Preface and Introduction.
After all that I have written on this subject I will not waste many words upon a preface here. My object now is to reach a wider circle of intellectual readers, who may not, however, yet have become habituated to oriental literature.
I by no means wish to minimise the difficulties of Zoroastrian science, ’though I present its interior in this popular manner. The questions which arise are exceedingly numerous and the problems are severe. Some of them are also not susceptible of (a positive) solution, while the materials necessary to a critical opinion have actually never been at all attempted in any serious spirit by any person whomsoever (since Spiegel) except to the extent of the Gâthas; and the urgent requests which I have received for assistance from leading scholars have been based upon the exhaustive presentation of these materials made in my Study of them[1].
As this Preface may be read by persons who hear for the first time of the subject I give a further account of my stewardship. Aside from the more extended attempts (S. B. E. XXXI, 1887, Gâthas with Zend, Pahlavi, Sanskrit and Persian texts with Latin verbatims of the Zend, English of the Pahlavi and Sanskrit, together with Commentary 1892—94. (Dictionary now in the Press), other contributions to the subject have been very numerous, though each separate section of them has not extended beyond the
- ↑ See the Five Zarathushtrian Gâthas.
It is easy enough with absolutely no (enlightened) public to criticise us, to offer tentative translation where others have preceded us; but to afford really exhaustive and not fictitious results on matters never yet even properly edited is quite another thing.
