Though we were able to establish the fact that these fragments belonged in their language, their contents, and their written character to Eastern Iran, and the evidence of Western writers proved to us that at the time when Alexander of Macedon overthrew the kingdom of the Achæmenids, there were sacred scriptures of considerable extent in Iran--this does not enable us to decide the date of the origin of these scriptures. We have to inquire whether these writings were known in the West of Iran also, before the date of the Sassanids; whether the new collection and revision about the year 350 of our era was satisfied with faithfully representing the old condition of the scriptures, so far as it could be discovered, or whether it altered their contents; whether the influence exercised by Hellenic and Aramaic elements in the time of the Seleucids and Parthians--so obvious in the one case and so searching in the other--affected the contents of the Avesta.[115] This question cannot be set aside, because even under the Sassanids, in spite of their zeal for the Avesta and for Iran, these elements were not unknown. We are aware that Greek and Jewish schools flourished in Syria and Mesopotamia at the date of the Sassanids, that Chosru Nushirvan (531-578 A.D.) gave his protection to Damascius and the Platonists in his kingdom, and caused Greek works to be translated. However much other virtues, required in the Avesta, were extolled in this ruler, such as the foundation of fire-temples, and appointment of sacristans for them, the promotion of agriculture (no temple was to be without cultivated lands) and of marriages--nevertheless sects sprung up within the true religion. Even in official documents of the fifth century we find a certain deviation from the doctrine of the Avesta; under king Kavadh (488-453 A.D.), Mazdak, who proclaimed the community of goods and women, found adherents, and the Arabs speak of sects in Iran which opposed the teaching of the Magians.[116] They mention the Zarvanites, the Gayomarthians, and others, of whom the Zarvanites sought to derive the good and evil deity from some higher abstraction,[117] while the Gayomarthians represented the evil deity as proceeding from the thought of the good deity. Had conceptions of this kind, and other later views which we find in their doctrines, influence on the restoration of the canon? The fact that the sacred writings were composed in a language no longer current, when the canon was restored, is not a complete safeguard against changes and interpolations, for the priests at that time may have understood the language, and therefore may possibly have been able to compose in it. FOOTNOTES: [76] [Cf. Darmesteter, "Zend-Avesta," Introduction, c. iii.] [77] Haug, "The Book of Arda Viraf," p. 142 ff. [78] Herbedh is the old Bactrian _athrapaiti_. [79] Haug, "Pahlavi-Pazand Glossary," p. 144, 146. [80] It is found in the so-called "Great Rivayat."