captious objections and their magic arts, thirty standing on his right hand and thirty on his left, but he baffled their wiles, aided by grace from above, and having forced them to avow themselves at the end of their resources, he completed his victory by reciting the Avesta before them. The legend adds, that after rallying the majority of the people round him, he lived to a good old age, honoured of all men for his saintly life. According to some accounts, he was stricken dead by lightning,* while others say he was killed by a Turanian soldier, Bratrok-resh, in a war against the Hyaonas. * This is, under very diverse forms, the version preferred by Western historians of the post-classical period. The question has often been asked whether Zoroaster belongs to the domain of legend or of history. The only certain thing we know concerning him is his name; all the rest is mythical, poetic, or religious fiction. Classical writers attributed to him the composition or editing of all the writings comprised in Persian literature: the whole consisted, they said, of two hundred thousand verses which had been expounded and analysed by Hermippus in his commentaries on the secret doctrines of the Magi. The Iranians themselves averred that he had given the world twenty-one volumes--the twenty-one _Nasks_ of the Avesta,* which the Supreme Deity had created from the twenty-one words of the Magian profession of faith, the _Ahuna Vairya_. King Vishtaspa is said to have caused two authentic copies of the Avesta--which contained in all ten or twelve hundred chapters**--to be made, one of which was consigned to the archives of the empire, the other laid up in the treasury of a fortress, either Shapigan, Shizigan, Samarcand, or Persepolis.*** * The word _Avesta_, in Pehlevi _Apastak_, whence come the Persian forms _avasta, osta_, is derived from the Achaemenian word _Abasta_, which signifies _law_ in the inscriptions of Darius. The term Zend-Avesta, commonly used to designate the sacred book of the Persians, is incorrectly derived from the expression _Apastac u Zend_, which in Pehlevi designates first the law itself, and then the translation and commentary in more modern language which conduces to a _knowledge (Zend)_ of the law. The customary application, therefore, of the name Zend to the language of the Avesta is incorrect. ** The Dinkart fixes the number of chapters at 1000, and the Shah-Namak at 1200, written on plates of gold. According to Masudi, the book itself and the two commentaries formed 12,000 volumes, written in letters of gold, the twenty-one Nasks each contained 200 pages, and the whole of these writings had been inscribed on 12,000 cow-hides.