alphabet. A considerable literature, both in prose and poetry, has sprung up during the last seven centuries in Persian on Zoroastrian subjects.[1] The Pahlavi and Pazend works originated in Persia, whereas both Persia and India contributed in the production of the Persian works.
Parsi-Sanskrit and Gujarati sources. An Indian school of Parsi Sanskritists of the thirteenth century, headed by Neryosang Dhaval, has translated some parts of the Avestan texts into Sanskrit from their Pahlavi version. Besides these, they have left for us the Sanskrit translation of a few Pahlavi works.
A considerable literature, in prose and verse, has appeared in Gujarati on Zoroastrian subjects in India. A Gujarati version of the Yasna and Vendidad and two renderings of the Khordah Avesta were published in the beginning of the nineteenth century, that is, before the influence of Western scholarship penetrated into India. Works written in Gujarati continue to be published to the present day.
Oriental sources. The Indo-Iranians shared a common religious heritage, and the Rig Veda furnishes us with the earliest sacred texts that are helpful in the better understanding of the religious beliefs of the pre-Gathic, Gathic, and the Younger Avestan periods of the history of Zoroastrianism. There are, likewise, scattered passages in the Vedas, Brahmanas, Smriti, and Puranas that refer to the Iranians and their religion. Judaism under the Exile was influenced by Zoroastrian teachings and furnishes us with points of resemblance between the angelology, demonology, and eschatology of the Iranians and the Hebrews. The Armenian historians Moses of Khoren and Elisaeus, the theologians Eznik and the Syrian Theodore bar Khoni, the Acts and Passions of Persian Saints and Martyrs, works written by Zoroastrian converts to Christianity, the Syriac, Armenian, Judaic, and Christian polemic literature against Zoroastrianism, and the writings of the Mandaeans are full of views held by those who opposed the state religion of Persia during the Sasanian period. A host of Arabic and Mohammedan Persian writers from the days of Ibn Khurdadhbah (a.d. 816) and al-Baladhuri (a.d. 851), al-Biruni (a.d. 973-1048), al-Shahrastani (a.d. 1086-1153), to Yakut (a.d, 1250), Kazwini (a.d. 1263), Mirkhond (a.d. 1432-1498) and Mohsan Fani (a.d. 1600-1670) give valuable
- ↑ See West, GIrPh. 2. 122-129.
