Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 4.djvu/43

Rh likely the reason to which we owe its preservation. As to the Gâthas, they were already to the Zoroastrians of the Sassanian age just what they are to the Parsis of to-day: their paramount sanctity was the same as it is now, and their extent was the same, as appears from the fact that the three Gâthic Nasks which were developed around the Gâthas, or artificially attached to them, are composed each of twenty-two Fargards, answering one by one to the twenty-two Gâthas of our Yasna. Therefore the many losses that the Sassanian Avesta underwent in the last twelve centuries did not bear on the essential parts; and the loss, however considerable it may be, is neither absolute, as much of the matter survived under a Pahlavi garb, nor perhaps irreparable, as the Zend finds made in the Pahlavi literature afford a hope for fresh and more important recoveries, when that deep quarry, only half opened, has been worked out through all its strata.

§ 7. It is not only the general outlines of the Sassanian Avesta we find sketched in the Dînkart; it furnishes us also with a history of its formation, which may be summed up as follows:—

The twenty-one Nasks were formed by Ahura Mazda himself out of the twenty-one words of the Ahuna Vairya. They were brought by Zoroaster to king Vîstâp. Two copies of the complete scriptures were written by order of the king: one was deposited in the treasury at Shapîgân, the other in the Record Office. When Alexander invaded Persia, the copy in the Record Office was burnt, and the one in Shapîgân was carried off by the Greeks, who had it translated into their own language.

One of the Parthian kings, Valkhash, ordered all the scattered remnants of the Avesta, which had been preserved, either in manuscript or by oral tradition, to be searched for and collected.