This is the Bible of the Zarathustrians and of their modern representatives, the Parsees, who flourish for the most part in Bombay.  The title “Zend Avesta” is an anomaly, for “Zend” is not the name of a language at all, but means “commentary,” the word “Avesta” connoting the original text on which the commentary is written.  The original title denotes Avesta and Zend, which is a correct description, for what is now known as the Zend Avesta is really a combination of text (Avesta) and commentary (Zend), just as the Jewish Talmud is a combination of Mishnah (text) and Gemara (commentary, or, literally, completion).  The word “Avesta” denotes (perhaps literally) knowledge, being cognate with the Sanscrit word “Veda.”  But A.V.W.  Jackson derives it from a form Upasta, denoting “the original text.”  Darmesteter makes the word Old Persian, denoting “law.”

The existing Avesta is more like a prayer book than a Bible, for it is as a liturgical work that it took on its present form, and as such that it is now generally used, though the part called “Vendidad” includes a large number of laws for religious ceremonies and the like.

What is known to modern scholars as the Avesta is, however, only a portion of the original work, the latter having been largely lost through the conquests over Persia of Alexander the Great, and especially owing to the more thorough subjugation of the Sassanid Persians by the Muslims in A.D. 632.  The latter were much more bigoted and uncompromising in their treatment of other religions and their literatures than were Alexander the Great and his successors.  The original Avesta, as described in Pahlavi text which have come down to us, contain twenty-one Nasks or books.  These existed, in a more or less incomplete state, down to the ninth century of our era, to which century the Pahlavi work “Dindard” belongs.

The Avesta which exists to-day may be divided thus:—­

I. The strictly canonical parts, including the following, which will be more fully described in connection with the summaries.

    1.  Yasnas, including the Gathas.
    2.  Vispereds.
    3.  Vendidads.

II.  The Apocryphal Avesta usually called the Khorda Avesta, or the short Avesta.  This is much less esteemed than the Avesta proper.  It comprises,

    1.  Yashts (invocation).
    2.  Minor Prayers.

The language of the Avesta can be correctly described only as Avestan, for no other literature in the same language exists.  It resembles the Pahlavi, or Ancient Persian, but it is identical with no language.  The Zend, or commentary, is written in the Pahlavi language.

The present writer wishes to express his obligation to the translation of the Avesta by Spiegel (in German); Hang in his “Essays on Sacred Language, Writing, and Religion of the Parsees “; and also to those by Darmesteter and L.H.  Mills in the “Sacred Books of the East,” volumes iv, xxiii, xxxiii.  On the question whether or not the Achaemenian kings of Persia, Cyrus I., and so forth, were Zarathustrians, see “Century Bible,”—­Ezra—­Nehemiah—­Esther.