ousand peculiar to themselves; as also in
Greek and Latin we find many common words which we look for in vain in
any of the other Indo-European dialects. These facts are full of
historical meaning; and with regard to Zend and Sanskrit, they prove
that these two languages continued together long after they were
separated from the common Indo-European stock.

Still more striking is the similarity between Persia and India in
religion and mythology. Gods unknown to any Indo-European nation are
worshipped under the same names in Sanskrit and Zend; and the change
of some of the most sacred expressions in Sanskrit into names of evil
spirits in Zend, only serves to strengthen the conviction that we have
here the usual traces of a schism which separated a community that had
once been united.

Burnouf, who compared the language and religion of the Avesta
principally with the later classical Sanskrit, inclined at first to
the opinion that this schism took place in Persia, and that the
dissenting Brahmans immigrated afterwards into India. This is still
the prevailing opinion, but it requires to be modified in accordance
with new facts elicited from the Veda. Zend, if compared with
classical Sanskrit, exhibits in many points of grammar, features of a
more primitive character than Sanskrit. But it can now be shown, and
Burnouf himself admitted it, that when this is the case, the Vaidik
differs on the very same points from the later Sanskrit, and has
preserved the same primitive and irregular form as the Zend. I still
hold, that the name of Zend was originally a corruption of the
Sanskrit word _k_handas (i. e. metrical language, cf. scandere),[35]
which is the name given to the language of the Veda by Pa_n_ini and
others. When we read in Pa_n_ini's grammar that certain forms occur in
_k_handas, but not in the classical language, we may almost always
translate the word _k_handas by Zend, for nearly all these rules apply
equally to the language of the Avesta.

[Footnote 35: The derivation of _k_handas, metre, from the same root
which yielded the Latin scandere, seems to me still the most
plausible. An account of the various explanations of this word,
proposed by Eastern and Western scholars, is to be found in Spiegel's
'Grammar of the Parsi Language' (preface, and p. 205), and in his
translation of the Vendidad (pp. 44 and 293). That initial _k_h in
Sanskrit may represent an original sk, has never, as far as I am
aware, been denied.