We use the ordinary form of the word, Zend-Avesta, for though some Orientalists claim that it should be called the Avesta-Zend, it is an open question whether this is the original and only correct term. According to the Pārsīs, Avesta means the sacred text, and Zend its Pahlavī translation, but in the Pahlavī translations themselves, the original work is called the Avesta-Zend, although there is no reason given for this course. Neither the word Avesta nor Zend occurs in the original Zend texts. The word Avesta, however, seems to be the Sanskṛit _avastha_, meaning “authorized text,” while Max Müller[145] claims that the name Zend was originally a corruption of the Sanskṛit word _Kh_andas, or “metrical language,” which is a name given by the Brāhmans to the hymns of the Veda. The word Zend, or Zand, is also used to designate the language[146] in which the greater part of the Avesta is written. In relation to its antiquity, the Zend ranks next to the Sanskṛit, and such authorities as Westergaard and Spiegel, while differing upon many points, agree in considering the Veda the safest key to an understanding of the Avesta. Many of the gods which are unknown to any of the Indo- European nations are worshipped under the same name in Sanskṛit and in Zend, and indeed many of the gods of the Zoroastrians seem to be mere reflections of the more primitive gods of the Veda, but at times the tendency to monotheism in the Zoroastrian religions would appear to be a solemn protest against the worship of all the powers of nature which is found in the Veda. Although there is much kinship between the two tongues, and many striking similarities between the gods of the two mythologies, it does not necessarily prove that portions of the Zend- Avesta were borrowed from the Veda. It does prove, however, that the two works proceeded from a common source of Āryan tradition, and it also proves that the Sanskṛit and the Zend continued to live side by side long after they were separated from the common stock of the Indo- European tongues. There are decided differences between the themes of the Veda and the Avesta, but the link which binds them to a common source is never broken. Some Orientalists claim that there was a schism between the two and that the differences are the result of a religious revolution, while others argue that there was only a long and slow movement which led, by insensible degrees, the vague dualism of the Indo-Īrānians onward to the sharply defined dualism of the Magi. It has been clearly shown that the mythologies of Europe and Asia have a common origin in the idolatry found the valley of the Euphrates; so also the Veda and the Zend-Avesta are two great literary productions flowing from the same fountain head, which is found in the Indo-Īrānian period. DIVISIONS.