n from among much
that has been written on the etymology of _k_handas, a most happy
remark of Professor Kuhn, who traces the Northern skald, poet, back to
the same root as the Sanskrit _k_handas, metre. (Kuhn's 'Zeitschrift,'
vol. iii. p. 428.)]

In mythology also, the 'nomina and numina' of the Avesta appear at
first sight more primitive than in Manu or the Mahabharata. But if
regarded from a Vaidik point of view, this relation shifts at once,
and many of the gods of the Zoroastrians come out once more as mere
reflections and deflections of the primitive and authentic gods of the
Veda. It can now be proved, even by geographical evidence, that the
Zoroastrians had been settled in India before they immigrated into
Persia. I say the Zoroastrians, for we have no evidence to bear us out
in making the same assertion of the nations of Persia and Media in
general. That the Zoroastrians and their ancestors started from India
during the Vaidik period can be proved as distinctly as that the
inhabitants of Massilia started from Greece. The geographical
traditions in the first Fargard of the Vendidad do not interfere with
this opinion. If ancient and genuine, they would embody a remembrance
preserved by the Zoroastrians, but forgotten by the Vaidik poets--a
remembrance of times previous to their first common descent into the
country of the Seven Rivers. If of later origin, and this is more
likely, they may represent a geographical conception of the
Zoroastrians after they had become acquainted with a larger sphere of
countries and nations, subsequent to their emigration from the land of
the Seven Rivers.[36]

[Footnote 36: The purely mythological character of this geographical
chapter has been proved by M. Michel Breal, 'Journal Asiatique,'
1862.]

These and similar questions of the highest importance for the early
history of the Aryan language and mythology, however, must await their
final decision, until the whole of the Veda and the Avesta shall have
been published. Of this Burnouf was fully aware, and this was the
reason why he postponed the publication of his researches into the
antiquities of the Iranian nation. The same conviction is shared by
Westergaard and Spiegel, who are each engaged in an edition of the
Avesta, and who, though they differ on many points, agree in
considering the Veda as the safest key to an understanding of the
Avesta. Professor Roth, of Tuebingen, has well expressed the mutual
relation of the Ved