ontiguous countries. The priests, who are called "Atharvans,"
fire-priests, in the Avesta (compare the same name in
Hinduism, the Atharvan Veda, etc.) are identical with the
Magi, priests of the religion which Zarathustra (Zoroaster)
found in his original and adopted home. According to some, the
founder of Zarathustrianism lived at a very much earlier time,
and there are great scholars (Tiele, Darmesteter, Edouard
Meyer) who wholly deny the historicity of such a character. No
doubt, in later years, there gathered around Zarathustra an
immense number of fictitious and silly legends, as was the
case with Buddha, Jesus, and even Muhammad; but that each one
of these religious teachers lived and wrought is beyond the
reach of reasonable doubt.

_INTRODUCTORY_

This is the Bible of the Zarathustrians and of their modern
representatives, the Parsees, who flourish for the most part in Bombay.
The title "Zend Avesta" is an anomaly, for "Zend" is not the name of a
language at all, but means "commentary," the word "Avesta" connoting the
original text on which the commentary is written. The original title
denotes Avesta and Zend, which is a correct description, for what is now
known as the Zend Avesta is really a combination of text (Avesta) and
commentary (Zend), just as the Jewish Talmud is a combination of Mishnah
(text) and Gemara (commentary, or, literally, completion). The word
"Avesta" denotes (perhaps literally) knowledge, being cognate with the
Sanscrit word "Veda." But A.V.W. Jackson derives it from a form
_Upasta_, denoting "the original text." Darmesteter makes the word Old
Persian, denoting "law."

The existing Avesta is more like a prayer book than a Bible, for it is
as a liturgical work that it took on its present form, and as such that
it is now generally used, though the part called "Vendidad" includes a
large number of laws for religious ceremonies and the like.

What is known to modern scholars as the Avesta is, however, only a
portion of the original work, the latter having been largely lost
through the conquests over Persia of Alexander the Great, and especially
owing to the more thorough subjugation of the Sassanid Persians by the
Muslims in A.D. 632. The latter were much more bigoted and
uncompromising in their treatment of other religions and their
literatures than were Alexander the Great and his successors. The
original Avesta, as describ