The first edition of the Zend texts, the critical restitution of the MSS., the outlines of a Zend grammar, with the translation and philological anatomy of considerable portions of the Zoroastrian writings, were the work of the late Eugène Burnouf. He was the real founder of Zend philology. It is clear from his works, and from Bopp's valuable remarks in his 'Comparative Grammar,' that Zend in its grammar and dictionary is nearer to Sanskrit than any other Indo-European language. Many Zend words can be retranslated into Sanskrit simply by changing the Zend letters into their corresponding forms in Sanskrit. With regard to the Correspondence of Letters in Grimm's sense of the word, Zend ranges with Sanskrit and the classical languages. It differs from Sanskrit principally in its sibilants, nasals, and aspirates. The Sanskrit s, for instance, is represented by the Zend h, a change analogous to that of an original s into the Greek aspirate, only that in Greek this change is not general. Thus the geographical name hapta hendu, which occurs in the Avesta, becomes intelligible if we retranslate the Zend h into the Sanskrit s. For sapta sindhu, or the Seven Rivers, is the old Vaidik name of India itself, derived from the five rivers of the Penjâb, together with the Indus, and the Sarasvatî. Where Sanskrit differs in words or grammatical peculiarities from the northern members of the Aryan family, it frequently coincides with Zend. The numerals are the same in all these languages up to 100. The name for thousand, however, sahasra, is peculiar to Sanskrit, and does not occur in any of the Indo-European dialects except in Zend, where it becomes haza_n_ra. In the same manner the German and Slavonic languages have a word for thousand 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.