or ZENDAVESTA, a book containing the religion of the Magians, or worshippers of fire, who were disciples of the famous Zoroaster. See MAGI.

This book was composed by Zoroaster during his retirement in a cave, and contained all the pretended revelations of that impostor. The first part contains the liturgy of the magi, which is used among them in all their oratories and fire-temples to this day; they reverence it as the Christians do the Bible, and the Mahometans the Koran. There are found many things in the zend taken out of the scriptures of the Old Testament, which Dr. Prideaux thinks is an argument that Zoroaster was originally a Jew. Great part of the Psalms of David are inserted: he makes Adam and Eve to have been the first parents of mankind, and gives the same history of the creation and deluge as Moses does, and commands the same observances about clean and unclean beasts, the same law of paying tithes to the sacerdotal order, with many other institutions of Jewish extraction. The rest of its contents are an historical account of the life, actions, and prophecies of its author, with rules and exhortations to moral living. The Mahometans have a sect which they call Zendikites, who are said to be the Sadducees of Mahometanism, denying providence and the resurrection, believing... lieving the transmigration of souls, and following the zend of the magi.