Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 4.djvu/49

Rh them again from his hands, would retain their title of Shâh At the time when Tansar wrote, fourteen years had elapsed since Ardashir had begun his work: a part of it was done, the unity of the empire was restored: the only political task that remained to be performed was to avenge Dara's murder on Alexander's successors, and to exact from them the old tribute they had formerly paid to Persia for Egypt and Syria.

§ 13. Then remained the work of moral restoration. The Shâhinshâh s second task is to re-establish 'the law of the Ancients' (سنّة اوّلينان ). How shall that ideal of the past be brought again to light? There lay the difficulty, as the Avesta was all but lost, and the tradition of the law had been obliterated by revolutions and anarchy. 'You know that Alexander burnt in Istakhar our sacred books written on twelve thousand ox-hides. There remained something of it in memory, but it was only legends and traditions : nothing more was known of the religious laws and ordinances ; and at last, by the corruption of the men of those times, by the disappearance of the law, the love of novelties and apocrypha and the wish for notoriety, even those legends and traditions passed away from the memory of the people, so that there was not a particle authentic