526 Professor Rasx’s Remarks on the Zend Language. 
consequence. It shows only that the Musalmdn author had not extended 
his inquiries into the Gueber antiquities so far back; but knowing the 
Pahlavi to be an obsolete language of the Guevers, imagined that all their 
books were written in that dialect, which mistake I have frequently observed 
myself even amongst well-informed Europeans. Not only was Hype much 
mistaken about these languages ;* but even Sir Wm. Jones seems, unac- 
countably enough, to have confounded Zend and Pahlavi with Parst, or the 
modern Gueber dialect of the Persian.t At all events, the omission is no 
more to be wondered at than that Firpausi makes no mention whatever of 
the Median dynasty, as Mr. Ersxine has observed.t The fact is, that the 
Musalméns had no idea whatever of those remote ages, and did not think 
it worth their while to search after any information about them in the 
writings of the Parsis or the Greeks. Amir AppaLia BEN Taner’s expres- 
sion respecting the loves of Wamin and Apura, quoted by Mr. Erskine, 
contains the key to this strange ignorance. ‘ We read the Kordn,” said 
the Amir, “‘ we read no books but the Kordn and the traditions. ‘These 
others are useless. ‘This is a work of the Magi, and is evil in our sight.” 
Besides this, an inquiry into the Zend, Pahlavi, and Greek records would 
have required the serious and very difficult study of languages, extremely 
different from modern Persian, which could never be expected from a 
Musalmin, especially considering the total want of necessary means for such 
study. Moreover, the enumeration of the Persian dialects in the Farhang 
Jehdngiri, is evidently incomplete. Seven are mentioned, of which four 
belong to the provinces east of the Persian desert, wiz. Soghd? in Soghdiana, 
Herri in Khorassan, Zdvel/ in Zabulistan, and Sagzi in Sejistin ; the other 
three are to be placed west of that great barrier, viz. Farsi and Deri (the 
court dialect of Fars) in Farsistan and Kerman, and Pahlavi, according to 
Mr. Ersxrne’s most ingenious hypothesis, on the western frontiers of the 
empire in Khuzistan, Laristan, and perhaps Kurdistan. By an inspection 
of the map, it will be seen that no language is assigned to the provinces of 
Shirvan, Gilan, and Aderbaijin, not to speak of Irak, and in short the 
whole of ancient Media, a country as extensive as one of the great king- 
doms of Europe, and just the very country where Zoroaster, by every 
* Vide ANQUETIL DU PERRon’s “ Vie de ZoroAstRE,” in his Zendavesta, page 2, note |, 
+ In his Treatise on the “ Orthography of Asiatic words,” fourth specimen. 
¢ P. 309, c. 25, in vol. ii. of the Transactions of the Literary Society of Bombay, 
