may be compared to the Indian Rig-Veda. Several of them may
have been cemented together from a number of lesser poems or
songs. They are a rich source of mythology and legendary history.
Side by side with full, vividly coloured descriptions of the Zoroastrian
deities, they frequently interweave, as episodes, stories from
the old heroic fables. The most important of all, the 19th Yasht,
gives a consecutive account of the Iranian heroic saga in great
broad lines, together with a prophetic presentment of the end of
this world.
5. The Khordah Avesta, i.e. the Little Avesta, comprises a collection of shorter prayers designed for all believers—the laity included—and adapted for the various occurrences of ordinary life. In part, these brief petitions serve as convenient substitutes for the more lengthy Yashts—especially the so-called Nyāishes.
Over and above the five books just enumerated, there are a considerable number of fragments from other books, e.g. the Nīrangistān, as well as quotations, glosses and glossaries.
The Larger Avesta and the Twenty-one Nasks.—In its present form, however, the Avesta is only a fragmentary remnant of the old priestly literature of Zoroastrianism, a fact confessed by the learned tradition of the Parsees themselves, according to which the number of Yashts was originally thirty. The truth is that we possess but a trifling portion of a very much larger Avesta, if we are to believe native tradition, carrying us back to the Sassanian period, which tells of a larger Avesta in twenty-one books called nasks or nosks, as to the names of which we have several more or less detailed accounts, particularly in the Pahlavi Dīnkard (9th century A.D.) and in the Rivayats. From the same sources we learn that this larger Avesta was only a part of a yet more extensive original Avesta, which is said to have existed before Alexander. We are told that of a number of nasks only a small portion was found to be extant “after Alexander.” For example, of the seventh nask, which “before Alexander” had as many as fifty chapters, there then remained only thirteen; and similar allegations are made with regard to the eighth, ninth, tenth and other nasks. The Rivayats state that, when after the calamity of Alexander they sought for the books again, they found a portion of each nask, but found no nask in completeness except the Vendidad. But even of the remains of the Avesta, as these lay before the author of the 9th century, only a small residue has survived to our time. Of all the nasks one only, the nineteenth, has come down to us intact—the Vendidad. All else, considered as wholes, have vanished in the course of the centuries.
It would be rash summarily to dismiss this old tradition of the twenty-one nasks as pure invention. The number twenty-one points, indeed, to an artificial arrangement of the material; for twenty-one is a sacred number, and the most sacred prayer of the Parsees, the so-called Ahunō Vairyō (Honovar) contains twenty-one words; and it is also true that in the enumeration of the nasks we miss the names of the books we know, like the Yasna and the Yashts. But we must assume that these were included in such or such a nask, as the Yashts in the seventeenth or Bakān Yasht; or, it may be that other books, especially the Yasna, are a compilation extracted for liturgical purposes from various nasks. Further, the statements of the Dīnkard leave on us a very distinct impression that the author actually had before him the text of the nasks, or at all events of a large part of them: for he expressly states that the eleventh nask was entirely lost, so that he is unable to give the slightest account of its contents. And, besides, in other directions there are numerous indications that such books once really existed. In the Khordah Avesta, as we now have it, we find two Srōsh Yashts; with regard to the first, it is expressly stated in old MSS. that it was taken from the Hādōkht nask (the twentieth, according to the Dīnkard). From the same nask also a considerable fragment (Yts. 21 and 22 in Westergaard) has been taken. So, also, the Nīrangistān is a portion of the seventeenth (or Hūspāram) nask. Lastly, the numerous other fragments, the quotations in the Pahlavi translation, the many references in the Bundahish to passages of this Avesta not now known to us, all presuppose the existence in the Sassanian period of a much more extensive Avesta literature than the mere prayer-book now in our hands. The existence of a larger Avesta, even as late as the 9th century A.D., is far from being a mere myth. But, even granting that a certain obscurity still hangs undispelled over the problem of the old Avesta, with its twenty-one nasks, we may well believe the Parsees themselves, when they affirm that their sacred literature has passed through successive stages of decay, the last of which is represented by the present Avesta. In fact we can clearly trace this gradual process of decay in certain portions of the Avesta during the last few centuries. The great Yashts are not of very frequent occurrence in the manuscripts: some of them, indeed, are already met with but seldom, and MSS. containing all the Yashts are of extreme rarity. Of the fifteenth, seventeenth and nineteenth Yashts the few useful copies that we possess are derived from a single MS. of the year 1591 A.D.
Origin and History.—While all that Herodotus (i. 132) has to say is that the Magi sang “the theogony” at their sacrifices, Pausanias is able to add (v. 27. 3) that they read from a book. Hermippus, in the 3rd century B.C., affirmed that Zoroaster, the founder of the doctrine of the Magi, was the author of twenty books, each containing 100,000 verses. According to the Arab historian, Ṭabari, these were written on 12,000 cowhides, a statement confirmed by Masudi, who writes: “Zartusht gave to the Persians the book called Avesta. It consisted of twenty-one parts, each containing 200 leaves. This book, in the writing which Zartusht invented and which the Magi called the writing of religion, was written on 12,000 cowhides, bound together by golden bands. Its language was the Old Persian, which now no one understands.” These assertions sufficiently establish the existence and great bulk of the sacred writings. Parsee tradition adds a number of interesting statements as to their history. According to the Arda-Viraf-Nāma the religion revealed through Zoroaster has subsisted in its purity for 300 years, when Iskander Rumi (Alexander the Great) invaded and devastated Iran, and burned the Avesta which, written on cowhides with golden ink, was preserved in the archives at Persepolis. According to the Dīnkard, there were two copies, of which one was burned, while the second came into the hands of the Greeks. One of the Rivāyato relates further: “After the villainy of Alexander, an assemblage of several high-priests brought together the Avesta from various places, and made a collection which included the sacred Yasna, Vispered, Vendidad and other scraps of the Avesta.” As to this re-collection and redaction of the Avesta the Dīnkard gives various details. One of the Arsacid kings, Vologeses (I. or III.?), ordered the scattered remnants of the Avesta to be carefully preserved and recorded. The first of the Sassanian kings, Ardashīr Babagan (226-240), caused his high-priest. Tanvasar, to bring together the dispersed portions of the holy book, and to compile from these a new Avesta, which, as far as possible, should be a faithful reproduction of the original. King Shāpūr I. (241-272) enlarged this re-edited Avesta by collecting and incorporating with it the non-religious tractates on medicine, astronomy, geography and philosophy. Under Shāpūr II. (309-380) the nasks were brought into complete order, and the new redaction of the Avesta reached its definitive conclusion.
Historical criticism may regard this tradition, in many of its features, as mere fiction, or as a perversion of facts made for the purpose of transferring the blame for the loss of a sacred literature to other persons than those actually responsible for it. We may, if we choose, absolve Alexander from the charge of vandalism of which he is accused, but the fact nevertheless remains, that he ordered the palace at Persepolis to be burned (Diod., xvii. 72; Curt., v. 7). Even the statement as to the one or two complete copies of the Avesta may be given up as the invention of a later day. Nevertheless the essential elements of the tradition remain unshaken, viz. that the original Avesta, or old sacred literature, divided on account of its great bulk and heterogeneous contents into many portions and a variety of separate works, had an actual existence in numerous copies and also in the memories of priests, that, although gradually diminishing in bulk, it remained extant during the period of foreign domination and ecclesiastical decay after the time of Alexander, and that it served as a basis for the redaction subsequently made. The kernel of this native tradition—the fact of a late collection of older fragments—appears indisputable. The character of the book is entirely that of a compilation.
In its outward form the Avesta, as we now have it, belongs to the Sassanian period—the last survival of the compilers' work already alluded to. But this Sassanian origin of the Avesta must not be misunderstood: from the remnants and heterogeneous
