Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 4.djvu/52

xlvi § 15. Ardashîr's collection was not a canon closed. His successor Shâhpûhr I (241–272), the conqueror of Valerianus, had, we are told, the scientific and philosophic fragments, scattered in India and Greece, collected and embodied in the Avesta. This is a confession that part of the Avesta was translated or imitated from foreign sources: but it is a confession that a Zoroastrian might easily make, as it was an accepted legend that Alexander had the Avesta translated into Greek, so that they could borrow back from the Greeks without being indebted to them. To us it tells a different tale, namely, that the scientific Nasks of the Avesta, of which unfortunately very little is left , were written under Shâhpûhr I, in imitation of Greek and Sanskrit scientific treatises.

§ 16. It was not to be expected that a body of Scriptures, formed so recently and with such visible accretions, should obtain at once sufficient authority to command universal respect and check the sectarian spirit. In vain did Ardashîr put the secular arm at the service of the new orthodoxy : the inquisition disgusted the older generation and could not ensure the triumph of one particular system. The old free believers, not yet confined in the immovable limits of orthodox dogma, went on growing and branching off into independent heresies. One of these, Manicheism, became at one moment powerful even at the court of Shâhpûhr. The execution of Manes under Shâhpûhr's successor, Bahrâm I (272–276), did not stop the progress of the heresies, and it was only under Shâhpûhr II (309–379) that, through Âdarbâd Mahraspand's devotion, the