As soon as the French
version of the "Avesta" appeared, he published a German translation of
it, and also of Anquetil's historical dissertations. Then, in a series
of dissertations of his own, he vindicated the authenticity of the Zend
books. Anquetil had already tried to show, in a memoir on Plutarch, that
the data of the "Avesta" fully agree with the account of the Magian
religion given in the treatise on "Isis and Osiris." Kleuker enlarged
the circle of comparison to the whole of ancient literature.
In the field of philology, he showed, as Anquetil had already done, that
Zend has no Arabic elements in it, and that Pahlavi itself, which is
more modern than Zend, does not contain any Arabic, but only Semitic
words of the Aramean dialect, which are easily accounted for by the
close relations of Persia with Aramean lands in the time of the
Sassanian kings. He showed, lastly, that Arabic words appear only in the
very books which Parsi tradition itself considers modern.
Another stanch upholder of the "Avesta" was the numismatologist Tychsen,
who, having begun to read the book with a prejudice against its
authenticity, quitted it with a conviction to the contrary. "There is
nothing in it," he writes, "but what befits remote ages, and a man
philosophizing in the infancy of the world. Such traces of a recent
period as they fancy to have found in it, are either due to
misunderstandings, or belong to its later portions.
Pages:
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90