106 General Observations on [Feb. 



The sun is the eye of the universe. There is none greater among the 

 immortal powers. From him the universe proceeded, and in him it will 

 reach annihilation. It is the three irradiating powers, or forms, 

 Brahma, Vishnu and Rudra.* 



The Malays derived from the Hindus, I suppose, their name for the 

 sun, mata hari, the eye of day. 



" The court language of Iran about Mohammed's time, and when 

 Anusharavan sat on the throne of Persia, was called Deri, while that 

 of the learned was named Pahlavi. The former was only a refined and 

 elegant dialect of the Par si. 



Besides these, there was a very ancient and abstruse tongue known to 

 priests and philosophers, called the language of the Zend, because a 

 book on religious and moral subjects had been written in it. That is, 

 the character was the Zend, and the language Awesta. 



Hundreds of Parsi nouns are pure Sanscrit, and very many Persian 

 imperatives are the roots of Sanscrit verbs." The corollary or deduc- 

 tion made from these facts does not yet seem to have been adopted by 

 the learned, " that the Parsi was derived, like the various Indian dialects, 

 from the language of the brahmans," 



If the brahmans came from Persia, it is more likely that they should 

 have brought the Parsi, or the Pahlavi along with them. 



But " the Zend bears a strong resemblance to Sanscrit, and the Pah- 

 lavi to Arabic." Hence, according to this assumption, the brahmans 

 brought the Zend with them. 



Could any of the characters of the ancient inscriptions decyphered by 

 Prinsep be traced back to one of these Persian Alphabets, as they have 

 been formed into Sanscrit ? " The Zend language was at least a dialect of 

 the Sanscrit, approaching perhaps as nearly to it, as the Praciit, or other 

 popular idioms, which we know to have been spoken in India two thou- 

 sand years ago." 



This date would fall about the period when it is probable the third 

 Buddha Kassapo may have appeared. 



" The oldest discoverable languages of Persia therefore were Chaldaic, 

 from which Pahlavi was derived, and Sanscrit, and when they had 

 ceased to be vernacular, the Pahlavi and Zend were deduced from them 

 respectively, and the Parsi either from the Zend or immediately from the 

 dialect of the brahmans. But all had perhaps a mixture of Tartarian." 

 * As. Res. Vol. V. p. 354. 



