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 810 ZELTER ZEND-AVESTA history at Bordeaux, Rennes, Strasburg, and Aix. In 1858 he became maitre de conferences at the normal school in Paris, and a lecturer at the Sorbonne. In 1869 he succeeded Duruy in the polytechnic school, and in 1874 Mi- chelet in the academy of moral and political sciences. He has published Ulrich de Hutten (1849); Hiatoire de Vltalie (1852); Episodes dramatiques de Vhistoire d> Italic (1855) ; L'An- nee historique (4 vols., 1860-'63) ; Leg empe- reurs romains (1863) ; Entretiens sur Vhistoire (1865) ; and Histoire d 1 Allemagne (1872). ZELTER, Karl Friedrieh, a German composer, born in Berlin, Dec. 11, 1758, died there, May 15, 1832. He was bred a mason and builder. Forbidden to indulge his musical tastes, he se- cretly walked to Potsdam, about 20 m., to take his weekly lessons of Fasch, whom in 1800 he succeeded as director of the Berlin Sing-Aka- demie. In middle life he divided his time be- tween his art and his trade, in which he em- ployed many workmen. From 1809 till his death he was professor of music at the academy of arts and sciences. He founded in 1809 the Liedertafel, a male-voice society, for which he composed many part songs, and which was the first of this class of clubs, now so common in Germany, England, and America. His most important composition was his Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Christi. He also composed much church music. He was an intimate friend of Goethe, his correspondence with whom was published after his death (6 vols., Berlin, 1833-'4). His life has been written by Dr. W. Rintel (Berlin, 1861). ZEMPLEtf, or Zemplin, a N. county of Hun- gary, in the Ois-Tibiscan circle, bordering on the counties of Ung, Szabolcs, Borsod, Abauj, and Saros, and on Galicia, from which it is divided by the Carpathians; area, 2,392 sq. m.; pop. in 1870, 292,771, chiefly Slovaks and Magyars. The Theiss forms most of the S. frontier, and the Hernad part of the S. W. The northern part of the county is mountain- ous and little productive ; the southern is very fertile. The S. W. portion includes the Hegy- alja, a region partly mountainous and partly hilly, famous for the production of the Tokay wine ; the best vineyards are in the vicinity of the towns of Tullya, Mad, and Tokay. Capi- tal, Satoralja-Ujhely. ZENAIDA DOVE. See PIGEON, vol. xiii., p. 506. ZEND-AVESTA, the scriptures of the Zoroas- trian faith, the ancient national religion of Persia, now professed only by scanty commu- nities of Parsees. The proper name is simply Avesta, while Zend means the translation of it into the Huzvaresh (now usually called the Zend), which is the literary form of the Pehlevi language, probably made some centuries after the Christian era. This language, the oldest form of Iranic speech known, has received from Spiegel the name of Old Bactrian. (See IRANIO RACES AND LANGUAGES.) Zend-Avesta, however, if understood to mean the Zend and the Avesta, or the Avesta and its Zend, is a suitable name for the whole Parsee sacred lit- erature, ancient and modern, and will be here accepted as such. The Avesta is one of the most ancient and interesting documents re- maining to us for the early history and reli- gion of the Indo-European family. It is made up of several distinct parts. First in impor- tance among these are the Vendidad and the Yacna. The former is, as it were, the Penta- teuch of the Zoroastrian canon, the book of origins and of the law. It is in great part pre- scriptive, a moral and ceremonial code, teach- ing the means of avoiding or of expiating sin and impurity. It is cast chiefly in the form of colloquies between the supreme divinity, Ahura-Mazda (Oxmuzd), and his servant and prophet Zarathustra (Zoroaster), in which the former makes known to the latter his will respecting his creation. The same form pre- vails more or less through the whole Avesta ; it is professedly a revelation to Zoroaster, and through him to mankind. The Vendidad is evidently not preserved complete, nor is it certain that its few first and last chapters originally belonged to it. The Yacna is of a very different character, being made up of prayers and praises addressed to the divinity and to the beings inferior to him, yet recog- nized as worthy of reverence and worship. It is divided into two distinct portions, of which the latter is in a slightly different and appar- ently older dialect, and is in great part met- rical, resembling in form and contents the hymns of the Hindoo Veda ; these songs are plainly the most ancient arid original part of the Avesta, and some of them may go back even to the time of Zoroaster himself; that they do so is the opinion of Dr. Haug, who published an annotated translation of them in the German oriental society's collections (Die funf Gdthds, &c., Leipsic, 1858-'60) ; they have also been edited, with version and notes, by Kossowicz (1867-'71). The Vispered is kin- dred in character with the more recent part of the Yacna ; these two, along with the Vendi- dad, are mingled together in the liturgical use of the Parsees. The other constituents of the Avesta are sometimes spoken of as the Khordeh Avesto, or shorter Avesta; they are the 24 Yeshts, laudations of sacred persons or ob- jects, the five Nydyith, and a few other less important pieces. The Parsees hold that Zo- roaster's writings originally filled 21 volumes, which were in great part lost in the ruin of the Persian empire and religion after Alexan- der, only fragments of them being recovered and preserved by the Sassanian monarch Arde- shir, excepting the Vendidad, which had been saved entire. The Avesta is clearly an assem- blage of fragments of a more extended litera- ture, and many circumstances favor the theory of its collection into its present form during the early^part of the Sassanian period. Its material is of different ages, and some of it must be many centuries older than our era. Its place of origin, as that of the Zoroastrian