Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 02.djvu/370

AVESNES. Waterloo, and for some time was occupied by the allied troops. Population, in 1896, 6400.

AVES'TA, or ZEND'-AVES'TA. The name under which, as a designation, are comprised the bible and prayer-book of the Zoroastrian religion. The Avesta forms to-day the sacred books of the Parsis or Fire Worshipers, as they are often termed, a small community living now in India, or still scattered here and there in Persia. The original home of these worshipers and of their holy scriptures was ancient Iran, and the faith they profess was that founded many centuries ago by Zoroaster (q.v.), one of the great religious teachers of the East.

The Avesta is, therefore, an important work, preserving as it does the doctrines of this ancient belief and the customs of the earliest days of Persia. It represents the oldest faith of Iran, just as the Vedas do of India. It stands as the law of ancient Media, and later of Persia, and apparently also of Bactria (q.v.). The religion which the Avesta presents was once one of the greatest, and it has left ineffaceable traces upon the history of the world. It flourished fully six centuries before the Christian Era; it certainly became the religion of the later Achæmenian kings, if it was not already the creed of Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes: but its power was weakened by the conquest of Alexander, and many of its sacred books were lost. It revived again during the first centuries of our own era, but was finally broken by the Mohammedans in their victorious invasion. Most of the Zoroastrian worshipers were then compelled, through persecution, to accept the religion of the Koran; many however, fled to India for refuge, and took with them what was left of their sacred writings. A few of the faithful remained behind in Persia, and though persecuted, they continued to practice their religion. It is these two scanty peoples — perhaps 80,000 souls in India and 10,000 in Persia — that have preserved to us the Avesta in the form in which we now have it.

The designation Avesta, for the scriptures, is adopted from the term Avistāk, regularly employed in the Pahlavi (q.v.) of the Sassanian time. But it is quite uncertain what the exact meaning and derivation of this word may be. Possibly Phl. Avistāk, like the Skr. Veda, signifies 'wisdom, knowledge, the book of knowledge.' It may, however, mean 'the law.' The designation Zend-Avesta, though made current by Anquetil-Duperron, as described below, is not an accurate title. It arose by mistake from an inversion of the oft-recurring Pahlavi phrase, Avistāk va Zand, 'Avesta and Zend,' or 'the Law and Commentary.' The term Zand in Pahlavi (cf. Av. āzain̄ti), as the Parsi priests now rightly comprehend it, properly denotes 'understanding, explanation,' as opposed to the Avesta itself, which some maintain signifies 'the unknown' text that needed explanation in order to be understood. It is certain, in any case, that Zand is the name of the later version and commentary of the Avesta texts, the paraphrase which is written in the Pahlavi language. The proper designation for the scriptures, therefore, is Avesta; the term Zend should be understood as the Pahlavi version and commentary. It is to be regretted that the meaning, application, and reading of the word abašta or abišta in the old Persian inscriptions is still a vexed problem.

Discovery and History of Research of the Avesta. — Of the religion, manners, and customs of ancient Persia which the Avesta preserves to us, we had but meagre knowledge until about a century ago. What we did know up to that time was gathered from the more or less scattered and unsatisfactory references of the classic Greek and Latin, from some allusions in Oriental writers, or from the later Persian epic literature. To direct sources, however, we could not turn. Allusions to the religion of the Magi, the faith of the Avesta, are to be found in the Bible. The Wise Men from the East who came to worship the Saviour, the babe in Bethlehem, were Magi. Centuries before that date, however, it was Cyrus, the ancient Persian King, whom God called his anointed and his shepherd (Isa. xlv. 1, 13; xliv. 28; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 22, 23; Ezra i. 1-11), and who gave orders that the Jews be returned to Jerusalem from captivity in Babylon. Darius, moreover (Ezra v. 13-17; vi. 1-16), the worshiper of Ormazd, favored the rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem, as decreed by Cyrus. Allusions to the ancient faith of the Persians are perhaps contained in Ezek. viii. 16; Isa. xiv. 7, 12. The classical references of Greek and Roman writers to the teachings of Zoroaster (q.v.), which we can now study in the Avesta itself, may be said to begin with the account of the Persian religion given by Herodotus (B.C. 450). To this account may be added references and allusions, though often preserved only in fragments by various other writers, including Plutarch, 'On Isis and Osiris,' and Pliny down to Agathias, about A.D. 560. (See .) The Armenian writers, Eznik and Elisæus, of the Fifth Century A.D., also refer to the Zoroastrian religion. After the Mohammedan conquest of Persia, we have an allusion by the Arabic writer, Masudi (A.D. 940), who tells of the Avesta of Zeradusht (Zoroaster), and its commentary called Zend, together with a Pazend explanation. The Abasta (Avesta) is also mentioned several times by Al-Birudi (about A.D. 1000). The later Mohammedan author, Shaharastani (A.D. 1150), sketches in outline the creed of the Magi of his day. An interesting reference is found in the Syriac-Arabic Lexicon of Bar-Bahlul (A.D. 963) to an Avastak, a book of Zardosht (Zoroaster), as composed in seven tongues — Syriac, Persian, Aramæan, Segestanian, Marvian, Greek, and Hebrew. In an earlier Syriac MS. Commentary on the New Testament (A.D. 852) by 'Isho'dad, Bishop of Hadatha, near Mosul, mention is made of the Abhāstā as having been written by Zardosht in twelve different languages. These latter allusions, though late, are all of them important, as showing the continuity during ages of the tradition of such a work as the Avesta, which contains the teachings of Zoroaster, the Prophet of Iran. All these allusions, however, it must be remembered, are by foreigners. No direct Iranian sources had been accessible.

From this time, moreover, till about the Seventeenth Century, we find there was little inquiry into the sacred books of the Persians. One of the first series of investigations into the Greek and Roman sources seems then to have been undertaken by a European, Barnabé Brisson, De Persarum Principatu (Paris, 1590). The Italian, English, and French travelers in the Orient next added some information as to