TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 93 
II. Under the early Sasanian kings the First Book-language had become obsolete, 
and the Second,—called by the Parsis ‘‘ the speech of Huzvaresh’’ (=** Auspicious 
Heroism,” as it used to be rendered, or rather, as it is now understood, “* Acceptable 
Sacrifice’’),—became the hieratic vehicle. In this appeared both versions of the old re- 
velations, and also some new works designed to facilitate the restoration of Magian 
worship, such as the Viraf Namah, the Bun-Dehesh, the Mino-Khirad, the Din-Kard, 
&c. That any secular works were composed in it, or indeed existed at that epoch, there 
is no evidence. In it, however, are expressed the legends upon the fire-altar-coins 
struck by the early Sasanids, and also the vernacular portions of bilingual inscrip- 
tions upon various monuments at Naqsh-e-Rustam, Naqsh-e-Rajab, and Karman- 
Shah, belonging to the same period. This fact was discovered, as is well known, by 
the illustrious Silvestre de Sacy. The labours of successive numismatists and de- 
cipherers have gradually, though still but imperfectly, elicited the laws and charac 
' teristics of the language: they have been most clearly expounded in an essay of 
Joseph Miiller, and the publications of Spiegel and Westergaard are now rendering 
them at once more definite and more widely known. All inquirers continue to agree 
that it is isolated, among the Arian kin-tongues, by a copious Aramaic infusion, 
neither inherited from its predecessor nor transmitted to its successor, which has im- 
parted to it a hybrid and abnormal aspect, and which at the same time assures us 
that this is the “language of Zardusht’’ described by Abu-’1-Faraj as an admixture of 
Old Persic with Nabathzan or Assyrio-Chaldaic.—Now, these circumstances all 
harmonise with—if they do not absolutely require—the hypothesis, that the Huz- 
varesh speech must have originated in the Western provinces of the empire, where 
the maniform intercourse of Arian and Semitic tribes would naturally produce a 
mongrel phraseology. While compatible with Anquetil’s view of its being indige- 
nous in Lower Media, in the region between Mazandaran and Farsistan, the 
rather favour that for which the cogent arguments of Erskine, Miiller, Mohl, 
Lassen and Knobel have secured a general reception—viz. that it was formed in 
the Border-land along the Tigris, including at first Khuzistan and Iraq-Ajami, 
and subsequently also the Northern districts about. Hamadan and Kirmanshah. 
They decisively preclude the fancy of Quatremére and Pott, that this language 
was vernacular East of the Caspian, among. the Parthians,—was successfully pro- 
pagated towards the West and South by the dominant Arsacids,—and only relapsed 
into obscurity after several reigns of the native Sasanians. For, in this case, it 
should have been’ distinguished by a Turanian, not an Aramaic, infusion ; its monu- 
mental inscriptions should have been found to the Kast, not the West, of the Great 
Salt Desert; its coin-legends should have belonged to the “ Phil-hellenic’’ Arsacids,— 
whose mintage however is purely Grecian,—not to their Sasanian successors, whose 
policy would naturally have discouraged its use. Equally inadmissible is the idea of 
Anguetil and his immediate followers, that this dialect so early and so extensively 
encroached upon the domain of others, as to have been adopted, under the Kaianian 
dynasty, as the speech of the court and the empire, and to have maintained that 
rank at least 900 years, including the most brilliant and palmy period of Persian 
ascendency, and reaching down almost to the Moslem invasion. It is sufficient to 
remark,—without mentioning the historical and geographical difficulties which hence 
arise,—first, that it is not this language which supplies the words adduced by 
Greek and Latin writers as exemplifying the classical Persic of their day; and, 
secondly, that és structure does not accord with the intimations of Firdausi, Nizami, 
and other Moslem authors, that the speech of the ancient monarchy had survived the 
revolution, and had come down to themselves so far exempt from any material change 
that they had no difficulty in consulting the chronicles preserved in it 
I1I, In respect to the Third Book-language, the prevalent—and, as would appear, 
well-founded—belief now is, that 7¢ was the one referred to by Firdausi and Nizami; 
that it had been the vernacular idiom of Farsistan, which, under the later kings of 
the Sasanian line, became fashionable and literary; that it ranked as the Dart or 
“‘ Court-speech ’’ during two centuries, but shrank into the obscurity of a book-lan- 
guage after 'a.p. 641, when it ceded its title of Dart by resisting that influx of Arabic 
terms and phrases which began thenceforward to colour the vehicle of ordinary con- 
versation and business. Its analytical character, intermediate between the still com- 
plex—though doubtless partially relaxed—tissue of Huzvaresh and the consummated 
