TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 91 
languages and those of other families, and also to question, on various points, the 
principles on which the present arrangement of the members composing the Indo- 
European class itself reposes. In particular, the position usually assigned to the 
Medo-Persic element has been assailed; and not merely has the registry of its 
functions and claims been thought to demand revision, but a disposition has been 
evinced to jostle it altogether out of its existing connexion, Although it was not 
to have been expected that such theories as those formerly advocated by Othmar 
Frank on one side, and Col. Vans Kennedy on another, would be reproduced after 
the natural history of languages had been traced by Schlegel, Humboldt, and their 
coadjutors, yet that the present attitude of Medo-Persic philology is a retrograde 
one, might be inferred from such surmises as those which, having been propounded 
by an authority like Dr. Latham, drew upon him unmeasured censure in a recent 
number of the Edinburgh Review. If it be not certain, after all, that the Iranian 
speech is cognate with the Sanskrita,—if it be still possible that the organisation of 
any of its dialects may pass for Seriform,—then it is certainly high time that the 
notions generally current in reference to it should be reviewed, and, if requisite, 
corrected. A resumé of the progress already made may be useful as a preliminary 
to prospective steps in this direction. 
The Languages spoken by the subjects of the Achemenian Kings—preserved 
through past ages on rocks, bricks, and slabs of stone, in the Cuneiform Inscrip- 
tions—are now partially resuscitated. One of these—generally known as “the 
third ’’—is admitted by all decipherers, with the (probably) solitary exception of 
Grotefend, to come under the Semitic category, like those of the Inscriptions of 
Assyria and Babylonia. The “second ”’ type has not yet been so definitely classified : 
the designation at first given to it, ‘ Pahlavi,’’ has been given up, and that of 
“‘ Median ”’ has been substituted provisionally ; -but, while some consider it Aramaic, 
others are at a loss whether to treat it as Arian, or as Turanian,—and in either case 
disguised by foreign accessions,—or as a hybrid offspring, and one of uncertain pa- 
rentage. Only the “first ’’ of these monumental languages is admitted by all to be 
Arian, and by nearly all to represent the ‘‘ Old Persic.”” Not only its orthography, 
but its lexical and grammatical constitution, has been already to a great extent 
elucidated ; and,—what it is here of importance to observe,—it has been shown to 
resemble very closely the Old Sanskrita,—that of the Vedas. 
Distinct from the Languages just noticed, and likewise from each other, are those 
preserved in the Sacred Books of the Parsis—whether those of the Sipasi heretics, or 
those of the orthodox Zoroastrians or Mazdayagnis. It is true, that not only the 
antiquity and genuineness of those books has been questioned by European criticism, 
but that the very languages, both of that oracle of the Sipasis—the Dasaitr, and of 
those Zoroastrian books which are represented as the oldest and as the prototypes of 
the rest, have been regarded as fictitious products,—travesties of real but recent 
tongues, or else as mere gibberish. Whether, however, that in which the so-called 
version of the Dasatir is composed represents the vernacular of Persia about the 
time of the Moslem conquest, or is some centuries later,—and whether that of the 
so-called original, the Asmant Zaban, be such a fabrication as the Balai-Balna 
of the Sufis or the Formosan of Psalmanazar, or after all be, as suggested by 
Von Hammer and Troyer, the relic of some old local dialect,—are points which, on 
the one hand, cannot be regarded as finally decided, and, on the other hand, do not 
furnish available data in the present inquiry. But it has come to be generally 
acknowledged, in respect to the Mazdayagnian Books, that they in reality belong to 
three distinct epochs :—the originals being fragments of the revelations attributed 
to the undated Seer, Zarathustra ;—the proximate versions or imitations of these, 
with some commentaries on them, being of the Sasanian age ;—and the versions of 
those versions, with other pieces founded upon and referring to them, coming down 
as far as—and in some instances even below—the era of Yazdajird. And the history 
of the three Languages, in which these three classes of Books are composed, requires 
now to be traced with the utmost attainable accuracy. 
I, The First of them has been variously designated the Language of the “ Ména- 
thar” (=* Invocations’’), or “‘ of the Avesta”? (= Text, Discourse,” or perhaps 
primarily “‘ Appointment, Decree ’’), or “‘of the Zend” ( =“ Book,” or perhaps 
** Gnosis, Science ’’), from the documents in which it has been preserved. The third 
