India. After he had defined the limits that divide the races speaking Aryan languages from the native non-Brahmanical tribes in the south, he wanted to know if a similar boundary had ever existed in the north-west; and...