Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 5.djvu/17

INTRODUCTION. XI original Avesta text. But besides these translations there is another class of Pahlavi religious writings whose authority is more open to dispute. These writings are either trans- lations and Zands of Avesta texts^no longer extant, or they contain the opinions and decisions of high-priests of later times, when the Pahlavi language was on the decline. Such writings would hardly be considered of indisputable authority by any Parsi of the present day, unless they coincided with his own preconceived opinions. But for outsiders they have the inestimable value either of supplying numerous details of religious traditions and customs which would be vainly sought for elsewhere, or of being contemporary records of the religious ideas of the Parsis in the declining days of their Mazdayasnian faith. It is with a few of such writings this volume has to deal ; but before describing them more minutely it will be desirable to give some account of the Pahlavi language in which they are written.

2. The Pahlavi Language and Literature.

The term ' Pahlavi/ in its widest extent, is applied to all the varying forms of the mediaeval Persiaaianguage, from the time when the grammatical inflexions of ancient Persian were dropped, till the period when the modern alphabet was invented, and the language became corrupted into modern Persian by the adoption of numerous Arabic words and phrases. Some traces of Pahlavi words and phrases, written in old Semitic characters, have been found in the legends of coins struck by certain kings of Persian provinces, subordinate to the Greek successors of Alexander, as early as the third century B. c. 1 Further traces have been dis^ covered in the legends on some provincial, coins of the time of the Arsacidan dynasty. But, practically, our acquaintance with Pahlavi commences with the inscriptions, on rocks and coins, of An/akhshir-i Pdpakan (a.D. 226-240), the founder of the Sasanian dynasty, and ends with certain religious

See Levy's Beitrage zur aramaischen Miinzkunde Eran's, und zur Kunde der altern Pehlewi-Schrift ; Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, Leipzig, 1867 ; XXI, 421-465.