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 Pâ_n_ini and others. When we read in Pâ_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. (Curtius, 'Grundzüge,' p. 60.) The fact that the root _k_hand, in the sense of stepping or striding, has not been fixed in Sanskrit as a verbal, but only as a nominal base, is no real objection either. The same thing has happened over and over again, and has been remarked as the necessary result of the dialectic growth of language by so ancient a scholar as Yâska. ('Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, vol. viii. p. 373 seq.) That scandere in Latin, in the sense of scanning is a late word, does not affect the question at all. What is of real importance is simply this, that the principal Aryan nations agree in representing metre as a kind of stepping or striding. Whether this arose from the fact that ancient poetry was accompanied by dancing or rhythmic choral movements, is a question which does not concern us here. (Carmen descindentes tripodaverunt in verba hæc: Enos Lases, etc. Orelli, 'Inscript.' No. 2271.) The fact remains that the people of India, Greece, and Italy agree in calling the component elements of their verses feet or steps (ποὑς, pes, Sanskrit pad or pâda; padapaṅkti, a row of feet, and _g_agatî, i. e. andante, are names of Sanskrit metres). It is not too much, therefore, to say that they may have considered metre