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has simply given out things existing in the original Avesta scriptures. His method consists in
grouping together imperfectly translated sentences here and there picked out from various
translation-books of the Avesta on any particular subject, and in putting in the main body of a
chapter this whole group in a chain or bead-like form, and marking every sentence at a full stop
with figures, and giving scripture reference for these figures in the foot-note of a page. From the
smart way of writing, a reader, -I mean, a reader of the English language who has never read a letter
of the Zoroastrian scriptures in the original, -may be readily led to believe such a work to be real,
systematic and genuine, propounding the prophet’s (!) own ideas as it were on Zoroastrian
Theology. What is really seen is this that in many places we find in the main body of the chapter the
bead- like ideas to be simply imperfect or wrong translations suitable only to the pet Idols of the
writer with wanton additions and omissions serving his own purpose of carrying his favorite
mission home to the public. If the reader reads a sentence in the main body of the chapter and
notices a figure placed on it, and then sees reference for that figure at the foot of the page he is
reading, he seems to imagine that the idea read by him in the main body is an idea occurring in the
Zoroastrian text referred to in the footnote ; whereas, if the same reader goes actually to refer to the
text and tries to find that idea out, and moreover if he is a student of Avesta, to his great surprise he
sees there absolutely no such idea given in the original Avesta text. Thus it is that the reader is
misguided and such a book meant to pass as authority on Zoroastrian Theology must be publicly
run down as a collection of dangerous views disgracing Avesta study in itself. The writer’s own
shabby views shrouded in the dark silken cover of polish and smartness, thrust and enforced on the
ignorant-of-Avesta Parsee public can no longer prevail, and the Trustees of the Funds and
Properties of the Parsi Panchayet have very aptly dealt a death-blow to such an unguaranteed
heterodox book by refusing to encourage the sale of it from the Funds of the Parsi Zoroastrian
community under their control.
With these initial words we shall now proceed to examine the subject-matter of the book
itself. It is quite certain that 99 percent of the Parsi community are quite ignorant of the reading,
writing, and understanding of Avesta and Pahlavi. Hence a duty towards religion and community
has developed upon me, of showing the existence of counterfeit works in Zoroastrian literature to
my co-religionists and aliens who take interest in the Zoroastrian studies. It is a very difficult task to
write something like a review of such a book as Dr. Dhalla’s Zoroastrian Theology without the
reviewer’s own personal and original knowledge of Avesta and Pahlavi writings in their own
languages. Those who have studies Avesta and Pahlavi as their classical languages in the University
have almost all of them unfortunately imbibed the Idols of the Market Place re Zoroastrianism, and
therefore such students can never be expected to take an unbiased and fair review of such works
proceeding from their own school. The other class who is quite unfamiliar with Avesta and Pahlavi
has fairly speaking no right to write a review on a book requiring a special knowledge thereof, and
even if anybody of this class writes one, it cannot stand in argument against those very few to
whom the pages of Avesta and Pahlavi texts have been wide open. Hence although I myself have
studied Avesta and Pahlavi in their school, I have adopted quite a different line of study and have
left off picking up and accumulating together their Idols of the Market Place, for though I am or
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