No concessions are made to man’s coarser desires or grosser passions. The
system set before us is rounded in perfection, and shows not a flaw from
beginning to end. We feel that He who speaks, whether in His own Person or
through His disciples, speaks as never man spoke before; and that the Voice
which fills our ears and stirs our hearts is, in deed and in truth, a Voice from
Heaven.
We propose to furnish in this chapter a general view of the construction and
teaching of the Parsee Scriptures, with the view of showing the signal inferiority
of the creed it embodies to Christianity in all that can elevate the mind and
satisfy the soul. At the same time we admit that the Parsee creed, and all similar
creeds, possess an intrinsic value, apart from their ethical deficiencies, as
illustrating the recognition of an Almighty Will, an Eternal and Supreme Force,
by all the higher races of mankind. They show us the hopes, fears, and desires of
great tribes and peoples which existed in the days before men wrote history; and
they show us how their wisest teachers groped in the dark, and stumbled in the
thorny path,—favoured occasionally, it is true, with a wonderful glimpse of
light, and striking now and again into the pleasant places, but never rejoicing in
the glory which rose upon earth with the Sun of Righteousness, never treading in
that narrow but secure way which leads to Eternal Life. We see in them the great
minds of the early world, like children on the seashore, perplexed by a music
which they could not comprehend, and astonished by a power which they were
unable to define. Yet happier and wiser they than the cold materialist of a later
age, who resolves all mysteries, all phenomena, into the working of a blind
inflexible Law, and takes out of creation its light, beauty, and joy by denying the
existence of an all-powerful and all-loving Creator.
The religion professed by the ancient Persians, and still accepted by the Parsees
of Western India, and by a scattered population in Yezd and Kerman, is taught in
the books known as the Zend-Avesta. This title comes from the Sassanian term
Avesta or Apusta, that is, the text;[17] and Zend, or Zand, that is, the commentary
upon it. The meaning of the latter word, however, seems to have varied at
different periods. Originally it signified the interpretation of the sacred texts
handed down from Zoroaster (or Zarathustra) and his disciples. In course of time
the interpretation came to be esteemed not less authoritative and sacred than the
original text, and both were called Avesta. But the language in which they were
written having died out, they became unintelligible to the majority of the people,
and a new Zend or commentary was required before they could be understood.
The new “Zend” was the work of the most learned priests of the Sassanian