to the Ethnological Society of London. 63i 



fully treated of by the Hon. Mountstuart Elphinstone, whose 

 principal scope is the history of times subsequent to the in- 

 vasion of Mahmoud of Ghizni and the Patau conquest. Be- 

 fore I pass from the subject of Indian history, I am bound to 

 mention the publication of the Rigveda, under the direction 

 of Professor Wilson, assisted by Dr Miiller, to which Pro- 

 fessor Wilson has promised to add an English translation. 

 The Vedas are interesting, as displaying the most ancient 

 form of the Brahminical religion : they are also valuable on 

 account of the language in which they are written. This is 

 said to be a dialect much more ancient than the classical 

 Sanskrit, or the language of the Indian poems. A most cu- 

 rious cireumstance in connection with the Vedic language is 

 the relation in which it stands to the Zend, the idiom of the 

 original text of the Zendavesta. It was long ago remarked by 

 M. Eugene Burnouf, whose great work on the Ya^na shews 

 how profoundly he has studied the scriptures of the ancient 

 Magians, and the observation has been confirmed by Pro- 

 fessor Wilson, that the Zend has a much nearer relation to 

 the idiom of the Vedas than to the later and more polished 

 Sanskrit. The Zend language is the greatest problem of 

 eastern antiquity. If we suppose this language, as the fact 

 just stated seems to argue, to have been coeval with the 

 idiom of the Vedas, we must carry back the age of its preva- 

 lence as a living speech to the fourteenth century before the 

 Christian era, since that is the date fixed upon by general 

 consent as the period when the Vedas were composed, or 

 perliaps compiled. But the writing of the Zendavesta, and 

 even the invention of the characters in which it is written, is 

 confessedly much more recent. It is apparently of compara- 

 tively modern date. Many learned men are of opinion that 

 the greater part of the Zendavesta betrays otherwise indica- 

 tions of a late composition, and that neither the written cha- 

 racter, nor the text of the Zendavesta as it now stands, can 

 be more ancient than the elevation of the Sassanian dynasty. 

 Major Rawlinson has observed that the compilation of the 

 reputed works of Zoroaster, for which the Zend alphabet h 

 supposed to have been formed, must have taken place at a 

 period when the contents of the Cuneiform Inscriptions hao 



