﻿ON THE FERSIANS, $$ 



to supply the lost or mutilated works of their legist 

 laror by new composition., partly from their imper- 

 fect recolL. ction, and partly from such moral and re- 

 ligious knowledge as they gleaned, most probably, 

 among the Christians, with whom they had an inter- 

 course. One rule we may fairly establish in deciding 

 thequesrion, Whether the books of the modern Gabrs 

 were anterior to the invasion of the Arabs f When 

 an Arabic noun occurs in them, changed only by the 

 spirit of the Chaldean idiom ; as werta for werd, a 

 rose ; Jaba for dhahab, gold ; or demon for zeman, 

 time, we may allow it to have been ancient Pahiaviy 

 but when we meet with verbal nouns or infinitives, 

 evidently formed by the rules of Arabian grammar, 

 we may be sure that the phrases in which they occur 

 are comparatively modern ; and not a single passage, 

 which Bahman produced from the books of his reli- 

 gion would abide this test. 



& 



We come now to the language of the Zend; and 

 here I must impart a discovery which I lately made, 

 and from which we may draw the most interesting 

 consequences. - M. Anquetil, who had the merit of 

 undertaking a voyage to India, in his earliest youth, 

 with no other view than to recover writings of Zera- 

 tusht, and who would have acquired a brilliant repu- 

 tation in France, if he had not sullied it by his immo- 

 derate vanity and virulence of temper, which alienated 

 the good-will even of his own countrymen, has ex- 

 hibited in his work, entitled Zendavesta, two vocabu- 

 laries in Zend and Pahlavi, which he had found in 

 an approved collection of Rawayat, or Traditional 

 pieces, in modern Persian. Of his Pahlavi no more 

 need be said than that it strongly confirms my opi- 

 nion concerning the Chaldaic origin of that language ; 

 but, when I perused the Zend glossary, I was inexpres- 

 sibly surprised to find that six or seven words in ten 

 were pure Sanscrit, and even some of their inflexions 



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