the ancient Zoroastrians. The subsequent researches
of Burnouf, Roth, and others, have shown that several, at least,
of the passages which Anquetil supposed to teach such a doctrine
were erroneously translated by him, and do not really contain it.
And recently the ground has been often assumed that the doctrine
of the resurrection does not belong to the Avesta, but is a more
modern dogma, derived by the Parsees from the Jews or the
Christians, and only forced upon the old text by misinterpretation
through the Pehlevi version and the Parsee commentary. A question
of so grave importance demands careful examination. In the absence
of that reliable translation of the entire original documents, and
that thorough elaboration of all the extant materials, which we
are awaiting from the hands of Professor Spiegel, whose second
volume has long been due, and Professor Westergaard, whose second
and third volumes are eagerly looked for, we must make the best
use of the resources actually available, and then leave the point
in such plausible light as existing testimony and fair reasoning
can throw upon it. In the first place, it should be observed that,
admitting the doctrine to be nowhere mentioned in the Avesta,
still, it does not follow that the belief was not prevalent when
the

23 Rhode, Heilige Sage des Zendvolks, s. 410.

24 Bundehesh, ch. xxxi.

Avesta was written. We know that the Christians of the first two
centuries believed a great many things of which there is no
statement in the New Testament. Spiegel holds that the doctrine in
debate is not in the Avesta, the text of which in its present form
he thinks was written after the time of Alexander.25 But he
confesses that the resurrection theory was in existence long
before that time.26 Now, if the Avesta, committed to writing three
hundred years before Christ, at a time when the doctrine of the
resurrection is known to have been believed, contains no reference
to it, the same relation of facts may just as well have existed if
we date the record seven centuries earlier. We possess only a
small and broken portion of the original Zoroastrian Scriptures;
as Roth says, "songs, invocations, prayers, snatches of
traditions, parts of a code, the shattered fragments of a once
stately building." If we could recover the complete documents in
their earliest condition, it might appear that the now lost parts
contained the doctrine of the general resurrection fully formed.
We hav