| Sanskrit. | Gāthā. | Later Zend. |
| abhi (near) | aibī | aiwi |
| īhā (work) | īzhā | īzha |
The clearest evidence of the extreme age of the language of the gāthās is its striking resemblance to the oldest Sanskrit, the language of the Vedic poems. The gāthā language (much more than the later Zend) and the language of the Vedas have a close resemblance, exceeding that of any two Romanic languages; they seem hardly more than two dialects of one tongue. Whole strophes of the gāthās can be turned into good old Sanskrit by the application of certain phonetic laws, for example—
| “ | mat vāo padāish yā frasrūtā īzhayāo |
| pairijasāi mazdā ustānazastō | |
| aṭ vāo ashā aredrahyācā nemanghā | |
| āt vāo vangēhush mananghō hunaretātā,” |
becomes in Sanskrit—
| “ | mana vah padāih yā praçrutā ihāyāh |
| parigachāi medha uttānahastah | |
| āt va rtena radhrasyaca namasā | |
| āt vō vasor manasah sūnṛtayā.”[1] |
The language of the other parts of the Avesta is more modern, but not all of one date, so that we can follow the gradual decline of Zend in the Avesta itself. The later the date of a text, the simpler is the grammar, the more lax the use of the cases. We have no chronological points by which to fix the date when Zend ceased to be a living language; no part of the Avesta can well be put later than the 5th or 4th century B.C. Before Alexander’s time it is said to have been already written out on dressed cowhides and preserved in the state archives at Persepolis.
The followers of Zoroaster soon ceased to understand Zend. For this reason all that time had spared of the Avesta was translated into Middle Persian or Pahlavī (q.v.) under the Sassanians. This translation, though still regarded as canonical by the Parsees, shows a very imperfect knowledge of the original language. Its value for modern philology has been the subject of much needless controversy amongst European scholars. It is only a secondary means towards the comprehension of the ancient text, and must be used with discrimination. A logical system of comparative exegesis, aided by constant reference to Sanskrit, its nearest ally, and to the other Iranian dialects, is the best means of recovering the lost sense of the Zend texts.
The phonetic system of Zend consists of simple signs which express the different shades of sound in the language with great precision. In the vowel-system a notable feature is the presence of the short vowels e and o, which are not found in Sanskrit and Old Persian; thus the Sanskrit santi, Old Persian hantiy, becomes henti in Zend. The use of the vowels is complicated by a tendency to combinations of vowels and to epenthesis, i.e. the transposition of weak vowels into the next syllable; e.g. Sanskrit bharati, Zend baraiti (he carries); Old Persian margu, Zend mōurva (Merv); Sanskrit rinaktī, Zend irinakhti. Triphthongs are not uncommon, e.g. Sanskrit açvebhyas (dative plural of açva, a horse) is in Zend aspaēibyō; Sanskrit kŗnoti (he does), Zend kerenaoiti. Zend has also a great tendency to insert irrational vowels, especially near liquids, owing to this the words seem rather inflated; e.g. savya (on the left) becomes in Zend hāvaya; bhrājati (it glitters), Zend barāzaiti; gnā (γυνή), Zend genā. In the consonantal system we are struck by the abundance of sibilants (s and sh, in three forms of modification, z and zh) and nasals (five in number), and by the complete absence of l. A characteristic phonetic change is that of rt into sh; e.g. Zend asha for Sanskrit ŗta, Old Persian arta (in Artaxerxes); fravashi for Pahlavī fravardīn, New Persian ferver (the spirits of the dead). The verb displays a like abundance of primary forms with Sanskrit, but the conjugation by periphrasis is only slightly developed. The noun has the same eight cases as in Sanskrit. In the gāthās there is a special ablative, limited, as in Sanskrit, to the “a” stems, whilst in later Zend the ablative is extended to all the stems indifferently.
We do not know in what character Zend was written before the time of Alexander. From the Sassanian period we find an alphabetic and very legible character in use, derived from Sassanian Pahlavī, and closely resembling the younger Pahlavī found in books. The oldest known manuscripts are of the 14th century A.D.[2]
Although the existence of the Zend language was known to the Oxford scholar Thomas Hyde, the Frenchman Anquetil Duperron, who went to the East Indies in 1755 to visit the Parsee priests, was the first to draw the attention of the learned world to the subject. Scientific study of Zend texts began with E. Burnouf, and has since then made rapid strides, especially since the Vedas have opened to us a knowledge of the oldest Sanskrit.
2. Old Persian.—This is the language of the ancient Persians properly so-called,[3] in all probability the mother-tongue of Middle Persian of the Pahlavī texts, and of New Persian. We know Old Persian from the rock-inscriptions of the Achaemenians, now fully deciphered. Most of them, and these the longest, date from the time of Darius, but we have specimens Old Persian. as late as Artaxerxes Ochus. In the latest inscriptions the language is already much degraded; but on the whole it is almost as antique as Zend, with which it has many points in common For instance, if we take a sentence from an inscription of Darius as—
“Auramazdā hya imām bumim adā hya avam asmānam adā hya martiyam adā hya siyātim adā martiyahyā hya Dārayavaum khshāyathiyam akunaush aivam paruvnām khshāyathiyam,”
it would be in Zend—
“Ahurō mazdāo yō imām būmīm adāṭ yō aom asmanem adāṭ yō mashīm adāṭ yō shāitīm adāṭ mashyahē yō dārayaţvohūm khshaētem akerenaoţ ōyūm pourunām khshaētem.”[4]
The phonetic system in Old Persian is much simpler than in Zend, we reckon twenty-four letters in all. The short vowels e, o are wanting; in their place the old “a” sound still appears as in Sanskrit, e.g. Zend bagem, Old Persian bagam, Sanskrit bhagam; Old Persian hamarana, Zend hamerena, Sanskrit samarana. As regards consonants, it is noticeable that the older z (soft s) still preserved in Zend passes into d—a rule that still holds in New Persian; compare—
| Sanskrit. | Zend. | Old Persian. | New Persian. |
| hasta (hand) | zasta | dasta | dast |
| jrayas (sea) | zrayō | daraya | daryā |
| aham (I) | azem | adam | . . . |
Also Old Persian has no special l. Final consonants are almost entirely wanting. In this respect Old Persian goes much farther than the kindred idioms, e.g. Old Persian abara, Sanskrit abharat, Zend abarat, ἔφερε: nominative baga, root-form baga-s, Sanskrit bhagas. The differences in declension between Old Persian and Zend are unimportant.
Old Persian inscriptions are written in the cuneiform character of the simplest form, known as the “first class.” Most of the inscriptions have besides two translations into the more complicated kinds of cuneiform character of two other languages of the Persian Empire. One of these is the Assyrian; the real nature of the second is still a mystery. The interpretation of the Persian cuneiform, the character and dialect of which were equally unknown, was begun by G. F. Grotefend, who was followed by E. Burnouf, Sir Henry Rawlinson and J. Oppert. The ancient Persian inscriptions have been collected in a Latin translation with grammar and glossaries by F. Spiegel (Leipzig, 1862; new and enlarged ed., 1881). The other ancient tongues and dialects of this family are known only by name; we read of peculiar idioms in Sogdiana, Zabulistan, Herat, &c. It is doubtful whether the languages of the Scythians, the Lycians and the Lydians, of which hardly anything remains, were Iranian or not.
After the fall of the Achaemenians there is a period of five centuries, from which no document of the Persian language has come down to us.
Under the Arsacids Persian nationality rapidly declined; all that remains to us from that period—namely, the inscriptions on coins—is in the Greek tongue. Only towards the end of the Parthian dynasty and after the rise of the Sassanians, under whom the national traditions were again cultivated in Persia, do we recover the lost traces of the Persian language in the Pahlavī inscriptions and literature.
3. Middle Persian.—The singular phenomena presented by Pahlavī writing have been discussed in a separate article (see Pahlavī). The languages which it disguises rather Middle than expresses—Middle Persian, as we may call it—presents many changes as compared with the Old Persian of the Achaemenians. The abundant grammatical forms of the Middle Persian. ancient language are much reduced in number; the case-ending is lost; the noun has only two inflexions, the singular and the plural, the cases are expressed by prepositions—e.g. rūbān (the soul), nom. and acc. sing., plur. rūbānān; dat. val or avo rūbān, abl. min or az rūbān. Even distinctive forms for gender are entirely abandoned, e.g. the pronoun avo signifies “he,” “she,” “it.” In the verb compound forms predominate. In this respect Middle Persian is almost exactly similar to New Persian.
- ↑ “With verses of my making, which are now heard, and with prayerful hands, I come before thee, Mazda, and with the sincere humility of the upright man and with the believer’s song of praise.”
- ↑ Grammars by F. Spiegel (Leipzig, 1867) and A. V. W. Jackson (Stuttgart, 1892); Dictionary by F. Justi (Leipzig, 1864); editions of the Avesta by N. L. Westergaard (Copenhagen, 1852) and C. F. Geldner (Stuttgart, 1886—1895; also in English); translation into German by Spiegel (Leipzig, 1852), and into English by Darmesteter (Oxford, 1880) in Max Müller’s Sacred Books of the East.
- ↑ And perhaps of the Medes. Although we have no record of the Median language we cannot regard it as differing to any great extent from the Persian. The Medes and Persians were two closely-connected races. There is nothing to justify us in looking for the true Median language either in the cuneiform writings of the second class or in Zend.
- ↑ “Ormuzd, who created this earth and that heaven, who created man and man’s dwelling-place, who made Darius king, the one and only king of many.”
