A literary history of Persia

RECA PITULA TION8 iof the third and fourth centuries before Christ, that is, duringthe Parthian period.1Huzvdrish) Zawdrish, or Zawdrishn has been already explained,but the derivation of the word itself is more doubtful.ManyJrather wild etymologies have been pro-Huzvarish./ f> fposed, such as Uastur Hushangji s nuzvan-asur," tongue of Assyria," and " Derenbourg's ha Sursl" " this is"Syriac but ; Haug's explanation, that it is a Persian verbalnoun from a verb " zuv&rldan^ togrow old, obsolete," or asimilar verb, supposed by Darmesteter to have " grownobsolete" to such an extent that it isonly preservedold andin itsoriginal sense in the Arabic zawwara (verbal noun tazwlr\" he forced, concealed, distorted, or falsified [the meaning ofa text], he deceived, tricked, misled,"is the most probable.Anyhow a graphic system which writes, for example, " aetunoyemalelunt aigh " for words intended to be read " etun goyandku" (whichis the Pazend or Parsi equivalent of the Huzvarish)may fairly be described as a " forcing," " concealing " or" distorting" of the speech which it is intended to represent.Just as Zend is the " explanation " of an Avestic text inPahlawi, so is Tazend ( = paiti-zainti) a " re-explanation " ofPaz d ndpd\ si?a Pahlawi text itby transcribing into a characterlessambiguous than the Pahlawi script, andsubstituting the proper Persian words for theirrespective Huzvarish equivalents. When the Avesta characteris used for this transcription, the result is called " Pazend " ;when the Persian (/.*.,the Arabic) character isadopted, theterm " Parsi " is often substituted. In either case the productis simply an archaic or archaistic (for unfortunately, owingto the defective character of the Parsee tradition, no greatreliance can be placed on its accuracy in points of detail) formof " modern " (/'.*., post-Muhammadan) Persian, from whichthe whole Aramaic element has disappeared. Of several1See Haug's Essay, pp. 30-31, and West's article on Pahlawi Literaturein vol. ii of the Grundriss d. Iran, Philolog., p. 75.7