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ZENATA, or ZANATA , a Berber tribe of Morocco in the district of the central Atlas. Their tribal home seems to have been south of Oran in Algeria, and they seem to have early claimed an Arab origin, though it was alleged by the Arabs that they were descendants of Goliath, i.e. Philistines or Phoenicians (Ibn Khaldun, vol. iii. p. 184 and vol. iv. p. 597). They were formerly a large and powerful confederation, and took a prominent part in the history of the Berber race. The Beni- Marin and Wattasi dynasties which reigned in Morocco from 1213 t0 1548 were of Zenata origin. ZEND-AVESTA, the original
original
Although the Avesta is a work of but moderate compass (comparable, say, to the Iliad and Odyssey taken together), there nevertheless exists no single MS, which gives it in entirety. This circumstance alone is enough to reveal the true nature of the book: it is a composite whole, a collection of writings, as the Old Testament is. It consists, as we shall afterwards see, of the last remains of the extensive sacred literature in which the Zoroastrian faith was formerly set forth. Contents.As we now have it, the Avesta consists of five partsthe Yasna, the Vispered, the Vendidad, the Yashts, and the Khordah Avesta. 1. The Yasna, the principal liturgical book of the Parsecs, in 72 chapters (haiti, ha), contains the texts that are read by the priests at the solemn yasna (Izeshne) ceremony, or the general sacrifice in honour of all the deities. The arrangement of the chapters is purely liturgical, although their matter in part has nothing to do with the liturgical action. The kernel of the whole book, around which the remaining portions are grouped, consists of the Gathers or " hymns " of Zoroaster (q.v.), the oldest and most sacred portion of the entire canon. The Yasna accordingly falls into three sections of about equal length: (a) The introduction (chaps. 1-27) is, for the most part, made up of long-winded, monotonous, reiterated invocations. Yet even this section includes some interesting texts, e.g. the Hama (Horn) Yasht (9, 11) and the ancient confession of faith (12), which is of value as a document for the history of civilization. (b) The Gathers (chaps. 28-54) contain the discourses, exhortations and revelations of the prophet, written in a metrical style and an archaic language, different in many respects from that ordinarily used in the Avesta. As to the authenticity of these hymns, see ZOROASTER. The Gathas proper, arranged according to the metres in which they are written, fall into five subdivisions (28-34, 43-46 47-50, 51, 53). Between chap. 37 and chap. 43 is inserted the so-called Seven-Chapter Yasna (haptanghaiti), a number of small prose pieces not far behind the Gathers in antiquity. (c) The so-called Later Yasna (Aparo Yasno) (chaps. 54-72) has contents of considerable variety, but consists mainly of invocations. Special mention ought to be made of the Sraosha (Srosh) Yasht (57), the prayer to fire (62), and the great liturgy for the sacrifice to divinities of the water (63-69).2. The Vispered, a minor liturgical work in 24 chapters (karde), is alike in form and substance completely dependent on the Yasna, to which it is a liturgical appendix. Its separate chapters are interpolated in the Yasna in order to produce a modifiedor expandedYasna ceremony. The name Vispered, meaning " all the chiefs " (vise ratavo), has reference to the spiritual heads of the religion of Ormuzd, invocations to whom form the contents of the first chapter of the book. 3. The Vendidad, the priestly code of the Parsees, contains in 22 chapters (fargard) a kind of dualistic account of the creation (chap. I), the legend of Yima and the golden age (chap. 2), and in the bulk of the remaining chapters the precepts of religion with regard to the cultivation of the earth, the care of useful animals, the protection of the sacred elements, such as earth, fire and water, the keeping of a man's body from defilement, together with the requisite measures of precaution, elaborate ceremonies of purification, atonements, ecclesiastical expiations and so forth. These prescriptions are marked by a conscientious classification based on considerations of material, size and number; but they lose them-selves in an exaggerated casuistry. Still the whole of Zoroastrian legislation is subordigate to one great point of view : the warpreached without intermissionagainst Satan and his noxious creatures, from which the whole book derives its name; for " Vendidad " is a modern corruption for vi-daevo-datem" the anti-demonic Law." Fargard 18 treats of the true and false priest, of the value of the house-cock, of the four paramours of the she-devil, and of unlawful lust. Fargard 19 is a fragment of the Zoroaster legend: Ahriman tempts Zoroaster; Zoroaster applies to Ormuzd for the revelation of the law, Ahriman and the devils despair, and flee down into hell. The three concluding chapters are devoted to sacerdotal medicine. The Yasna, Vispered and Vendidad together constitute the Avesta in the stricter sense of the word, and the reading of them appertains to the priest alone. For liturgical purposes the separate chapters of the Vendidad are sometimes inserted among those of the Yasna and Vispered. The reading of the Vendidad in this case may, when viewed according to the original intention, be taken as corresponding in some sense to the sermon, while that of the Yasna and Vispered may be said to answer to the hymns and prayers of Christian worship .4. The Yashts, i.e. " songs of praise," in so far as they have not been received already into the Yasna, form a collection by them-selves. They contain invocations of separate Izads, or angels, number 21 in all, and are of widely divergent extent and antiquity. The great Yashtssome nine or tenare impressed with a higher stamp: they are cast almost throughout in a poetical mould, and represent the religious poetry of the ancient Iranians. So far they may be compared to the Indian Rig-Veda. Several of them may have been cemented together from a number of lesser poems or songs. They are a rich source of mythology and legendary history. Side by side with full, vividly coloured descriptions of the Zoroastrian deities, they frequently interweave, as episodes, stories from the old heroic fables. The most important of all, the 19th Yasht, gives a consecutive account of the Iranian heroic saga in great broad lines, together with a prophetic presentment of the end of this world. 5. The Khordah Avesta, i.e. the Little Avesta, comprises a collection of shorter prayers designed for all believersthe laity included and adapted for the various occurrences of ordinary life. In part, these brief petitions serve as convenient substitutes for the more lengthy Yashtsespecially the so-called Nyaishes. Over and above the five books just enumerated, there are a considerable number of fragments from other books, e.g. the Nirangistan, as well as quotations, glosses and glossaries. The Larger Avesta and the Twenty-one Nasks.In its present form, however, the Avesta is only a fragmentary remnant of the old priestly literature of Zoroastrianism, a fact confessed by the learned tradition of the Parsees themselves, according to which the number of Yashts was originally thirty. The truth is that we possess but a trifling portion of a very much larger Avesta, if we are to believe native tradition, carrying us back to the Sassanian period, which tells of a larger Avesta in twenty-one books called nasks or nosks, as to the names of which we have several more or less detailed accounts, particularly in the Pahlavi Dinkard (gth century A.D.) and in the Rivayats. From the same sources we learn that this larger Avesta was only a part of a yet more extensive original Avesta, which is said to have existed before Alexander. We are told that of a number of nasks only a small portion was found to be extant " after Alexander." For example, of the seventh nask, which " bef"*e Alexander " had as many as fifty chapters, there then remained only thirteen; and similar allegations are made with regard to the eighth, ninth, tenth and other nasks. The Rivayats state that, when after the calamity of Alexander they sought for the books again, they found a portion of each nask, but found no nask in completeness except the Vendidad. But even of the remains of the Avesta, as these lay before the author of the gth century, only a small residue has survived to our time. Of all the nasks one only, the nineteenth, has come down on us intactthe Vendidad. All else, considered as wholes, have vanished in the course of the centuries. It would be rash summarily to dismiss this old tradition of the twenty-one nasks as pure invention. The number twenty-one points, indeed, to an artificial arrangement of the material; for twenty-one is a sacred number, and the most sacred prayer of the Parsees, the so-called Ahuno Vairyo (Honovar) contains twenty-one words; and it is also true that in the enumeration of the nasks we miss the names of the books we know, like the Yasna and the Yashts. But we must assume that these were included in such or such a nask, as the Yashts in the seventeenth or Bakan Yasht; or, it may be that other books, especially the Yasna, are a compilation extracted for liturgical purposes from various nasks. Further, the statements of the Dinkard lcaveon us a very distinct impression that the author actually had before him the text of the nasks, or at all events of a large part of them: for he expressly states that the eleventh nask was entirely lost, so that he is unable to give the slightest account of its contents. And, besides, in other directions there are numerous indications that such books once really existed. In the Khordah Avesta, as we now have it, we find two SrOsh Yashts; with regard to the first, it is expressly stated in old MSS. that it was taken from the Hadokht nask (the twentieth, according to the Dinkard). From the same nask also a considerable fragment (Yts. 21 and 22 in Westergaard) has been taken. So, also, the Nirangistan is a portion of the seventeenth (or Hasparani) nask. Lastly, the numerous other fragments, the quotations in the Pahlavi transiation, the many references in the Bundahish to passages of this Avesta not now known to us, all presuppose the existence in the Sassanian period of a much more extensive Avesta literature than the mere prayer-book now in our hands. The existence of a larger Avesta, even as late as the 9th century A.D., is far from being a mere myth. But, even granting that a certain obscurity still hangs undispelled over the problem of the old Avesta, with its twenty-one nasks, we may well believe the Parsees themselves, when they affirm that their sacred literature has passed through successive stages of decay, the last of which is represented by the present Avesta. In fact we can clearly trace this gradual process of decay in certain portions of the Avesta during the last few centuries. The great Yashts are not of veryfrequent occurrence in the manuscripts: some of them, indeed, are already met with but seldom, and MSS. containing all the Yashts are of extreme rarity. Of the fifteenth, seventeenth and nineteenth Yashts the few useful copies that we possess are derived from a single MS. of the year 1591 A.D. Origin and History.While all that Herodotus (i.132) has to say is that the Magi sang "the theogony " at their sacrifices, Pausanias is able to add (v. 27. 3) that they read from a book. Hermippus, in the 3rd century B.C., affirmed that Zoroaster, the founder of the doctrine of the Magi, was the author of twenty books, each containing roo,000 verses. According to the Arab historian, Tabari, these were written on 12,000 COW-hides, a statement confirmed by Masudi, who writes: "Zartusht gave to the Persians the book called Avesta. It consisted of twenty-one parts, each containing 200 leaves. This book, in the writing which Zartusht invented and which the Magi called the writing of religion, was written on 12,000 cowhides, bound together by golden bands. Its language was the Old Persian, which now no one understands." These assertions sufficiently establish the existence and great bulk of the sacred writings. Parsee tradition adds a number of interesting statements as to their history. According to the Arda-Viraf-Narna the religion revealed through Zoroaster has subsisted in its purity for 300 years, when Iskander Rumi (Alexander the Great) invaded and devastated Iran
Historical criticism may regard this tradition, in many of its features, as mere fiction, or as a perversion of facts made for the purpose of transferring the blame for the loss of a sacred literature to other persons than those actually responsible for it. We may, if we choose, absolve Alexander from the charge of vandalism of which he is accused, but the fact nevertheless remains, that he ordered the palace at Persepolis to be burned (Diod., xvii. 72; Curt., v. 7). Even the statement as to the one or two complete copies of the Avesta may be given up as the invention of a later day. Nevertheless the essential elements of the tradition remain unshaken, viz. that the original Avesta, or old sacred literature, divided on account of its great bulk and heterogeneous contents into many portions and a variety of separate works, had an actual existence in numerous copies and also in the memories of priests, that, although gradually diminishing in bulk, it remained extant during the period of foreign domination and ecclesiastical decay after the time of Alexander, and that it served as a basis for the redaction subsequently made. The kernel of this native traditionthe fact of a late collection of older fragmentsappears indisputable. The character of the book is entirely that of a compilation. In its outward form the Avesta, as we now have it, belongs to the Sassanian periodthe last survival of the compilers' work already alluded to. But this Sassanian origin of the Avesta must not be misunderstood: from the remnants and heterogenepus fragments at their disposal, the diasceuast or diasceuasts composed a new canonerected a new edifice from the materials of the old. In point of detail, it is now impossible to draw a sharp
opinion , they were written in Media under the Achaemenian dynasty; according to some, their source must be sought in the east, according to others, in the west of Iran
opinion of orthodox Parsees, does not even claim to come from Zoroaster. As the Gathas now constitute the kernel of the most sacred prayer-book, viz. the Yasna, so they ultimately proved to be the first nucleus of a religious literature in general. The language in which Zoroaster taught, especially a later development of it, remained as the standard with his followers, and became the sacred language of the priesthood of that faith which he had founded; as such it became, so to speak, absolved from the ordinary conditions of time and space. Taught and acquired as an ecclesiastical language, it was enabled to live an artificial life long after it had become extinct as a vernacularin this respect comparable to the Latin of the middle ages or the Hebrew of the rabbinical schools. The priests, who were the composers and repositories of these texts, succeeded in giving them a perfectly general form. They refrained from practically every allusion to ephemeral or local circumstances. Thus we search vainly in the Avesta itself for any precise data to determine the period of its composition or the place where it arose. The original country of the religion, and the seat of the Avesta language, ought perhaps to be sought rather in the east of Iran (Seistan and the neighbouring districts). But neither the spiritual literature nor the sacred tongue remained limited to the east. The geography of the Avesta points both to the east and the west, particularly the north-west of Iran, but with a decided tendency to gravitate towards the east. The vivid description of the basin of the Hilment (Yasht 19, 6560 is peculiarly instructive. The language of the Avesta travelled with the Zoroastrian religion and with the main body of the priesthood, in all probability, that is to say, from east to west; within the limits of Iran it became international.As has been already stated, the Avesta now in our hands is but a small portion of the book as restored and edited under the Sassanians. The larger part perished under the Mahommedan rule and under the more barbarous tyranny of the Tatars, when throughconversion and extermination the Zoroastrians became a mere remnant that concealed its religion and neglected the necessary copying of manuscripts. A most meagre proportion only of the real religious and ritual writings, the sacerdotal law and the liturgy, has been preserved to our time. The great bulkover three-fourths of the Sassanian contentsespecially the more secular literature collected, has fallen a prey to oblivion. The under- standing
The MSS. of the Avesta are, comparatively speaking, of recent
The first European scholar to direct attention to the Avesta was Hyde of Oxford, in his Historia Religionis Veterum Persarum eoramque Magorum (1700), which, however, failed to awake any lasting interest
EmTIoNs.--Zend-Avesta, ed. by N. L. Westergaard (Copenhagen 185254), complete; F. Spiegel, Avesta (Vienna, 1853-58), only Vendidad, Vispered and Yasna, but with the Pahlavi translation; K. Geldner (Stuttgart, 188696). Translations.Anquetil Duperron, Zend-Avesta, Ouvrage de Zoroastre (Paris, 1771); Fr. Spiegel, 3 vols. ( Leipzig
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