﻿5° THE SIXTH DISCOURSE: 



name of Pahlavi, either from the heroes, who spoke 

 it in former times, or from Pahlu, a tract of land, 

 which included, we are told, some considerable cities 

 of Irak. The ruder dialects of both were, and, I be- 

 lieve, sc ill are spoken by the rustics in several pro- 

 vinces ; and in many of them, as Herat, Zabul, Sis- 

 tan, and others, distinct idioms were vernacular, as it 

 happens in every kingdom of great extent. Besides 

 the Parsi and Pahlavi, a very ancient and abstruse 

 tongue was known to the priests and philosophers, 

 called the language of the Zend, because a book on 

 religious and moral duties, which they held sacred, 

 and which bore that name, had been written in it ; 

 while the Pazand, or comment on that work, was 

 composed in Pahlavi, as a more popular idiom ; but 

 a learned follower of Zeratnsht, named Bahman, who 

 lately died at Calcutta, where he had lived with me 

 as a Persian reader about three years, assured me, that 

 the letters of his prophet's book were properly called 

 Zend, and the language Avesla, as the words of the 

 Vedas are Sanscrit, and the characters Nagari; or as 

 the old Sagas and poems of Iseland were expressed in 

 i?j/;z/t: letters. Let us however, in compliance with cus- 

 tom, give the name of Zend to the sacred language of 

 Persia, until we can find, as we shall very soon, a fitter 

 appellation for it. The Zend and the old Pahlavi are 

 almost extinct in Iran ; for among six or seven thou- 

 sand Gabrs, who reside chiefly at Yezd, and in Cir- 

 rnan^ there are very few who can read Pahlavi, and 

 scarce any who even boast of knowing the Zend], 

 while the Parsi, which remains almost pure in the 

 Shalmamah, has now become by the intermixture of 

 numberless Arabic words, and many imperceptible 

 changes, a new language exquisitely polished by a se- 

 ries of fine writers in prose and verse, and analogous 

 to the different idioms gradually formed in Europe af- 

 ter the subversion of the Roman empire : but with 

 modern Persian we have no concern in our present in- 



