He saw that two causes had misled
Anquetil: on the one hand, his teachers, the Parsi dasturs, either knew
little themselves or taught him imperfectly, not only the Zend, but even
the Pahlavi intended to explain the meaning of the Zend; so that the
tradition on which his work rested, being incorrect in itself, corrupted
it from the very beginning; on the other hand, as Sanscrit was unknown
to him and comparative grammar did not as yet exist, he could not supply
the defects of tradition by their aid. Burnouf, laying aside tradition
as found in Anquetil's translation, consulted it as found in a much
older and purer form, in a Sanscrit translation of the Yasna made in the
fifteenth century by the Parsi Neriosengh in accordance with the old
Pahlavi version. The information given by Neriosengh he tested, and
either confirmed or corrected, by a comparison of parallel passages and
by the help of comparative grammar, which had just been founded by Bopp,
and applied by him successfully to the explanation of Zend forms. Thus
he succeeded in tracing the general outlines of the Zend lexicon and in
fixing its grammatical forms, and founded the only correct method of
interpreting the "Avesta." He also gave the first notions of a
comparative mythology of the "Avesta" and the "Veda," by showing the
identity of the "Vedic Yama" with the "Avesta Yima," and of Traitana
with Thraetaona and Feridun.
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