If he established the doctrines" in the Kingdom (or "in Power "?) they could not have had exclusive reference to the other world. Many may suppose Y. 33, 5 to be exclusively eschatological on account of line c, and its connection with Y. 43, 3 (see below): (Free trl.) I who invoke Thine Obedience, the greatest of aids to my succour Gaining long life for myself in the Realm where the Good Meaning ruleth, e And paths that are straight from their truth where Mazda A'hura dwelleth. Here "long life," strange as it may sound to a beginner, may very possibly refer to eternity. One of the leading Vedic Gods is called the "Long-lived," and in Y. 31, 20 (see below), the spiritual future of the condemned is "long life in darkness," but this only makes this Y. 33, 5 a test passage to show the non-exclusion of this life when sanctified, or the contrary, from the consideration of the other, for the sage goes on to call upon the Creator for counsel in the interests of agriculture;— (Free trl.) An invoker unerring through Truth from the Best Spirit will I implore it, From him with that mind will I ask how our fields are best to be cultured, These are the things which I seek from Thy sight and a share in Thy counsel.1 Without going so far as to ask of God to point out the very fields which were to be planted and with what seed, we may well understand that the general subject of tillage, on which the life of the Holy State depended, was laid open to the Divine eye, and that his counsel was implored through his priests. We also ask for rain and thank for harvests. In verse 8, however, the ideas pass beyond the earthly horizon, and in verse 9 they settle distinctly in Heaven. (8) Obtain for me then the true rites that with good Mind I may fulfil them. (9) Thou let them bear the spirit of Thy two truth-promoting rulers To Thy brilliant home, O Mazda, with wisdom, and Thy Best Mind So, in Y. 31, 20, 21, we have a similar climax, where Immortality is that of the future because it is contrasted with a graphic glimpse of its inverted counterpart, Hell. But he who deceives3 the saint, for him shall at last be destruction, Long life in the darkness his lot, vile his food with revilings loathsome. This be your world (or "your life"), faithless men, by your deeds your own souls will bring it! But Mazda Ahura will give both Weal and a Life Immortal With the fulness of his grace from Himself as the head of Dominion, And the Good Mind's power he'll send to His friend in deed and in spirit. Notice "long life" in the sense of "eternal life." Cp. Indra dîrghấyu. 1 Gâthas p. 119, and Comm. p. 490, 491. * Gáthas, pp. 121, 491 ff. 3 Differing opinions here do not affect the eschatology. 4 Gâthas, pp. 82, 83, 467, 468, 469. The expressions in verse 20 are doubly historic; they describe the kind of Hell feared at the Gâthic age, and they show the original of the later Yasht 22, with its kindred passages. Cp. also Y. 49, 11. In Yasht 22 the souls of the evil were met with sinister ridicule, and were offered vile food, and especially they were met (as we see from the Parsi version, the Zend text having been unfortunately curtailed) by their own consciences or souls (the word is the same as that rendered "souls" above), and these consciences recall "their deeds." These analogies push the temporal Immortality here quite aside. The other world must be almost, if not quite, exclusively meant. In Yasna 43, 3 we have: "Then may Thy saint approach toward that which is the better than the good (the summum bonum), he who will show us the straight paths of spiritual profit of this life, the bodily and of the mental in those veritably real (or 'eternal' ?) worlds where dwells Ahura.”1 There is, of course, again no doubt here that life in another world is alluded to, and the passage with its "straight paths in which Ahura dwells" influences most powerfully our view of Y. 33, 5 (see above), and forces us to concede there also that the composer, while pointing his hearers to the needed sanctity of this life, could not have forgotten the other for a moment; so also as to Y. 28, 2 (see above). Y. 43, 4, 5, goes on: "Yea, I will regard Thee as mighty and likewise bountiful (others, less critically, 'holy '), O Ahura Mazda. . . . when Thy rewards to the faithless as to the righteous come, when as rewarding deeds and words Thou didst (?' shalt') establish evil for the evil and happy blessings for the good by Thy just discernment (or virtue') in the creation's final change (so, literally, in the last turning, change, or better "end" '). In which last changing Thou shalt come and with Thy bounteous (others, 'holy ') spirit and Thy sovereign-power, O Ahura Mazda, by deeds of which the settlements are prospered through Holiness (Asha) for Devotion (our Piety inspired by Ahura) is declaring the laws of Thy wisdom to these Thy settlements, the laws of that wisdom which no man deceives."1 Of course the question by this time arises, Have we any right to restrict the " Immortality" of any passage in the Gâthas, even so far as I have attempted to do above in opening my discussion? Here we have rewards and punishments to the wicked and to the holy, to be meted out in the last changing or end of life (or "of the world"), a veritable Day of Judgment at which, according to the later Zoroastrianism, Rashnu the Just was to weigh the souls in scales, etc. I almost fear that I have ventured too far in saying what I have said above. To proceed, in Yasna 45, 5 the composer says: "Yea, I will declare that which the most bountiful one told me, that word which is the best to be heeded by mortals, and they who therein grant me obedient attention, on 1 See The Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxxi., pp. 99-101. The wording is somewhat changed here. See the book of the Mainyo-i-Khard, West, p. 9. them come Weal and Immortality"; and that this immortality could not be the finite only we see from verse 5, where the souls (so literally) of the righteous are spoken of as desiring these blessings in (locative) the continuous (or more boldly, "in the eternal") Immortality, which blessings are woes to the faithless; and accordingly the Home of Song (or "sublimity"), which is distinctly Heaven, is next mentioned (in verse 8).1 While in Y. 46, 10 we see the souls actually proceeding over the Judge's Bridge which reached from the Sacred Alborj (Mount Haraiti) toward Heaven "Whoever man or woman shall give to me those gifts of life which Thou has known as best, O Mazda, and as a blessing through Thy Righteous Order a Throne established with Thy Good Mind, with these I shall go forth. Yea, with all those of them whom I shall by example incite (lit., accompany) forth to the Judge's Bridge shall I lead on, while (v. 11) the Karpan and the Kavi will join with their evil Kings to slay the lives of holy men by evil actions, they whom their own soul (so literally) and their own conscience (so) shall becry when they approach there where the Judge's Bridge extends, and they shall fall, and in the Lie's abode (that is 'in Hell') for ever (yavói vîspái) shall their habitations (or their bodies '1) be;" and he closes: "He who from Holiness shall verily perform for me, for Zarathushtra, that which is most helpful according to my wish,2 on him shall they bestow reward beyond this world (mizhdem paráhúm 2).” The question is settled. The "Immortality" of the Gâthas was future as well as present. The idea pervades them, and it was only more seldom conceived of as other than a "deathlessness to be completed in a future spiritual state, and after the still sacred body shall have paid the debt of nature. It was this which made the Avesta the book of the other life to the pre-christian world, bringing it to light among nations foreign to its authors. 3 The translations which I have offered differ in no essential respects from those of all moderns on the points at issue, although they may differ from those of some half-educated Zendists in other particulars. The most cautious theologian need not hesitate to cite them. All translators of the Gâthas differ, of course, as to shades of meaning, as do the translators of other equally ancient matter, and we actually try to differ from ourselves, improving upon our past versions when they are no longer fresh; but twist the syntax as we may, the isolated words 5 1 See The Sacred Books of the East, xxxi., p. 127; also Gâthas Comm., pp. 541, 542. 2 See The Sacred Books of the East, xxxi., pp. 140, 141, 144, and Gâthas Comm. pp. 556, 557, 563. 3 The doctrine of the soul's immortality cannot be said to pervade the Rik, certainly not at all so fully as it pervades the Avesta. 4 The rhythmical renderings are, of course, free, and use poetic licence, but in my Gâthas literal ones so far as to the end of Y. 34 are given; and in S. B. E. xxxi., the rendering is quite close, although, as being now some five years and more old, it is susceptible of proportionate improvement. The commentary in my Gáthas is finished, and applies to all; two other Gâthas are in type. 5 * Perhaps I may be allowed to impress on beginners, or on those hesitating whether to become beginners, that all the obscurities have now been elaborately discussed, and that in my are nine-tenths of them plain Zend-Sanskrit, and the main conclusions on Immortality at least have never been the subject of doubt. Gâthic Immortality was so strongly eschatological that I will decidedly add the warning interrogative to the passage written above where I half suggest that its futurity may have been at times for the moment forgotten.1 Surely then, as an eminent Professor recently remarked after reading the Gâthas, "they are a wonderful phenomenon." That Doctrine which of all others we treasure as the first essential of objective religion was taught in Iran at a period so remote that its later variations may have been contemporaneous with Cyrus. We can only thank God for it, as we reflect how many more millions of human beings must have prepared for judgment than if this lore had never been uttered or preserved. Surely this should in time add many a chapter to the written history of the human soul, for what are all our studies in early and later religions but simply the endeavour to record what men have thought and longed for in those interests which concern our highest nature and our ultimate destiny? P.S. As my copy of THE THINKER for July has arrived before the proof-sheet of the paper on Gâthic Immortality goes back, it gives me the opportunity to thank Mr. Moulton, not only for his scharfsinn, but this time for his courtesy as well. Omitting several points on which I had expressed still further my agreement with him and my appreciation of his articles, I pass on to note (as more interesting to the general reader) one little case of disagreement. I do not fully catch Mr. Moulton's meaning in referring to the Zend Grammar and to Brugmann. The Zend book is well worked up on its predecessors and with the help of its author's teacher, and Brugmann is the first authority on his subject, and will continue to be; but surely Mr. Moulton does not suppose that the phonetic laws are all discovered. Every Zend writer that I know of is as eagerly engaged in tracing the exceptions to those laws as in revising the lexicography. Roth used to suggest emendations to the Petersburg Dictionary at every lecture, and on almost every hymn, not to say line (of the Rig Veda); and in Zend one of our most satisfactory occupations is to detect the false writings, of which there are vastly more in the Avesta than in the Veda. No one I believe has any doubt that anuha is a mere blunder of later transcribers for 'anhua oasva. No such word as baranuha was ever spoken just published work I endeavour to furnish an imitation of each Gâthic word in clear Latin, while the Asiatic commentators are given in full, and a critical commentary follows containing the later views of other scholars as well as alternative suggestions of my own; and that no one may suspect me of being unduly influenced by the Pahlavi and Persian versions, I hope to add in an appendix the Sanskrit forms in a continuous translation, which Zendists most careless of the Asiatics may read as pure Vedic if they so prefer. 1I had expressed myself in the passages referred to with much less reserve; I have now altered them a little to correspond with this remark. by native Iranians; and we all (I believe) agree that anhã contains y, and is really equivalent to ahya. I can give Mr. Moulton even a stronger case. What do my readers think of ahé as a genitive instead of 'ahya; as if Sanskrit asya were pronounced ase (!), and that at every moment? But there never was such a termination (yielding, for instance, Zarathushtrahê for trahya!). The explanation is this. The Zend alphabet, as we all know, was restored from the Pahlavi (in order to save half the language from being lost in obscurities); and in the Pahlavi the letter which spells é in Zend spells ya (among other things) in Pahlavi; and this double meaning of the letter, which generally equals é in Zend, has survived also in other words. The termination is 'ahya(a) everywhere. It is astonishing that no one had seen this. There are a throng of similar discoveries to be made if Zendists would only attend to the Pahlavi alphabet. L. H. MILLS. DATE OF THE SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH. BY REV. CANON S. GARRATT, M.A. IN the July number of THE THINKER, Mr. Astley objects to the statement of Dr. W. Wilson, of Utica, U.S., that "the existence of the Samaritan Pentateuch" is a "controlling fact" in the controversy as to the origin of the Old Testament. I have long been as much astonished as Dr. Wilson at the manner in which this fact has been ignored, and am equally astonished at the manner in which the grounds for believing in the antiquity of the Samaritan Pentateuch are ignored by Professor Ryle in the words which Mr. Astley quotes. Professor Ryle says, "It has been very generally and very naturally supposed that the Samaritan community obtained their Torah, which, save in a certain number of comparatively unimportant readings, is identical with the Jewish Torah, from the renegade Jewish priest of the name, according to Josephus, of Manasseh, who instituted on Mount Gerizim a rival templeworship to that on Mount Moriah (Jos. Ant. xi. 7, 8)." There are two entirely distinct questions respecting the Samaritan 'Pentateuch. One relates to the value of its various readings, those in which it differs from the Hebrew Pentateuch. Jerome, Eusebius of Cæsarea, Cyril, among the Fathers, valued them greatly, as in more recent days have Kennicott, Walton, Le Clerc. On the other hand, the Talmud, Gesenius, and most modern critics consider them worthless, as having been introduced into the Samaritan text to serve Samaritan purposes. But this is not the question referred to by Professor Ryle in the passage quoted, and does not in any way affect Dr. Wilson's argument. The other question is, How and when did the Samaritans obtain their Pentateuch? Professor Ryle says that the very general and very natural supposition 1 See The Sacred Books of the Eust, xxxi., p. xxxiv. |