in the triple Inscriptions of the Persians, &c. 263 
of the Brahmans. But if the testimony of those boasters be found utterly un- 
worthy of credit, as to the antiquity of their writing, surely more weight cannot, 
with any show of reason, be conceded to it with regard to the age of their lan- 
guage; nor should such evidence be permitted to extend our estimate of that 
age beyond the limits to which it is by other considerations restricted. The 
Zend and Pali are still less ancient, as they recede farther from the language of 
the legends referred to; and they appear to be merely the Sanscrit, as it became 
altered and corrupted in the hands of respectively the Parsi and the Buddhist 
priests ; for the two later dialects are much too nearly connected with the earlier 
one, to admit of the possibility of their having been formed independently of it. 
If this be a just view of the relation they bear to each other, it adds to the proba- 
bility of the Sanscrit having been originally confined to the use of a sacerdotal 
class, since the Zend actually remains so confined down to the present day. 
5. The works composing the Zend-Avesta, and purporting to have been 
written by Zoroaster, are proved evidently spurious by (independently of other 
considerations) the difference between their idiom and that of the legends of 
Darius in the first kind of cuneiform character. It is, indeed, attempted to 
account for this difference by supposing that the Persian sage made use of a pro- 
vincial dialect. But this suggestion can hardly be reconciled with the tradition 
that he was the lawgiver of the Persians, and held in the highest respect and 
veneration by his countrymen. The composition, surely, of such a man, if it 
ever had existence, must have been looked up to as the standard and model of the 
purest Persian of his day. Besides, how can an individual who is represented as 
the friend and companion of Darius’s father, Hystaspes,* be conceived to have 
been fabricated by the Hindu priests at a much later period. But for a full discussion of this 
point, I must refer the reader to the eighth chapter of the second part of my Work. 
* By Persian authors the patron of Zerdusht or Zoroaster is named “Gushtasp,” not 
“« Hystaspes ;” and they make no mention of Darius as son of Gushtasp. But Ammianus Marcel- 
linus, who wrote in the fourth century of our era, when the history of the ancient kings of Persia 
was not as grossly distorted and corrupted in the east as it afterwards became, connects the age of 
Zoroaster with that of Darius’s father, Hystaspes, who is thereby identified with the Gushtasp of 
more modern Persian historians. ‘‘Magiam opinionum insignium auctor amplissimus Plato 
Machagistiam esse verbo mystico docet, divinorum incorruptissimum cultum; cujus scientize 
seculis priscis multa ex Chaldzorum arcanis Bactrianus addidit Zoroastres; deinde Hystaspes, 
rex prudentissimus Darii pater.” —Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. xxiii. cap. 6. 
