Zend or Zand ( Middle Persian : 𐭦𐭭𐭣 ) is a Zoroastrian term for Middle Persian or Pahlavi versions and commentaries of Avesta n texts. These translations were produced in the late Sasanian period.
59-525: Zand glosses and commentaries exist in several languages, including in the Avestan language itself. These Avestan language exegeses sometimes accompany the original text being commented upon, but are more often elsewhere in the canon. An example of exegesis in the Avestan language itself includes Yasna 19–21, which is a set of three Younger Avestan commentaries on the three Gathic Avestan 'high prayers' of Yasna 27. Zand also appears to have once existed in
118-629: A biography of Zoroaster ( Vie de Zoroastre ), a translation of the Bundahishn , and two essays ( Exposition des usages civils et religieux des Parses and Système cérémonial et moral des livres zends et pehlvis ). A heated dispute broke out in Britain and in Europe, which questioned the authenticity of this claimed first translation into a European languages of the Avesta scriptures. It
177-770: A bitter dispute over the intercalation of the Zoroastrian calendar , which is now called the "Kabiseh controversy". Each side cultivated ties with competing European traders. The one faction (the shahenshahi s, led by a certain Muncherji Seth) had ties to the Dutch East India Company . The other (the kadmi s, led by a certain Darab Kumana) maintained ties to the British East India Company and to Armenian merchants. In
236-402: A facsimile of four leaves of a Vendidad Sade that had been sent to Deshauterayes's uncle Michel Fourmont in the 1730s in the hope that someone might be able to decipher it. The original was at Oxford's Bodleian Library , but the script was not recognized, and so the manuscript was placed in a box chained to a wall near the library's entrance and shown to everyone who might be able to identify
295-615: A fellow countryman in a duel , was badly wounded himself, and was forced to take refuge with the British. Anquetil-Duperron's own brother demanded that he be handed over, but the British refused. In April 1760, the French authorities dropped the charges and allowed him to return to the French sector. In the meantime, Anquetil-Duperron had travelled all over Gujarat. At Surat and in his travels, he collected 180 manuscripts, which not only included almost all known Avestan language texts and many of
354-539: A pamphlet written in French in 1771, Jones dismissed Anquetil-Duperron's manuscripts as a fraud. Other scholars in England criticised Anquetil-Duperron's translation on philological grounds. In France, Voltaire poked fun at Anquetil-Duperron and his translation in his article "Zoroastre" (1772) in the Questions sur l'Encyclopédie . Diderot was likewise similarly "conspicuously disappointed". For these philosophes
413-455: A ritual point of view, the liturgy can be broken into 4 major sections, each having its own internal prelude: Some sections of the Yasna occur more than once. For instance, Yasna 5 is repeated as Yasna 37, and Yasna 63 consists of passages from Yasna 15.2, 66.2 and 38.3. The ability to recite the Yasna from memory is one of the prerequisites for Zoroastrian priesthood. Translations of
472-439: A small salary while there. Anquetil-Duperron left France as a free passenger on 24 February 1755. After a passage of six months, Anquetil-Duperron landed on 10 August 1755 at the French colony at Pondicherry , on the coast in south-eastern India. From his private correspondence it appears that he intended to become "master of the religious institutions of all Asia", which in the 18th century were still imagined to all derive from
531-416: A temple as only possible if the sacred fire had been temporarily removed because the temple was being renovated. On the other hand, Anquetil-Duperron states that he was given a sudra and kusti and he may have been formally invested with them, which would have made him a Zoroastrian in the priest's view, and thus would have been acceptable in a functioning temple. In late 1759, Anquetil-Duperron killed
590-522: A translation was, of course, premature", and, as Eugène Burnouf demonstrated sixty years later, translating the Avesta via a previous translation was prone to errors. However, Anquetil-Duperron was the first to bring an ancient oriental sacred text other than the Bible to the attention of European scholars. Following his Zend Avesta and until his death in 1805, Anquetil-Duperron was occupied with studying
649-574: A variety of Middle Iranian languages , but of these Middle Iranian commentaries, the Middle Persian zand is the only one to survive fully, and is for this reason regarded as 'the' zand . With the notable exception of the Yashts , almost all surviving Avestan texts have their Middle Persian zand , which in some manuscripts appear alongside (or interleaved with) the text being glossed. The practice of including non-Avestan commentaries alongside
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#1732765066997708-589: A work considered notable by the British for its "remarkable" invectives against them and for its "numerous misrepresentations". Anquetil-Duperron's most valuable achievement in his last years was the publication of the Oupnek'hat, id est, Secretum tegendum , a two-volume Latin retranslation and commentary of a Persian translation of fifty Upanishads . Duperron had received the Persian translation from India in 1775 and had translated that into both French and Latin, but
767-594: Is a key text for understanding Sassanid-era Zoroastrian orthodoxy. The Denkard , a 9th or 10th century text, includes extensive summaries and quotations of zand texts. The term zand is a contraction of the Avestan language word zanti ( 𐬰𐬀𐬌𐬥𐬙𐬌 , meaning "commentary, explanation"). The authorship of the Zand is unknown. The dating of the Zend is considered complicated in contemporary scholarship, especially in
826-453: Is largely taken from Secunda 2012. Yasna Yasna ( / ˈ j ʌ s n ə / ; Avestan : 𐬫𐬀𐬯𐬥𐬀 ) is the Avestan name of Zoroastrianism 's principal act of worship. It is also the name of the primary liturgical collection of Avesta texts, recited during that yasna ceremony. The function of the yasna ceremony is, very roughly described, to strengthen the orderly spiritual and material creations of Ahura Mazda against
885-414: Is linguistically and functionally related to Vedic Sanskrit yajna . The theological function of the yasna ceremony, and the proper performance of it, is to further asha , that is, the ceremony aims to strengthen that which is right/true (one meaning of asha ) in the existence/creation (another meaning of asha ) of divine order (yet another meaning of asha ). The Encyclopedia Iranica summarizes
944-513: Is sharply critical of the English, both of Fraser's "failure" to accomplish what he intended, and of the Bodleian's failure to realize that Thomas Hyde 's manuscripts, which the Bodleian also had in its possession, included a transliteration table for Avestan script . Playing on the French antipathy towards the English, in his travelogue he later claimed that after seeing the facsimile pages of
1003-584: Is the yasna ceremony, which is understood to have a direct, immediate effect: "[f]ar from being a symbolic act, the proper performance of the yasna is what prevents the cosmos from falling into chaos." The culminating act of the yasna ceremony is the Ab-Zohr , the "strengthening of the waters". The Yasna service, that is, the recitation of the Yasna texts, culminates in the Ab-Zohr , the "offering to waters". The Yasna ceremony may be extended by recitation of
1062-610: The Institut français de Pondichéry is named after him. Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil was born in Paris on 7 December 1731 as the fourth of seven children of Pierre Anquetil, a spice importer. As was the custom of the time, the name of one of his father's estates, "Duperron", was added to his name to distinguish him from his brothers. Anquetil-Duperron initially distinguished himself in the study of theology at Paris and Utrecht with
1121-688: The Jansenists who were exiled there. On returning to Paris, his attendance at the Royal Library ( Bibliothèque du Roi , now the National Library ) attracted the attention of the keeper of the manuscripts, Claude Sallier , who hired Anquetil-Duperron as an assistant on a small salary. In 1754, Michelangelo-André Le Roux Deshauterayes, who at the time was professor for Arabic at the Collège Royal , showed Anquetil-Duperron
1180-455: The Visperad and Vendidad . A well-trained priest is able to recite the entire Yasna in about two hours. With extensions, it takes about an hour longer. In its normal form, the Yasna ceremony is only to be performed in the morning. From a literary point of view, the 72 chapters consist of two nested inner cores, and an outer envelope. The outer chapters/sections (the "envelope") are in
1239-525: The Yasna liturgy now in the public domain: Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron (7 December 1731 – 17 January 1805) was the first professional French Indologist . He conceived the institutional framework for the new profession. He inspired the founding of the École française d'Extrême-Orient a century after his death. The library of
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#17327650669971298-598: The Younger Avestan language. The middle 27 chapters include the (linguistically) oldest texts of the Zoroastrian canon. The inner chapters/sections (excepting chapters 42.1–4,52.5–8) are in the more archaic Old Avestan language, with the four sacred formulae bracketing the innermost core. This innermost core includes the 17 chapters of the Gathas , the oldest and most sacred texts of the Zoroastrian canon. From
1357-552: The Zoroastrian priests of Surat would teach him their sacred texts as well as the languages in which they were written, he resolved to accompany his brother. Wanting to explore the country, however, he disembarked from his brother's ship at Mahé and travelled overland the rest of the way on foot and on horseback. He arrived in Surat on 1 March 1758, at a time when the Indian Zoroastrians ( Parsis ) were embroiled in
1416-558: The (linguistically) oldest texts of the Zoroastrian canon. These very ancient texts, in the very archaic and linguistically difficult Old Avestan language, include the four most sacred Zoroastrian prayers, and also 17 chapters consisting of the five Gathas , hymns that are considered to have been composed by Zoroaster himself. Several sections of the Yasna include exegetical comments. Yasna chapter and verse pointers are traditionally abbreviated with Y. The Avestan language word yasna literally means 'oblation' or 'worship'. The word
1475-521: The 9th/10th-century works of Zoroastrian tradition, but also other texts in a multitude of Indian languages. Anquetil-Duperron finished his translation in September 1760, and decided to leave Surat. From Surat, he intended again to travel to Benares but the widow of the Frenchman he had killed was bringing charges against him, which Anquetil-Duperron then used as an excuse to seek refuge again with
1534-690: The Authenticity of the Zend Language (Bombay, 1821), may have contributed to the confusion. Propagated by N. L. Westergaard's Zendavesta, or the religious books of the Zoroastrians (Copenhagen, 1852–54), by the early/mid 19th century, the confusion became too universal in Western scholarship to be easily reversed, and Zend-Avesta , although a misnomer, continued to be fashionable well into the 20th century. The following list of Zand texts
1593-413: The Avestan language, which was considered a sacred language . The Middle Persian zand can be subdivided into two subgroups, those of the surviving Avestan texts, and those of the lost Avestan texts. A consistent exegetical procedure is evident in manuscripts in which the original Avestan and its zand coexist. The priestly scholars first translated the Avestan as literally as possible. In a second step,
1652-406: The Avestan texts led to two different misinterpretations in western scholarship of the term zand ; these misunderstandings are described below . These glosses and commentaries were not intended for use as theological texts by themselves but for religious instruction of the (by then) non-Avestan-speaking public. In contrast, the Avestan language texts remained sacrosanct and continued to be recited in
1711-533: The British and obtain passage on one of the English ships destined for Europe. He paid for his journey by calling in debts that others had made to his brother. Just before his departure, the priest Kaus lodged a complaint with the British that Anquetil-Duperron had failed to pay for all the manuscripts that he had purchased. The British seized his goods, but released them when Anquetil-Duperron's brother guaranteed payment. Anquetil-Duperron left Surat on 15 March 1761. He arrived at Portsmouth eight months later, where he
1770-539: The French translation was never published. The Latin translation was published in Strasbourg in 1801-1802 and represents the first European language translation of a sacred book of Hinduism , albeit in an approximate rendering. Anquetil-Duperron's commentaries make up half the work. The Latin version was the initial introduction of the Upanishadic thought to Western scholars, although, according to Paul Deussen ,
1829-638: The Indian Vedas . For that, Anquetil-Duperron knew he would need to learn Sanskrit . He initially studied Persian (the lingua franca of Moghul India ), which Europeans in the 18th century still presumed to have descended from Sanskrit. His plan was then to visit the Brahmins in Benares to learn Sanskrit "at some famous pagoda". Half a year later, he was living on rice and vegetables and saving his money so that he might "find some Brahmin" to become
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1888-536: The Oxford manuscript, he resolved to "enrich [his] country with that singular work" and the translation of it. There was a government interest in obtaining eastern manuscripts; Anquetil-Duperron obtained a mission from the government to do so but, unable to afford his own passage to India, he enlisted as a common soldier for the French East India Company on 2 or 7 November 1754. He marched with
1947-557: The Persian translators had taken great liberties in their rendering of the original Sanskrit text and at times changed the meaning. A 108-page French paraphrase of Duperron's Oupneck'hat by Jean-Denis Lanjuinais appeared in Millin de Grandmaison 's Magasin Encyclopédique of 1805. Arthur Schopenhauer encountered Anquetil-Duperron's Oupnek'hat s in the spring of 1814 and repeatedly called it not only his favorite book but
2006-465: The Sasanian cultural context with none belonging to the post-conquest era (and no references to Islam), as well as the use of source criticism to provide a relative dating of the text alongside other more concretely dated texts. One study has shown that all the major authorities of the Zend flourished from the late fifth to sixth centuries CE. The priests' practice of including commentaries alongside
2065-403: The aim of the yasna ceremony as "the maintenance of the cosmic integrity of the good creation of Ahura Mazdā ." Zoroastrianism's cosmological/eschatological perception of the purpose of humankind is to strengthen the orderly spiritual and material creations of Mazda against the assault of the destructive forces of Angra Mainyu . In that conflict, theologically speaking, mankind's primary weapon
2124-584: The assault of the destructive forces of Angra Mainyu . The yasna service, that is, the recitation of the Yasna texts, culminates in the apæ zaothra , the "offering to the waters." The ceremony may also be extended by recitation of the Visperad and Vendidad texts. A normal yasna ceremony, without extensions, takes about two hours when it is recited by an experienced priest. The Yasna texts constitute 72 chapters altogether, composed at different times and by different authors. The middle chapters include
2183-610: The company of recruits from the Parisian prisons to the Atlantic port of L'Orient , where an expedition was preparing to depart. His friends secured his discharge and, on 7 February 1755, the minister, touched by his romantic zeal for knowledge, granted him free passage, a seat at the captain's table, an allowance of 500 livres from the library, and a letter of introduction to the French governor in India which would entitle him to
2242-532: The curiosity. Also at the Bodleian was the manuscript collection of James Fraser (1713–1754), who had lived in Surat (a city in present-day Gujarat, India ) for over sixteen years, where he had been a Factor of the British East India Company and later Member of Council. Fraser had returned to Britain with some 200 Sanskrit and Avestan manuscripts, which he intended to translate, but he died prematurely on 21 January 1754. In his later travelogue, Anquetil-Duperron
2301-615: The disciple of. As he also wanted to "study the Indian books", he decided to travel to the French colony at Chandannagar , also known in French as Chandernagor , in Bengal , where he arrived in April 1756. He promptly fell sick; by coincidence, he landed in the hospital of the Jesuit missionary Antoine Mozac, who some years earlier had copied the "Pondicherry Vedas". Anquetil-Duperron remained in
2360-483: The former class of manuscripts was misunderstood to be the proper name of the texts, hence the misnomer "Zend-Avesta" for the Avesta. In priestly use, however, "Zand-i-Avesta" or "Avesta-o-Zand" merely identified manuscripts that are not suitable for ritual use since they are not "clean" ( sade ) of non-Avestan elements. The second mistaken use of the term Zend was its use as the name of a language or script. In 1759, Anquetil-Duperron reported having been told that Zend
2419-709: The hospital until September or October 1756 and began to wonder whether he should not instead become a priest as he had intended years earlier. Meanwhile, the outbreak of the Seven Years' War in Europe had renewed hostilities between French and British forces in India, where the conflict is known as the Third Carnatic War . The British East India Company under Robert Clive and the British Navy under Charles Watson bombarded and captured Chandannagar on 23 March 1757 and Anquetil-Duperron resolved to leave
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2478-570: The ideas revealed by Anquetil-Duperron's translation seemed impossible to relate to the idealized Enlightenment-era view of Zoroaster or to his religion which they associated with simplicity and wisdom. Many German scholars, with the notable except of Herder , also attacked Anquetil-Duperron's translation. In 1820, fifteen years after his death, Anquetil-Duperron was vindicated by the Danish philologist Rasmus Rask . The debate would rage for another thirty years after that. Anquetil-Duperron's "attempt at
2537-454: The intention of becoming a priest like his elder brother Louis-Pierre Anquetil . In the course of his studies, however, he acquired such an interest in Latin , Hebrew , and Greek that he chose to devote himself entirely to philology and classical studies and discontinued his clerical training. He travelled to Amersfoort near Utrecht to study oriental languages, especially Arabic , with
2596-706: The laws, history, and geography of India. "In his youth a kind of Don Juan; he now led the life of a poor, ascetic bachelor, combining Christian virtue with the wisdom of a Brahmin." During that period he abandoned society, and lived in voluntary poverty on a few pence a day. In 1778, he published at Amsterdam his Législation orientale , in which he endeavoured to prove that the nature of oriental despotism had been greatly misrepresented by Montesquieu and others. His Recherches historiques et géographiques sur l'Inde appeared in 1786 and formed part of Thieffenthaler 's Geography of India . In 1798, he published L'Inde en rapport avec l'Europe (Hamburg, 2 vols.),
2655-506: The light of the orality of the text and the lack of reference to it outside of Zoroastrian literature . The earliest manuscripts of the Zend date to the fourteenth century, with colophons assuring the existence of earlier manuscripts at least up to 1000 CE. For several reasons, it has been argued that the Zend was first assembled prior to the Arab conquests. These include the presence of many stylistic and linguistic characteristics that belong to
2714-568: The priests then translated the Avestan idiomatically. In the final step, the idiomatic translation was complemented with explanations and commentaries, often of significant length, and occasionally with different authorities being cited. Several important works in Middle Persian contain selections from the zand of Avestan texts, also of Avestan texts which have since been lost. Through comparison of selections from lost texts and from surviving texts, it has been possible to distinguish between
2773-432: The priests were committing a great sacrilege in acquainting him with the texts and lessons were conducted in Persian so that the priest's Zoroastrian servant would not be aware of what was transpiring. Kaus's anxiety increased when Anquetil-Duperron demanded proper interpretation and not just translation. Via Persian, the two priests taught him what they knew of Avestan (which was not much) and of Zoroastrian theology (which
2832-443: The publication of the materials he had collected during his travels. In 1771, Anquetil-Duperron published his three-part Zend Avesta which had been ascribed to Zoroaster and which included not only a re-translation of what the priests had translated into Persian for him but also a travelogue ( Journal du voyage de l'auteur aux Indes orientales ), a summary of the manuscripts that he collected ( Notice des manuscrits ),
2891-486: The territory. Unable to gain access to the Vedas, Anquetil-Duperron planned to travel to Tibet and China to find the ancient Indian texts there. Discouraged by news that there were no texts to be found there, Anquetil-Duperron returned overland to Pondicherry over the course of a hundred-day trek. There, he found his brother Etienne Anquetil de Briancourt, who had been named consul at Surat. As Etienne assured Abraham that
2950-465: The text being commented upon led to two different misunderstandings in 18th/19th century western scholarship. The first was the treatment of "Zend" and "Avesta" as synonyms and the mistaken use of "Zend-Avesta" as the name of Zoroastrian scripture. This mistake derives from a misunderstanding of the distinctions made by priests between manuscripts for scholastic use ("Avesta- with -Zand"), and manuscripts for liturgical use ("clean"). In western scholarship,
3009-443: The time. Anquetil-Duperron complains of the priests' interest with law and ritual rather than philosophy or theology. Anquetil-Duperron grew impatient with the methodical methods of the priests and with his inability to obtain manuscripts. According to his travelogue, the priests also had no desire to teach him Avestan and no expectations that he would master it well enough to translate their texts. Also according to Anquetil-Duperron,
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#17327650669973068-644: The translations of Avestan works and the commentaries on them, and thus to some degree reconstruct the content of some of the lost texts. Among those texts is the Bundahishn , which has Zand-Agahih ("Knowledge from the Zand ") as its subtitle and is crucial to the understanding of Zoroastrian cosmogony and eschatology. Another text, the Wizidagiha , "Selections (from the Zand)", by the 9th century priest Zadspram,
3127-522: The travelogue, Darab's co-operation with Anquetil-Duperron is attributed to a need for assurance of French protection. It seems that Darab (and another priest , a certain Kaus) attempted to provide Anquetil-Duperron with an education similar to that given to priests. His essay Exposition du système théologique aligns itself with the texts and provides only glimpses of what the Parsis actually believed at
3186-570: The work of the entire world literature that is most worthy of being read. When the Institut de France was reorganised, Anquetil-Duperron was voted in as a member but soon resigned. In 1804, he refused to swear allegiance to Napoleon , stating that "his obeisance [was] to the laws of the government under which he lived and which protected him." Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron died in Paris on 17 January 1805. His work became one of
3245-538: The works attributed to Zoroaster ." It appears that this mischaracterization of his objective was in order to be seen as having achieved what he intended. The librarian Jean-Jacques Barthélemy procured a pension for him and appointed him interpreter of oriental languages at the Bibliothèque du Roi. In 1763, he was elected an associate of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres and began to arrange for
3304-610: Was even less). In June 1759, 16 months after his arrival in Surat, he sent news to Paris that he had completed (in three months) a translation of the " Vendidad ". The same June, the priest Darab arranged for Anquetil-Duperron to attend – in disguise but armed with a sword and pistol — a ceremony in a fire temple "in exchange for a small present and the hope of promenading the city in my palanquin ". Anquetil-Duperron also suggests that Darab attempted to convert him, but that he "courageously refused to waver". Two centuries later, J. J. Modi would explain Anquetil-Duperron's invitation into
3363-572: Was interned but allowed to continue working. After his release, he traveled to Oxford to check his copies of the Avestan language texts against those of the Bodleian. He then set out for France and arrived in Paris on 14 March 1762. He deposited his manuscripts in the Bibliothèque du Roi the next day. In June 1762, Anquetil-Duperron's report was published in the Journal des sçavans , and he became an instant celebrity. The title of his report indicated that he had gone to India to "discover and translate
3422-711: Was suggested that Anquetil-Duperron's so-called Zend Avesta was not the genuine work of the prophet Zoroaster, but was a recent forgery. At the fore in this dispute was William Jones , an Oxford graduate, at the time studying law at the Middle Temple in London. Jones, the future founder of the Asiatic Society who would become known for his hypothesis in 1786 regarding a relationship among European and Indo-Aryan languages , had been deeply wounded by Anquetil-Duperron's scornful treatment of Jones's countrymen and, in
3481-468: Was the name of the language of the more ancient writings. Similarly, in his third discourse, published in 1798, Sir William Jones recalls a conversation with a Hindu priest who told him that the script was called Zend , and the language Avesta . This mistake resulted from a misunderstanding of the term pazend , which actually denotes the use of the Avestan alphabet for writing certain Middle Persian texts. Rasmus Rask 's seminal work, A Dissertation on
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