PERSIA. (LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND RELIGION.) 



477 



the living word. Sir VV. Jones was informed by a 

 learned disciple of Zoroaster, that Zend is the name 

 of the character in which the books are written, and 

 Avesta the name of the language. It appears to 

 have been extinct before the beginning of the vulgar 

 era ; and among the Guebers, who adhere to the 

 doctrines of Zoroaster, there are at present very few 

 who are acquainted with it. The Zend, both in its 

 grammatical construction, and its radical words, bears 

 a great resemblance to the Sanscrit and Teutonic 

 languages. (See Rask.} The Pehlvi, that is, the 

 language of heroes, which was first spoken nearly 

 contemporarily with the Zend, at first in Media or 

 I'arthia (in the language of the country, Pehlo or 

 Pehluwan), and seems to have been closely allied 

 witli the Georgian and Aramsean, attained to a high 

 degree of perfection, and became, under the Parthian 

 kings, the common language of the nobility and 

 higher classes, but gave way to the Parsee when the 

 seat of the empire was transferred to the southern 

 provinces, and the Sassanides prohibited its use. 

 According to some vague reports, it is still spoken 

 by a wandering tribe of Shirvan (the PiuUlars). 

 Among the Guebers there are only a few who under- 

 stand it. Tiie writings of Zoroaster were early 

 translated into the Pehlvi : there are also some theo- 

 logical and historical writings extant in it, several of 

 which Ouseley has brought to Europe. Under the 

 Sassanides, the soft, rich, and expressive language of 

 Pars or Farsistan (the Parsee), became the prevailing 

 language in Persia: from it sprung the modern 

 Persian, and from the two was formed the rude Curd 

 dialect. The Parsee, or the pure language of Farsis- 

 tan, bears traces of a common origin with the San- 

 scrit ; although we do not assume, with Schlegel, 

 that the Sanscrit is the mother of the Parsee, nor with 

 Frank, that the Parsee is the mother of the Sanscrit ; 

 the latter of which opinions, however, appears the 

 more probable, on account of the greater simplicity of 

 the Parsee. We find the Parsee tolerably pure in 

 Ferdusi, and other authors of the first century of the 

 Mohammedan era, though not entirely free from 

 mixture with the Arabic. This mixture took place 

 after the conquest of Persia by the Arabs, when Mo- 

 hammedanism became the prevailing religion of 

 Persia, and A rabic the learned language of the coun- 

 try. The addition, not only of single words, but 

 even of whole phrases, was owing partly to necessity, 

 because words were wanting in Parsee to express 

 many new ideas, and partly to an affectation of 

 elegance. In this manner was formed the modern 

 Persian. The Arabian words which it contains 

 have, in some instances, remained unchanged, and 

 have sometimes been changed and inflected in the 

 Persian manner. The resemblance between the 

 Persian and Teutonic is not so great, that a German 

 could, as Leibnitz said, at once understand whole 

 Persian verses, but it is certainly striking, and 

 proves, without justifying us in adopting useless 

 hypotheses, that the German, which came from Asia, 

 sprung from the same source with the language 

 of the early inhabitants of Persia. The same is true 

 of the Celts, Sclavonians, and Thracians, of whose 

 languages traces are also to be found in the Persian. 

 According to Hammer, the present Persian is, of all 

 the Eastern languages, the most nearly allied to the 

 German. In the country which, according to Mir- 

 chond, was anciently called Germania, and, accord- 

 ing to Eddussi, Erman, the old Persian is the native 

 dialect; so that the name Germani'K not of ^Ionian 

 origin. In the simplicity of its grammatical con- 

 struction, the Persian language resembles the Eng- 

 lish ; in its power of compounding words, the Ger- 

 man. We pass over the dialects of the Persian lan- 

 guage, merely mentioning that the most cultivated 



of them, the refined Parsee, which has become the 

 language of the court arid of literature, is called 

 Deri (court language, from dar, door), and that the 

 popular language is called f~a.la.at. 



The written character of the Persian language is 

 the Arabic, with the addition of four letters with 

 three points, which are not in the Arabic. Their 

 books are most frequently written in the character 

 called Talik. The Persian literature, of which the 

 Magi were in possession until the introduction of 

 Mohammedanism, has nothing to show in its old 

 dialects, the Zend and Pehlvi, but the works above- 

 mentioned, and the Persepolitan inscriptions, which 

 are in part unintelligible. What escaped destruc- 

 tion in the time of Alexander, was destroyed under 

 the caliphs, and a few fragments only were preserv- 

 ed among the fugitive Parsees or Guebers. Persian 

 civilization declined during the first period of the 

 Arabian dominion ; even in the tenth century, no 

 traces of any literature are to be found among the 

 Persians. Learning first revived in Persia in the 

 time of the Abassides, and Arabian literature was 

 already on the decline, when the Persian, favoured 

 by the Bouides and Seljooks, revived. Among the 

 princes who encouraged learned men and poets by 

 personal favour and rewards, the Bouide Azad Ed- 

 daulet, in the middle of the tenth century, the Gaz- 

 navide sultans Mahmood Sebektechin and Keder 

 Ben Ibrahim, and the Seljook sultan Malek Shah, 

 with his vizier Nazam el Maluk, and Keder Chan 

 Chacan, deserve to be mentioned. The flourishing 

 period of literature continued till the time of Gengis 

 Khan, in the thirteenth century. Under Timur, in 

 the fourteenth century, and the Turks, in the fif- 

 teenth, it continually declined, and in the sixteenth, 

 was almost entirely extinct. The oppressions and 

 disturbances to which Persia has since been con- 

 tinually subject, have prevented the revival of learn- 

 ing. The old Persian language is now almost super- 

 seded by the Turkish*; the Parsees alone speak it. 

 But the Persians possess rich literary treasures of 

 the earlier periods, particularly in poetry, history, 

 geography, &c. We must limit ourselves chiefly to 



notice of that portion which has been touched by 

 Europeans. 



The most brilliant part of Persian literature is 

 poetry. (See Hammer's History of Persian Polite 

 Literature in German, Vienna, 1818). Among the 

 poets are the following : Rudigi, the father of mo- 

 iern Persian poetry, who translated in verse Pilpay's 

 Fables ; the epic poet Ferdusi, author of the Shah- 

 narneh, or Book of Kings (of which Gorres has given 

 an abridgment), who lived at the beginning of the 

 eleventh century ; and his contemporaries, the cele- 

 3rated lyric poets, Ansari (the first king of poets) 

 and Ahmed Essedi of Thus. Also distinguished as 

 .yric poets are Anweri or Enweri, of Bednah, in 

 Khorasan (died 1200), who was unsurpassed in the 

 Cafide, and inferior only to Hafiz in the ode (two of 

 lis poems are contained in the Asiatic Miscellanies) ; 

 Dhakani, his contemporary and rival ; Chodscha 

 Bafiz Schemseddin Mohammed, best known under 

 .he name of Hafiz; Shahi, probably a pupil of 

 Djami; Hatefi, Emir Chosrou, Senai, Shetali, and 

 many other writers of the divan, who are mentioned 

 n Hammer's work above referred to. To the lyric 

 aoets of Persia also belong the Turkish emperor 

 Selim I., the unfortunate Shah Allum (see Franklin's 

 Life of Shah Allum}, and the Shah Feth Ali. As a 

 .yric mystic and moral poet, Sheik Sadi is the most 

 celebrated, not only in the East, but also among ns. 

 Ferideddin Attar, a contemporary of Sadi's, was the 

 author of a very valuable collection of proverbs, 

 under the title of Pendnameh (Book of Counsel) , 

 of which Sylvestre de Sacy has published a complete 



