hou wilt be renowned as Feridun.

[Footnote 39: Cf. Atkinson's Shahnameh, p. 48.]

As a last stage in the mythe of the Vaidik Traitana we may mention
versions like those given by Sir John Malcolm and others, who see in
Zohak the representative of an Assyrian invasion lasting during the
thousand years of Zohak's reign, and who change Feridun into Arbaces
the Mede, the conqueror of Sardanapalus. We may then look at the whole
with the new light which Burnouf's genius has shed over it, and watch
the retrograde changes of Arbaces into Feridun, of Feridun into
Phredun, of Phredun into Thraetaona, of Thraetaona into
Traitana,--each a separate phase in the dissolving view of mythology.

As to the language of Persia, its biography is at an end with the
Shahnameh. What follows exhibits hardly any signs of either growth or
decay. The language becomes more and more encumbered with foreign
words; but the grammar seems to have arrived at its lowest ebb, and
withstands further change. From this state of grammatical numbness,
languages recover by a secondary formation, which grows up slowly and
imperceptibly at first in the speech of the people; till at last the
reviving spirit rises upwards, and sweeps away, like the waters in
spring, the frozen surface of an effete government, priesthood,
literature, and grammar.

_October, 1853._

IV.

THE AITAREYA-BRAHMANA.[40]

The Sanskrit text, with an English translation of the
Aitareya-brahma_n_a, just published at Bombay by Dr. Martin Haug, the
Superintendent of Sanskrit Studies in the Poona College, constitutes
one of the most important additions lately made to our knowledge of
the ancient literature of India. The work is published by the Director
of Public Instruction, in behalf of Government, and furnishes a new
instance of the liberal and judicious spirit in which Mr. Howard
bestows his patronage on works of real and permanent utility. The
Aitareya-brahma_n_a, containing the earliest speculations of the
Brahmans on the meaning of their sacrificial prayers, and the purport
of their ancient religious rites, is a work which could be properly
edited nowhere but in India. It is only a small work of about two
hundred pages, but it presupposes so thorough a familiarity with all
the externals of the religion of the Brahmans, the various offices of
their priests, the times and seasons of their sacred rites, the form
of their innumerable sacrificial utensils, and the preparation of