Page:Avesta, the Bible of Zoroaster.djvu/2

 AVESTA, THE BIBLE OF ZOROASTER.

By

Columbia College.

It is hardly more than a century ago that the western world, already often enriched by the treasures of the East, received another gift, a contribution from Persia, and a new text deciphered was added to our list of sacred books of ancient nations — this was the Avesta, or Zend-Avesta, the bible and prayer-book of Zoroaster, the prophet of ancient Iran. This work of antiquity, dating back some centuries before the Christian era, still forms, with the supplementary writings in the Pahlavi or Middle Persian language, the scriptures of the modern Parsis in India, and of some scattered bands in Yezd and Kirman, the surviving remnants of the faith of Ormazd.

For our first direct knowledge, or rather practically for the discovery of the Avesta, we have to thank the spirited zeal of that enthusiastic young Frenchman, Anquetil du Perron. The somewhat romantic story of his enterprise and its success is too familiar to relate; suffice to say, that in 1771 with his translation of the Zoroastrian scriptures, the first in any European tongue (Le Zend-Avesta, Ouvrage de Zoroastre, 3 vols., Paris, 1771), he opened to scholars a new field for research, the rich harvest of which we are really only just beginning to reap, and which stands ready to offer more full and abundant sheaves, especially to the student of our own Bible.

To the biblical student, the Avesta and the religion of Zoroaster have more than one distinct point of interest. It may fairly be said that the sacred books of no other people, outside the light of the great revelation, contain a clearer grasp of the ideas, of right and wrong, or a firmer faith in the importance of the purity alike of body and soul, a more ethical conception of duty (considering the early times), or a truer, nobler, more ideal 420