Leyde; 1898.]

[Footnote 3: See the review by Barbier de Meynard of the edition of
_Mahasin wal Azdad_ in the Revue Citique, 1900, 276.]

In the Parsi ecclesiastical literature of an ethical nature we find
definitely settled what is "proper" and, on the other hand, what is
"improper."[1] It is well known that books under this title,--"the
proper and the improper" or "the licit and the illicit"--are to be found
among the Pahlavi tracts the time of whose composition can be fixed
somewhere between the seventh and the ninth centuries A.D.[2] Comparing
the Pahlavi tracts with reference to these questions with Arabic books
on good and bad qualities and manners, we have to bear in mind the
general features, general outline, as well as the conditions of
civilisation of the period when these books were written, in other
words, the circumstances of their intimate relation generally of a
cultural nature, particularly of a literary form obtaining between the
Arab and Persian nations, and between Islam and Parsism. Not only in
detail, but also in their nature these books must be differentiated in
proportion as were different the clergy who wrote these ethical tracts
from didactic works of a strong legendary element belonging to the pen
of secular people. These literary monuments must be differentiated quite
as much as their authors and with reference to them we may institute the
same parallel which we suggested above between the Parsi clergy and the
Iranophile party of the Shuubiya.

[Footnote 1: Shayed-na-shayed.]

[Footnote 2: _Shayast la-shayast_ West Pahlavi Texts, Part I, 1880.
Sacred Books of the East, Vol. V. 237-407.]