Zend

The term zand is a contraction of the Avestan language word '''' (, meaning "commentary, explanation"). == Authorship ==

The authorship of the Zand is unknown. == Date ==

The dating of the Zend is considered complicated in contemporary scholarship, especially in the light of the orality of the text and the lack of reference to it outside of Zoroastrian literature. The earliest manuscripts of the Zend date to the fourteenth century, with colophons assuring the existence of earlier manuscripts at least up to 1000 CE. For several reasons, it has been argued that the Zend was first assembled prior to the Arab conquests. These include the presence of many stylistic and linguistic characteristics that belong to the Sasanian cultural context with none belonging to the post-conquest era (and no references to Islam), as well as the use of source criticism to provide a relative dating of the text alongside other more concretely dated texts. One study has shown that all the major authorities of the Zend flourished from the late fifth to sixth centuries CE. ==Confusions relating to the name==

The priests' practice of including commentaries alongside the text being commented upon led to two different misunderstandings in 18th/19th century western scholarship. "Zend-Avesta" The first was the treatment of "Zend" and "Avesta" as synonyms and the mistaken use of "Zend-Avesta" as the name of Zoroastrian scripture. This mistake derives from a misunderstanding of the distinctions made by priests between manuscripts for scholastic use ("Avesta-with-Zand"), and manuscripts for liturgical use ("clean"). In western scholarship, the former class of manuscripts was misunderstood to be the proper name of the texts, hence the misnomer "Zend-Avesta" for the Avesta. In priestly use, however, "Zand-i-Avesta" or "Avesta-o-Zand" merely identified manuscripts that are not suitable for ritual use since they are not "clean" (''sa'deh'') of non-Avestan elements. "Zend" as the name of a language The second mistaken use of the term Zend was its use as the name of a language or script. In 1759, Anquetil-Duperron reported having been told that Zend was the name of the language of the more ancient writings. Similarly, in his third discourse, published in 1798, Sir William Jones recalls a conversation with a Hindu priest who told him that the script was called Zend, and the language Avesta. This mistake resulted from a misunderstanding of the term pazend, which actually denotes the use of the Avestan alphabet for writing certain Middle Persian texts. Rasmus Rask's seminal work, A Dissertation on the Authenticity of the Zend Language (Bombay, 1821), may have contributed to the confusion. Propagated by N. L. Westergaard's Zendavesta, or the religious books of the Zoroastrians (Copenhagen, 1852–54), by the early/mid 19th century, the confusion became too universal in Western scholarship to be easily reversed, and Zend-Avesta, although a misnomer, continued to be fashionable well into the 20th century. == List of Zands ==

The following list of Zand texts is largely taken from Secunda 2012. • Hērbedestān • A Zand on an Avestan work about the laws of priestly study • Nērangestān • A Zand on an Avestan book concerning ritual • Pahlavi Wīdēwdād • A Zand on an Avestan book primarily concerned with purity law • Pahlavi Yasna • A Zand on an Avestan Yasna (sacrifice book) • Zand ī Fragard ī Jud-dēw-dād ("A Commentary on the Chapters of the Widēwdād") • Zand-i Wahman yasn • An apocalyptic Pahlavi text • Zand ī Gōmēz Kardan ==References==