92 REPORT—1852. 
of these names is the one most usually employed; though Spiegel and some other 
scholars have lately questioned its propriety, conceiving it to designate the more re- 
cent version, in an Aramaising idiom, which will be noticed under the next head. 
So long as this language could be studied only in the specimens exhibited by An- 
quetil Duperron, its character and rank were very imperfectly apprehended ; but 
now, that its genuine physiognomy has been portrayed by the happy ingenuity 
of Rask, its framework rebuilt and reanimated by the master-hand of Burnouf, and 
its relations elicited by the comprehensive analytics of Bopp, it has assumed its 
rightful stand-point as one of the primary members of the Indo-European family. 
As yet, however, opinions remain divided in reference to its original locality,—its 
growth, progress, and decline,—the age, authenticity, and mutual relations of its 
literary muniments.—The idea of Anquetil, Kleuker, and Herder, that the Zend- 
books were composed under Darius the son of Hystaspes and succeeding kings of 
the Achemenian house, has been advocated by Adelung, Rask, Malcolm, and Klap- 
roth: Wahl likewise concurred,—although he held that their language was merely 
a hieratic vehicle, gradually refined from the one in popular use by the sacerdotal 
caste : and the late Dr. Prichard adhered to the same chronology, without pronouncing 
decidedly for Wahl’s theory, but evidently well inclined to it. Foucher and Tychsen, 
however, believed the groundwork of the liturgy to date from the reign of the Mede 
Cyaxares I., above 600 years 8.c.; while they allowed that expositions of various 
parts, with additional prayers and tracts, composed under the Achemenids, must have 
been incorporated with antique fragments in the existing compilation so lately as 
under the Sasanian dynasty. Rhode and Heeren went still farther back, making 
the age of Zarathustra anterior to the Median empire; and this hypothesis has been 
stamped with the sanction of Burnouf, Lassen, and Pott.—For the locality of “ the 
Zend-folk,”’ the older inquirers had pitched upon the North-West provinces of Iran, 
between the Caspian and Black Seas, and supposed the vocabulary to have been 
that of Northern Media: philological affinities were therefore sought, by Anquetil, 
’ Kleuker, and Wahl, in the subsisting dialects of Armenia and Georgia; but—more 
discreetly—by Klaproth and Rask, in the speech of the Caucasian Iron or Osi, 
whose descent from the old Medes had been traced through the Alans of the middle 
ages. An antagonist theory points to the North-Eastern provinces, those bounded 
by the Caspian and the Himalayan range; and, styling the speech of the Avesta 
“« Sogdo-Bactrian,”’ makes it intermediate, as to local habitation not less than age, 
between the ‘‘ Medo-Persic ”’ of the Achemenian Inscriptions and the Sanskrita of the 
Vedas. And this latter theory,—first suggested by Foucher and Tychsen, afterwards 
maintained by Rhode and Heeren,—is now commended by Burnouf, Lassen, Pott, 
Spiegel, and Westergaard ; while Prichard, after a show of resistance, has virtually 
capitulated in its favour.—The definite conclusions of Westergaard on other points 
have not yet been announced; but, in 1843, he proposed to keep in view, throughout 
his forthcoming Grammar and Dictionary, certain ideas,—previously thrown out by 
Mr. Erskine of Bombay,—viz. that in the extant rifacciamento of the Parsi books 
but a small residuum of the old Bactrian oracles can be detected, and that their 
language is in a condition of decrepitude and semibarbarism. Col. Rawlinson, in 
different papers, oscillates between Erskine’s notion and that of Wahl; but his 
latest statement, in 1846, is opposed to the belief that these books conserve any 
tongue which was spoken under the ancient monarchy. Finally, Spiegel’s acute 
criticism has not only dissevered the relics of most hoar antiquity from the recent 
Sasanian accessions,—has not only detached from both extremes various specimens 
of the literature which partially bridged over the wide gap between,—but has dis- 
parted the ‘‘ Old Zend ”’ itself into two distinct dialects, and referred to each of these 
such of the extant documents as exhibit their respective peculiarities. What if this 
distinction,—which Westergaard homologates,—was one of locality rather than of 
age? What if one-half of the book Yagna was composed on the Western or Median 
side of the Caspian Lake, and the other on its Eastern or Bactrian border? If so, 
we may amicably close all controversy about “ Media” or “ Bactria,” as the home 
of the Zend speech—which must thus have been “‘ Medo-Bactrian,” and as the 
cradle of the Zend people—in whose sagas the spiritual and secular powers were 
symbolised, respectively, by Zarathustra, the Seer born in Urumiya, and Vishtag¢pa, 
the Monarch enthroned in Balkh. 

