A literary history of Persia

io8LITERATURES OF ANCIENT PERSIAcussed in the next section) are known to us by name, and tosome extent in substance, through the early Arabic andMuhammadan Persian writers. The same cause which ledto the loss of the scientific and philosophical nosh of theAvesta (the hdtak mdnsarik : see p. 97 supra), namely, thecomparative indifference of the Zoroastrian priests,who werepractically the sole guardians of the old literature after the fallof the Sasdnian Empire, to all books which did not bear immediatelyon their own interests, led, no doubt,to the lossof the greater part of the profane literature of the Sasanianperiod. The works of this class now extant are so few thatthey may be enumerated in full. They comprise : ( I )TheSocial Code ofthe Zoroastrians in Sasanian Times. (2) TheTdtkdr-i-Zarlrdn (also called the Shdhndma-i-Gushtdsp andthe Pahlawl Shdhndma], translated into German by Geiger inthe Sitzungsberichte d. phll.und hist. Classe d. Kals. bayer. Akad.d. Wissenschaften for 1890, ii, pp. 243-84,and further discussedby Noldeke two years later in the same periodical. 1and his(3) The Tale of Khusraw-i-Kawdtdn (Nushlrwdn)Page. (4) The extremely interesting Kdrndmak-i-Artakhshatr-i-Pdpakdn,or " Gests of Ardashir Babakan," the founderof the Sasanian dynasty, of which the Pahlawi text 2 (whichappears, however, to be edited with little criticism) was publishedatBombay in 1896 by Kayqubad Adharbad DasturNushirwan, while an excellent German translation, withcritical notes and a most luminous Introduction, by ProfessorNoldeke of Strassburg, appeared at Gottingen in 1878.Of this book I shall have occasion to speak much morefully in connection with the Shdh-ndma^ or " Book of Kings."It and the two preceding ones maybe classed together as thesole survivors of the " historical novel " of Sasanian times ;1This work is placed by Noldeke about the year A.D. 500, and isdescribed by him as " vvohl die alteste eigentliche Heldensage, die uns iniranischer Sprache erhalten ist."'The date of its composition is placed by Noldeke about A.D. 600.