an dialect, which may as Professor

W. D. Whitney suggests in his very lucid and able article in vol.
v. of the Journal of the American Oriental Society most fitly be
called the Avestan dialect. (No other book in this dialect, we
believe, is known to be in existence now.) It is difficult to say
when these

1 Wilson, Parsi Religion Unfolded, p. 405.

documents were written; but in view of all the relevant
information now possessed, including that drawn from the
deciphered cuneiform inscriptions, the most probable date is about
a thousand years before Christ. Professor R. Roth of Tubingen
whose authority herein as an original investigator is perhaps
hardly second to any other man's says the books of the Zoroastrian
faith were written a considerable time before the rise of the
Achamenian dynasty. He is convinced that the whole substantial
contents of the Zend Avesta are many centuries older than the
Christian era.2 Professor Muller of Oxford also holds the same
opinion.3 And even those who set the date of the literary record a
few centuries later, as Spiegel does, freely admit the great
antiquity of the doctrines and usages then first committed to
manuscript. In the fourth century before Christ, Alexander of
Macedon overran the Persian empire. With the new rule new
influences prevailed, and the old national faith and ritual fell
into decay and neglect. Early in the third century of the
Christian era, Ardeshir overthrew the Parthian dominion in Persia
and established the Sassanian dynasty. One of his first acts was,
stimulated doubtless by the surviving Magi and the old piety of
the people, to reinaugurate the ancient religion. A fresh zeal of
loyalty broke out, and all the prestige and vigor of the long
suppressed worship were restored. The Zoroastrian Scriptures were
now sought for, whether in manuscript or in the memories of the
priests. It would seem that only remnants were found. The
collection, such as it was, was in the Avestan dialect, which had
grown partially obsolete and unintelligible. The authorities
accordingly had a translation of it made in the speech of the
time, Pehlevi. This translation most of which has reached us
written in with the original, sentence after sentence forms the
real Zend language, often confounded by the literary public with
Avestan. The translation of the Avestan books, probably made under
these circumstances as early as A. D. 350, is called the
Huzvaresch. In regard to some of t