ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Zoroastrianism [Main Section] Some writers, we find, on glancing over their works, place this prophet - called Zoraster sometimes, and more lately Zarathushtra (and I must ask the pardon of my Parsî brethren, as I may be committing the most flagrant mispronunciations, for I am absolutely ignorant of the Avestaic language) - as late as B.C. 610.

That would make him about contemporary with the Buddha and with Plato - a position resting on Muhammadan authority, and, if ever seriously entertained by European Orientalists, now at least entirely renounced. Dr. L. H.

Mills - looked upon as one of the greatest European authorities, who made the standard translation of the Gãthãs and published with it the various other authoritative translations - in dealing with this question of antiquity relies on the evidence of language, a point on which I shall have something to say a little later. He says that the Gãthãs are written in a tongue which is evidently related to the Vaidik Sanskrit, the Gãthãs being "long after the oldest Riks".

[ Zendavesta, Introduction p 37. Sacred Books of the East, xxxi]. Now the Rig Veda is put by him at the preposterously late date of only 4,000 years before Christ; and basing himself on that date he puts the Gãthãs at B.C. 1000, and possibly as far back as 1500 B.C. So that we have got from 610 B.C. to 1000 B.C. or even 1500 B.C. as our first backward step. But Dr. Mills says that they may be much older - as, in truth, they are.

In his later work, writing in 1890, he says: "I have ceased to resist the conviction that the latter limit [B.C. 1500] may be put further back. If they antedate the worship of Mithra . there is no telling how old they may be. The decision of criticism is to refrain from conjectures too closely limiting their age." [ A Study of the Five Zarathushrian ( Zorastrian) Gãthãs, with Pahlavi translation. Narosangh’s Sanskrit Text and the Persian text translated, and a commentary.

Introduction, pp xix, xx]. Then we come to the view taken by the German savant, Dr. Haug, and we find that he contends for a greater antiquity, basing himself on the destruction of the library of Persepolis by Alexander, in 329 B.C. He argues that, in order that such a vast library, such a mass of literature, should have been gathered together, you must assume a greater antiquity, to give the mere time necessary for the writing and the gathering of the books.