'A General Sketch of the History of Persia' [‎47] (98/636)

THE ZEND AVESTA.
47
Bavarian Government to copy all the Zend manuscripts
in Paris, Oxford, London, and Copenhagen, and he
published a translation. Hermann Brockhaus of
Leipsic, in the same year, published an edition of some
of the sacred books ( Vendidad,Yasna, and Visparat)
in Eoman characters.
In 1841—43, a Danish scholar named Westergaard
visited both India and Persia; and it is to him we owe
the first complete edition of the Zend Avesta, published
in 1852—4, with a dictionary and grammar.
Martin Haug, Professor of Sanscrit in the Puna
College, commenced the study of Zend in 1852. Being
convinced, like Burnouf, that the language of the Vedas
stands, among all Aryan dialects, nearest to the Zend,
he studied the language of the Eig-Veda Sanhita also.
In 1858-60, he published at Leipsic the Five
i.e.. Collections of Songs and Zarathrustra,
2 vols. ; and in 1862, at Bombay, his
Sacred Language, Writings,
Thus, from Anquetil to Dr. Haug, the study of Zendic
literature is barely a century old.
We must now glance at the history of the Zend Lan
guage, and at the channels through which the ancient
Persian sacred books iu that language passed down into
the hands of the modern Parsees.
Dr. Haug divides the ancient language of Iran into
the Bactrian and Median branches. The Bactrian
branch is that in which the scanty fragments of the
sacred Persian scriptures are written. It was dying
out between B.C. 300 and 200. In the Median branch
a few documents are extant in the cuneiform inscriptions