The History of Antiquity, Vol. 5 (of 6)

"To thy kingdom and thy truth, I offer praise, Ahura, Asha. Listen to this with kindly spirit, Mazda; incline thine ear, Ahura. Let the worshippers of the liar be few; may all these turn themselves to the priests of the truthful fire! The good must rule over us, not the evil! Ahura, the all-knowing, cannot be deceived. I will think of thee, most glorious one, at the final departure of life. With prayers, O Mazda, Asha, will I come forward to praise thee, and with the works of Vohumano. In your dwelling, O wise one, sound the praises of them that give thanks. I will be called the singer of thy praises, and will continue to be so as long as I can, by advancing the laws of life, that the life of the world may continue of itself. With the verses which have been composed and handed down for your praise, I will approach both of you, and with uplifted hands. As a worshipper I will invoke you one and all, ye who give blessing, as well as all those who attain to the strong bridges of your blessedness, Auramazda, Asha, and Vohumano; those bridges which belong to you. Come ye to my aid."[241 - "Yaçna," 47-49, according to Haug's translation.]

These are the essential traits of the doctrine of the Gathas. Auramazda, himself a shining one (hvathra), has created the shining bodies of the heaven, the earth, the waters, the trees, and men; he has appointed their paths for the stars. He is the sustainer of the world, inasmuch as he devises the good sayings (daena) for the protection of the good creation. He is light and truth, and therefore is not to be deceived; he shows the right way to Zarathrustra, and gives him the proper charms against the evil spirits. That at this stage of ideas there can be no myth attached to Auramazda, i. e. to the concentrated essence of the gods of light, is obvious. In the Gathas it is only the quite abstract forces of Vohumano and Asha, of good disposition and truthfulness, which stand beside him. Auramazda is simply the creator and lord; and the same position is ascribed to him as we saw (p. 87) in the inscriptions of the Achæmenids. In spite of the strongly-marked trait of spiritualisation and abstraction which runs through the Gathas, there is no lack in them of unreflecting and naïve conceptions, which have come down to us from ancient days. It is true that the contrasts in nature and men are elevated to the opposition of truth and falsehood, and the service of truth is proclaimed as the highest command; but on the other hand, it is the strong fire of Auramazda which causes the right to be recognised, and gives the decision in battle.[242 - "Yaçna," 31, 3, 19; 33, 3; 46, 7.] It is the good sayings which sustain the world, i. e. the old magic of prayers and invocations is to keep off the evil, and increase the strength of the good, spirits. However high may be the conception of Auramazda, he who walks in his way, and performs the commands of purity, not only expects his reward, but insists on it; he desires to obtain ten mares and stallions, and at least one camel; he wishes for the blessings of Haurvatat in order to sacrifice from them; he desires continuance and power, health and long life. In these traits the old contrast between powers that give increase, blessing, and life, and powers of destruction, is plainly retained.

From the beginning the evil one was ranged over against Auramazda as his twin brother. He has created all that is evil, but nevertheless he is without any independent power of creation. If the Gathas express this merely in such a manner that they give prominence to Auramazda as the creator, they were as far from setting up a dualism of equally-balanced forces, as any other religion has been from attempting such a task, and carrying it out. The other fragments of the Avesta leave no doubt of the fact, that Angromainyu was not in a position to create the world according to his own will; he can only implant the form of evil in the good creation of Auramazda; he puts desolation, destruction, and death in the place of increase. The Vendidad quotes a whole series of lands which Auramazda created good, and enumerates the evils which the deadly Angromainyu brought into each: – into one winter, into another excessive heat; in one case vermin, in another disease, in a third beasts of prey. In the same way, in opposition to moral good, the evil one creates idleness, lies, lust, doubt, disbelief. An equally poised power of the two deities would have led to a direct conflict between them, which occurs nowhere in the Avesta; God and the devil only contend for the increase and injury of the world, and for the souls of men. The relative inferiority of the evil deity has not escaped the Greeks. "Some are of opinion," Plutarch says, "that there are two opposite deities, one of which framed the good, the other the evil. Others, however, name the better power the god, the other the demon, as Zoroaster the Magian. He calls one Oromazdes, the other Areimanius, and states that Oromazdes most resembles light among perceptible things, and Areimanius gloom and uncertainty."[243 - Plut. "De Isid." 46.] It is a later speculation, diverging from the Avesta, which formed the good and evil spirits into simple forces, and ranged them against each other with equal powers.[244 - From the invocation of the time without limit, Zrvana akarana, in the Avesta (p. 79), some have sought to draw the conclusion, that this is the supreme principle, and that Auramazda and Angromainyu proceeded from it. This is no less incorrect than if it were maintained that according to the Christian dogma God and the devil owed their origin to eternity. In the Avesta Zrvana akarana does not assume an important place either at the creation or in the worship. I have already remarked above, that the spirits of light are called in the Rigveda sons of Aditi, i. e. of the unlimited, the eternal. Parallel similitudes which, however, mean no more than the eternity of the gods, could be made even among the Arians of Iran. But there is a difference between speaking in similes, and derivation from a principle. The faith of Iran was not a philosophical system, but a religion; a religion cannot combine the good and evil god into one unity. It is only when speculation becomes master over religion, that conceptions of this kind can find a place; and this speculation, which sought for primeval cosmical unity, arrived as a fact at an identical origin for the good and evil spirit; but this was not the case with the Avesta. Centuries after the establishment of the canon we find the oldest form of such teaching in a demand made to the Armenian Christians that they should join the faith of Auramazda. In this we are told that the great deity Zrovan had sacrificed for a thousand years, and had received two sons, Ormuzd and Ahriman. The first had created heaven and earth, the other had opposed him with evil works. About the same time Theodorus of Mopsuestia in Cilicia (Phot. "Biblioth." p. 63, ed. Bekker), tells us: "Zoroaster called the creator of all things Zaruam, and described him as fate;" and in the sixth century Damascius ("De prim. princip." p. 384) writes: "The Magi and the whole Arian nation call the Whole and One in thought, space and time respectively; from this One arose the good and evil god, Oromasdes and Areimanius, or as others say light and darkness were divided before these." The sect of the Zarvanites, who deviated from the faith of Zoroaster, inasmuch as they carried these principles still further, has been already mentioned (p. 67).]

In the Gathas we have the nucleus of the conceptions from which the reform of the ancient faith of Iran arose, but not in their original state. On the contrary, they have been systematised in the circles of the priests. Hence the contents and prescripts of other parts of the Avesta, which do not present a speculative tendency, are not on that account to be regarded as of later origin than the Gathas – least of all the invocations to the ancient deities. It was an essential object of priestly meditation to bring these old gods, which existed vividly before the soul of the nation, into harmony with the new faith. On every page of the Avesta it is clear that the priests of Eastern Iran did not attain to an accepted system in this direction; that the old gods remained in existence beside Auramazda, and the direct contest against the evil spirits, after the reform as before it, was carried on by Mithra, Verethraghna, and Vayu, Tistrya and Çraosha, while Auramazda is in the background, and sits somewhat passively on his golden throne in the heaven of Garonmana. When the Avesta was written down and collected, the ideas of the priests were still so naïve, or still preserved such a respect for the traditional forms of the gods of light and water, as they obviously lived in the mind of the people, that they represent Auramazda himself as offering sacrifice to Mithra,[245 - "Mihr Yasht," 123.] Anahita, Vayu, and Tistrya, with Haoma and the sacred bundle of twigs, in order to strengthen their power or carry out his own wishes, just as the gods of the Aryas in India offer sacrifices to one another. In India the old gods received a subordinate position as protectors of the world after the rise of Brahman, but in Iran this was not the case; nor were they brought into any genealogical connection with their new head Auramazda, though fire is occasionally spoken of in a figure as the son of Auramazda, and the earth (Armaiti) is once or twice called his daughter.[246 - Ashi vanguhi is in one passage called the daughter of Auramazda and Armaiti; "Yaçna," 44, 4; "Vend." 19, 45; "Ashi Yasht," 16.] The only bond of union between the new god and the old gods in the Avesta is the fact that Auramazda is made the creator of the old gods, and even of Mithra. Yet the old position of Mithra appears, when Auramazda says to Zarathrustra: "When I created Mithra, the lord of wide pastures, I created him as mighty to pray to, mighty to worship as myself." Tistrya also was created by Auramazda as worthy of adoration and praise as himself.[247 - "Tistar Yasht," 50.] We are already acquainted with Auramazda's command to Zarathrustra to invoke and worship Mithra, Vayu, the other ancient gods, and fire (p. 131). The existence and extent of this worship is proved not only by the prayers of the Yaçna, but also by the accounts of western writers which we have already examined.

As a compensation for the independent life of the ancient gods by the side of Auramazda, the priests surrounded his throne with six spirits, who were his associates and helpers. These are called Amesha Çpentas, i. e. the holy immortals; as good and wise kings they rule with Auramazda over the seven girdles of the earth,[248 - "Vend." 19, 40; "Yaçna," 56, 10, 2.] as in India the eight protectors of the world rule over the eight zones. The views out of which these spirits arose are found in the Gathas, but they did not receive their complete form till the Gathas had been composed and generally received. Plutarch tells us that, according to the faith of the Persians, Oromazdes had created six gods: the first, the god of good disposition (εὔνοια); the second, the god of truth (ἀλήθεια); the third, the god of order and law (εὐνομία); the three remaining deities were the gods of wisdom (σοφία), of wealth (πλοῦτος), and of delight in the beautiful (ἐπὶ τοῖς ϰαλοῖς ἡδέων). The two first, good disposition (Vohumano), and truth or truthfulness, we already found frequently mentioned in the Gathas, but chiefly as ideas rather than persons. With the priests Vohumano and Asha vahista (the most excellent truthfulness) became the Amesha Çpentas, who stand next to Auramazda. The Avesta speaks not only of the good way of Vohumano, but also of his acts, his dwelling, and his kingdom. According to the books of the Parsees it is his duty to protect the flocks. Asha vahista, as the truthful one, is the protector of fire, which points the right path, and, according to the Gathas, gives the decision in the contest against the liars. According to the books of the Parsees, Asha builds the bridge of Chinvat, to which the souls come after death, making it wide when the pious souls step upon it. Not less correctly does Plutarch describe the third Amesha Çpenta as the spirit of order and law. Kshathra, i. e. the kingdom, the dominion, is mentioned impersonally in the Gathas; and this idea the priests have elevated into Kshathra vairya, i. e. the good spirit of the desired dominion, of good order and law, which is the third Amesha Çpenta. Metals were allotted to him as the king of the Ameshas.[249 - "Vispered," 23, 1.] The fourth figure in this circle, which Plutarch correctly describes as the spirit of wisdom, though he is wrong in calling it a god, is the earth spirit Armaiti. In the Rigveda Aramati (the earth) is a maiden worthy of praise, who, morning and evening, brings butter to Agni. In the Avesta Armaiti is "the beautiful daughter of Auramazda, the bearer (barethri) of cattle, of beasts of draught, and men;" with "her hands Auramazda performs pure actions," while the Gathas also ascribe to her special relations to the corporeal world.[250 - "Yaçna," 44, 4; 46, 2; 13, 6; "Vend." 19, 45; Haug, "Essays," p. 231.] Among the priests the spirit of the "patient humble earth" has become the spirit of humility and piety. According to the books of the Parsees Armaiti gives patience and firmness.[251 - Spiegel, "Eran," 1, 435.] The fifth and sixth spirits also, whom Plutarch calls the gods of wealth and delight in the beautiful, were found in existence by the priests, and merely ranged by them in the circle of the Amesha Çpentas. These are Haurvatat and Ameretat. We saw how earnestly the Arians of India besought the gods for wealth and length of life; and in this matter the Arians of Iran were not behind them. Here, as there, the powers which could grant such gifts were elevated into special spirits, to whom, naturally, all that gave wealth and long life, good and healing plants and refreshing water, belonged. The good plants were the kingdom of Ameretat, refreshing water the domain of Haurvatat. In the fancy of the Arians of Iran good plants sprang from the tree of heaven, the Gaokerena, which grew in Ardviçura (p. 126); the water flowed down from this source in heaven, or came from Vourukasha, the lake on the divine mountain. Those two spirits, who ruled over plants and water, were brought by the system of the priests into the circle of the Amesha Çpentas; the province over which they ruled had long been apportioned to them. They were distinguished from the first four by the fact that those were personifications of moral ideas, these two were personifications of real goods.[252 - Darmesteter, "Haurvatat et Ameretat," p. 68, 81 ff.] With wealth, prosperity and happy life is given, with length of life the complete enjoyment of its blessings, and so the Greeks could arrive at the conclusion that these two spirits were gods of wealth and delight in beauty. Thus Auramazda now ruled surrounded by six sacred forms. The semblance of this circle on earth was the throne of Cyrus and his successors, which was surrounded by the six tribal princes of the Persians.

The personification of ideas – the process of transforming old figures, and changing them into abstractions – did not come to an end with the Amesha Çpentas. We are acquainted with Çraosha, the warrior against the Daevas, his habitation on the divine mountain, his horses, his club, and how he fights at the side of Mithra, and keeps watch in the dark of the night against the demons (p. 121). Now it is he who first sang the sacred four Gathas of Zarathrustra, who first bound the sacred withes, "three twigs, five twigs, seven twigs;" he not only knows the sacred word; the sacred word is the body of Çraosha. Instead of the club which he held raised against the head of the Daevas, the invocations of the Avesta and the prayer Ahuna vairya are now the weapons with which he, "the pure lord of the pure," "advances the world." We remember the process by which the Arians in India came to represent Indra as smiting Vritra, and shattering his cave, not as formerly with the lightning, but with Brahman, the power of the prayer and the sacred acts. Obviously we have some influence of these old Arian conceptions of the mysterious power of prayer, and the control of the spirits possessed by the correct invocations and sayings against gods and spectres, when we find Çraosha fighting with the prayers of the Avesta, and in the Avesta the sacred word is praised as a Divine power —[253 - "Vend." 19, 30-34, 54.] when Zarathrustra offers sacrifice to the good law.[254 - "Din Yasht," 2.] More liberal creations on the part of the system of the priests are the elevation of "excellent thought, knowledge, and conception," of "the long study," "and the thought of the pure man," which are invoked and praised in the Avesta, into Divine powers. Of not less abstract nature are other forms, like Rashnu razista, i. e. the most straight-forward justice,[255 - "Rashnu Yasht," 8.] which, according to the Dinkart, tests the souls on the bridge of Chinvat; time, which is invoked as unlimited, as the ruler of the long periods, and like the genius of the five portions into which the priests divided the day. Of older origin, though also modified by the reform, is the invocation of the heights, which Mithra first illuminated with his light. In the Avesta this invocation is mainly addressed to the high "navel of the waters," the Divine mountain, which reaches to the sky, "on which were asked the holy questions," i. e. on which Zarathrustra has received the revelation; "by reason of the revelation of the sacred word we invoke the height, which preserved the knowledge."[256 - Burnouf, l. c. p. 417, 468.] Many of the traditional forms of ancient times were partly modified by the priests and partly allowed to fade away. The goddess Drvaçpa, to whom the ancient heroes had sacrificed, they changed into the soul of the primeval bull, which Angromainyu had slain.[257 - "Gosh Yasht;" Yaçna, 29; 39, 1.] Nairyoçangha, the Naraçansa of the Veda, an ancient name of the spirit of fire, which we learned to know in the Veda as the messenger of men to the heavenly beings, as priest and mediator between heaven and earth (IV. 39), appears in the Avesta merely as the messenger of the gods.[258 - "Vend." 19, 111, 112; 22, 22.] The form of Vayu, the more ancient conception of which still plainly breaks through (p. 116), becomes merely the air "whose operation is on high;" and Ashi vanguhi, whom the ancient sacrificers and heroes invoked, together with Ardviçura, for victory, bears traces which can hardly any longer be recognised. We merely perceive that she could once confer power, fertility, beauty, and wealth. We saw above how she called Zarathrustra to her chariot, and promised splendour to his body, and long prosperity to his soul (p. 130). If the luminaries of heaven, in spite of the creation described to Auramazda, are extolled as "having no beginning," we have in this fact a glimpse of the old position of the spirits of light. The struggles of Tistrya against the demons of drought were allowed to remain (p. 120). Plutarch observes that, according to the doctrine of the Magians, Oromazdes had placed Sirius (Tistrya) as a watchman and advanced guard. On the other hand, the worship of the sun-god appears but faintly in the Avesta – in our fragments at any rate. Yet Herodotus informs us that with the Persians the neighing of horses at sunrise was regarded as a favourable sign from the gods, and Xenophon states that the Magians offered bulls to Zeus, but horses to the sun-god, and that on the journeys of the Achæmenids the chariot of Zeus went first, then that of the sun-god; both were white and crowned; and these were followed by a third chariot covered with purple, which as it seems was the chariot of fire. In the march of Xerxes to Hellas, according to the account of Herodotus, a sacred car, yoked with eight white horses, went before him; and ten sacred horses were led, clothed in the most beautiful trappings. Curtius represents the emblem of the sun as glowing over the tent of the last Darius, who invokes "the sun, Mithra, and the sacred eternal fire;" and he tells us of the chariot of Zeus in the army, yoked with white horses, behind which was led a horse of remarkable size, the horse of the sun, with golden bridle and white covering, like those before the chariot. Dio Chrysostom tells us that the Magians reared a yoke of Nisaean horses for Zeus, i. e. for Mithra, which were the largest and most beautiful in all Asia, and a horse for Helius.[259 - Herod. 7, 40, 55; Xenoph. "Cyr. inst." 8, 3, 12; Curtius, 3, 3, 8; 4, 48, 12. Dio Chrysost. 2, 60, ed. Dindorf.] We can call to mind the battle-chariot of Mithra, "with golden wheels and silver spokes" (p. 110). These were imitations of the divine chariots of which the Greeks tell us, and if they were not in a position to distinguish accurately what belonged to Mithra (Auramazda does not come into the question), and what to Hvare Kshaeta (the sun-god) – Strabo is of opinion that the Persians called the sun Mithras[260 - p. 732.]– we may still conclude with certainty from these statements, that the worship of Mithra and the sun-god remained more vigorous and effectual among the princes and nations of Iran than our fragments of the Avesta would allow us to assume, if the old invocations to Mithra, Tistrya, Haoma, Vayu, and Verethraghna had not been preserved in them. Yet the fragments do present us with an invocation to the sun-god, though weakened, it is true, and adapted to the new faith. "We celebrate the brilliant, immortal sun, whose horses are unwearied. When the sun gleams in heaven, the heavenly spirits come by hundreds and thousands, and spread the light over the earth for the salvation of the pure world, for the salvation of the pure bodies. As the sun rises, the earth purifies herself, and the fructifying waters of the springs, pools and lakes; the sun-god purifies all creatures that belong to Çpentomainyu. If the sun came not, the Daevas would slay all that inhabits the seven girdles of the earth, and the heavenly beings would not be able to withstand them; they could not drive them away. He who sacrifices to the sun in order to withstand the dark Daevas, the thieves and robbers, he sacrifices to Auramazda, to the Amesha Çpentas and to his own soul."[261 - "Khorshed Yasht," in De Harlez, "Avesta," p. 34.] In the time of the Sassanids, the worship of the sun comes definitely forward.

Plutarch states that the demon Areimanius had created an equal number of evil spirits to match the six good gods of Oromazdes, i. e. the Amesha Çpentas. The Vendidad mentions five of them: Andra, Çaurva, Naonghaithya, Tauru, and Zairicha,[262 - 10, 17, 18.] to which we have only to add Akomano, which has been mentioned already in the Gathas, in order to make up the number. They are all of them creations of the priests, partly invented to match the Amesha Çpentas, partly borrowed from older forms, which had lost their brightness among the Arians of Iran. Akomano, i. e. Bad disposition, is naturally the counterpart of Vohumano, or Good disposition: opposite Asha vahista, i. e. the most excellent truthfulness, the priests placed the demon Andra (Indra), i. e. an old Arian name which the Arians beyond the Indus had elevated to be the best warrior against the demons, the god of the storm. No special qualities of Andra are known or mentioned in the Avesta; the books of the Parsees can only say that he brings care and sorrow of heart to men, and makes narrow the bridge of Chinvat. The demon Çaurva is the opponent of Kshathra vairya, of order and law, of good dominion; hence, according to the Sad-der-Bundehesh, he leads kings astray into despotism, and nations into lawlessness and robbery. Naonghaithya is the opponent of Armaiti, the spirit of humility and piety; this spirit therefore, as the Bundehesh maintains, makes men impatient and proud; the science of languages claims to find in this name a Vedic name for the two Açvins, – Nasatya (IV. 42). Only the last two opposing spirits of the Amesha Çpentas, the opponents of Haurvatat and Ameretat, display, like these beings, real characteristics. If they are the spirits of water and plants, of prosperity and long life or immortality, then Tauru is the spirit of thirst and sickness, and Zairicha of hunger and death.[263 - "Zamyad Yasht," 96; Darmesteter, l. c. p. 10.]

If the ancient gods have preserved more lively traits than the Amesha Çpentas, the old demons have also more definite outlines than the opposing spirits. Such are the Daeva Apaosha, who parches up the land and keeps back the water from the earth; Çpenjaghra, the comrade of him who was struck by lightning; Zemaka, the spirit of the cold winter; and finally Azhi, who seeks to steal away the fire from men in the night. Among these evil spirits may further be reckoned a female demon Bushyançta, with long hands and of a yellow hue, who leads men astray into much sleep and idleness, who does not allow them to see the rise of the sun, and shortens the joy of existence;[264 - "Vend." 18, 38.] the three Daevas of drunkenness, Kunda, Banga, and Vibanga; the Daeva Buiti, the spirit of lies and falsehood, who deceives men;[265 - "Vend." 19, 6, 146.] the spirit of flattery, Ashemaogha;[266 - Burnouf, "Journ. Asiatic," 1845, p. 433.] and the very wicked Ashma "of evil glance," who attempts to slay the sleeping, and withstands Çraosha by night with terrible weapons.[267 - "Vend." 10, 23. Windischmann, "Zoroastrische Studien," s. 138.] Very evil also is Açtovidhotu, i. e. the destroyer of bodies, and a female goblin, the spirit of the Daevas, the Druj Naçu. This spirit enters the body immediately after death, and exercises power over all who come in contact with it.

Under Auramazda are united the gods, the Amesha Çpentas, the rest of the Yazatas (those worthy of adoration), in opposition to the troops of hell, the Daevas, Druj, Pairikas and Jainis, which are led by Angromainyu. The first are found in the light of sunrise, in the clear gleam of the pure sky; the latter in the gloom of sunset, or in the distant clouds of the north; in burial-places, and where the dead are placed; in all corners into which the light of heaven does not pierce; in the dark abyss under earth; in "the worst place."[268 - "Vend." 19, 147.] On the summit of the mountain Arezura (Demavend, apparently), they take counsel how they are to turn the evil eye on men; how they can injure and slay them.[269 - "Vend." 4, 139.] To them belong gloom, cold, drought, the barren land and the wilderness, thorns and poisonous herbs, hunger and thirst, sickness, death, dirt, laziness, lying, sin. Theirs are the harmful beasts, the Khrafçtras; beasts of prey, wolves, serpents; all animals which live in holes and corners, lizards, scorpions, toads, frogs, rats, mice, gnats, and lastly mosquitoes, lice, and fleas.[270 - "Vend." 12, 65, 71; 14, 9 ff.; Plut. "De Isid." c. 46; Agath. 2, 24.] To the good spirits belong light, water, springs, rivers, the fruitful earth, good plants,[271 - Plut. "De Isid." c. 46.] trees, fields, pastures, good food, purity, truth, life in this world and the next; and theirs are the good animals, the animals of the flocks, the birds which nestle on the heights, and live in the clear air. The dog and the cock are worshipped in the Avesta as fighting with men against the Daevas. The first protects the flocks against the beasts of prey of Angromainyu. Of the cock the Avesta says: "The bird Parodarsh, which evil-speaking men call Kahzkataç (i. e. Kikeriki or the like), lifts up his voice in the last third of the night, roused by the holy Çraosha at every divine dawn. He cries: 'Rise up, ye men; praise the most excellent truth; drive away the Daevas.' Who gives a pair of these birds to a pure man, in purity and kindness, gives as much as if he had given a palace with a thousand pillars and a thousand beams, ten thousand windows, and a hundred thousand turrets." "And whoever gives to a pure man as much meat as makes the size of a Parodarsh" – the book of Auramazda tells us in another place – "I who am Auramazda will ask him no other question on his way to Paradise."[272 - "Vend" 18, 34-37; 64-69.] According to the Avesta the dog and cock unite their powers against the Druj.[273 - Cf. "Bundehesh," c. 19.] The bird Asho-zusta fights against the Daevas, and the bird Karshipta (the sacred hawk) announces the good law in the garden of Yima. Two other mythical birds, the two eagles (çaena) of the sky, Amru and Chamru, are invoked as helpful powers.[274 - "Yasht Farvardin," 109; "Yasht Bahram," 19-21.] They nestle on the tree of life in the heaven. Besides the tree Gaokerena, which grows in Ardviçura and bears the heavenly Haoma, the Avesta has also the tree Viçpataokhma, which grows in the Lake Vourukasha, and bears all seeds. When Amru sits on this tree, the seeds fall down, and Chamru carries them away where Tistrya collects the water, who then rains down the seed with the water to the earth. In the book of kings of Firdusi, Simurgh (Çinmurv), the king of the birds, carries Rustem on his pinions over the broad earth as far as the sea of Chin (China) to the tree of life.[275 - Kuhn, "Herabkunft des Feuers," s. 125; Darmesteter, loc. cit. p. 55. Çinmurv has arisen out of Çaena (Çin), i. e. eagle, and meregha, "bird;" Middle Pers. murv; New Pers. murgh. In New Pers. Çinmurv becomes Simurgh.] A prophet of the Hebrews represents Jehovah as saying of Cyrus: "I summoned from the East the eagle, the man of my counsel."[276 - Isaiah xlvi. 11. In Aeschylus also an eagle represents the Persians and a falcon the Hellenes; "Pers." 205-210.] Xenophon tells us that Cyrus, and the Achæmenids who succeeded him, carried as a standard a golden eagle on a tall lance;[277 - "Cyri instit." 7, 1, 4.] and Curtius says, that a golden eagle with outspread wings was attached to the chariots of the Persian king.[278 - 3, 7.]

The fragments of the Avesta which have been preserved do not give us very full information on the sacrifices. The essential matters are hymns of praise and prayers. The chief sacrifice is offered to one of the old deities, Haoma, the supporter and protector of life. When Plutarch represents the Magi as pounding a certain herb of the name of Omomi in a mortar, with invocations to avert Hades, he gives a correct account of the supposed tendency of this sacrifice. According to the Avesta the utensils for this sacrifice – the mortar, cup and bundle of twigs – were found in every house. The sacrifice consisted in the offering, i. e. the elevation of the cup filled with the juice of the Haoma, during the recitation of the proper prayers. Beside this offering, which even now is offered twice each day by the priests of the Parsees, the fire is to be kept up perpetually, and fed with good dry wood and perfumes. The flesh of the sacrifice (myazda) is not often mentioned; yet the book of the law provides that a thousand head of small cattle must be offered in expiation of certain offences,[279 - "Vend." 18, 137, 138, 149.] and we are told in the invocations that the heroes of old time, from Thraetaona down to King Vistaçpa, had offered great sacrifices of animals to Ardviçura and Drvaçpa, in order to gain the victory, viz. 100 horses, 1000 cattle, and 10,000 head of small cattle. Herodotus tells us that the Magians, when Xerxes marched into Hellas, sacrificed 1000 oxen on the summit of Pergamus to Athene of Ilium, and at a later time white horses in Thrace; Xenophon maintains that the Persians sacrificed beautiful bulls to Zeus, i. e. to Auramazda, and horses to the sun, and burnt them whole; Athenæus tells that with the king of the Persians a thousand animals were daily slaughtered as sacrifices; camels, horses, oxen, apes, deer, and especially sheep. According to Arrian, the Magians who kept guard over the burial-place of Cyrus received a horse every month, and a sheep every day, for sacrifice.[280 - Xenophon, "Cyri instit." 8, 3, 11, 24; Athen. p. 145; Arrian, "Anab." 6, 29.] Herodotus has already told us, that the animals were led to a pure place, and when the sacrificer had invoked the god were killed, cut up, cooked, and then laid out on delicate grass. The Magian then sang the theogony, and after some time, the person who offered the sacrifice "carried away the flesh, and used it at his pleasure" (p. 85). Herodotus is better informed than Xenophon; according to the Avesta only the head of the animal belongs to the gods.[281 - "Yaçna," 10. 38, 11, 16. Strabo, p. 732, tells us that the deity of the Persians received nothing from the sacrifice.] Obviously, as the nature of the gods became more spiritualised – and the reform prepared the way for this – the sacrifice of animals was restricted in this manner, so that it consisted essentially in the offering of the animals, i. e. in the consecration of the flesh. We may conclude from the statement in Athenæus, that only consecrated flesh could be eaten at the court of the kings. Xerxes certainly would not have sacrificed to Athene, "a lying deity" of the Greeks, on the summit of Ilium; but he might very well have selected the last eminence in Asia Minor, "the many-fountained Ida," in order to offer there a sacrifice of 1000 oxen to Ardviçura for his victory beyond the sea – a sacrifice which corresponds exactly to the first offering made by Kava Huçrava and Kava Vistaçpa to the same goddess for victory over the Turanians.[282 - What Herodotus tells us of the sacrifice of girls and boys by the Magi in Thrace contradicts his own statement that the Magi did not venture to kill any one, and the whole conception of the Avesta. If Cambyses is said to have caused twelve Persians to be buried alive, this is not to be regarded as a sacrifice, but as a barbarous form of execution, which occurs also under the Sassanids. What Herodotus says of the fourteen boys offered by Amestris as a sacrifice, if true, must have its origin in some other superstition, not in the Avesta; and the actions of Amestris and Parysatis in this direction, as recorded by Ctesias, were in any cases crimes, not sacrifices.]

Temples and images are unknown to the Avesta. The reform preserved for the nations of Iran the traditional form of worship without images, on which it was founded. The accounts of western writers, from Herodotus and Xenophon downwards, establish the fact that there were only sacrificial places on the heights and consecrated fire-altars in Iran.[283 - Strabo, p. 732.] But this must not be taken to mean that the forms of worship and the images of the nations with which the Persians became acquainted after the foundation of their supremacy, especially of their nearest neighbours, the Semites on the Tigris and Euphrates, remained without influence on them. On the monuments of Darius we see the picture of Auramazda, cut exactly after the pattern which the Assyrian monuments exhibit in the portraiture of their god Asshur. We are also told of images of Anahita. Berosus maintains that Artaxerxes Mnemon erected statues to Aphrodite Anaitis at Babylon, Ecbatana, and Susa, and taught this form of worship to the Damascenes and Lydians.[284 - Fragm. 16, ed. Müller.] From this statement, taken in connection with the account of Herodotus that the Persians had learnt to sacrifice to Mylitta,[285 - 1, 131.] the conclusion has been drawn that Artaxerxes II. introduced the worship of Bilit among the Persians. But it was not necessary to teach this worship to the Damascenes and Lydians (I. 358, 563), and even in the Avesta, Anahita as the goddess of the heavenly water is the goddess of fertility. Hence the statues made by Artaxerxes were, no doubt, images of Anahita the goddess, whom he invokes along with Auramazda and Mithra in his inscription at Susa. Strabo describes the worship of the Magians at the fire-altars of Cappadocia in a manner which completely agrees with the accounts given in the Avesta, and then adds that these functions were also performed in the enclosures (σηϰοί) which were consecrated there to Anaitis, Amardatus, and Omanus, and the image of Omanus was carried round in processions. He concludes with the words: "this (i. e. the form of worship described) I have myself seen."[286 - Strabo, p. 733.] According to this account, then, Amardate,[287 - Windischmann has shown, "Abh. Bair. Akad. phil. philol. Kl." 8, 90, 120, that, Ἀμαρδατός must be read for Ἀνανδατός.]i. e. the Amesha Çpenta Ameretat, who averts death, was worshipped there beside Anahita, and Omanus, i. e. the Amesha Çpenta Vohumano, the protector of the flocks, had an image. As this is all that we can discover about the image-worship of the Persians, it is clear that the influence of the picture-worship of Hither Asia and Egypt had no great influence even on the western nations of Iran. It is limited to the facts that Darius added the symbolical picture of Auramazda to his inscriptions without, however, building him a temple; that a century after him Artaxerxes II. erected statues and a temple to Anahita at Ecbatana; and that at a later time a portable image of Vohumano was in existence in Cappadocia.

The nucleus of the old religious conceptions of the Arians – the desire to obtain increase and life from the gods – has been sufficiently disclosed; and that which could not be obtained in this world, the continuance of the individual life, heaven was to bestow upon them. This line was followed up by the reform; the spirits of health and long life were added by the priests to the circle of the Amesha Çpentas. When Zarathrustra had increased the means for the protection and support of life; when it became a fixed maxim that purity preserved life in this world and ensured it after death; the sharp insistence on the command of the pure and active and truthful life which men ought to lead in this world, became developed into the conception of a judgment on the souls after death. He who had lived purely, and given the Daevas no room to exercise their power on his body, became himself pure and bright, and could therefore enter after death as a pure spirit among the spirits of light. Thus the Avesta announces that "when body and soul have separated," the soul on the third night after death, as soon as the brilliant sun arises, and the victorious Mithra seats himself with "pure brilliance" on the mountains, comes over the Hara berezaiti to the bridge of Chinvat, i. e. the bridge of assembly or of assembling, which leads to Garonmana, i. e. to the dwelling of hymns, the abode of the good gods. Here the Daevas and the gods contend for the soul;[288 - "Vend." 7, 132-136; 19, 90-100.] the judgment of the souls takes place;[289 - "Vend." 19, 89.] here Auramazda asks the souls about their conduct.[290 - "Vend." 18, 68, 69.] The pure soul, whose odour the Daevas dread,[291 - "Vend." 19, 108.] which approaches with virtue and sanctity, is joined by the other pure souls and by the souls of the dogs which keep watch over the bridge of Chinvat,[292 - "Vend." 13, 22, 25.] and the host of the heavenly Yazatas brings the soul of the good over the bridge into heaven. In contentment the pure soul goes to the golden throne of Auramazda, to the thrones of the Amesha Çpentas, to the dwelling of the pure. And Vohumano rises from his golden throne and inquires of the pure one: "How hast thou, O pure one, come hither out of the perishable to the imperishable world?"[293 - "Vend." 19, 100-108.] But the souls which come to the bridge full of terror and sick, find no friend there; the evil spirits, Vizaresha by name, lead them bound down into the place of the bad, into the darkness, the dwelling of the Druj.[294 - "Vend." 8, 252, 310; 19, 94; cf. 3, 118-121. In the Dinkart the proceedings on the bridge are related at greater length.]

In the Veda the spirits of the fathers are invited to the sacrificial meal; they are to enjoy the gifts which are laid for them on the grass, to support the prayers of their descendants, to keep away the evil spirits, and to increase wealth. Each day water was poured there for the forefathers, and corns of rice were scattered for them; on the new moon the clans held the funeral feast for the dead; and we are acquainted with the consequences which attended expulsion from this banquet.[295 - Vol. IV., 61, 163, 230.] The belief in the spirits of the ancestors, and their continued relation to their descendants, existed also among the Arians of Iran, and the Avesta alters it only so far as to limit consistently the assistance given by the spirits of the fathers to the souls of those who have lived in truth and purity, and have thus found entrance into heaven. According to the Avesta the Fravashis of the pure – this is the name given to the Pitaras, or fathers of the Indians – protect their descendants against the Daevas, help them in distress and danger, and fight for their families on the day of battle, if they are honoured and satisfied by their descendants. It is only an old conception, repeated in the Avesta, when we are told: "We invoke the good, strong, holy Fravashis. Where strong men fight in severe conflict, there come the Fravashis with strong shield, iron helmet, and iron weapons; with Mithra and the victorious wind they go forward; strong warriors against the enemies, they are mighty saviours; strong conquerors, they destroy the victory of the enemy – the Turas (Turanians)."[296 - "Farvardin Yasht," 35-48, 70, 71.] It is due to the additions and modifications introduced by the priests that we hear that the hosts of the Fravashis watch the body of Kereçaçpa till the resurrection, and the seed of Zarathrustra, and protect the sleepers from the rising of the stars till midnight.[297 - "Farvardin Yasht," 61, 62.] As among the Arians of India the ancient belief in the fathers was retained in spite of all changes of the religious system, so also in Iran. At the close of the year, on the intercalary days which were added to it, the Fravashis come to their families, abide among them for ten nights, and ask: "Who will receive us, and sacrifice to us, and praise us?" and "if any one offers to them prayers and flesh and clothes, him they bless, and in his dwelling there will be abundance of oxen and men, swift horses and a strong car."[298 - "Farvardin Yasht," 50-52.] The Greeks had therefore reason to say that according to the doctrine of the Magians the air was full of spirits.[299 - Diogen. Laert. "Prooem." 6.]

In another direction the system of the priests deviated far more widely from the ancient conception of the spirits of the ancestors. They held that only the pure and bright part of the soul could live on after death. Hence, even in the living they distinguished this part from the polluted part, and in the pure immortal half they saw the side created by the good gods, its true being, the Fravashi or protecting spirit allotted to each man. In the Avesta therefore rules can be given for the invocation of this pure part and nature of the individual soul, of the separate Fravashis. The priests then transferred this notion to the heavenly spirits, and even to Auramazda himself. His purest nature, his best self, must be praised and invoked for aid. Auramazda says to Zarathrustra in the book of the law: "O Zarathrustra, praise thou my Fravashi, the Fravashi of Auramazda, the greatest, best, most intelligent, best-formed, highest in holiness, whose soul is the holy word."[300 - "Vend." 19, 46, 48.] And in the prayers we are told: "We praise the Fravashis of the Amesha Çpentas, of the holy Çraosha, of Mithra, together with all the Fravashis of the heavenly Yazatas. I invoke the Fravashi of the holy Zarathrustra, the Fravashis of the men of the ancient law, and the Fravashis of the men of the new law, the good mighty Fravashis of the pure, of the nearest relations, and of my own soul."[301 - "Yaçna," 1, 47; 23, 6; Burnouf, "Commentaire," p. 571.] The Persians at the king's gate, according to the Greeks, set apart a separate table at each meal with bread and food for the "demon" of the king, and at a Persian banquet the host, according to Plutarch, calls on his guests, "to honour the demon of king Artaxerxes." Hence it clearly follows that the priestly doctrine of the Fravashis of the living was current even in Western Iran under the Achæmenids.[302 - Plut. "Artax." 15; Theopomp. Fragm. 135, ed. Müller.]

Zarathrustra had increased the means for keeping off the evil ones, and had made the struggle against the wicked spirits easier for men. But the time will come when the struggle will be no longer necessary, and the bright spirits alone will rule. This doctrine is indicated even in the Gathas.[303 - "Yaçna," 45, 3; 47, 1; above, p. 156.] In the book of the law Zarathrustra says to Angromainyu: he will smite the Daevas till Çaoshyant is born from the water of Kançava in the eastern region.[304 - "Vend." 19, 17-19; above, p. 135.] Çaoshyant, i. e. the useful, the saviour, is called in the Avesta, "the sublime, the victorious;" he will smite the Druj, and Aeshma will bow before him. He will make the world to live for ever, without age and death; the dead will rise again, and the living will be immortal. Vohumano will smite Akomano, Asha will kill the lies. Haurvatat and Ameretat will destroy thirst and hunger: "The evil-doer Angromainyu, robbed of his dominion, bows himself."[305 - "Zamyad Yasht," 89, 95, 96.] This doctrine of the Avesta also was well known to the western world. In Herodotus Prexaspes tells Cambyses that when the dead rise again he will see Smerdis and Astyages.[306 - 3, 62.] Theopompus of Chios tells us: Zoroaster had proclaimed that there would be a time in which the dead will arise, and men will be immortal, and everything will be done by their invocations. Last of all, Hades will pass away; men will then be happy; they will need no nourishment, and throw no shadows, and the god who will accomplish this rests for a time, but not a long time for a god.[307 - Theopomp. Fragm. 71, 72, ed. Müller.] It is true that men required no nourishment when Çaoshyant had appeared, in the meaning of the Avesta, for Haurvatat and Ameretat had overcome hunger and thirst as well as sickness and death; and as the dark side of man was taken away, and only the bright side remained, they could not cast any shadows.

As already remarked, it was part of the duty of the priests to bring the ancient legends of the old time into harmony with the new doctrine. We saw that the legends of Iran began with the happy age of Yima, and his reign of a thousand years full of increase and blessing. This conception of a perfect age for the creatures of earth at the very beginning of things did not suit with the struggle, which, according to the new doctrine, Angromainyu commenced immediately after the creation. The priests, therefore, conceived the beginning of things in a different manner. In their system Auramazda first created the heaven, then the water, then the earth and the trees, and after these the four-footed bull, and the two-legged pure man Gayo maretan.[308 - "Yaçna," 19, 16-18.] In the Avesta the primeval bull and man are at the head, and time extends from Gayo maretan to Çaoshyant.[309 - "Yaçna," 26, 32; "Farvardin Yasht," 135.] The books of the Parsees then tell us that Angromainyu killed the primeval man and bull, but from the seed of the bull proceeded a pair of oxen, and then all kinds of good animals; and out of the seed of Gayo maretan grew up the first man and the first woman. As we have already remarked, our fragments of the Avesta identify the soul of the first created bull with the Drvaçpa, the ancient guardian spirit of the flocks; next to Gayo maretan they place Haoshyangha, the Paradhata (p. 36), and represent him as sacrificing to Ardviçura, Vayu, and Ashi vanguhi, in order to obtain the dominion over the evil spirits.[310 - "Aban Yasht," 21-23; "Farvardin Yasht," 157; "Ashi Yasht," 24; "Zamyad Yasht," 26.] After him Takhmo urupa rules the earth of seven parts; he sacrifices to Vayu in order to obtain grace to restrain Angromainyu for thirty years.[311 - "Ram Yasht," 11; "Zamyad Yasht," 28.] Then, according to the system of the priests, follows the dominion of Yima the son of Vivanghana, during which there was no cold and no heat, no age and no death, as was represented in the old views. Yima kindles the red-glowing fire. Flocks and men, i. e. life, increase; and the earth must be made larger. The end of this happy period, and the death of Yima, is brought about, according to the priests, by the fact that Yima refused to be the preacher of the doctrine of Auramazda, that he was unable to maintain purity and truth, and began to "love lying speech" (p. 41). As Yima was born to Vivanghana as a reward for his Haoma sacrifice, there follows a series of those who have offered the sacrifice: Athwya, Thrita, Pourushaçpa, and their sons. To the first Thraetaona was born, who smites the serpent Dahaka; to Thrita Kereçaçpa, who smites the serpent Çruvara; and to Pourushaçpa was born Zarathrustra, who receives the law of Auramazda and proclaims it; by this law the Daevas will be warded off till Çaoshyant appears, when everything which has once had life will come to life again.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE PRIESTHOOD OF IRAN

In the form in which we have them the books of the Avesta are the work of the priests of Eastern Iran. According to the evidence repeatedly furnished by them, there were three orders in Sogdiana and Bactria: priests, warriors, and husbandmen. This sequence, which is uniformly preserved both in the invocations and in the book of the law, shows that the priests had risen above the warriors, and claimed to be the first of the three orders.[312 - "Vend." 2, 87-89; "Yaçna," 14, 4-6. If in "Yaçna," 19, 46 four occupations are mentioned instead of the four orders, and artisans are added to the husbandmen, this is only another theory, which does not, however, alter the series and system; in India the order of Vaiçyas comprises husbandmen, merchants, and artisans.]

In considering the civilisation of the Bactrian kingdom we found ourselves compelled by the proximity of the nations of the steppes to assume, that when the Arians had become established there, the tribes which had a capacity or love for battle, undertook the protection of the land, the flocks and fields, against the incursions of the nomads of the north, and made battle and strife their special vocation. Such attacks increased with the increasing culture of Bactria, and led to a consolidation of powers; these clans raised one of their number distinguished in battle to be their leader, or followed him, and thus was laid the basis for the foundation of a great state. The importance ascribed in the Avesta to the splendour of majesty – we find the personification of good government in the Avesta among the Amesha Çpentas – in combination with the battles which, as we learn from the book, the princes of Bactria carried on against the Turanians, and with the statements in the West Iranian Epos about the kingdom of the Bactrians, together with the later condition of the country, allowed us to draw the conclusion that at one time the kings of Bactria were not without power and importance. They reigned, surrounded by the families of the warriors, who were enabled by their possessions in lands and flocks, to devote themselves to the practice of arms and to battle. The invocations to Mithra, Verethraghna, and Vayu, bear upon them very evident traces of a war-like spirit (p. 110, 114). That the spirits of the sky, which once fought with the cloud-dragons, have become mortal heroes in the Avesta, also proves – since even among other nations the Epic poetry which follows periods of warlike excitement transforms shapes of the sky into heroes of old time – that once on a time Bactria had experienced a period of warfare, when difficulties arose which it was mainly the business of the monarchy and the nobles to settle. The Avesta can tell us of arms and robes as well as of palaces with pillars and turrets; of earthen, iron, silver and golden vessels; of mats, carpets, and adornments of gold,[313 - "Vond." 8, 254.] such as are found among noble families; and those hecatombs of horses, cattle, and sheep which the heroes in the Avesta sacrifice to Anahita and Drvaçpa, in order to obtain their favour by victory, are no doubt borrowed from the sacrifices which princes and nobles were wont to offer in cases where the numbers must be enlarged in honour of the heroes. Yet we see that Xerxes orders a thousand oxen to be sacrificed at one time. We have already shown (IV. 390), how important and pre-eminent was the position which the races of the warriors, "the princes," occupied on the Indus and the Ganges, and what respect they commanded among "the free Indians" in the Panjab, even in the fourth century B.C. That a warlike nobility of a similar character, attitude, and position, existed in Eastern Iran, is the less to be doubted, as the order of warriors in the Avesta is denoted by a name (rathaestar) which goes back to the chariots of war. The husbandmen, who were settled beside and among them, bear in the Avesta the name of Vaçtrya,[314 - Under the Sassanids we find a chief of the husbandmen (vaçtriosan), and a chief of the warriors (arthestaran); Nöldeke, "Tabari," s. 110.] but the word Vaeçu is also used for them, which simply repeats the name of the Indian Vaiçyas.

Like the Arians of India, the Arians of Iran believed in the power of the correct invocations, prayers, and sacrifice; among them also the sacrifice strengthens the gods and increases their power. In India too, the priests, and minstrels, and sacrificers handed down in their families the knowledge of the effective invocations and ceremonies which exercised compulsion on the gods, and the same was the case in Eastern Iran; priestly families arose at a very early period. They did not here retain the name of supplicators, as in India; but are called Athravas in the Avesta. In the Veda Atharvan kindles the sacrificial fire, and among the Arians of India the incantations of the race of Atharvan passed from the most powerful. In a similar way powerful invocations and sentences were handed down in Iran from father to son in the race of the Athravas. These families preserved the ancient invocations to Mithra, Verethraghna, Anahita, Tistrya, which are preserved to us in the Avesta, though in a modified form. The god Haoma instructs Zarathrustra to praise him, as the other fire-priests had done (p. 124). The reform which bears the name of Zarathrustra cannot have left the condition of the priests unchanged. The doctrine may, as invocations in the Avesta would seem to show, have first found adherents in the race of Haechataçpa, to which Zarathrustra belonged, and to which he first proclaimed his law (131), and next in the race of Jamaçpa and Frashaostra, who are spoken of as Zarathrustra's most zealous followers. According to the creed of the Parsees the good law also came to Aderbat Mahresfant by family descent (p. 62). These new races of priests, who knew the sayings, invocations, and prayers of Zarathrustra, would then be joined by those among the races of the old fire-priests who approved of the reform, and the priesthood thus formed would be further strengthened by those who, deeply impressed by the new doctrine, sought and found reception as pupils into a family of the priests, thus entering into their circle, and becoming members of their families. United by a new doctrine and settled tenets, the priests who represented the reform would become united together more firmly than the priestly families of the old time.

The priesthood could very well claim precedence of the warriors; on their prayers and sayings, their knowledge of the custom of sacrifice, depended the favour of the gods, the power of averting evil spirits, the removal of pollution, salvation in this world and the next. Yet they could not obtain such a position as the Brahmans held on the Ganges after the reform of the ancient faith, and the victory of Brahman over Indra. For in Iran there was no order of Çudras, no vanquished remnant of an old population, which created a sharp line of division even among the orders of the Aryas; and moreover the Brahmans were the first-born of Brahman, a purer incarnation of the divine nature than any other order. The world had not emanated from Auramazda; there were in Iran no gradations of beings in which the divine essence existed in a more or less pure condition. All had to fight against evil deities and against evil; the priests were the leaders in this struggle – this leadership and nothing more could they claim. In their lives they studied especial purity of body and mind; and they were pre-eminently "the pure men." Only by their means, at any rate with their assistance, could sacrifice be offered; from their mouths alone could the correct invocations be uttered to the gods, and the evil ones be driven away. Men were compelled to submit to the rules of the life acceptable to the gods of light, of pure conversation, which were accurately known to the priests only; they had to take upon themselves the expiations which the priests prescribed, in order to wipe out offences and sins and their consequences – but they had not to reverence in them, as was the case beyond the Indus, a class of creatures raised by birth to a higher level. Hence the sharp separation of the priesthood from the rest of the orders, in the Brahmanic fashion, was at once placed out of the question. The priesthood of Iran perpetuated their knowledge and wisdom in their families; but they had not the right to bar all entrance into their families or their order on the score of higher birth, or to prohibit the marriage of priests with women of other orders, on the ground of their superior nature.

From our fragments of the Avesta we may assume that although, as is obvious, the precedence of the priests above the remaining orders was strongly marked, and they were especially denoted as "pure men," the limits of their political and social position were far more modest than those of the Brahmans. So far as we can see, the Avesta allots no special income to the priests beyond the camels, horses, or small cattle given to them by warriors and husbandmen in quittance for the purifications they have performed. The penalties also which have to be paid in expiation of certain offences are to be given to "the pure men," and the Avesta repeatedly recommends the presentation of gifts to them. On the other hand, the priests do not possess the exclusive right to perform purifications. The Vendidad merely says that any one who wishes to perform purifications must have learned the law from one of the purifiers, i. e. it is only the instruction of the priest which is indispensable in this matter. Any one who performs purification without such instruction (except in the case of necessary purifications, p. 230), will take away from the places where it is performed, "food and fatness, health and all remedies, prosperity, luxuriance and growth, and increase of corn and fodder; and corn and fodder will not return to such places until for three days and nights the holy Çraosha has been praised at the burning fire with bound withes and uplifted Haoma." The uncertified purifier is to be put in chains, his clothes taken from him, and his head cut off.[315 - "Vend." 9, 172-180, 187-196.] If it was permitted to learn the purifications, it follows that men not of priestly descent could enter the order of the Athravas, and the boundary line between this order and the rest was not impassable. Among the Parsees of India any one can become a priest. The duties of the priest, according to the book of the law, consist in watching and tending the sacred fire, in praising the good spirits, in offering sacrifice, and performing purifications, and in the ceaseless study of the holy scriptures. The priest is to be provided with a mortar made according to certain rules, a cup (for the Haoma sacrifice), the snake-switch (a stick for killing impure animals), and the Paitidana, i. e. a piece of cloth for veiling the mouth, in order that he may not approach the sacred fire with breath that is possibly impure. For the rest, the Vendidad lays down the rule that the priests are to be patient and content, and satisfied with a little bread, and they ought to eat what is offered to them.[316 - "Vend." 13, 126-129.] Auramazda says; "Many men, O Zarathrustra, carry the Paitidana, the serpent-switch, the sacred bundle of twigs, without being guided according to the law. These are wrongly called priests; do not thou call them priests, O Zarathrustra. He who lies the whole night without praising or hearing, or reciting, or learning, or teaching – call not such an one a priest. Call him a priest, O pure Zarathrustra, who inquires of the pure intelligence the whole night, of the wisdom which purifies from sins and makes the heart wide, which has merits in store on the bridge of Chinvat, and causes us to attain the purity and bliss of Paradise."[317 - "Vend." 18, 1-17.] The Avesta distinguishes different classes of priests, but the distinction only rests on the various acts which they perform in the sacred rites. The first rank is taken by the Zaotar, who utters the prayers and invocations (the Hotar, i. e. the Repeater of the Veda); next to him apparently is the Çraoshavareza, "who speaks very wise and truthful things;"[318 - "Vispered," 3, 13, 14. Above, p. 165.] he bears the club of Çraosha, in order to keep the evil spirits at a distance from the sacred acts; then comes the Atarevaksha, i. e. the priest who causes the fire to increase, and attends to the worship of it; then the Açnatar (the Washer), who has to cleanse the instruments of sacrifice to keep them from pollution; the Frabaretar, i. e. the Carrier, etc. In the modern ritual of the Parsees all the duties of the sacred service have been transferred to the Zaotar and the Raçpi, which latter discharges the functions of ministering priest.

If we were only approximately correct in placing the date of Zarathrustra and the reform of the ancient faith at 1000 B.C., the formation of this priestly order, which took place on the basis of the new doctrine, may have come to an end about the year 800 B.C. We saw that from this date onwards the spread of the new doctrine must have begun in the west of Iran towards the Medes and Persians, since there existed among the Medes from 700 B.C. an hereditary priesthood, charged with the worship of the gods according to the regulations of Zarathrustra, and in this century it was already sufficiently numerous to be placed as an equal division beside the tribes of the Medes.

We have no better information about the priests of the West than we have on the political and social position of the priests of Eastern Iran. They are not called Athravas but Magush. This name is first found in the inscription which Darius caused to be cut on the rock-wall of Behistun; afterwards it was consistently used by Western writers, from Herodotus to Agathias, for the priests of Iran. The Avesta has the words magha and maghavan, i. e. the powerful, the great,[319 - The Mobedh of Middle Persian is magupat, i. e. lord of the Magians (p. 60). The derivation of the name Magus from the Turanian imga (apparently = honourable) can only be adopted by those who regard the Magians as descendants of the Turanians, or at any rate as containing a strong admixture of Turanians; a view which rests on the theory that the second series in the inscriptions of the Achæmenids is the Median translation of the Persian inscriptions. With this view I cannot agree; all that we learn from the Greeks of the customs, manners, and names of the Medes bears the mark of an Arian origin, and is in harmony with what is attributed to the Persians. In the inscription of the second class at Behistun, Gaumata is not called imga but magush.] but does not use it of the priests, which are always called Athravas. If the last title is taken from the fire-worship, the first allows us to see the importance of the priests. He who can use incantations to the gods and spirits – can summon or remove them – is the mighty one, the powerful. If in this name we have evidence of the respect with which the laity of Western Iran looked up to the priests, the difference between the names in the East and West shows that there were priestly races among the Medes and Persians before the religion of Zarathrustra reached them. Had not such existed before the reform, and had they not possessed a definite name in the West – had priestly families become known there for the first time at the rise of the reform – they would never have had any other name than that of Athravas. Even without this positive proof we might assume that from all antiquity there had been priests among the Medes and Persians who understood how to invoke the gods of light in the old Arian faith – Mithra and Verethraghna, Vayu and Tistrya – and tend the fire which destroyed demons. When the new doctrine reached from the East to Ragha and then to Media (p. 96), the old races who passed over to the new faith united with the families the members of which were the prophets of the new doctrine. The teachers of the Medes in old times, which Pliny called successors of Zarathrustra, might have stood at the head of this transformation of the ancient priestly families, of the creation of the Median priesthood on the basis of the new religion (p. 92). However this may have been, the priestly families among the Medes were so numerous, their connection and union so close and firmly fixed, that they could be counted as a sixth tribe beside the other five Median tribes.

Among the tribes of the Persians Herodotus mentions no tribe of Magi. It would be a mistake to conclude from this that there were originally no priests among the Persians, and to put faith in Xenophon's statement that Cyrus was the first to give the Magians the care of the sacred fire, "because he preferred to go on board with the pious rather than the impious."[320 - "Cyri instit." 8, 1, 23.] No one will maintain that the Persians in ancient times were without worship and religious rites, or that when they accepted the doctrine of Zarathrustra, which did not permit sacrifice without Magians, they used the services of none but alien priests. Such a proceeding would be absurd. The proper conclusion from the fact that Herodotus does not mention a tribe of Magians among the Persians is that the priestly families there were less numerous; they had not broken away from the tribal connections to which they originally belonged, and formed themselves into a separate community. Further, from the fact that the priestly families of the Persians in old times had not formed themselves into a separate community, we may conclude – and indeed the conclusion follows from the position of Media and the notice in the Avesta about Ragha, and the observation about the ancient teachers of the Medes, who are said to have been followers of Zarathrustra – that the reform of the faith first came from Bactria to the Medes, that it was adopted and more strongly represented among them, and so passed on to the Persians. We cannot doubt that there were Persians belonging to the order of Magians. If Plato and his pupils call Zoroaster the "teacher of the Magians," and at the same time "a Persian," they must assume that there were Magians among the Persians; if, according to Plato's statement, the four teachers of the heirs to the Persian throne, of which one had to teach the Magism of Zoroaster, were selected out of "all the Persians;" – if at the time of Xerxes there were Persians who wrote on the doctrine of Zoroaster, they must have been initiated in the wisdom and knowledge of the Magians, and have known their invocations and customs; the contents of the holy scriptures and the scriptures themselves can hardly have been hidden from them. In order to prove that the Magians, i. e. the priests, belonged exclusively to the Medes, the fact has been brought forward that the Persians, after Darius had dethroned the Pseudo-Smerdis, celebrated each year the feast of the slaughter of the Magians, at which no Magian allowed himself to be seen, but all were obliged to remain at home.[321 - Herod. 3, 79.] The Magophonia was not the celebration of a victory over the Magi generally, but over the removal of a usurper, and the restoration of the dominion to the Achæmenids, which had been taken from them by one who happened to be a Magian. Herodotus at any rate calls this Magian a Mede.[322 - Herod. 3, 73.] Darius contents himself with calling him the "Magian." Hence there is no ground to doubt that both before and after the reform, families of the Persians were charged with the worship of the gods; the less so because Plato, as already remarked, represents the heirs to the throne in Persia as being instructed in the doctrine of Zoroaster, while Strabo and Pausanias speak expressly of "Persian Magi," and the chief Magian is enumerated among the tribes "which dwell in the districts of Persis."[323 - Strabo, p. 727; Pausanias, 5, 27, 3.]

When the dominion of the Achæmenids had been established over Iran, the priestly families of all the West must have been united into one community. There is no doubt that this remained an order in which the priestly wisdom and knowledge were traditional. Strabo, like Herodotus, calls the Magians a tribe; he adds that the members of it sought after a holy life. The tribe was large, he tells us in another place; Magians could be found even in Cappadocia. Ammianus also informs us that the Magians handed down their doctrines to later times, each by his descendants. Growing up through centuries from a small number, the Magians became a nation, and being regarded as dedicated to the service of the gods, they had acquired respect through their religion. They inhabited open villages, lived according to a law of their own, and possessed fruitful fields in the district called Nisæa. Agathias also calls the Magians a tribe.[324 - Ammian. 23, 6, 32-35; Agathias, 2, 26.] But the separation of the priestly order in the West cannot have been more strict than that of the Athravas in the East. Marriage with the women of other orders was not forbidden, nor transition from other orders into that of the Medes. The Avesta speaks of the teacher and the pupil (p. 203); and it is expressly said – though the statement comes from the beginning of the third century of our era – that the Magians among the Persians, i. e. the Magians under the Arsacids, instructed even those who were not Persians in their doctrine, but only at the special command of the king.[325 - Philostratus in Rapp, "Z. D. M. G." 20, 71.]

We find the Magians in close proximity to the rulers of the Medes and Persians; they were not without importance and influence. In Herodotus they tell Astyages that they had and would have great honours from him.[326 - Herod. 1, 120.] Xenophon speaks of them as determining, at the time of Cyrus, which god is to be honoured on each day.[327 - "Cyri instit." 7, 5, 20; 8, 1, 8.] Cambyses charges Magians with the duty of watching the grave of Cyrus, and this office became hereditary in their families;[328 - Arrian, "Anab." 6, 29.] he also entrusts a Magian with the care of the royal household, while he marches with the army into the remote parts of Egypt and Nubia. The inscriptions of Darius showed us how much in earnest he was with the doctrines and regulations of the religion – how lively was his faith. On his march to Hellas, Xerxes was accompanied by Osthanes, a man skilled in the priestly dogmas, and by Magians; they offer sacrifice, and charm the storms.[329 - Herod. 7, 191.] The sacred fire which was carried before the kings[330 - Curtius, 3, 7; Ammian. 23, 6, 34.] was conducted by Magians, and so also were the sacred chariot, the sacred horses of Mithra and the sun-god, in the campaigns of the Achæmenids (p. 167). Of greater importance was it that the heirs to the throne in Persia were instructed, as Plato tells us, in the Magism of Zoroaster,[331 - "Alcibiad. I." p. 122.] which could only be done by Magians. Nicolaus of Damascus relates that the Persian princes were instructed by the Magians in truthfulness, justice, and the laws of their country;[332 - Nic. Dam. fragm. 67, ed. Müller.] and, according to Plutarch, Magians were the educators of the Persian princes; Magians also under the Achæmenids performed the consecration at the accession of a new king.[333 - Plut. "Artaxerxes," c. 3.] We are also told that this king of the Medes and that of the Persians, took the advice of the Magians on important occasions. Under the Arsacids they formed, along with the members of the race of the kings, the supreme council of the kingdom; in the time when this dynasty was at its height they ruled, as Pliny told us, "over the king of kings;" and we have seen (p. 60) that their influence under the Sassanids, at court, in the administration of law, and in politics, was even more powerful.

Herodotus maintains that the Magians also occupied themselves with soothsaying and prophecy; like Ctesias, he ascribes to the Medes the interpretation of certain dreams and other miraculous acts. Of such interpretations and prophesying on the part of the priests the Avesta knows nothing, and those Greeks who were better informed, warmly contested the assertion that the Magians were occupied with such things. Plato tells us: "The Magism of Zoroaster is the worship of the gods;" and Aristotle assures us that the Magians knew nothing of soothsaying.[334 - Diog. Laert. prooem. 6.] What Herodotus tells us, on the other side, he certainly did not invent, but repeats after his informants. The Medo-Persian Epos, which, though indirectly, forms the basis of Herodotus' account of the rise of Cyrus and the death of Cambyses, allowed a wide field, even in the account of the fall of the Assyrian empire (III. 264), to the astrological and prophetic wisdom of the Chaldæans. From this we may conclude that prophecies of the Chaldæans were not left out of sight at the overthrow of Astyages. In Nicolaus of Damascus it is a Chaldæan of Babylon who expounds her dream to the mother of Cyrus,[335 - Fragm. 66, ed. Müller; cf. infra Bk. 8, c. 4.] and possibly the kings of the Medes followed the example of the Assyrian and Babylonian courts in having astrologers and interpreters of dreams from Babylon about them.

Whatever was the influence employed by the Magians at the court of the Achæmenids, the Arsacids and Sassanids, their influence was of a moral nature; it was only through the effect of religion on the heart and conscience of the king, that they could work; their position did not rest on any hierarchical institutions. In Iran the priesthood had no real means of power which permitted it to come forward in opposition to the power of the State. The priest was a subject of the king like any one else. It was within the king's power to proceed at his pleasure with the severest corporal punishment against the Magi, and it is abundantly clear that the kings did not shrink from inflicting such punishments, even if we do not regard as established facts the stories that Astyages impaled the Magians who had given him a false report, and that Darius caused forty Magians to be executed at once.[336 - Herod. 1, 128; Ctes. "Pers." 15. The excerpt says 4 °Chaldæans, but obviously Magi are here meant.]

Diogenes Laertius relates that the Magians lived on lentils, bread and cheese, which agrees with the Avesta to the extent that the priests are there commanded to be content with a little food.[337 - Prooem. 7. Above, p. 190. The further statements of Diogenes about the white robes of the Magians, their avoidance of all ornament and gold, of their lying on the ground, and staff of reed, deserve little notice, inasmuch as the source whence they are derived is unknown.] What Herodotus tells us of the duties and occupation of the Magians agrees entirely with the rules given in the Avesta for the Athravas. No one could sacrifice without a Magian; the sacrifices were offered on high places (in this Xenophon agrees[338 - "Cyri instit." 8, 7, 3.]) or in "pure places;" the most delicate grass was spread – we remember the importance of the Kuça-grass in the Veda and the Brahmanas – on this grass the flesh of the sacrifice was laid; the Magians sang the theogony, i. e. long sacrificial prayers, and the sacred rite is fulfilled. Herodotus also asserts that the Magians took great pride in killing serpents, ants, and other winged and creeping things with their own hands; that human life was greatly respected by them; that the dog was held in high honour (p. 86); and the corpses of the Magians were exposed to dogs or birds of prey. This he declares that he knows to be the truth; Xenophon represents the Magians as beginning their songs of praise with the break of day, and as offering their sacrifices at certain places, which were selected for the gods. Curtius relates that they sang native songs.[339 - "Cyri instit." 8, 7, 3; 7, 5, 20; 8, 1, 8; Curtius, 3, 3, 8.] Strabo told us above that the Magians sought after a holy life; he observes also that whatever was the god to which they sacrificed they first prayed to fire. At every sacrifice the Magians conducted the sacred rite; the victims were not slain with the knife but struck down with a club. No part of the flesh of the victim was set apart for the deity, for they declared that the god required only the soul of the animal; yet according to some they placed a small portion of the fat in the fire. "In Cappadocia there were enclosed places," Strabo continues, "in the midst of which was an altar, heaped up with ashes. On this the Magians kept up the unquenchable fire. Each day they went and sang for an hour before the fire, holding in their hands a bundle of twigs. On their heads they wore tiaras of felt, which fell down on both sides so far that the side-pieces covered the lips."[340 - Strabo, p. 733.] Pausanias, who observed the worship of the Magians in the cities of Lydia, says: "At both places there was a shrine with a cell, and in the cell is an altar; on this are ashes the colour of which is not the ordinary colour of ashes. When the Magian comes into the cell, he lays the dry wood on the altar, puts the tiara on his head, and sings the invocation to some god or another, in a barbarian manner, quite unintelligible to the Hellenes; but he sings from a book. Then the pieces of wood, without being kindled, ought to become lighted, and a flame from them should flash all round the cell."[341 - Pausan. 5, 27, 5, 6.]

CHAPTER IX.

THE LAW OF THE PRIESTS

The rules concerning purity and purification, the expiations and penances necessary to avert the Daevas, which we possess in the Vendidad of the Avesta, are only the remnant of a far more comprehensive law. From the list of books and chapters traditional among the Parsees, we can see that it was intended to include not only all the invocations and prayers which the worship required, the rules of sacrifice, and the entire ritual, together with the Calendar of the year of the Church, but also the arrangement of the process of law, the civil and criminal code, and, moreover, rules for agriculture and medicine. If to this we add the statements and quotations of the Greeks (p. 53), we may assume that the scriptures of Eastern Iran comprised the whole sum of the knowledge of the priests. In the Avesta the Athravas had sketched the ideal picture of the correct conduct pleasing to Auramazda in every department of life. How far the princes of Bactria and the viceroys of Cyaxares and the Achæmenids, or even these princes themselves, and the judges, wished or allowed themselves to be bound in their decisions by these regulations of the priests, may be left out of the question. The priests here, like the Brahmans in India, could only influence the action of the State and those charged with it, so far as the reverence for the principles of religion and the force of their own authority extended.

The existing part of the law has obviously arisen out of the questions and considerations sketched above, which in consequence of the reform must have forced themselves into the circles of the priests. The reform also required above all things purity from men, but no supernatural purity, such as the Brahmans demanded. The body is not in the Avesta, as it was to the Brahmans and after them to the Buddhists, the impure prison of the soul which must be abandoned; on the contrary the Avesta rejoices in its health and vigour. It requires that the body should be kept pure from filth, from contamination by the impure, which gives the Daevas power over mankind, i. e. it demands the exclusion of the harmful side of nature; it desires that the soul should be pure from pollution, freed from untruthfulness, lying, and deceit, which are contradictory to the nature of the clear bright gods, and Auramazda, and make men companions of the Daevas, and sharers in their nature. In other words, it demands the invigoration of the light and wholesome side of man. The kingdom of the good spirits is truth, increase, and life; the kingdom of the evil is deception and falsehood, lying, destruction, and death. The Avesta praises Auramazda as purity itself; and next to him Asha vahista, i. e. the best purity; the gods are chiefly extolled as "the pure," and Zarathrustra as the master and teacher of purity. The Avesta repeatedly declares "that purity after birth is the best thing for men." Hence it is the foremost of all duties to keep the soul and body pure. The worshipper of Auramazda must preserve his purity by good thoughts, words, and works; truth is required in thinking, speaking, and acting; uprightness and honesty in all the relations of life; the sacredness of promises and pledges, and solemn assurances, at which Mithra is summoned to bear witness. It is an old function of the god which appears here. He is the guardian of the word, and the compact. "Mithra is twenty-fold between friends and kinsmen, thirty-fold between tradespeople, forty-fold between companions who live together, fifty-fold between man and wife, sixty-fold between associates in sacrifice, seventy-fold between scholar and teacher, eighty-fold between step-son and step-parents, ninety-fold between brothers, a hundred-fold between son and father." "Miserable are the houses, without descendants the dwellings, inhabited by those who deceive Mithra. Miserably does the cloven-footed cow go on the wrong path, which is oppressed by the burden of Mithra-deceiving men."[342 - "Mihr Yasht," 38, 116, 117.] In accordance with this view deception is in the eyes of the law the worst offence; worse than robbery or theft. Evil-speaking and calumny also are, according to the Vendidad, "lies and sins" against Mithra. The gravest offence of this kind is the calumny by which "a pure man" is disparaged "with a man of another religion," for this sin is committed with full knowledge, and by a man's own intelligence; and the worst of all lies is teaching a false law. "One who teaches such a law," says the Vendidad, "does no better than if he killed a thousand horses, slew the men in a village inhabited by worshippers of Auramazda, or carried off the cows on the wrong way."[343 - "Vend." 1, 18, 20; 18, 22-32.]

It is not the least proof of the currency of the doctrines of the Avesta in the West of Iran that their ethical side, which gathers round the command of truthfulness, was there most distinctly recognised. King Darius has already told us that "the lie" had brought his kingdom into rebellion; the leaders of the rebellious lands, who gave themselves out to be descendants of the ancient royal families, he calls "liars against the kingdom." From their youth up, Herodotus tells us, the children of the Persians were instructed in truthfulness. He adds: Among the Persians it was forbidden to speak of that which it was forbidden to do; the Avesta requires truth "in thought, speech, and action." Lying and borrowing, Herodotus says, passed with the Persians for the most disgraceful acts, for they were of opinion that any one who contracted debts was generally compelled to tell lies. The Avesta says: "He who does not restore that which has been borrowed, seeks day and night to deceive the creditor." Plato states that the heirs to the Persian throne had, besides three others, a teacher whose special business it was to instruct them in truth. Xenophon assures us that pledges and oaths were religiously kept among the Persians; and Diodorus, that the pledge of hands was the strongest security among them.[344 - Herod. 1, 136; Plato, "Alcib. I." p. 122; Xen. "Cyri instit." 8, 8, 2; Diod. 16, 43.] Practice in Persia was, it is true, not equal to these injunctions, however sharply expressed; on the contrary, we often find the two in the most glaring contradiction.

Not falsehood and lies only, but also laziness and sloth pollute the soul of man. The pious man must rise early. Çraosha awakes the bird Parodarsh, we are told in the book of the law. At the return of the divine Ushahina, i. e. of the morning (p. 108), this bird speaks to those who are in their beds: "Friend, up, arise. Praise purity, and the Daevas will fly away. Long sleep, O man, is not good for thee. The Bushyançta runs up to thee, who lays again in sleep the whole corporeal world. Turn yourselves not away from the three best things: good thinking, speaking, and acting. He who rises first will come into Paradise; he who first brings pure, dry, old, well-hewn wood to the fire of Auramazda, him will the fire bless (p. 122)."[345 - "Vend." 18, 35-42; 53-57.] The pious man should be industrious and work; the best work is that which increases nourishment and fruit for men and animals, which furthers the increase and life of the world, and thus diminishes the kingdom of the evil, the power of the dark spirits. For this reason running water and growing fruits should be spread over the earth; "the field should be tilled, and trees planted which produce food." "When there are shoots," the law-book says, "the Daevas are in alarm; when there are stalks, the Daevas weep; when there are ears, the Daevas hiss; when there are grains, the Daevas fly."[346 - "Vend." 3, 105 ff.] "In the house where there are most ears, the Daevas are smitten most heavily." "The earth is not glad which lies untilled. The greatest pleasure is given to the earth where a pure man builds his house, provided with fire and cattle, and good flocks, with wife and child, where most corn, fodder, and grain is produced by husbandry, where the dry land is most watered, where fruit-bearing trees are planted, where cattle and beasts of draught leave the most urine."[347 - Loc. cit. 3, 1-20.] "He who plants fruits and trees, who gives water to the earth where it is needed, and takes it away where too abundant, he worships the earth." When a man tills the earth she bestows life upon him; "as a friend to a beloved friend, she gives him descendants and wealth." To him who tills her, the earth says: "O man, who tillest me with the left arm and the right, with the right arm and the left, in love will I bear thee all kinds of fruit." But to him who tills her not the earth says: "Thou wilt go to the doors of others and there stand, in order to beg for food; in idleness thou wilt ask for it and get but little." He who sows corn, sows purity; the law of Auramazda increases with the fruits of the field; they extend the law of Auramazda by 100, 1000, and 10,000 meritorious works.

These regulations of the Avesta were fully accepted in the West. The great reverence paid to splendid trees by the Achæmenids is shown by Herodotus' story of Xerxes, that he furnished a beautiful plane tree, which he saw in Lydia, with golden ornaments, and appointed a perpetual guardian for it.[348 - Herod. 7, 31.] Ameretat, as already observed, was the special protecting spirit of trees (p. 164). Xenophon tells us that the Persian kings gave special attention to agriculture; on their journeys they inquired into the tillage of the land, and demanded similar attention from their satraps. Round their palaces and wherever they came they caused the most beautiful gardens to be laid out, planted with trees and all the most excellent shrubs in the world.[349 - "Œconom." 4, 13 ff.] The satraps also had gardens of this kind (pairidaeza) round their residences, and the younger Cyrus assures Lysander, "in the name of Mithra," that he never took food before he had induced perspiration by work in the garden or exercise in arms.[350 - Ibid. 4, 20-24.] The satraps, says Xenophon, whose provinces were found deficient in population and poorly cultivated, were punished and removed from their office, while those whose provinces were in good order, were rewarded by presents. When the king of the Persians conferred distinctions, those were summoned first who had distinguished themselves in war, and next came those whose districts were best cultivated.[351 - Ibid. 4, 8-12; "Cyri instit." 8, 6, 16.] Respect and reverence for trees was so deeply rooted in Iran, that even Islam did not extirpate the feeling. To this day in Shiraz old trees are presented with dedicatory offerings, and hung with amulets; and the pious prefer to pray under tall trees rather than in the neighbouring mosques; while in the barren regions of Iran even groups of bushes receive offerings.[352 - Darmesteter, "Haurvatat et Ameretat," p. 64 ff.]

Besides the care of trees, plants, and the soil, the labour of mankind must be directed to the care of the flocks, to the increase of the animals of the good god, and the destruction of the Khrafçtras, or animals belonging to the evil spirit (p. 171). Cows are not held in such veneration in Iran as beyond the Indus, yet even here the "cow is not to be driven on the wrong way," and gomez (the urine of oxen) is the most effectual means of purification; in the theory of the priests Auramazda began the creation of living things with the bull. We have already mentioned the rank taken among the animals of Auramazda by the cock and dog. In the Vendidad Auramazda says: "I have created the dog with clothes and shoes of his own, with keen scent and sharp teeth, attached to men, savage against the enemy, for the protection of the flocks. No thief or wolf comes to the village or the fold and carries away anything unobserved, if the dog is healthy, in good voice, and among the flocks. The houses would not stand firm upon the earth if there were not dogs in the villages and flocks. The dog is patient, contented, and satisfied with little food, like a priest; he goes forward, and is before and behind the house, like a warrior; he sleeps less than the husbandmen, is talkative like a child, and friendly as a mistress."[353 - "Vend." 13, 125-162.] The dogs are to receive good food, "for of all the creatures of Auramazda old age comes upon them the most quickly;" especially must the watch-dog be provided with milk, fat, and flesh, "the proper food" for a dog; and a dog must never be among those who are eating without receiving something to eat. Any one who gives unbroken bones or hot food to a sheep-dog or house-dog, and the bones injure him, and the hot food burns his mouth and tongue, so that he dies – is worthy of death.[354 - "Vend." 15, 2, 3, 4.] Dogs with young are treated with the same care as pregnant women. It is a sin to chase or beat a dog which has brought forth; if she is injured or dies in running the sinner is worthy of death; and any one who beats a pregnant dog is to receive twice seven hundred stripes. It is the duty of every man to bring up for six months the dogs born on his ground, until they are able to run round in a circuit of twice seven houses.[355 - "Vend." 15, 5, 20, 21, according to Goldner's translation. [Cf. Darmesteter.]] Sick dogs are treated with the same remedies as rich men; and to the question of Zarathrustra – "If the dog will not take the remedies?" Auramazda answers that in this case "the dog can be tied, and its mouth opened with a flat piece of wood."[356 - "Vend." 13, 97-105.] Wounds inflicted on dogs are to be punished with stripes to the number of twice eight hundred;[357 - "Vend." 13, 26-47.] and besides this, compensation is to be given for the damage which thieves or wolves do to the village so long as the dog is prevented by his injuries from keeping watch. The book of the law everywhere threatens all those men who beat dogs that their souls will go from this world full of terror, and sick. To kill a water-dog is the greatest crime;[358 - It is not certain whether the udra of the Vendidad is the water-dog (spaniel?) or the otter.] and is menaced with the worst penalties and expiations known to the Vendidad. As a general rule punishments do not go beyond 2000 stripes, or the necessity of killing 2000 noxious animals; but the slayer of the water-dog is to receive 10,000 stripes. Besides this, if he would save his soul, he must give 10,000 parcels of hard wood, well hewn and dried, for the fire of Auramazda, and also 10,000 parcels of soft, fragrant wood; he must kill 10,000 snakes, and an equal number of tortoises, lizards, and water-lizards, ants, flies, and rats. He must fill up 10,000 impure holes in the earth; give to the priests all the utensils required for the holy rites; to a warrior a complete set of armour; to a husbandman he must give all that is needed for agriculture: a house, provided with a beautiful mat, and arable land for tillage. In addition, he must give, as an expiation for his soul, fourteen head of small cattle to the "pure men," and bring up fourteen young dogs, and build fourteen bridges over running water. He must cleanse eighteen dogs from fleas, and make eighteen bones into edible food; and satisfy eighteen "pure men" with wine and flesh. If he does not perform these expiations he will go into the dwelling of the Druj, and "the heat which is injurious to the pasture will not depart from his dwelling until he has offered sacrifice for three days and nights for the pure soul of the water-dog, on the burning fire, with bound rods and uplifted Haoma."[359 - "Vend." 13, 169-174; 14, 4-75.]

In order to extirpate the animals of Angromainyu, the priest is to be provided with a stick, the Khrafçtra-killer. Herodotus has already told us, that the Magians held it a duty to kill serpents, ants, and other creeping and winged insects. For the expiation of sins the Avesta universally requires the killing of serpents, lizards, and ants; rats and mice, which do harm to the crops; flies, midges, fleas, lice, and other vermin. Plutarch tells us that the Persians count him a happy man who slays most water-mice; Agathias observes that in honour of the chief festival in Persia every one killed as many snakes, and beasts of prey, and animals living in the desert, as possible, and then brought them to the Magians as a proof of his piety. In this way they believed that they did what was pleasing to the good god, while they injured and distressed Arimanes.[360 - Agath. 2, 24.]

According to the Avesta, the soul of man is kept pure by truthfulness, industry, and diligence, by good thoughts, good words and acts, which advance the kingdom of life; the body is to be kept free from dirt and the house from filth and dead creatures; from all that belongs to the evil spirits and is in their power. The soul of man is created pure; but from the first the body has certain impure parts, and the defilement which Angromainyu brought into the bodies of men. This defilement consists in the spittle, the excrements, dead skin, sores, etc; in everything that has an unpleasant smell, or is removed from the living body, like the hair and nails. These when cut are dead, and therefore belong to the kingdom of darkness; hence in Iran as in India they are impure things. "Wherever cut hair and nails lie," says the book of the law, "there the Daevas gather to these unholy places; there the impure animals come, which men call lice. Therefore carry away – so saith Auramazda – cut hair and nails, ten paces from the pure men, twenty from the fire, thirty from the water, fifty from the sacred bundle of rods. Dig a hole below the house in the earth, pronounce the prayer Ahunavairya thrice, six times, nine times, and then say: To thee, O bird, Asho-zusta, I show these nails. These nails I dedicate to thee; may they be thy lances, thy swords, thy bow, thy swift-flying arrows, thy sling-stones against the Mazanian Daevas. If these nails are not announced to the bird Asho-zusta, they are weapons for, not against, the Daevas."[361 - "Vend." Farg. 17.] Spittle is among the worst impurities. The priests could only approach the fire with veiled mouth, and even now the Parsees invariably cover the mouth in praying. They eat in silence, and two never use the same spoon, because the food would then be polluted by spittle. The removal of the excrements requires as much care in the Avesta as it did in the Brahmanic law, and the Vendidad gives minute regulations in regard to these matters.[362 - "Wer den Urin mit vorgestrecktem Fusse lässt macht die Drudsch schwanger," so dass sie neue Unholde gebären.] A man is rendered impure by excess and debauchery; a woman by her courses, "by marks and blood," and by the birth of a child. She must be carried to an elevated place in the dwelling, which is strewn with dry sand, fifteen paces from the fire, from water, and the sacred bundle of rods, "at a distance also from the trees," and so placed that she cannot see the fire on the hearth. No one may touch her. Only a definite amount of certain kinds of food can be given to her, and that in metal jars, because these contract the least amount of impurity, and are most easily cleansed; the person who brings the food must remain three paces distant from her bed. After childbirth a woman is unclean for three days; then she must wash her body with water and gomez. If she has had a miscarriage her body is also polluted by the dead child: she must be placed thirty paces away from the fire and the sacred objects of the house, and must pass a longer period on her dust-bed – at the present time forty-one days are required. The first thing she is allowed to taste is ashes mixed with gomez – three, six, and then nine drops. The nine apertures of her body – that number is common to the Indians and Iranians – must be washed with ashes and gomez. She may not drink any water out of her impure hand; if she does so, she must receive two hundred blows with the rod, and two hundred with the whip.[363 - "Vend." 5, 45-55, 136-157; 7, 158-182.] Fire and water, springs, streams and rivers, the best gifts of the good gods, must, like the human body, be carefully preserved from all filth and defilement. The accounts of Western writers prove that the Persians and Medes observed the rules of purification given in the Book of the Law; it was not the custom among the Persians to spit in the presence of another, still less to sneeze, etc. They avoided the defilement of a river, or of the shadow of a man; and it was forbidden to uncover in the sight of the sun or moon.[364 - Herod. 1, 133; Xen. "Cyri instit." 1, 2, 16; 8, 9, 11; Plin. "H. N." 28, 19.]

"The sun, the moon, the stars shine unwillingly," we are told in the Vendidad, "on the polluted man."[365 - "Vend." 9, 161.] "The impure takes away prosperity and increase; he brings sickness and death; after death he will not go into heaven."[366 - "Vend." 9, 187.] "But whatever pollution a man has contracted, and whatever sin he has committed, the good law quenches all impurity and sin, if the purifications, expiations, and penalties which it prescribes are performed and paid; for the good law of Auramazda surpasses all others in greatness, goodness, and salvation, as far as the heaven rises above the earth, and as the sea of Vourukasha includes all other waters."[367 - "Vend." 5, 23-25.] "The good law of Auramazda takes from the man who praises it and commits no evil actions afterwards, his deception; it takes away the murder of the pure man, and the burial of the dead; it takes away inexpiable actions, and accumulated guilt; it takes away all evil words, thoughts, and actions, even as the strong swift wind purifies heaven from the right side."[368 - "Vend." 3, 140-147; 8, 87.]

Slight pollution is removed by washing with pure water accompanied by certain prayers and imprecations on the Daevas, such as: "I contend with thee, O evil Angromainyu; away from this dwelling, away from the fire, the water, from this place, from all the blessings which Auramazda has created. I contend against pollution, direct and indirect; against the unclean spirits; I contend against the Daeva Andra, Çaurva, Zairicha (p. 169); against the Pairika, who goes to the water, the earth, cattle, and trees," etc.[369 - "Vend." 10, 11, 12, 17, 18, 26-28.] More serious impurities require ablutions with gomez, which in certain cases have to be repeated thirty times, with various prayers.[370 - "Vend." 8, 275, 276.] The most efficacious purification, which removes even the worst taint, is that of the nine nights. This can only be performed by a priest, who knows the law accurately, can repeat the sacred word by heart, and speaks the truth. A special place must be constructed for it; thirty paces (which are equal to ninety times the length of the foot) from the fire, the water, and the sacred bundle of rods. In the middle of this space nine pits are dug in the earth, and round them twelve furrows are drawn with a metal instrument. The purifier sprinkles the person who requires cleansing (who is entirely naked) with gomez, from a leaden vessel, with many prayers. He is then rubbed fifteen times with earth; he must then wash himself at each of the nine pits once, twice, thrice with water, after which he is fumigated with fragrant wood. Then follow washings with water and gomez in the third, sixth, and ninth night. "After this," says the book, "the purified person shall bring water of purification to the fire, hard wood, and perfumes; he is to utter praises to Auramazda, to the Amesha Çpentas, and to the rest of the pure ones – so will the man be purified." The purifier must be rewarded for this purification; according to the measure of the man's property the payment rises from small cattle and cows to camels; "in order that the purifier may go away contented and without hatred." Instead of cattle, goods of another description can be given. "But if the purifier goes away discontented, the wicked spirit of impurity comes again into the purified persons, and they are impure for evermore."[371 - "Vend." 9, 119-158; 19, 69-80.]

In the view of the Avesta impurity consists essentially in that which is opposed to life; hence there is no worse form of uncleanness than that caused by the corpse. The body, as soon as the soul has left it, belongs to Angromainyu. The fiend of death, the Druj Naçu, obtains possession of it, and from it she springs on all who touch it, or come near it. If a man dies, or a dog – and in this matter dogs are put quite on a level with men – and other men and women are in the same house – two, five, fifty, or a hundred – the Druj Naçu comes immediately from the north in the form of a fly, and settles on all the inhabitants of the house and makes them impure with infection, pollution, and uncleanness.[372 - "Vend." 5, 83-108; 7, 4 ff.] In the first instance she is to be met by incantations – the Gathas, Bisamruta, Thrisamruta, Chathrasamruta, must be repeated; then the fiend falls to pieces like grass that has been dead a year.[373 - "Vend." 9, 168-171; Farg. 10.] After this the hearth-fire must be removed from the house of the dead, and the sacred utensils – the mortar, the cup, the sacred bundle of rods, and the Haoma. In winter the fire can be kindled again upon the hearth after nine nights; in summer, when the need for warmth and cooked food is less pressing, after a month; any one who does not observe these periods is to be punished with twice two hundred stripes.[374 - "Vend." 5, 124-135.] After purification the kinsmen are to utter prayers for the departed, and the number of these is fixed, in the Vendidad, in the same fanciful manner which is so often met with in the book of Manu. The number decreases according to the degree of relationship; for the nearest kinsmen thirty prayers are spoken; for the most remote, five; if the dead man has led an impure life the number of prayers is doubled in order to give efficacy to the petition.[375 - "Vend." 12, 1-59.]

The preservation and increase of life is the foundation of the teaching of the Avesta. The good life of nature is promoted by planting and agriculture, by tending the useful and destroying the pernicious animals; and by posterity provision is to be made for the life of men. From this point of view the Vendidad lays especial weight on marriage. "I declare," Auramazda says, "that the married is before the unmarried, and he that has a house before him that has none, and the father of children before the childless."[376 - "Vend." 4, 130-133.] We can only ascertain very incompletely from the remaining fragments of the Avesta the rules which it prescribed for family life. We see that bringing about a marriage was regarded as a meritorious work, and marriage between close relations was considered happy. Yet maidens are not to be given in marriage before their fifteenth year.[377 - "Vend." 14, 64-66.] To those who have long remained unmarried the god Haoma, the special protector of life, sends truthful, active husbands, gifted with good understanding (p. 125). We never hear of any difference of the orders in contracting marriage; nor is there the least hint that the priest can only marry a wife of priestly blood, or the husbandman a wife of his own class. On the other hand, the strictest directions are given that the worshippers of Auramazda are only to marry among themselves; marriage with those of an alien religion is severely reprobated. "A man who mingles the seed of the faithful and the unbelievers, the seed of the worshippers of the Daevas with the worshippers of Mazda, keeps back a third part of the flowing water, a third part of the increase of the blooming plants, and their golden fruits; he annihilates a third part of the clothing of Çpenta Armaiti (the Earth); he robs the just men of a third part of their power, their merits, their purity. They who do this are more destructive than forked serpents, than howling wolves, than the she-wolf which rushes on the flocks, than the thousand-fold brood of the lizard, which pollutes the water."[378 - "Vend." 18, 123-133, after Harlez' translation. [Cf. Darmesteter.]] The Vendidad gives the house-father a similar power over his wife and children to that given in Manu's law – so far as we can conclude from certain indications. He is to be spoken of with the same reverence as the house-father on the Ganges; the wife is to be honoured, but is to "be watched perpetually, like the fire of Auramazda."[379 - "Vend." 15, 126.] With regard to the education of children, we can only gather from the Vendidad they were to be tended for seven years; "protect dogs for six months, children for seven years;"[380 - "Vend." 15, 125.] and boys are to be invested in their fifteenth year with the sacred girdle.[381 - "Vend." 18, 115.] We remember the sacred girdle which the three upper castes wore and still wear beyond the Ganges; the investiture with this, and adoption into the family and caste – "the second birth" takes place, according to Manu's law, among the Brahman boys in the eighth year, among the Kshatryas, in the eleventh, and the Vaiçyas in the twelfth. The habit of wearing the girdle, which prevails on both sides of the Indus, proves that this custom was in use before the two branches of the Arians separated. Originally the girdle was intended to be a protection or amulet against the evil spirits.[382 - "Vend." 18, 23.] In the girdle which the priests prepare with traditional ceremonies, and put on boys in their seventh or tenth year, the modern Parsees see the bond which encloses and unites the worshippers of Auramazda.

If I attempt to supplement the scanty hints of the Avesta on family life from the accounts preserved to us on this subject by Western writers, it must be remembered that the more ancient of these statements hold good only of the West of Iran. But as we have hitherto found the worship and manners of the Persians and Medes, as described by the Greeks, agreeing with the rules of the Avesta, we may suppose that in this province also East and West were in agreement. Herodotus states that the Persians married many wives, and had concubines in addition. They considered it honourable and right to have as many children as possible; next to bravery in war it was the greatest merit to have many children, and the king sent presents every year to the man who had most.[383 - Herod. 1, 135, 136.] Of all days the Persians celebrated most the day on which they were born. A more abundant meal was served on this day: among the wealthy an ox, a horse, or a camel was roasted whole; and smaller animals among those who were poorer. Plato adds: "When the first son, the heir of the kingdom, was born to the king of Persia, all the subjects of the king celebrated the day, and on the birthday of the king there were festivals and sacrifices throughout all Asia."[384 - Plato, "Aloib. I."; p. 121.] Herodotus observes, that the respect of children for their parents was great. The Persians regarded the murder of parents by a son as impossible; if such a thing happened they believed that the child was supposititious.[385 - Herod. 1, 137.] Aristotle tells us that the power of the father over the sons among the Persians was tyrannical, i. e. unlimited; he treated them as slaves.[386 - "Ethic. Nicom." 8, 10, ed. Zell.] That the mother was also treated with respect follows from the statement that the son might not remain seated when the mother entered, and could only resume his seat at her permission. At the court of the Achæmenids the mother of the king had the first place, the king the second.[387 - Curt. 5, 9; Plut. "Artax." c. 5.] That the queen-mother often exercised great influence is shown by the history of this ruling family. Of the careful education of the heir to the throne, the other princes, and the sons of the wealthy Persians, both in the exercise and strengthening of their bodies and in moral training, the Western writers had much to tell.

What the Greeks narrate respecting the celebration of the birthday among the Persians, the distinction of the satraps whose provinces were best cultivated and populated, and the rewards given to those who had most children, agrees entirely with the delight in life which runs through the Avesta, and the exhortations to increase life everywhere present in that book. The Avesta always speaks of one wife only. The polygamy noticed by the Greeks was limited to the rich (the number of wives among the Persians, says Ammian, was regulated by property[388 - Ammian, 23, 6.]); in consequence of the religious feeling just noticed, it prevailed, no doubt, far more extensively among the Arians of Iran than among the Indians. Yet the harems of the Indian princes were large. However numerous the harems of the Achæmenids, only one wife was the lawful wife; and she alone, as in India, bore the name of queen: only her sons could be considered heirs to the throne. The other wives greeted the queen on their knees: the queen must belong to the race of the Achæmenids, or at any rate to one of the six tribal princes.[389 - Herod. 3, 70, 88; Dinon. fragm. 17, ed. Müller; Ctes. "Pers. Ecl." 44.] The same was the case among the rest of the Persians who had several wives; one only was the house-wife. The Avesta told us above that the wife must be watched. According to Plutarch the Persians were more strict in this matter than the rest of the barbarians; they kept not only the wife but the concubines shut up, and they left the houses in covered cars only.[390 - Plut. "Themist." c. 26.] Manu's law also requires that women should be watched (IV. 263). The power of the father, and the respectful attitude of the children to the mother, correspond to the principles of family life which we have seen beyond the Indus. Yet, so far as we can see, marriage was not in Iran so close and firmly established a relation as among the Arians of India, where the wife belonged absolutely to the man, and surrendered herself in complete devotion to him; nor did the relation of children to parents in Iran experience that excellent and happy development which on the whole attended it in India, and of which we can still perceive the results. If Western writers maintain that it was the custom among the Persians to take the nearest relations in marriage, so that even the brother married the sister (of which Herodotus gives an example in Cambyses) and the son the mother after the father's death (the latter is said to have prevailed especially among the Magi)[391 - Herod. 3, 31; Diogen. Laert. Prooem. 6; Plut. "Artax." c. 26; Ctes. "Pers. Ecl." 44; Agathias, 2, 23; Heracl. Cum. fragm. 7 ed. Müller.]– the Avesta, as we have seen, declared marriages between near relations to be good, and the history of the Achæmenids mentions marriage with sisters more than once. The more extreme assertions, especially in regard to the Magi, are to be regarded as exaggerations of the Greeks, and owed their origin to their astonishment at a custom which was more than revolting. On the relation of the sexes both before and after marriage, and other matters connected with procreation, the Vendidad supplies a number of minute regulations.[392 - The regulations respecting sexual intercourse, abortion, etc., which here follow in the German text will be found in "Vend." 16, 33-40; 18, 100-122, 136, 152; ib. 15, 9-17, 60; 18, 115; ib. 18, 115-119; ib. 8, 74-82; ib. 8, 96-106.]

The preservation of life also receives great attention in the Avesta. We remember the incantations of the Rigveda which banish sickness into thrushes and woodpeckers, and the sentences of the Atharvaveda against sickness and death (IV. 281). The remedies of the Veda are water and plants. All remedies are in water; the waters of the springs and the waters of the rivers drive away sickness. The plants said, when they came from heaven, that they descended from the water of the sky. "The mortal whom we touch will suffer no harm." "May Agni protect me with the waters, and Soma with the plants," we are told in the Veda; and again: "The plants whose king is Soma, have rescued me from death."[393 - "Rigveda," 10, 97, 17; "Atharvaveda," 2, 10, 2; 8, 1, 18 in Darmesteter loc. cit. 73, 76.] The priest who knows the sentences is at the same time the physician, though the Rigveda has a separate name for the latter (IV. 35). How highly the Indians respected doctors and physicians at a later time, in spite of the theory of the Brahmans of the unworthiness of the body, and how it was the custom there in the sixth century B.C. to send for the physician in every sickness, has been mentioned in its place (IV. 323). Proceeding from precisely the same conceptions, the Avesta went on to fill several books with medical remedies. The best mode of healing is that by charms, and the sacred word. In such incantations of the Avesta we are told: "I contend against sickness, I contend against death, I contend against pain, I contend against fever, I contend against the corruption and pollution which Angromainyu has created in the body of men. Sickness, I curse thee; fever, I curse thee; death, I curse thee."[394 - "Vend." 20, 19, 25.] The sacred word is invoked to heal by its power. "Mayst thou heal me, O Manthra Çpenta. As a recompense I will give to thee a thousand stall-fed oxen, a thousand spotless cattle, a thousand swiftly-running horses, a thousand camels, swift and with strong backs. I will bless thee with beautiful, pious blessings; with dear, pious blessings, which make the deficient full, and the full to overflow, which bind the friend and make the bond firm."[395 - "Vend." 22, 7-38.] As in the Veda, the remedies are water and plants, "Draw up, ye clouds, draw up," we are told in the Vendidad; "Let the water fall as thousand-fold, ten thousand-fold rain, to drive away sickness, to drive away corruption, to drive away death. May it rain for the renewal of the waters, the earth, the plants, the means of healing."[396 - "Vend." 21, 3-19.] As in the Veda Soma is the king of plants, so in Iran Haoma, the god of life, is the lord of plants.[397 - Justi, "Bundehesh," c. 24.] The white heavenly Haoma grows, as we have seen, on the Gaokerena, the tree of heaven; from it springs the earthly Haoma and all plants of which the seed falls from the tree Viçpotaokhma in Vourukasha, which the bird Chamru carries where Tistrya collects the clouds, in order to let the seed fall down from them to the earth.[398 - West, "Mainyo-i-Khard," c. 62. Above, p. 172.] "I, who am the giver of all blessings," says Auramazda, "created this dwelling (the earth), the beautiful, brilliant, and noteworthy; then Angromainyu, who is full of death, created nine diseases, ninety diseases, nine hundred diseases, nine thousand diseases, nine and ninety thousand diseases. Thrita desired as a favour a means to withstand death, to withstand pain, to withstand the heat of fever, and the evil corruptions and filth which Angromainyu has brought into the body of men. Then I, who am Auramazda, brought forth the healing plants, many hundreds, many thousands, many tens of thousands, around the one Gaokerena." The invocation then follows: "We bless thee, we invoke thee, we worship thee for the healing of the body of men, in order to drive away sickness, in order to drive away death, the hot fever and the cold fever."[399 - "Vend." 20, 11-20.]

Thrita, a spirit of heaven, who has a place among the sages and sacrificers of old time (p. 42) was, in the Avesta, the first physician who kept back disease and death; and every one who follows in his course, every physician, must appear as a willing combatant, an active co-operator against the evil spirits, from whom death and disease proceed. According to the Vendidad, those have the first place among the physicians who heal by charms, i. e. by the sacred word, the words of the law; these are the "physicians of physicians;" next come the physicians who heal by remedies; and last of all, those who heal by the knife.[400 - "Vend." 7, 118, 121.] These latter must first use the knife on the worshippers of the Daevas; when they have done so three times, and the patient has died each time, they are incapable for ever of practising the art of healing. But if they have healed three worshippers of the Daevas, they are capable of "healing the worshippers of Auramazda, and they can try their skill upon them as they please." The physician is not only to heal sick men, but sick animals also, and above all the sick dog. The Vendidad fixes the sum which the physician is to receive for his services. He is to heal a priest, and ask for no more than his blessing. For healing the overseer of a district he is to receive a yoke of four oxen, and for his wife a she-camel; the overseer of a canton is to pay a large beast of draught, and his wife a mare; the head of a village pays a smaller beast, and his wife a cow; the head of a house a small beast, and his wife a she-ass. For healing a large beast of draught the price is a beast of moderate size; and for one of moderate size, a head of small cattle, etc.[401 - "Vend." 7, 105, 117.] Pliny quotes a number of remedies and means of cure used by the Magi, some of them of an extraordinary character; indeed, the impression made on Pliny by the importance ascribed to medicine in the doctrine of Zarathrustra was so great, that he maintained that the Magism of Zoroaster had arisen out of the art of healing, and had introduced, as it were, a higher and sacred medicine. To this was subsequently added the power of religion, and the mathematical arts of investigating the future by the heavens, so that Zoroaster's doctrine had taken possession of the mind of men by a three-fold bond.[402 - "H. N." 30, 1.] How greatly he is mistaken in ascribing to the Magians the astrology of the Chaldæans, has been remarked above; the mistake is explained by the fact, that the Avesta includes the astronomical knowledge of the priests of Iran in the books which treated of medicine (p. 52).

The astronomical chapters are lost as well as those on medicine. From our fragments we cannot so much as fix the year by which the Avesta reckons. We merely perceive that it counted by nights, not by days. It is from the Bundehesh that we first learn that the year of Eastern Iran is made up of 360 days in twelve months of thirty days, with five additional days. This year is said to have begun with the vernal equinox, i. e. the period when the vigour of nature again shows itself. In the last five nights of the old year, and the first five nights of the new one, the spirits of the forefathers, the Fravashis, come to their descendants in the houses; they awake with nature to new life (p. 179). The first month is called Farvardin after these spirits; of the remaining eleven, six are called after the Amesha Çpentas, and the remaining five, which are inserted between the six, after Mithra, Tistrya, the spirits of fire and water, and lastly after the law (Din). The inscriptions of the Achæmenids give us nine names of months entirely different from these. Hence the West had its own calendar, as well as its own alphabet, and made use of it as early as the year 500 B.C. In the East the calendar of the Avesta was in use; and this seems to have been current in the West also in the first half of the fourth century B.C. There is no doubt whatever that it was the standard for all Iran at the time of the Sassanids.[403 - Von Gutschmid ("Das iranische Wandeljahr, Berichte der K. Sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wiss." 1862) places the establishment of the cycle, by which, in order to bring the year of 365 days into agreement with the natural time, a month was inserted every 120 years, and consequently the introduction of the East Iranian calendar into the whole kingdom, in the year 411, or between 428 and 381 B.C. That the beginning of the year was universally placed in the spring after the introduction of this calendar, and fixed between March and the middle of June, would follow from the importance of the Farvardin festival, even if it were not sufficiently vouched for by other evidence. The Bundehesh (c. 25) speaks of the year as fixed, inasmuch as it reckons the shortening of the days from a certain day in the month of Tir, and puts the shortest day on the 20th of the month of Din, yet it adds that the priests reckoned on this basis, and that the lunar year did not correspond to the year thus calculated. The Cappadocian names for the months are those of the East Iranian calendar; and the Cappadocians cannot have obtained these till the calendar was current throughout the whole kingdom of the Achæmenids. On this ground also Von Gutschmid's dates do not seem to be too high.]