place of their compositions.  Here we may separate a certain stratum of Persian element, and an analysis of them may reveal partly contemporary knowledge and partly elements of foreign religious ethics.  The third but not the last place in importance is occupied by the Greek ethical tradition in which latterly are discernible important Christian constituents.  Recent studies have yielded us as their result, this structure of Musalman ethics.  But it is to be noted that the theoretical deductions at first sight do not find confirmation in facts.  For we do not know which Greek books on ethics were translated in the beginning of the period of the scientific development of Islam, and for the support of our thesis we have to point to the possibility of oral transmission of Hellenic ethical tradition through Syriac scholars, although this circumstance does not militate against our hypothesis.  Besides a small amount of translations from Greek ethical works, especially the books of Aristotle, there are observed among the works embodied in this tradition a series of pseudographs which, however, can have only an external relation with the Greek sciences and which would rather lead to the second group of the influences on Musalman ethical monuments namely, the group of monuments of “Oriental wisdom.”  The most typical of the pseudographical wisaya, or “Testaments” are ascribed to Aristotle, Pythagoras, and others.  To our mind, they are derived from Persian tradition to the same extent, if not in a larger extent than from the Christian.  Actual studies demonstrate that the basal work for this epoch was the book above-mentioned of Ibn Miskawaihi which as we saw above, issued from Persian literary tradition.  And the character of that tradition can be explained from exterior circumstances without an analysis of its contents.  The fact is that Ibn Miskawaihi worked upon that class of Persian material, for instance the Pand Nameh or Andarz, which had nothing to do with the province of the indefinite gnomic literature but which had the character of a catechism and therefore expresses a definite system of religious morals, the morals of Parsism.[1] The appreciation of the influence of Parsism on Islam has only just commenced.  But we are already in a position to emphasise the great influence, which Parsi ethics have exercised on Islam and this influence has been attested by a number of Greek and Christian witnesses.  So far, for an acknowledgment of this influence serves a purely external fact, namely, a glance at the bibliography of the ancient ethico-didactic tracts in the Musalman literature and an examination of the contents of the book of Ibn Muskawaihi.  A number of additional facts confirm this hypothesis.

[Footnote 1:  For a general review of the morals of Parsism see A.V.W.  Jackson’s G. I. Ph.  Vol.  II, 678-683.]