I would here say that it is in no invidious or hypercritical spirit that I occasionally notice Haug’s slips in this particular in his energetic pioneer volumes on the Gathés. We must be grateful for the instruction and stimulus which he offered, even while we guard the student against his mistakes. They occurred in consequence of his not having become acquainted with the Pahlavi translation, and Neryosangh is inexplicable without that. Let any Sanskritist living, who is not at the same time acquainted with the Pahlavi translation of the Yasna, write a translation of Neryosangh, and then any master of the Pahlavi would be able to point out numerous errors. His use of Sanskrit was necessarily peculiar to himself.
And in his mode of treating his subject he varies. At times he seems merely to reproduce his original in its general ideas, rendering
the Pahlavi or Gath& with little attempt at an exact reproduction of the syntax but for the most part indicating the roots present, again he offers a flash of keen and independent exegesis. Then again we find alternative translation, but of course awkwardly arranged, while the alternative translations of the same GAtha word in the Pahlavi are often reproduced by him as if they were the translations of separate words.
As regards the glosses in Neryosangh we may suppose that they are chiefly from the original hand, but we have very positive evidence that Neryosangh was not the only Parsi of his time who wrote in Sanskrit. The various readings in the Sanskrit translations of the - Yasna leave little doubt that Neryosangh’s successors often ventured on emendations of his text, but these differing readings are not often very extended. They however furnish us with evidence sufficient to enable us to doubt the originality of some of the glosses, and this should serve as a check against hypercriticism of his work. That I have reproduced his ideas with exactness, it is impossible for me to say, as it is impossible for others to deny.
A literary translation in the usual sense of the term is of course not to be attempted, as this translation of a translation does not flow freely like an ordinary treatise. Alternative suggestions should be made at every step. I therefore desire my translation of Neryosangh, as of the Pahlavi, to be regarded as comment quite as much as translation, and as a treatment which may guard scholars against that superficial hypercriticism of Neryosangh in which Haug so unfortunately led the way.
It might be asked why I do not afford more explanations of the very irregular Parsi-persian in the Commentary. But as the Persian is a translation of the Pahlavi, the discussions on the Pahlavi, of which its translation is merely a part, include a treatment of the Persian.
This Parsi-persian text has been added not only to show its readings of the Pahlavi, and to give scholars an interesting specimen of the word for word translations of the Pahlavi of the Avesta, but also to assist the science of comparative philology as it bears upon the subject. Indeed I may say that this mass of native comment, Pahl. and Sanskrit, as well as Persian, is presented largely because it bears upon the question of the original Indo-germanic. The Sanskrit lies near to the Zend, and the ancient and middle Persian lie nearer to us than the Sanskrit. But of course their direct evidence was my more immediate object. And fergie their independent opinions, which although arrived
at under every disadvantage, are often keen and stimulating and also often correct, they offer us what are greatly more valuable than any opinions of their own, and that is, the broken fragments of original tradition. For I think we may fairly claim that a tradition of inter- pretation of the Avesta has existed from the first, and that we have portions of it in this mass of comment before us.
And here I must pause for a moment to recall our reasons for supposing that such an original traditional exegesis of the Gathas was at all possible under any circumstances. First let us ask whether an original traditional exegesis of any very ancient lore preserved in MSS. is possible.
We have undoubted tradition at least in texts. The Gathic text and the rest of the Avesta are in themselves a marvellous tradition, so is the Rig-Veda text, and so are all very ancient books. Rock inscriptions keep themselves, but what has kept the apparently frail life of ancient books? Their characters were imbedded in the human memory in the continuous life of generations.
The sanctity which attached to the Gathas from the first was naturally calculated to awaken a keen solicitude for their preservation, and as a matter of fact we find that phonological laws have been observed in the forms in which the Gathés and the rest of the Avesta have come down to us, and minute distinctions have been preserved with curious fidelity; and this proves a tradition of scholarship.
That certain original and correct ideas as to the meaning of Gathic words and passages have been preserved in this tradition is 4 priori very probable, but it is folly to expect anything approaching to a modern precision in the shape in which these remotely ancient opinions have survived to us. They are the descendants of descendants, and more often marred than assisted by later additions.
I regard it therefore as a very false policy to take this mass of mutilated tradition as if it were original tradition, and I of course hold that we should dispute even the original tradition at times, if we could be sure that we had seized it, for I doubt very greatly whether even the contemporaries of Zarathushtra knew always what he meant, and I am strongly inclined to suspect that he at times even affected obscurity.
I therefore regard it as the only critical procedure to follow the ‘tradition’ at one time and to disagree with it at another where the
facts seem to call for such a course, and also to follow what may be |
the original suggestions of ancient Parsi scholars which abound in these
Gt EK (
native translations, and which are in themselves no proper tradition in the original sense, and to follow them sometimes as opposed both to — original tradition and to modern conjectures where they seem superior to either of them, as is often the case. And ag we have no longer any external signs by which to distinguish between this original tradition _and this superadded ancient lore, we must rely wholly on our critical acumen to guide us in our procedure.
We have then comparative philology, original tradition, and the results of ancient scholarship in these translations; and each is a distinct and independent factor bearing upon the exegesis of their original.
It is of course very important that we should recognize these ancient works as our instructors in the past, for on that recognition depends their influence npon us in the future. Not only has the entire ground-work of our original information been laid by them, but often our latest and most subtle distinctions might have been much sooner made had we heeded their indications. Our discoveries are often
-rediscoveries. (See on Y. 48, 8.) Like the companions of Columbus it is easy for us to balance the egg, after they have shown us the way. The great task they leave us is to find the exact point and meaning of the rich lore to which they roughly introduce us.
As was said in the preface, the Introduction proper to this work is to be found on pp. i—xlvii of the XXXIst vol. of the S. B. E., but as that was published so long ago as May, 1887, it is to be expected that I should have on reflection some modifications to offer. And there are indeed two points on which I now feel less hesitation than I did then.
The first is as to the probable age of the Gathas. As is seen, I have made the endeayour to place them as late as possible, and at the time of publishing I had reached the conclusion that they may date as late as about 1000 B.C. while also possibly so old as 1500 B.C. But since then I have ceased to resist the conviction that the latter limit may be put further back. If they antedate. the worship of Mithra (which is however almost incredible) they would appear to be the oldest written compositions which have reached us not inscribed on stone. But looking at all the facts, the ancient, or better the little altered, state in which our Aryan speech appears in them, the absence of Mithra, Haoma, and of the throng of Gods which are common to the later Avesta and to the Rig-Veda, they seem to express a religious aspiration so bereft of superstition that it must have taken a very long time for it to have
degenerated either for the first, or for the second, time into the religion of Mithra, Haoma, and the rest, as we have it in the Yashts and in the Rik. But those deities were beyond a doubt very ancient indeed. If the Gathds antedated their cult, there is no telling how old they may be. The decision of criticism is to refrain from conjectures too closely limiting their age.
The other particular as to which I would now abandon my scepticism is the poetic personification of the Bountiful (or Holy) Immortals. I no longer doubt that it was poetical, and that they were actually appealed to and besought to approach the worshippers while yet understood to be divine and human attributes and not merely personal beings. I of course yielded to this opinion frequently in my earlier treatment, but I would now cancel every doubt. When the Good Mind, the Holy Order, and the Divine Sovereign Power, are bid ‘to hear’ and ‘to come’, I am now willing to believe that the sage subordinated entirely the inferior conception that they were personal beings to the very impressive conception that they were spiritual qualities in the mind of the Deity which were besought-for as acquisitions to the mind of the worshipper. The personification was almost wholly figurative in the Gathas, and this appears to me to be most remarkable in view of their remote age.
In this part of my book which I now offer to the learned public, and especially to those eminent scholars who have so long been in possession of the first part in its imperfect condition, I have used, as I have said, a perhaps painful succinctness. And I have expressed the hope that this will be condoned by non-specialists and by beginners in view of the fulness and unusual simplicity of the mass of exegetical matter which I have now with equal fulness introduced, and which is contained in the XXXIst vol. of the Sacred Books of the Hast, and in the first volume of this work, but I trust that notwithstanding a perhaps excessive parsimony in the use of language here, no statement will be found on careful examination to be obscure. I cannot however claim that the Commentary, if read by itself, will be other than inscrutable to non-specialists, and not very inviting to beginners. It is not intended to replace a dictionary, nor yet a grammar, both of which I had hoped and still hope to furnish. (My grammar, which I hope will appear before very long, will contain, and in fact will largely consist of a very full collection of comparative paradigms of the Zend and Vedic Sanskrit.)
Xxt
In concluding my necessarily extended explanations, I shall say a word to the large number of scholarly friends (not specialists in Oriental philology) who may have censured (some of them) the devotion of so many years to a recondite and difficult branch of investigation.
My answer to any such strictures would be short. If the history of human thought is of any importance, the Avesta claims a very prominent position in that history. It not only affords one of the oldest, if, not the oldest, monument of Aryan speculation, but, in view of its enormous influence upon later Jewish and Christian theology, it must justly claim a decisive place in the development of religion and so even in the moulding and destiny of the human soul. We have the gravest reason to believe that the entire change from the free-thinking Sadduceeism to that orthodoxy which now underlies the Catholic Creed . was due to Parsism which moulded Judaism under the modified name of Pharisaism: So far ‘as I can see, no thorough examination of the Jewish theology can be completed without a thorough knowledge of the Avesta in its general complexion, and in many of its particular statements.
But I have a further excuse. A valuable knowledge of the Avesta can now be acquired with little labour and delay, but a critical
knowledge of it, which alone befits an original expositor, requires very