INTRODUCTION, II.

...to the other, and was so enabled both to discover facts and to explain them.

At the same time, the ancient Persian inscriptions at Persepolis and Behistun were deciphered by Burnouf in Paris, by Lassen in Bonn, and by Sir Henry Rawlinson in Persia. Thus was revealed the existence, at the time of the first Achæmenian kings, of a language closely connected with that of the Avesta, and the last doubts as to the authenticity of the Zend books were at length removed. It would have required more than an ordinary amount of scepticism to look still upon the Zend as an artificial language, of foreign importation, without root in the land where it was written, and in the conscience of the people for whom it was written, at the moment when a twin language, bearing a striking likeness to it in nearly every feature, was suddenly making itself heard from the mouth of Darius, and speaking from the very tomb of the first Achæmenian king. That unexpected voice silenced all controversies, and the last echoes of the loud discussion which had been opened in 1771 died away unheeded¹.

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...

¹ The attacks of John Romer (‘Zend: Is it an Original Language?’ London, 1855) called 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).