a 
disintegration of Neo-Persic, warrants the philological soundness of this belief: Its 
name, “‘ Parsi,” at once recals its original locality, and identifies it as the distant de- 
scendant of the language which occupies the first place in the Achemenian Inscrip- 
tions—although, of course, the resemblance between these two has been seriously im- 
paired by diversified influences in the wide chasm of time by which they are separated. 
Since in it various holy Oracles were translated from Huzvaresh,—if not, im rare cases, 
even from the older hieratic tongue,—and since expositions and devotional pieces by 
revered Mobeds were preserved in it by those who adhered to the old faith after the 
triumph of Islam, it is now found to be largely saturated with the spirit of those 
uncongenial idioms,—especially the latter of them, with which it was in more imme- 
diate contact. Hence too it has been designated the speech of ‘‘ Pa-Zend”’ = ‘‘ the 
Commentary,” and of “ Buzurgdn-e-Din’’ = “the Doctors of Religion.” But, 
though the literary memorials now extant in it are, probably without exception, 
religious, others, now lost, are recorded to have been composed in it on secular sub- 
jects ;—such as the Zafar-Namah=“ Book of Victory,” by Buzur, the Vazir of 
Nushirvin,—the far older Kar-Ndadmah = “ Journal,” of uncertain authorship,— 
and a work on Morals by Ardshir Babagan. Further, it must be this same Parsi or 
Old Dari which Mohammedan writers term ‘‘ Pahlavi,’ while stating that in it, 
under the patronage of Nushirvaén and his successors, were composed the Bastan- 
Namah = “‘ Old Hero-book,” and also sundry versions as well of Sanskrita collections 
of apologues as of treatises by Plato and Aristoteles. 
Although, in the present abstract of a long paper*, the disputed appellations Avesta, 
Zend, Dari, have been passed without discussion, yet it is necessary concisely to 
review the history and circumscribe the import of the name just mentioned,—Pahlavz, 
—because it has been bandied about, in reference to unconnected and alien objects, 
with such latitude as to have involved the whole field of Medo-Persic philology in a 
perplexity truly tantalising. 
From the time of Hyde and Anquetil, European writers, with the sanction and 
concurrence (as would appear) of the Parsis themselves, have designated the Second 
Book-language ‘‘ Pahlavi.” And, in accordance with the different views which they 
have taken of the origin and history of that language, they have espoused different 
derivations of this name. Some have deduced it from pahlu = “ vigour,” or pahlau 
= “strong, hero,” as if it were strictly synonymous with Hu-zvdresh (according to 
the etymology put upon the latter term until lately), and representative of the speech 
in which the Pahlawdan-e-Jahan—those Paladins who upheld Iran, while its sway was 
most extended—embodied their conceptions ;—others, from Pahlava as applied to 
the Parthian tribes, or from Pehlev as indicating the old battle-ground of Rustam and 
Afrasiab ;—others, from Pahl, as restricted to the Border-land between the purely 
Persian and the Arabo-Chaldaic territories. But Pahlavi is defined by some Moslem 
authorities as simply = “‘ ancient Pars? ;” and by all of them this is employed as the 
ordinary designation of the tongue which they describe as having been the national 
one down to the Saracen conquest, or even later. Numerous words noticed by 
Firdausi as Pahlavi? are purely Iranian—not of Semitic parentage, as many of them 
at least must have heen, if really Huzvd@resh ; and it has been observed likewise, that 
that poet commutes Pahlavi and Pars? as epithets distinctive of his own phraseology. 
The truth then is, that, in Moslem usage, Pahlavz suggests the Third Book-language— 
the one above discussed under the titles Pa-Zend and Pars? ; occasionally compre- 
hendihg also the Dav?, in which the third language came to be absorbed—just as the 
names Dart and Pars? likewise have been sometimes treated as interchangeable. 
Before this state of the case was clearly demonstrated by Joseph Miiller, the name 
Pahlavi had been construed, in all Oriental works alike, as referring to exe language,— 
and that the Huzvdresh; but the unhappy result had been the perpetuation of such 
philological and historical hypotheses, incongruous and untenable alike, as have pre- 
viously passed under our review. 
Since, now, the name in question has been ascertained to denote, in one set of 
writers, the Second Book-language—one strongly tinged with Aramaism, but, in an- 
other set, the Third Book-language—one of more purely Iranian organisation, it 
94 ; REPORT—1852. 
* In it the later “ Dari phasis” of the language, the modern Farst, and various Arian 
dialects pure and mixed, were also reviewed, but not in a way that readily admits condensa~ 
tion or abridgement. 
