Thread by @ABharatram

Not until the Zend language was known to European philologists. Zend-avesta was first published by Anquetil Du Perron in 1771 (after he returned from India in 1762).

Excerpt:"After various adventures Anquetil was successful in
his attempt: he procured copies of the Avesta and..

https://twitter.com/CKRaju14/status/1600746785193852928

other works
relating to the Zarathustrian religion, made translations with
the help of the Destur Darab, and returned in triumph to Europe."

The German translation of Anquetil's book was published by Johann Friedrich Kleuker in 1781.

Later, William Jones declared his infamous..

hypothesis that few languages shared common ancestry, based on postulation of similarities between Sanskrit and Greek, Latin, German, etc.

Rasmus Kristian Rask identified that Zend, though allied to Sanskrit, but it was a distinct language.

Franz Bopp published a comparative..

grammar in 1833-35. A hypothesis to compare the grammatical features of Sanskrit with Zend(Avestan), Greek, Latin, German,etc.

Excerpt:"the real founder of Zend philology was Eugène Burnouf,
whose 'Commentaire sur le Yaçna,' and 'Etudes sur les Langue et les Textes Zends,' are..

a monument of patient learning and critical acumen."

The discovery that Zend was one of the languages of the Cuneiform inscriptions, engraved on the sepulchre of King Darius I, at Nakhsh-i-Rustam, near Persepolis; provided a real impetus for Aryan vs Non-Aryan racial discourse.

Excerpt:"At the same time the ancient Persian inscriptions at Persepolis and Behistun were deciphered by Burnouf in Paris, by Lassen in Bonn, and by Sir Henry Rawlinson in Persia. Thus was revealed the existence, at the time of the first Achæmenian kings, of a language closely..

connected with that of the Avesta, and the last doubts as to the authenticity of the Zend books were at length removed."

Excerpt:"And now that we can read, thanks
to the wonderful discoveries of Rawlinson, Burnouf, and Lassen,
the same records from which Herodotus derived his..

information, we find Darius calling himself, in the Cuneiform inscriptions, ‘a
Persian, the son of a Persian, an Arian, and of Arian descent.’"

Deciphered content of the Cuneiform inscriptions on the sepulchre of the King Darius I at Nakhsh-i-Rustam, served as the basis for..

the racial connotation of 'Aryan'.

Excerpt:"I (am) Darius, the great king, the king of kings, the king of all inhabited countries, the king of this great earth far and near, the son of Hystaspes, an Achæmenian, a Persian, the son of a Persian, an 'Arian', of
'Arian' descent."

Identity of speech can never imply the identity of race, but Max Müller professed kindred relationships between languages.

Excerpt:“The ultimate unity of the human race may be admitted, but Professor Max Müller has maintained a nearer kinship of all speakers of Aryan
languages.

He has asserted that the same blood runs in the veins of English soldiers ‘as in the veins of the dark Bengalese,’ and has had the courage to affirm that ‘there is not an English jury nowadays which, after examining the hoary documents of language, would reject the claim of..

a common descent
and a legitimate relationship between Hindu, Greek,
and Teuton.’”

https://twitter.com/ABharatram/status/1645249045621817346?t=2vQ4OzWJDEsjoNW4CnB7Rw&s=19

References:
•Avesta: The Religious Books of the Parsees by Arthur Henry Bleeck
•The Destiny of the Soul-A critical history of the doctrine of a future life by William Rounseville Alger
•The Zend Avesta, Part 1, The Venîdâd (Sacred Books of The East, Vol.4) by James Darmesteter

•The Persian Cuneiform Inscription at Behistun, Decyphered and Translated by Henry Creswicke Rawlinson
•The Discovery and Decipherment of The Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions by Arthur John Booth
•The Languages of the Seat of War in the East by Friedrich Max Müller

•History of Herodotus Vol.4 by George Rawlinson
•The Origin of the Aryans by Isaac Taylor