254 ZOROASTRIAN ELEMENTS IN THE QUR'AN

6. Other Persian Ideas Borrowed.

There are, no doubt, many other matters in which Persian ideas have influenced Islam, but what has been said is sufficient for our purpose. We must not conclude this part of our inquiry, however, without a reference to two other points of some little importance.

One of these is the Muslim belief that every prophet before his death gave notice of the coming of his successor. This idea finds no support in the Bible, where we find prophecies of the coming of the Messiah, but nothing to give rise to the Muhammadan theory. It is probably borrowed from a Zoroastrian work called the Dasatir i Asmani. This work claims to be of very great antiquity, and (owing doubtless to the difficulty of making any sense out of the original 1 text) is believed by many of the modern Parsis to be "composed in the language of heaven"! An interlinear translation into the old Dari dialect of Persian, however, accompanies the text, which is said to have been discovered in Persia early in the last century,
1 The original text (as published in Bombay) is written in Arabic (Persian) characters. By retranslating the Dari in a few passages into Pahlavi and then writing the latter in Arabic characters, I think I have proved that the difficulty in understanding the original text consists in the fact that the transcriber into the Arabic character did not know Pahlavi, and confounded with one another the very difficult combinations of letters in that confused current script.
AND TRADITIONS OF ISLAM. 255

and was edited by Mulla Firuz of Bombay. It consists of fifteen tractates which are supposed to have been revealed to fifteen successive prophets, the first of whom is styled Mahabad and the last Sasan, from whom probably the Sasanian dynasty may be supposed to trace their descent. The Dari translation is said to date from the time of Khusrau Parviz (A.D. 590-5), so that the original must be of some antiquity 1. Near the conclusion of each tractate but the last there is what purports to be a prophecy of the coming of the next prophet in succession. The object of this is very evident. Many Parsis reject the book, but the idea seems to have pleased the Muslims so much that it has found an entrance into their ordinary belief.

Secondly, it is worthy of note that the second verse of every one of these tractates runs thus: "In the name of God, the Giver, the Forgiver, the Merciful, the Just." It is evident that these words are closely related to those which form the introduction to every Surah of the Qur'an except the ninth: "In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful." Probably the Qur'an has borrowed from the Zoroastrian book and not conversely: for the Bundahishnih has the similar clause, "In the Name of Ormazd the Creator."
1 It is mentioned by the authors of the Dabistan i Mazahib and of the Burhan i Qati', so it must have been lost since their day. We have mentioned its recovery.