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A Manual of the Ancient History of the East, Volume 2 - Francois Lenormant - E-Book

A Manual of the Ancient History of the East, Volume 2 E-Book

François Lenormant

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Herausgeber: Jazzybee Verlag
Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
Sprache: Englisch

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Recent antiquarian research, in the hands of a greatly expanded scholarship, has completely revolutionized ancient Oriental history. The last 150 years have been prolific of discoveries going to enlarge our knowledge of the pre-Hellenic world. First came the original memoirs of the discoverers and decipherers; then great works combining their fruits into connected history and rehandling the old narratives in their light; and now we are having all that condensed and separated from critical apparatus and presented in forms for popular reading and instruction. Among works of the latter class this of Lenormant is positively one of the best we have yet seen. Its clear and brief narrative contains the latest results of the most advanced Orientalists, in their respective fields, and the whole is woven together by a scholar whose own life has been devoted successfully to the same round of subjects. This is volume two out of two covering the histories of the Medes, Persians, Phoenicians and Arabians.

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Leseprobe

A Manual of the Ancient History of the East

Volume 2: History of the Medes, Persians, Phoenicians and Arabians

FRANCOIS LENORMANT

A Manual of the Ancient History of the East Volume 2, F. Lenormant

Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck

86450 Altenmünster, Loschberg 9

Deutschland

Printed by Bookwire, Voltastraße 1, 60486 Frankfurt/M.

ISBN: 9783988681935

www.jazzybee-verlag.de

[email protected]

PREFACE TO THE SECOND VOLUME.

It was announced in the Preface to the First Volume, that the English edition of M. Lenormant's Manual would, following the last French edition, contain histories of the Arabians and of the Indians; and it will be seen that the volume now published terminates with the history of the Arabians, omitting that of the Indians.

It is necessary to explain the reason for this departure from the original plan of the work.

The Manual has met with great success and has been very favourably received by the reviewers. Some few minor points have been objected to, chiefly those on which there exists a difference of opinion between the French school of Assyrian research, headed by M. Oppert, and the English followers of Sir H. C. Rawlinson; but the work has been pronounced "a remarkable one," and as marking a stage in the progress of historical knowledge and ideas, to which the reading world in England will do well to give its serious attention."

To the book on the " History of the Indians," however, serious exception has been taken, not from any want of ability in M. Lenormant's treatment of the subject, but from a distrust of the reality of the foundation on which all the history of Ancient India rests. One able reviewer in particular, himself one of the highest authorities on all branches of Oriental history, writes, that "it is very questionable whether India can properly be said to have a history at all during the period designated by M. Lenormant in the title of his work." And that "the real history of India commences with Alexander, or perhaps we should rather say with Sandrocottus, and that to begin earlier is to fail of distinguishing between fact and fiction, history and legend."

Professor Max Müller, also, after giving an account of the clever forgeries which imposed on Colonel Wilford, and even Sir W. Jones, adds, "It is by no means certain that a further study of Sanskrit will not lead to similar disenchantments, and deprive many a book in Sanskrit literature, which is now considered as very ancient, of its claims to any high antiquity. Certain portions of the Veda even, which, as far as our knowledge goes at present, we are perfectly justified in referring to the tenth or twelfth century before our era, may, some day or other, dwindle down from their high estate, and those who have believed in their extreme antiquity, will then be held up to ridicule like Sir W. Jones, or Colonel Wilford."

In the face of such expressions as these, it was considered that-in spite of the great interest, especially for Englishmen, attaching to the history of India-it would be unwise to publish, as history, anything which it was possible that further research might prove to be mere myth, resting on no solid historical foundation; and that, too, in a work which, beyond all other collective histories of the East, professes to be drawn from authentic and original sources.

It has therefore been decided to omit, for the present, the history of India.

In the short time that has elapsed between the publication of the French and of the English editions of the Manual, historical science has made no slight progress; and several discoveries, made subsequently to the publication of the French, will be found to be embodied in the English edition; and important notes, some of them contributed by the kindness of men of high attainments, have been added on obscure points.

BOOK V.THE MEDES AND PERSIANS.

CHAPTER I.THE PRIMITIVE ARIANS.

SECTION I. - DIVISIONS AND DWELLING-PLACES OF THE ANCIENT ANCESTORS OF THE ARIAN RACE.

1. THE most ancient traditions of the Japhetic, or Indo-European, race do not carry us much further back than about the year 3000 B.C. This great division of the human race was then entirely concentrated at no great distance from the primitive cradle of post-diluvian humanity, the starting-point of the sons of Noah, in Bactria—a country that we are entitled to consider as the most ancient historical dwelling-place of the race to which we belong, and as the source whence all its various tribes have successively issued.

Even while still united, living in one country and forming a single people, the chief branches of the family of Japhet had already a separate existence and spoke different dialects, derived, however, from one common tongue, whence, in later times, after the dispersion of the tribes, were derived a separate and distinct group of languages. The whole of this great race assumed a common name, that of Arya, or Ariya, "the noble," a name preserved unaltered in Indian traditions, and in the name of that Asiatic district specially called Aria. Traces of it are also found among all nations of Arian family; for example, in the names of the Arii of Germany, of the Ases of Scandinavia, and of the Island of Erin (Ireland). Arya is derived from the root from which sprung, in Sanskrit, Aryaman, "friend;" Ariaka, “nobleman;” Ariata, "honourable conduct;" its meaning of "noble,' excellent," seems therefore to be well established.

Besides the differences of tribes, less distinct than they became in aftertimes, the Indo-European, or Japhetic race, from the most remote periods of which we know anything, exhibits a very clearly marked division, almost separating it into two nations: to the east, those who specially called themselves Arians, whose descendants inhabited Persia, India, and all the vast region known to the classical geographers as Ariana; to the west, the Yavana, or the Young ones, who first emigrated westward, and from whom have descended the various nations which have populated Europe. This is the name Javan found in the 10th chapter of Genesis, and the Ionians preserved it even in classical times.

2. We may, perhaps, be able to determine, in spite of the almost impenetrable obscurity of a subject on which no evidence of a date at all ancient exists, and where we are compelled to employ hypothesis as one of the chief means of investigation, the respective positions of the various tribes of the primitive Ariac family in their original settlement in Bactria, previous to the departure of the nations to people Europe. The Arians, using this word in the restricted sense that we have mentioned, occupied the eastern part of the country. One branch of them, the Iranians, who ultimately occupied Persia and Media, lived to the north-east, bordering on Sogdiana, towards the Belourtagh; these, owing to pressure arising from the increase of their population, extended themselves eastward into the elevated valleys, whence they afterwards descended into Bactria, when, in later times, the emigration of the Yavanas stripped those fertile districts of inhabitants. This seems the explanation of the ancient traditions of a period when a divine necessity compelled them to quit temporarily the Aryanem Vaêdjo, or primitive Ariana, that pleasant abode, to sojourn in a rigorous climate, where there were, as one of their sacred books says, ten months of winter and two only of spring."

Beside the Iranians, to the south-east, probably in the fertile districts of Badakchan, were the tribes who afterwards conquered India, settled there, and formed the superior castes, first, however, resting on the flanks of the Hindoo Koosh, which it was necessary for them to cross or turn before arriving in Cabul and penetrating into Northern India. This confined position in the heart of Bactria, shut in by high mountain chains on the side where emigration would most naturally take place, explains why the Arians, properly so called, remained so much longer than the other Japhetic tribes in the original habitation of their race. The Yavanas occupied the western part of Bactria, and were distributed in the following manner :-To the south-west, towards the sources of the Artamis and Bactrus, were the Pelasgic tribes, from whom descended the Greeks, the Latins, and the other Italians, as well as a part of the inhabitants of Asia Minor; thence they advanced first in the direction of Herat, continuing their emigration towards Asia Minor and the Hellespont by way of Khorassan and Mazanderan. The tribe that gave birth to the great Celtic race occupied the western region on the side of Margiana. Perfectly free to move towards the west, this race must have been among the first to emigrate under the pressure of the increase of population among the other tribes.

The Celts in all probability first extended themselves in the direction of Merv and Hyrcania; then turning to the south of the Caspian Sea, they halted at the foot of the Caucasus, in the fertile lands of Iberia and Albania, and the names of these countries seem to be one remaining trace of their temporary establishment. In later times, pushed forward no doubt by some new Iranian colonies-by the Georgians, who descended from the mountains of Armenia, and by tribes coming from the north-they passed the defiles of the Caucasus, and travelling northward of the Black Sea, reached the Danube, and continued their progress towards Central Europe, a progress not arrested until they had reached the extreme west. This long migration was not all accomplished in one unbroken course, and throughout this long road many names of lands, rivers, and nations, but little known elsewhere, bear testimony to establishments originally Celtic, but invaded subsequently, entirely or partially, by the Germanic emigration that succeeded them.

To return to Bactria and the original domicile of the Japhetic tribes, who were there assembled rather more than 3000 years B.C., we have only now to mention, as inhabiting the banks of the Oxus, their northern boundary, the Germanic and Slavonic tribes, who were extended also southward into the heart of the country in the fertile valleys of the affluents of that great river, and therefore in three directions in contact with the other tribes. At an early period, these two prolific races crossed the Oxus, to spread themselves over the vast regions of Scythia, and there remained probably for many centuries before advancing into Europe, in which direction they were gradually pressed by the invasion of the Turanian races. This last movement must have been commenced long before our era, and probably started from the countries between the Tanais, the Tyras, and the Ister, from beyond the Hamus, for in the time of Alexander the mass of the Germanic races had already advanced beyond the Black Sea, as far as the Rhine and the Baltic. The Lithuanians and Slavonians, spreading further to the north and east, followed next, and finding Europe already partly pre-occupied, remained in the north-eastern countries.

SECTION II.-MANNERS AND DEGREE OF CIVILISATION.

1. COMPARATIVE philology, taking the words of the language as the only monuments remaining of the primitive condition of the Japhetic races, has succeeded to a great extent in restoring a picture of their social condition before their dispersion. To M. Pictet, of Geneva, must be assigned the honour of having pushed to their greatest extent, and having most completely developed researches in "Linguistic Palæontology," a happy phrase invented by himself. The starting point for these researches was the ingenious and true conjecture, that words found in the Sanskrit, the sacred language of India, in the Zend, the ancient idiom of the Iranians, and also in the languages of Europe, with no sensible change in form or meaning, give the means of approximating to the degree of civilisation that the various tribes of Arians and Yavanas had attained, whilst they still lived side by side in Bactria, before quitting their first habitations to spread into the various countries where in later times they lived.

2. All the words appropriate to pastoral life, commencing with the name of the cattle themselves, are the same in the various groups of Indo-European languages; from which we have the right to suppose that the sons of Japhet followed chiefly this mode of life in the lands watered by the Oxus. Almost all the domestic animals were known to them; they had oxen, horses, dogs, sheep, pigs, she-goats, he-goats, kids, geese. This comparison of words teaches us also that they knew how to use both horses and oxen in the yoke, and to harness them to wheeled vehicles, but had not yet learned to ride on the backs of horses, an art scarcely known to the Greeks of the Homeric age. They had discovered how to work some of the metals—gold, silver, and bronze, but not iron. They used arms-lances, javelins, arrows; but it seems they were not acquainted with the sword, for which there is no common name in this family of languages. It is otherwise with the buckler, used for defence by even the most savage people. The primitive Arians, previous to the separation of the eastern and western tribes, also made ornaments, jewellery more or less rude, such as necklaces and rings.

These tribes did not live in tents like the Arabs, or in wagons like the Scythians; they knew how to construct fixed habitations, to enclose the domestic hearth," around which the family was seated," with properly constructed houses, having walls, a roof, a door, and an outer enclosing wall. These dwellings were already grouped into villages, and even towns," after a fashion.

2. The elements of agriculture were not unknown to these primitive Arians, but as yet they only slightly stirred the soil to sow their seed; and it was only after their migration that the Japhetic races learned from more advanced nations to manage the plough, to sow different species of grain, to cultivate roots, to plant the vine, and to press out the oil from the olive. Thus the greater number of words appropriated to agricultural life are found with the same meaning in Latin and Greek, but are not found with this particular sense in the Sanskrit. Grain, ground and made into flour, formed the chief part of the food of the primitive Japhetic tribes; and by this especially the races who migrated westward are distinguished from the savage nations who had preceded them, who were compelled to feed on berries and roots. The use of meat was also known to them, and they employed salt as a condiment. Lastly, they not only used wagons, but also had small vessels. These, of course, were only frail skiffs, propelled solely by oars, and they had neither masts nor sails, for the words used for these latter are not common to all, but peculiar to each language of the family.

According to scientific opinions, these people, although certainly still very ignorant, nevertheless divided the year according to the periodical revolutions of the moon,' and they had already in use a decimal system of numeration.

SECTION III.-FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELATIONS.

1. AMONG the primitive Arians in Bactria we find the family respected, and its powerful bonds form the basis of all social organisation. Marriage was a consecrated and free act, preceded by betrothal, and symbolised by the joining of hands. The husband, in the presence of the priest, both while it was still vested in the head of the family, and also after the priesthood became separated, took the right hand of the bride with his own right hand, pronouncing certain sacred formula; the bride was then conducted on a wagon drawn by two white oxen. The father of the bride presented a cow to his son-in-law, intended originally for the wedding feast, but in later times taken to the house of the bridegroom; this was the dowry, an emblem of agricultural richness. The bride's hair was then divided by a dart (a porcupine quill among the Indians, an iron lance among the Romans); she was then conducted round the domestic hearth, and was received at the door of her new abode with a present of fire and water.

Undoubted vestiges of these symbolical ceremonies of primitive ages are to be found in the ancient customs of all Indo-European nations.Once introduced to the dwelling of her husband, the wife, among the primitive Arians, was treated with the affection and respect due to her by whom the race was to be perpetuated. She was alone there, for polygamy was a vice introduced, after the degradation produced by contact with corrupt civilisations, into Iran and some other countries; but, as a rule, the Japhetic races are, of all mankind, those who have most faithfully kept to the original precept revived by the Gospel-solus cum sola, as well as those among whom the condition of women has been highest and most honourable. She was, doubtless, submissive in the house to the authority of her husband, but that authority was tempered by mutual love-by respect on one side, and protection on the other.

2. Under the influence of these happy sentiments, the birth of the infant was welcomed as of him "who gives joy" (harshayitnu), “who increases good fortune" (nandavardhana), "who drives away grief" (kleçapaha, as he was called in the ancient hymns of India). This tenderness was extended to the daughter as well as the son; she is also called by the Indians nandana, "she who rejoices." Between the brother and sister were established the affectionate relations so well expressed by the names, "he who sustains" (bratar, from the root bhar, to bear, support); and "he who is good, friendly" (svasar, connected with svasti, goodness, good fortune). Domestic duties are also distinguished: the son is "he who purifies" (putra, from the root pu); that is, according to the idea still preserved among the Indians, he who frees the father from the duty of propagating his race. The daughter is "the guardian of the flocks, she who brings milk from the cows" (duhitar, from the root duh). The name of the father signifies "protector" of the family (pitar, from the root pa), and the phrase employed to designate every ancestor has the same sense (avuka, from the root av); and lastly, the universal appellation of the mother means "the creatrix," she who brings children into the world (matar, from the root ma).

3. In the course of its development the family became the clan, viz. This is an assemblage of brothers, as its Greek name shows. The clan is a relationship that originated with the Japhetic nations and existed in later times among the Iranians in India, Ireland, Scotland, and among the Slavonians. At its head was a chief, or patriarch, the eldest, the head of the family, invested with absolute power, and that by right divine, as was the Roman paterfamilias. He, however, could not decide on his own unsupported authority; he was assisted by a council, sabha, composed of a certain number of elders, fathers of families, who were accustomed to deliberate with him. Beyond the clan we find the tribe a still larger extension of the family; all its members tracing back to one common origin, as its name indicates in Zend, zanter, identical with the Latin gens, and its Greek name, to "germinate, generate, produce"; the assemblage of tribes constituted the nation, which, therefore, is but a larger family, a multitude, an assemblage of men attached to each other by common ties. As a supreme chief above the heads of the clans and of the tribes, they have a king, whose name signifies the director, the sustainer.

The king, among the primitive Japhetic races, made war and peace, and had command of the warriors. The art of war sprung up, and villages and hamlets were surrounded by enclosures rudely fortified. Towns even were built. The conquered foreigner is made prisoner and becomes a slave.

The king also administered justice; but, strange to say, the decision of doubtful cases was referred to the judgment of God, and this was the original of the German ordeal. There was, first, the proof by fire, most generally employed in early times, and then the trial by water and by oil. "Let the judge make him whom he wishes to prove take hold of fire, or direct him to be plunged into water," say the old Indian Institutes of Menu, embodying an older tradition-" He whom the flame does not burn, and who does not float without effort on the water, must be acknowledged as truthful." In fact, in one of the epic poems of India, the Ramayana, the beautiful and virtuous Sita passes through the fire, to dissipate the unjust suspicions of her royal husband, Rama. The fire ordeal, introduced by the Japhetic tribes both into the west and into India, was managed in this way: a trench was dug and filled with live coals, and the accused was made to pass through it (this method was in use among the Germans down to the commencement of the middle ages); or else nine concentric circles were marked out, with a distance of sixteen finger breadths between each. The iron head of a lance, or a ball of metal five pounds' weight, was heated red hot; it was necessary to carry the red-hot metal, without being burnt, across the eight first circles, and to throw it into the ninth, where it must be hot enough to burn the grass. This trial was commonly used in India; it is also the gestatio ferri of the Scandinavians, and the "judgment by fire" (ienordal) of the Anglo-Saxons; and an invaluable passage in Sophoclest shows that it was used among the most ancient Greeks. In the judgment by water, a ring was thrown into boiling water, and had to be taken out by the accused without being scalded (this practice was still in use among the Franks when they invaded Gaul, and it is described by Gregory of Tours, under the Merovingian kings); or else the person was thrown into a pond of cold water, where, if he floated without effort, he was held to be guilty. This was the "water ordeal" (wasser ordel) of the Middle-age Germans.

SECTION IV.-RELIGION.

I. THE primitive religion of the Japhetic tribes, known to us from the sacred hymns, or Vedas, preserved traditionally by the tribes who conquered India, in one of its forms, not far removed from its original, was founded on the belief in the unity of the Deity. From this have sprung the religious beliefs of all Indo-European nations, particularly the Greeks. The ancestors of our race believed that everything proceeded from one celestial being-the being par excellence-God. Deva, the Zeus of the Greeks, the Deus of the Latins. This divine being was considered "The Living One," Asura among the Indians, Ahura among the Iranians, Esus among the Celts, Æsar among the Etruscans; "The Spirit," Manu in the Vedas, Mainyu among the Iranians; "The divine and eternal Spirit who fills the universe," Nara (Cymric Ner). One of the hymns of the Rig-Veda, in almost Biblical language, says of the God invoked in it, that he is "The only born Lord of all that is. He established the earth and this sky;

"He who gives life, He who gives strength; whose blessing all the bright gods desire; whose shadow is immortality; whose shadow is death;

"He who through his power is the only king of the breathing and awakening world; He who governs all, man and beast;

"He whose power these snowy mountains, whose power the sea proclaims, with the distant river. He whose these regions are as it were His two arms;

"He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm. He through whom the heaven was stablished — nay, the highest heaven. He who measured out the light in the air;

"He to whom heaven and earth, standing firm by His will, look up trembling inwardly. He over whom the rising sun shines forth;

"Wherever the mighty water clouds went, where they placed the seed and lit the fire, thence arose He who is the only life of the bright gods;

"He who by His might looked even over the water clouds, the clouds which gave strength and lit the sacrifice; He who is God above all Gods; . . . ."

None but the Hebrews have employed more sublime language in their religion; and a conception of the Deity so exalted demonstrates most strikingly the moral superiority and the eminently spiritualistic tendencies of the Japhetic race, when contrasted with the gross naturalism of the most famous sanctuaries of Semitic or Hamitic Asia.

But this belief in the divine unity, a relic of the primitive faith of mankind and of the original revelation, was, among the ancient Japhetic races, as among all the nations of antiquity who had not a divine revelation for the preservation of the truth, disfigured by the introduction of pantheism, and by the personification of the attributes of the Supreme Being as so many separate gods, emanations from His substance. God the Creator was mistaken for the universe He had created; His unity was divided into a number of personages also believed to be divine, as the name both singular and plural, Visve Devas, sometimes used in the Vedas, implies. Undoubtedly the original conception of unity still remained behind these secondary personifications, and one hymn of the Rig Veda distinctly says that "Sages give many names to the being who is 'One,'" according to the nature of his manifestation, and the character under which he is adored. But the existence of these distinct personifications, each invested with an individuality, was a deplorable fall from the original conception, and completely hid it from view in the popular worship, directly leading to the depths of polytheism and idolatry. Each one of the qualities and attributes of the divine first principle was adored as a separate being formed out of the Divinity.

Thus we have Prajapati, "Lord of the World"; Purusha, "the supreme spirit"; Asura, "the living spirit" (whence as we have said were derived Esus and Æsar, and also the Assyrian Asshur); Daksha, the powerful in will," "the wise"; Mithra or Aryaman, "the benevolent, "the friendly God "; Dhatar, "the Creator"; Savitri, "the progenitor" (the Saturnus of the old Latins); Ivashtri, "the creator." Every power of nature, and each physical phenomenon in which it is externally manifested, was also an object of worship, such as Agni, the fire, the principle of life which we recognise in the Hephæstus of the Greeks, and the Vesta of the Latins. Indra, the living power of that principle, as seen in fire and in lightning, called also Dyauspitar, "the luminous father," "the heaven father," whence the Diespiter or Jupiter of the Romans; Varuna, the heaven, the Ouranos of the Greek religion; Surya, the sun, the Greek Helios; and Parthivi Mutar, the "earth mother," the Fira Modor of the Anglo-Saxons, the Demeter of the Greeks, the Hertha of the Germans, Mahte of the Lithuanians, Tellus Mater or Ops of the Romans.

These secondary personages were perhaps more distinctly and completely separated from their original and single source among the Indo-European than among any other race; for the essentially anthropomorphic tendencies of the former led the popular imagination, and popular forms of speech, to ascribe to each a separate existence and definite individuality; and the same tendency led them, in all the supposed mutual relations of these personages, whether in their functions in the moral or physical government of the world, or in mythical tales, and dramatised histories, to depict them as living and acting in the same way as ordinary men. This gave rise to those fabulous stories to which the poetry of Greece and India has given so great celebrity and has presented in such a variety of picturesque forms.

2. The Egyptians, as we have already shown, saw in the daily and yearly course of the sun the most striking manifestations of the Divine Being, and on this foundation they constructed their religion. The Babylonians and their disciples the Assyrians, saw these manifestations in the stars of heaven, and their worship therefore assumed the astronomical and astrological character by which it was distinguished. The primitive Arians were not sufficiently learned to construct any similar system. The manifestations in which they recognised the divine power and adored its attributes, those which they personified and on which they founded their mythology, were purely atmospheric phenomena, giving fertility to the soil, the direct action of the sun on vegetation, the winds, mists, clouds, thunder and rain. Thus we find in the Vedas, among the divine personages to whom worship is addressed, Ushas, the dawn, the Eos of the Greeks, the Ostara of the Germans; the two Asvins, personifying the twilight of the morning and evening, the origin of the Greek Dioscuri; the Maruts, the winds, whose worship still prevailed in the primitive times of Greece, especially in the Athenian Tritopatores, a name that almost recalls the Vedic Tritsu; the Gandharvas, or celestial horses, who represented the rays of the sun, and gave the name and the first idea of the Grecian Centaurs.

Among natural phenomena, the primitive Arians were especially struck, as we see in the Vedic hymns, with those that seemed to reveal a strife in nature, an antagonism between two phenomena or two opposing principles, such as the struggle between day and night, between the sun's rays and clouds or fogs, the lightning rending the cloud and letting loose the fertilising rain; and they were naturally led to liken these physical phenomena to that strife between good and evil in the moral world, that must become evident to everyone who has lived long on earth.

From the observation of these phenomena of strife and antagonism, and the attempt to bring them into agreement with the preconceived idea of unity in substance and principle, added also to some remains of the teachings of the primitive revelation as to the ancient enemy of mankind-the tempter, the rebel against the Almighty-sprung the first germs of the doctrine of dualism, especially developed among all Arian races, and in later times the entire basis of the religious system of the Iranians. The existence must be admitted of two principles eternally at variance in the world, emanating though they do from the same original-principles on whose antagonism depend the life and duration of the world. In the Vedas this became the combat of Indra the luminous, with Vritra, the dark; among the Iranians it was figured by the contest of Ahura Mazda with Angro Mainyus (Ahriman), which the reforms of Zoroaster made of primary importance. With the Greeks it became the battle of Apollo with the Python, of Jupiter with the Titans, and in the ancient fables of Italy, that of Hercules with Cacus. It is to be found, in fact, in an infinity of mythical tales among all Indo-European nations.

3. External forms of worship, and especially sacrifice, played an important part in the religion of the primitive Japhetic races. Sacrifice they considered the work, par excellence, Kratu, so much so that it was itself considered to participate in the divine nature; it comprehended the rites, the offerings, and also the hymns and prayers; and in these hymns are found both dogma and moral.

The Vedic rites in their primitive simplicity seem to have preserved intact the sacrifice of ancient ages precisely as we find it among the old Pelasgi of Arcadia, and the chief features of this rite have been preserved in the later ceremonies of all people of the race. The head of the family erected in an elevated place, whence it could be seen from afar, a rude altar of pieces of turf (cespites, among the primitive Romans), or a stone with a large base, (grava prithubudhna), under the open vault of heaven.

This altar, destined to be the seat, dhasi, of the Deity, consecrates the place where it stands, a place called Vedi, surrounded by an enclosure. Leading a pastoral life, and subsisting on the produce of his flocks, the Arian consecrated his altar by anointing it with clarified butter (havis), and then on his knees (mitadjnava), or erect with his hands stretched out towards heaven (uttanahasta), he addressed an invocation to the Deity (havani), singing extempore hymns. Wood was then placed on the altar, the fire was lighted, both the symbol and substance of Agni, by rubbing together dry branches of trees (arani). The worshipper then elevated in a wooden cup (tchamasa potra), the Soma, the divine beverage, the drink of the god of battles, that animates his courage and inflames it almost to madness. This was the fermented juice of the stem and leaves of the asclepias acida, used instead of wine in a land where the vine is absolutely unknown; it was even then called vinas, "the desired," whence came vinum; in later times the Arian tribes, who arrived in more favourable climates, substituted for it the juice of the grape, and Soma, worshipped as one form of Agni, gave rise to the Dionysus of the Greeks. This liquor (indu) was thrown as a libation into the fire, and consumed as an offering (prayas, or vadja). The oblation offered was of butter (ghrita, or havis), of curdled milk (dhadhi), of grains of barley (dhana), and of cakes (karambha). For ordinary occasions these simple offerings sufficed, and it was only in solemn ceremonies that blood was required in sacrifice; victims were then taken from the herds, cows or goats; but the highest offering, the most solemn, is that of the noblest of all domestic animals, the sacrificeof the horse (asvamedhas), and this continued in use among the Scandinavians down to the time of their conversion to Christianity.

The burnt offering was accompanied, as we have already said, by prayer, a hymn interpretive of the symbols, a hymn of praise (stouti), adding a spiritual to the material offering. This had been taught by Vach (the Latin Vox), the sacred "speech," the "Word," the "first of speaking beings," the "treasure of prayer," whom one of the hymns of the fourth mandala of the Rig Veda celebrates in these magnificent words:-"I am queen and mistress of riches, I am wise. . . . He who is born, who breathes, who hears, feeds with me on this sacred food. He who knows me not is lost. Listen then to me, for I speak words worthy of belief. I speak good things for the gods, and for the children of manu (men). Whom I love I make terrible, pious, wise, bright. . . . I traverse heaven and earth. I exist in all worlds, and extend towards the heavens. Like the wind, I breathe in all worlds. My greatness extends beyond this world, and reaches even beyond heaven itself."

SECTION V.-TRADITIONS OF THE CREATION.

1. THE Japhetic tribes, before their dispersion, were already possessed of a cosmogony inspired by the ancient traditions of early ages, and resembling in many respects the Biblical narrative, altered, however, by the pantheistic notion that substitutes emanation for creation, and considers matter as a part of the divine substance.

One of the hymns of the 10th Mandala (book) of the Rig Veda says, "Nothing that is was then, even what is not did not then exist.” We give the hymn in the beautiful version in Max Müller's "Sanskrit Literature" (p. 564): —

Nor aught nor naught existed; yon bright sky

Was not, nor heaven's broad woof outstretched above.

What covered all? what sheltered? what concealed?

Was it the water's fathomless abyss?

Then was not death-hence, there was naught immortal,

Then was no confine betwixt day and night;

The only One breathed breathless in itself,

Other than it there nothing since has been.

Darkness then was, and all at first was veiled

In gloom profound, -an ocean without light.

The germ that still lay covered in the husk

Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat.

Then first came Love upon it, the new spring

Of mind-yea, poets in their hearts discerned,

Pondering, this bond between created things

And uncreated. Comes this spark from earth,

Piercing and all-pervading, or from heaven?

Then seeds were sown, and mighty power arose-

Nature below, and Power and Will above.

Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here?

Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang?

The gods themselves came later into being.—

Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?

He from whom all this great creation came.

Whether His will created or was mute,

The Most High Seer, that is in highest heaven,

He knows it, - or perchance e'en He knows not.

This is the same statement, under a form less anthropomorphic, and more metaphysical indeed, as that at the commencement of the Theogony of Hesiod-"In the beginning was Chaos, next the Earth, with its broad bosom, the immoveable foundation of all beings; the vast Tartarus, in the depth of its abyss; and Love, the most beautiful of all the immortal gods." In one of the most poetical of the choruses of Aristophanes we read-"Dark Chaos and night existed, and in the beginning dark Erebus and Tartarus; but neither Earth, nor Air, nor Sky were then. Before all, in the infinite circle of Erebus, the black-winged night produced an egg, not brooded on, whence in time sprang Love, parent of desire, beating its back with its gilded wings like the whirls of a tempest. Joined with the dark and restless chaos in the depths of Tartarus, it produced heaven, the sea, earth, and the deathless race of the immortal gods." As we see, therefore, the legend of the cosmogony received by the primitive Japhetic race, with the circumstance of the primordial chaos-itself an emanation from the divine substance, whence as a new emanation sprang the organised world-was carried with them by the tribes who emigrated from the common centre both into Greece and into India.

2. It was the same with the tradition of the deluge, which evidently held an important place in the legends of the primitive Japhetic people in Bactria. The following is the translation by Max Müller of a Sanskrit poem of the age immediately following the Vedic period, called the Satapathabrahmana :—

"To Manu they brought in the morning water to wash. As they bring it with their hands for the washing, a fish comes into the hands of Manu as soon as he had washed himself.

"He spoke to Manu the word, 'Keep me, I shall preserve thee.' Manu said, 'From what wilt thou preserve me?' The fish said, 'The flood will carry away all these creatures. I shall preserve thee from it.' 'How canst thou be kept?' said Manu, The fish replied, 'As long as we are small there is much destruction for us; fish swallows fish. First, then, thou must keep me in a jar. If I outgrow it, dig a hole and keep me in it. If I outgrow this, take me to the sea, and I shall be saved from destruction.'

"He soon became a large fish. He said to Manu, 'When I am full-grown, in the same year the flood will come. Build a ship, then, and worship me; and when the flood rises go into the ship, and I shall preserve thee from it.'

"Manu brought the fish to the sea, after he had kept him thus. And in the year which the fish had pointed out Manu had built a ship and worshipped the fish. Then when the flood had risen, he went into the ship. The fish came swimming to him, and Manu fastened the rope of the ship to a horn of the fish. The fish carried him by it over the northern mountain.

“The fish said, 'I have preserved thee. Bind the ship to a tree. May the water not cut thee asunder while thou art on the mountain. As the water will sink thou wilt slide down.' Manu slid down with the water, and this is called the Slope of Manu on the northern mountain. The flood had carried away all these creatures, and thus Manu was left there alone."

Manu then was saved; and then he offered the sacrifice, to be "the model for all future generations." By this sacrifice he obtained a daughter, named Ida, or Ila, who became supernaturally the mother of humanity. Manu received the title of "Father of mankind” (Manush pitar), and his name even became their generic appellation for men, who are called Manor apatya, "descendants of Manu;" and Manu means "the intelligent being, Man."

The Greeks had two different traditions as to the deluge which destroyed primitive humanity. With the first was connected the name of Ogyges, the first king of Attica, an entirely mythical personage, who is lost in mist of ages; his name even is derived from the primitive designation of the deluge (Sanscrit augha). It was reported that in his time all the country was covered by the deluge, and that the waters reached even to the heavens, and that he escaped in a vessel with some companions. The second tradition is the Thessalian story of Deucalion. Zeus having resolved to destroy the men of the age of bronze, whose crimes had excited his wrath, Deucalion, by the advice of Prometheus his father, constructed an ark, in which he took refuge with his wife Pyrrha. The deluge came; the ark floated above the waters for nine days and nine nights and was at last left stranded on Mount Parnassus. Deucalion and Pyrrha came out, offered a sacrifice, and repeopled the world, according to the orders of Jupiter, by casting behind them the bones of the earth, that is stones, which were changed into men. This Greek tradition is worthy of notice, as, like that in the Book of Genesis, it records the moral cause of the catastrophe-the destruction of wicked men, which the Indian legend does not allude to.

Among the Celts in Great Britain there was a similar tradition. "The first misfortune," says an ancient Welsh poem, was the overflow of the Llynn-llion, or lake of waves, and the occurrence of a general inundation (bawdd), by which all men were destroyed, with the exception of Dwyfan and Dwyfach, who saved themselves in a vessel without sails; by them the island of Britain was repeopled.” In the Scandinavian Edda, the three sons of Borr, Odin, Vili, and Ve, grandsons of Bure, the first man, kill Ymir, father of the ice giants, from whose body they make the earth. Blood runs from his wounds in such abundance that all the race of giants was destroyed, except Begelmir, who saves himself in a ship with his wife, and repeoples the earth. The Lithuanians, the one of the Japhetic races whose language has sustained least alteration, related, before their conversion to Christianity, that the god Pramzimas, seeing the earth full of disorder, sent two giants, Wandu and Wejas (water and wind), to destroy it. They overturned everything in their rage; only a few men saved themselves on a mountain. Touched with compassion, Pramzimas, who was then eating some of the nuts of heaven, let fall near the mountain a nutshell, in which men took refuge, and which the giants dared not touch. Having thus escaped this disaster, mankind afterwards dispersed. Only one very old couple remained in the country, and they were in distress at not having any children. Pramzimas sent a rainbow to give them hope and told them to dance on the bones of the earth, for the Lithuanian legend employs here the same expression as that of Deucalion. The aged couple jumped nine times, and the result was nine couples, who became the ancestors of the nine Lithuanian tribes.

We see that each of the Japhetic races, who, starting from the common centre of Bactria, dispersed themselves over the earth in various directions, has added to the groundwork of the original tradition ornaments more or less puerile. But the groundwork, in spite of all additions, remains the same, and contains all the essential features of the Biblical narrative,—a deluge destroying the human race as a punishment for its sins, except one righteous man, chosen by Providence to escape with his family from this disaster, and to repeople the earth.

CHAPTER II.SEPARATION OF THE ARIAN NATIONS. — ZOROASTER AND HIS RELIGION.

SECTION I.-THE ARIANS AFTER THE EMIGRATION OF THEWESTERN TRIBES.

1. THE emigration towards the west of those Japhetic tribes who were to form the inhabitants of Europe was not the work of one day, or the result of one single exodus. It was brought about gradually, the effect of the increase of numbers among the Arians proper, who, stopped toward the east by almost impassable mountains, pushed by degrees the various Yavana tribes westward in the only direction in which free and open space for new dwellings could be found. There came a time, however, when this emigration, at first gradual and progressive, was suddenly hastened by some cause unknown to us, and when all who remained of those tribes who became ancestors of the nations of Europe set out all at once to seek their fortune, leaving the Eastern Arians in sole possession of the fertile lands, the first settlement of their race. Then it was that the Iranians descended from the cold, elevated valleys of the Belourtagh, where they had been shut up, and finding the road open, returned to the more favourable climate of Bactria. Then it was that the Arians of both one and the other branch extended themselves beyond the limits that had hitherto contained all the primitive Japhetic tribes, and occupied, to the north, Sogdiana, from the Oxus to the Jaxartes, and to the south, the province specially called Aria by the classical geographers. This great movement took place about 3,000 years before the Christian Era.

2. The period of the return of the Iranians toward their primitive dwellings, and of the first expansion of the Eastern Arians beyond the frontiers of Bactria, is represented in the popular legends of Iran, collected by Firdusi in his "Book of Kings" by the mythical reign of Djemshid (Yima Khaeta), already mentioned in the books of Zoroaster. Djemshid is the personification of Arian society, now beginning to assume a more perfect organisation than before, to improve its agriculture, to build large cities, and to organise religious worship, but with an increased leaning to naturalism, for the Iranian legend, animated by the spirit of Zoroastrianism, reproaches Djemshid with having tarnished his glory by the establishment of idolatry.

Immediately after this epoch, the Iranian tradition, which, although it has assumed a purely fabulous form, must be founded on historical basis however much altered, places a foreign conquest, and seems to point to the time when the first Cushite empire at Babylon, founded by Nimrod, had extended its dominion by force of arms over the country inhabited by the Arians, as in later times did some of the Assyrian kings. It is, in fact, only an event of this kind that can be alluded to by the mythical Arab conqueror, Zohak, the sanguinary tyrant, corrupter of manners, the teacher of a monstrous and obscene religion, against which all the moral instincts of the Japhetic tribes revolted; that Zohak, who, like the Phoenician Moloch and the Adar Malik of the Sepharvaim in Chaldæa, required a succession of human victims to feed the two serpents coiled on his shoulders.

But the reaction of the proper genius and of the sentiment of Arian independence was not long in breaking out, and throwing off the yoke of the Hamite Babylonians. "There was at Ispahan" (!), runs the Iranian legend, 66 a man who had two young sons, very handsome in face, and endowed with all good natural gifts. One day these young men were seized, without the knowledge of their father or of their family, and killed, to feed with their brains the serpents of Zohak. The father's name was Caveh; he was a blacksmith and was working at a forge in front of his house when he was told that his children had been taken and put to death. He at once left his forge, and in his distress traversed the city, carrying the leathern apron with which smiths protect their clothes from fire. His cries and lamentations resounded throughout Ispahan and drew a large body of men round him. The inhabitants of Ispahan, tired of the cruelty of Zohak, rose in insurrection in a body, with Caveh the smith at their head, and hoisted his leathern apron on a pole as their standard."

Having conquered Zohak and his foreigners, Caveh placed on the throne Feridun (Thraetaona), grandson of Djemshid. We have quoted this legend, the production of a Moslem author of the eleventh century, who has removed its scene to Ispahan, the Persian capital of his own time, not because it is really historical, but because of the importance it assumed at a later period; for when the Sassanidæ had overthrown the empire of the Parthians, and had re-established the religion of Zoroaster in all its purity, they adopted, in commemoration of this tale, a leathern standard encrusted with gems, which they called "the standard of Caveh." It was used only on solemn and important occasions, when the king himself took command of the troops. It was regarded as the Palladium of the monarchy, of the nation, of the Zoroastrian religion. Its capture by the Arabs at the battle of Cadesia at once brought about the rout of the army of Yezdegird and the destruction of the Persian monarchy by the arms of Islam.

3. Almost immediately after the deliverance of the Arians from the tyranny of Zohak, under the reign of this very Feridun, who is as mythical as all his predecessors, but who in all probability represents an historical epoch, Iranian tradition places the commencement of the long-lasting and constantly renewed struggle of the Arians against the Turyas, or Turanians, that is the Ugro-finnish races, chiefly those of the Turkish branch. We have already had occasion to speak of the early power of the Turanian tribes, or Scythians of Asia, to whom the usually well-informed historian, Justin, assigns 1,500 years of dominion over a great part of the continent of Asia. We have also already spoken of their ancient civilisation, so long misunderstood, but now partly elucidated by modern science; a strange and incomplete civilisation, marked by gross Sabæism, by Hamitism, similar to that which now characterises the greater part of the Ugrian races, and is especially prominent among the Finns,-peculiarly materialistic tendencies, an absolute want of all moral elevation, but, at the same time, an extraordinary development of certain branches of knowledge, great progress in some points of material civilisation, whilst in others it remained quite rudimentary; that civilisation, in fact, to which the populations of the Tigro-Euphrates basin of Armenia and Susiana owed their system of cuneiform writing. The chief divinity these people worshipped was the great serpent, employed by Zoroaster as the emblem of Ahriman, the evil spirit-the serpent called Afrasiab in the Iranian legend, and that seems, in the ancient Turanian or Median language, to have borne the name of Farrursarabha.

The Iranian traditions collected in the "Book of Kings," and in the Zend Zoroastrian books, represent the war between the Arians and Turanians as a contest between hostile brothers; and, in fact, as we have shown in our first chapter, the Ugro-Finnish races must, according to all appearances, be looked upon as a branch, earlier detached than the others, from the Japhetic stem. But the war for all that was not the less bloody and destructive. It was a religious even more than a national war, and it assumed the former character especially after the time of Zoroaster. It was, moreover, to some extent forced on them by circumstances, for the habitations of the Arians and the Turyas bordered on each other; the irresistible tendency to migration impelled them both in the same direction, and they both aspired to the possession of the same fertile and favoured lands. Confined to the rugged plains to the north of the Arians, the great mass of the Turanian tribes coveted the fertile valleys of Bactria, and wished to drive away those who inhabited them. Westward, one of their tribes descended into the district now called Kurdistan, into Media and Susiana; and just in that direction it was that a branch of the Arians advanced, when the increase of population forced them to emigrate. It was northward, in Sogdiana, following the course of the Jaxartes, and westward, in Margiana and Hyrcania, that the Arians and Turyas first came into contact and into antagonism; and, in fact, it is in these regions that the Iranian legend places the commencement of the struggle, and shows us the Turanians as having at first the advantage.

4. To this period of the Arian history-between the period of the migration of the western tribes, who went off to settle in Europe, and the division of the eastern tribes into two great branches, one of which advanced towards Media and Persia, while the other entered India belong the oldest portions of the Vedas. They exhibit to us a state of society still resembling that of earlier ages, and the same religion. The population, however, is rapidly increasing, the cities are enlarging; agriculture is being developed—is progressing, and tending to supersede, at any rate partially, the pastoral mode of life.

A hierarchy is growing up in their society, classes and orders are being gradually established, not yet, however, developed into castes with impassable bounds, professions are generally hereditary, but it was still possible to pass from one to the other. The classes are those of the priests, warriors, and agriculturists, the latter sometimes divided into shepherds and labourers. These are the three orders that the Zend Avesta recognises among the Iranians, believed in later times to have been the descendants of the three sons of Zoroaster; and Herodotus mentions them as recognised by the Persians of his day. In India the spirit of Brahminism and the result of the conquest raised these ancient Arian classes into castes, the three superior castes, whilst the conquered Hamite population were divided into the Dasyus and Sudras, and were looked upon as inferior and contemptible.

SECTION II.-ZOROASTER.

I. AT this period we must place the great religious reform among the Iranians, the credit of which is attached to the name of Zarathustra (splendour of gold), better known under the Hellenised form of Zoroaster. All ancient writers are agreed in assigning a very high antiquity to Zoroaster. Pliny places him 1000 years before Moses (and this appears to be very nearly his true date); Hermippus, who translated his books into Greek, placed him 5000 years before the siege of Troy; Eudoxus, 6000 years before the death of Plato; Xanthus of Lydia, only six centuries before Darius Hystaspes, the Achæmenian.

Modern science, following the learned labours of Eugène Burnouf and M. Spiegel on the original Zoroastrian books, acquired with so much difficulty in India by Anquetil-Duperron, now arrives at the conclusion, in which Spiegel and Oppert both agree, that though it is impossible to fix precisely the date of the founder of the religion of Dualism, it was certainly a very remote one, although far from reaching the fabulous antiquity of Hermippus and Eudoxus, and that all appearances would place him in the twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth century B.C., just at the period where he was placed by Pliny.

2. We know nothing positive of the life of Zoroaster, but that he was the introducer of the religious doctrines that bear his name. His country even is unknown; but, at any rate, the district where he taught, and where his doctrine first gained success, is fixed by the concurrent testimony of the Zend Avesta, of classical writers, and of Mahometan authors. It was in Bactria, then governed by king Hystaspes (Zend, Vistacpa; Persian, Gustasp), son of Aurvadaçpa (Lohrasp, in Persian writers of the middle ages), son of Kava Uçrava (Kai Khosru), son of Kava Us (Kai Kaus), son of Kava Kavata (Kai Kobad), founder of the dynasty of the Keanians. The middle-age Persian writers, giving the last echoes of the popular and entirely mythical traditions to which both Pliny and Eubulus had in former times alluded, ascribed to Zoroaster a long series of prodigies and miracles without end. When thirty years of age he received his mission from Ormuzd himself, who held converse with him in a mountain cave, to which he retired for twenty years. He then repaired to the court of Hystaspes, whom he converted by a display of his miraculous power, and before long all Bactria professed his religion, with the exception of one portion of the Arian population.

The reformer was finally killed during an invasion of the Turanians, irreconcilable enemies to the new worship, who threw themselves into Bactria, took the capital by assault, and profaned the fire temples. This legend, however, was not the only one current in ancient times. Other stories, not less authentic, invested Zoroaster with an entirely different character, making him out a sort of Moses, a political as well as a religious leader.

Trogus Pompeius, whom, unfortunately, we know only through the abbreviation of Justin, and who was, of all the classical historians, the one distinguished by the most discriminating and accurate criticism— who was also particularly happy in his choice of sources of information, and was possessed of marvellously varied erudition, said that Zoroaster himself was governor of the Bactrians (probably after the death of Hystaspes), and that he propagated his new faith by force of arms, and attempted to impose it on the other Arians by conquest.

3. The story of the life of Zoroaster is thus enveloped in darkness, which will probably always remain impenetrable, and leave to us nothing of the Iranian legislator but his work. This was great, elevated, and worthy of profound admiration. The doctrine of Zoroaster is, without doubt, the most successful effort of the unaided human mind in the direction of spiritualism and pure metaphysical truth, on which his religion was founded, by the mere force of natural reason unassisted by revelation; it is the purest, the noblest, and of all the creeds of Asia, or of the ancient world, the nearest to truth, with the exception, of course, of the Hebrew faith based on its divine revelation.

It was the reaction of the most noble instincts of the Japhetic race -of the race spiritual and philosophical beyond all others of the sons of Noah-against naturalistic pantheism, and polytheism its natural consequence, which had been gradually introduced among the Arians, and had obliterated the recollection of the primitive revelation. Thus Zoroaster, in his indignation against polytheism and idolatry, applied, by a reasoning similar to that of the Hebrew prophets and the old fathers of the Church, the names of the divine personages of the Vedic religion to evil spirits.

The gods of that religion, Devas, became demons; the two most important, Indra and Siva, became the ministers of the evil principle. Zoroaster, in his religious doctrine, tended to pure monotheism. He rose almost to the level of this doctrine of eternal truth; but having nothing to rely on but the unassisted powers of his own reason, having no supernatural revelation to guide him, he failed to comprehend the almost insoluble problem of the origin of evil. This was the rock on which he split, and he was driven to the unfortunate idea of dualism.

SECTION III.-THE RELIGION OF ZOROASTER.

1. THE religion propagated by the Bactrian legislator is called Mazdeism, or Universal Knowledge." It was revealed by the "Excellent Word, pure and efficacious"-- the word that Zoroaster has conveyed to men, and which is "the good law." This law was called the Zend-Avesta, Law and Reform, for Zoroaster always represented his doctrine as a revival of what had existed among the Arians in primitive times, before the invasion and tyranny of Zohak.

The Zend-Avesta, a collection of all the writings on Mazdeism, and attributed to Zoroaster, comprised in the time of the Sassanidæ, who were most zealous professors of the Zoroastrian religion, twenty-one Naçkas, or books. The greater part of the work was lost during the severe persecutions of the professors of the ancient faith by the Moslem conquerors of Persia. One only of the books has been preserved entire; this is the Vidævadata, "the law against demons," called in Persian Vendidad.

The Yaçna and the Vispered are collections of fragments. The Vendidad, the Yaçna, and the Vispered together, constitute the collection termed Vendidad Sadé. Another collection of fragments forms the Yesht Sadé. These are all that remain of the Zoroastrian books in the original Zend text. But there still is extant a translation of a work of the same origin, treating on the creation, the Bundehesh, in the Pehlvi, the ordinary language of the greater part of Persia under the Sassanian kings.

Undoubtedly the state in which the text of the remains of the Zend Avesta has reached us is not older than the time of the Sassanidæ, when the ancient Zoroastrian law was written with a new alphabet, and was, in consequence, subjected to a transcription similar to that of the Penateuch by Ezra. This text undoubtedly shows evidences of interpolation and of alteration. But the basis and the essential parts may be attributed to the highest antiquity; this may be proved by the language employed, the Zend, the ancient idiom of Bactria-the one of the Indo-European languages nearest to the primitive form, much nearer, for instance, than the Persian of the Achæmenian cuneiform inscriptions.

These fragments are not the work of Zoroaster himself, but they are of venerable antiquity, and bear the true impress of the spirit of his doctrine. Modern criticism has almost admitted that the Gâthâs, or songs, at the end of the Yaçna, may be the production of the legislator himself, as they have an archaic character and a beautiful simplicity, not found in other fragments; and in them all the fundamental doctrines of his religion are distinctly enunciated.

2. The Zoroastrian doctrine positively rejects the idea of emanation for the origin of the world. Some passages, where there may appear to be a trace of such an opinion, are the result of a subsequent corruption of the text; and critics have been unanimous in refusing to admit them, as being contrary to the essential and original spirit of the religion. The doctrine of creation is, on the contrary, distinctly taught in very many passages, and thus a great gulf is fixed between the teaching of Zoroaster and all other ancient beliefs, as it admits no pantheistic ideas. The creation was the work of Ahura Mazda (Ormuzd), "the wise spirit,” called also the holy spirit (Çpenta maynius), the good principle, represented by light, by the sun, by fire, that was called his son; this is the true God of the Zoroastrian religion, he whom the legislator would have believed in as One, as the Sovereign Master of all things, if the hard problem of the origin of evil had not intervened to check the fervour of his tendency to monotheism.

“I invoke, I celebrate,” says the Yaçna, “Ahura Mazda, brilliant, resplendent, greatest and best. All-perfect, all-powerful, all-wise, all-beautiful, all-pure, sole source of true knowledge, of real happiness; him who hath created us, him who hath formed us, him who sustains us, the wisest of all intelligences."

Creator of all things, Ormuzd is himself uncreated and eternal. He has had no beginning and will have no end. He accomplished the work of creation by pronouncing the "Speech," the " Creating, preexisting word," Honover. But with regard to this very remarkable doctrine, so very nearly approaching the truth, we must quote the text of the Yaçna itself:

"Zoroaster asked Ahura Mazda: