Zend-Avesta, have for about a century occupied the attention of
European scholars, and, thanks to the adventurous devotion of Anquetil
Duperron, and the careful researches of Rask, Burnouf, Westergaard,
Spiegel, and Haug, we have gradually been enabled to read and
interpret what remains of the ancient language of the Persian
religion. The problem was not an easy one, and had it not been for the
new light which the science of language has shed on the laws of human
speech, it would have been as impossible to Burnouf as it was to Hyde,
the celebrated Professor of Hebrew and Arabic at Oxford, to interpret
with grammatical accuracy the ancient remnants of Zoroaster's
doctrine. How that problem was solved is well known to all who take an
interest in the advancement of modern scholarship. It was as great an
achievement as the deciphering of the cuneiform edicts of Darius; and
no greater compliment could have been paid to Burnouf and his
fellow-labourers than that scholars, without inclination to test their
method, and without leisure to follow these indefatigable pioneers
through all the intricate paths of their researches, should have
pronounced the deciphering of the ancient Zend as well as of the
ancient Persian of the Achaemenian period to be impossible, incredible,
and next to miraculous.

While the scholars of Europe are thus engaged in disinterring the
ancient records of the religion of Zoroaster, it is of interest to
learn what has become of that religion in those few settlements where
it is still professed by small communities. Though every religion is
of real and vital interest in its earliest state only, yet its later
development too, with all its misunderstandings, faults, and
corruptions, offers many an instructive lesson to the thoughtful
student of history. Here is a religion, one of the most ancient of the
world, once the state religion of the most powerful empire, driven
away from its native soil, deprived of political influence, without
even the prestige of a powerful or enlightened priesthood, and yet
professed by a handful of exiles--men of wealth, intelligence, and
moral worth in Western India--with an unhesitating fervour such as is
seldom to be found in larger religious communities. It is well worth
the serious consideration of the philosopher and the divine to
discover, if possible, the spell by which this apparently effete
religion continues to command the attachment of the enlightened Parsis
of India