A literary history of Persia

to6LITERATURES OF ANCIENT PERSIAWest as "one of the most difficulttopics, characterised byPahlawi texts in existence, both to understand and to translate."1-The Shikand-gumdnlk Vijar' (" Doubt-dispelling Explanation"), a controversial religious work, composed towards theend of the ninth century, in defence of the Zoro-"urni'nfifvijarastr ian dualism against the Jewish, Christian,and Muhammadan theories of theManichaean,nature and origin of evil ;and described by West as " thenearest approach to a philosophicaltreatise that remains extantin Pahlawi literature." The Dina-i-Mainyo [orM K&'" Mainbg} -i-Khirad (" Opinions of the Spirit ofWisdom ") contains the answers of this spirit tosixty-two inquiries on matters connected with the Zoroastrianfaith. The publication of the Pahlawi text by Andreas (Kiel,1882), and of the Pazend text with Neriosengh's Sanskrittranslation by West (Stuttgart, 1871), who has also publishedEnglish translations of both texts (1871 and 1885), render itone of the most accessible of Pahlawi works, and as pointed outby Noldeke in his translation of the Kdrndmak-i-drtakhshatr-idn^one of the best books for beginning the study otbook- Pahlawi. The Arda-Vlr&f Ndmak is anotherVer 7 well-known work, accessible in the original(Bombay, 1872) and in English and Frenchtranslations, and may be briefly described as a prose ZoroastrianParadiso and Inferno.It is interesting for the pictureitgives of the religious and material anarchy in Persia producedby the invasion of "the accursed Alexander the Roman,"of the Sdsanian national and religious revival in the thirdcentury of our era, and of the Zoroastrianideas of the futurelife. In the latter we can hardlyfail to be struck by theanalogy between the Chinvat Bridgeand the Muhammadan1Translated by West in vol. xxiv of the Sacred Books of the East series(Oxford, 1885), pp. 115-251 and; published in Pazend by the same scholarin conjunction with the Pars! Hoshang in 1887.