326 Rev. John Kenrick on the 



must be found, in a language likely to be used in a Persian 

 inscription, having tliis meaning, and beginning with these 

 letters. Many circumstances determined Gi"otetend to make 

 the attempt in the Zendic language. The Zendic is the old 

 language of Media, and probably of Bactriana, the original 

 seat of the Zoroastrian doctrines. It derives its name, from 

 being that in which is written the oldest part of the Zenda- 

 vesta, or " living word," the title which the worshipers of 

 fire give to the collection of writings which they attribute to 

 Zoroaster. M. Anquetil du Perron had brought these writings 

 from Surat to Europe in 1762, and had published a transla- 

 tion of them, and a short Grammar and Lexicon of the Zendic 

 language. When his work first made its appearance, much 

 prejudice was excited against him from the gasconading tone 

 in which his own adventures and merits are spoken olj and the 

 petulance with which he attacked some eminent orientalists ; 

 and Sir William .Jones published a letter to him {Lettre a 

 M. A*** du P**** Works, vol. x. p. 403.) in which he not 

 only treats him personally with great severity, but even inti- 

 mates that he had been imposed upon by a recent forgery of 

 the Guebers. His own residence in the East, however, and 

 his acquaintance with a learned Parsee, induced him to alter 

 his opinion; and in his Discourse on Persia (Asiatic Researches, 

 vol. i. p. 187.), he pays a tribute to the merits of Anquetil, and 

 argues from the close affinity between the Zendic (which he 

 considers as the most ancient language of Iran), and the San- 

 scrit, that a colony had passed from the one country to the 

 other in very early times*. That the Zendavesta in its present 

 form should be the work of Zoroastei", is not at all necessary 

 to our using it as the most ancient monument of the Median 

 language ; of this we have a strong argument in the circum- 

 stance that part of it exists in a Pehlevi translation. Now as 

 the Pehlevi, which is a dialect much mixed with, if not radi- 

 cally Chaldee, prevailed in the Parthian times, we must con- 

 clude the Zendic to be considerably older, and therefore at 

 least as ancient as the times of the Achajmenida:, if not prior 

 to the existence of a Persian monarchy. This language is re- 

 markable for the length of its forms, and the multitude of its 

 vowels, and thus corresponds very well with the appearance of 

 the inscription, in which the words are long, and the vowels 

 evidently written at length, not left to be inseited in pronunci- 

 ation, as in the Aramaean languages. In the Zendic then 

 Grotefend sought the word for king, and found it to be Kscheio 

 (whence in modern Persian Shah); and according to the al- 

 phabet which his deciphering of the proper names had given 



♦ See Phil. Mag. vol. xi. p. 265, 266.— Edit. 



him, 



