226 REV. W. ST. CLAIR TISDALL, D.D., ON THE BOOK OF DANIEL : 



Persian official entitled the " King's ear," Plutarcli ii, 522, E, 

 also cf. Lucian " Adv. Indoct.;' 23 ; so, too, the term the " King's 

 eye," Herod, i, 114 ; Ar. Ach., 92 ; Aesch. Persae, 985. 



(8) D^'llh^ : the Av. ava-daesa, from ava, yonder, on the other 

 side, and daesa a sign, indication ; hence avadaesa (Ed. Meyer), 

 the word here used in Aram, means an intimation, direction, 

 order. 



(9) pT^b"^ : Aram. pi. of Persian word which in Gk. becomes 

 aprd^T] and in Bab. artabu, a Persian measure. Derivation 

 perhaps Ach. arta, Av. ereta (Skt. rita), right, law, religious duty, 

 and root j^cc, to protect. 



(10) pnt^:: : a word which occurs in Ezra iv, 7, 18, 23 ; 

 V, 5 ; vii, 11, in both Heb. and Aram, passages. In Ezra the 

 R.V. in V, 5, renders it " Answer." The B.D.B. Heb. Lexicon 

 translates "letter," giving it as a Persian word (though noting 

 Meyer's doubts), and suggesting the derivation from the root 

 from which comes the modern Persian nivishteh (older nihishtaJi), 

 " written." This derivation, however, is quite impossible. 

 For the word taken from the Ach. jpais, Av. jpaes, to colour, 

 adorn, with prep, ni prefixed ni-paes, to write down, occurs 

 in Darius' inscriptions as nipishtam, written down, Inf. 

 nijpishtanaiy . It is clear that the form nishtewdn is not the 

 same as nipishtam. The two Ach. verbs from which these two 

 distinct words come both occur, strangely enough, in a passage 

 in Darius' Besitun Inscriptions, running thus : " Adam ni- 

 yashtayam imam dipim nipishtanaiy," I bade write this tablet. 

 The root of nishtewdn is really std, to stand (Ach. and Av.; 

 in Skt. stha), which, with the prefix ni becomes ni-sJitd in Ach., 

 ni-shtd in Av., and Ni-shtJid in Skt. Its causative stem ni- 

 shtdya occurs in the Achsemen. inscriptions, meaning " to 

 cause to stand in," and hence to " appoint, enjoin, command." 

 The past part, of the Skt. verb means fixed, firm, settled. The 

 verbal adj. nishthavat (in one form nishihavdn) means perfect, 

 complete. In Av. the verbal would be nishtavant, and in one 

 form nishtavdn, just the word found in the Aram, (allowing, 

 of course, for the fact that the vowels in Aram., as in Heb., 

 are not due to the original text). The word occurs in P. 13480, 

 line 3, as well as in Ezra. It means something enjoined, fixed, 

 settled. It might denote " statement, Teport, document, 

 memorial." It might assume the sense of "letter," only if 

 used as the message of a superior, which Persian politeness 

 might express by a word strictly signifying a command, as at 



