A literary history of Persia

'30 INTRODUCTORYthe profundity of the German school, yet gifted with somethingof that clearness as to the issues and alternatives of everyquestion which gives so great a charm to French science, andadding to these that combination of fairness and decision withwhich we are wont to credit the Anglo-Saxon genius, isProfessor A. V. Williams Jackson of Columbia University,New York. In a series of admirable papers published in theProceedings of the American Oriental Society, the American'Journal of Philology, &c., he has successivelydealt with mostof the difficult questions above alluded to, and with manyother points connected with the history and doctrine of Zoroastrianism;and has finallysummed uphis views in a work, atonce most scholarly and most readable, entitledZoroaster, theProphet of indent Iran (New York, 1899). His principalconclusions are as follows :I. That Zoroaster was a perfectly historical personage, a memberof the Median tribe of the Magi.2. That he flourished about the middle of the seventhwmiamsTack- century before Christ that is, during the dominion ofs n s the Medes and before the rise of the Achaemenianconclusions. , .. ,.power and died about B.C. 583, aged 77.3. That he was a native of Western Persia (Atropatene or Media),but that his first notable success was gained in Bactria (Balkh),where he succeeded in converting King Vishtaspa (Gushtasp).4. That the Gathas (admittedly the oldest portion of the Avesta)reflect with fidelity the substance of his original preaching inBalkh.5. That from Bactria the religion of Zoroaster spread rapidlythroughout Persia, and was dominant in Pars (Persis proper) underthe later ^Achaemenians,but that the date of its introduction into thispart of Iran and its adoption by the people and rulers of Pars isuncertain.Though theseconclusions are not universally accepted, theevidence, in the opinion of the writer, is strongly in theirfavour, more particularly the evidence of native tradition inthe period immediately succeeding the Muhammadan Conquest,which is derived mainly from the tradition current in