Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 4.djvu/44

xxxviii The founder of the Sassanian dynasty, Ardashîr (211–241), called to his court the high-priest Tansar, gave him the commission to gather and complete the scattered fragments, and invested his work with official authority.

Ardashîr's son, Shâhpûhr I (241-272), ordered the documents relating to profane sciences (medicine, astronomy, geography, philosophy), which were scattered amongst the Hindus and the Greeks, to be collected and embodied in the Avesta.

At last Shâhpûhr II, son of Auhrmazd (309-379), to check the sects that were distressing the religion, ordered a general disputation between them: the champion of orthodoxy, Âdarbâd, son of Mahraspand, submitting himself to a fire-ordeal, went through it victoriously, and the king proclaimed : 'Now we have seen the true religion on earth, we will not suffer any false religion,' and he acted accordingly. § 8. This account may be divided into two parts, one extending from the origin to the time of Alexander, the other relating to the restoration of the Avesta after the Greek invasion. These two accounts differ widely in character, the first being vague and legendary, the second being precise in its data and its dates, referring also to an historical period. We shall here have to do only with the second document, of which the import is that the Avesta is a collection that was formed on three occasions out of old fragments: the first edition emanating from a Parthian king, Valkhash; the second from the first Sassanian king, Ardashîr Bâbagân (211-241); the third and last from king Shâhpûhr I (241-272). Let us consider each of these three times, one by one.

§ 9. One may be surprised, at first sight, by the part ascribed to an Arsacide prince in this religious evolution. Most Byzantine, Parsi, and Muhammedan writers agree that it was the Sassanian dynasty which raised the Zoroastrian religion from the state of humiliation into which the Greek invasion had made it sink, and, while it gave the