Attentive readers of the sacred books of the east have had ample opportunities of becoming acquainted with the Zoroastrina scriptures so far as these have been preserved by the Parsis. In vol. Iv, xxiii and xxxi they have translations of all the texts extant in the original language of the Avesta excepting a few fragments which are not yet collected. And in vol. v, xviii and xxiv they have translations of later Pahlavi texts showing how faithfully the old doctrines and legends were handed down by the priests of Sasanian times to their immediate successors. But they will also have noticed that the translators of these texts are well aware of the fact that the texts themselves are mere fragments of the religious writings of the Zoroastrians which owe their preservation to the committed to memory by the priesthood such as the liturgy sacred myths and ceremonial laws. The objects of the present volume is to add to those fragments all the accessible information that can be collected from Iranian sources regarding the contents of the whole Zoroastrian literature in Sasanian times.
It has been long known that this literature was contained in twenty one Nasks or treatises named either from the nature of their content or from their initial words and each having one of the twenty one words of the Ahunavair attached to it as a kind of artificial reminder of their proper order and number while enumerating them. Very brief statements of the contents of each Nask Have also been accessible in manuscripts of the Persian Rivayats such as those translated in pp-419-438 of this volume and the existence of a much longer account of the nasks in the Dinkard was ascertained by Haug who published some extracts from it in 1870 when describing several of the Nasks in the Index to the Pahlavi Pazand Glossary. He was unable to do more on account of the defective state of all modern manuscripts of the Dinkaras in which a large portion of the text of the description of the Nasks in the eighth and ninth books is missing in various places without any hint of the omissions. These defects were owing to the abstraction of 52 folios of this part of the Iranian manuscript of the Dinkard after it was brought to India and before any copy of it had been written and even now two of these folis are still missing as stated in.
Your cart is currently empty.
