Whether Magism came from Ragha to Atropatene, or from Atropatene to Ragha, in cither case it had its origin in Media*. That Persia should have submitted in religious matters to a foreign tribe will surprise no one who thinks of the influence of the Etruscan augurs in Rome. The Magi might be hated as Medes, but they were respected and feared as priests. When political revolutions gave vent to national hate, the Persian might willingly indulge it, and revel in the blood of the foreign priest 4; yet whenever he had to invoke the favour of the gods, he was obliged to acknowledge that he could not do without the detested tribe, and that they alone knew how to make themselves heard by heaven 5. When and how the religious hegemony of Media arose we cannot say: it is but natural that Media G, 1 This would be a principle of classification which unfortunately applies only to a small part of the Avesta.
a Still, if we follow the direction of the Zoroastrian legend, Magism must have spread from west to east, from Atropatene to Ragha, from Ragha to Bactria; and Atropatene must thus have been the first cradle of Mazdcism. Its very name points to its sacred character; oriental writers, starting from the modem form of the name, Adarbigun, interpret it as ‘the seed of fire,* with an allusion to the numerous fire springs to be found there. Modem scholars have generally followed the historical etymology given by Strabo, who states that, alter the death of Alexander, the satrap Atropates made himself an independent sovereign in his satrapy, which was named after him Atropatene. This looks like a Greek etymology (scarcely more to be trusted than the etymology of ' Payat, from, frfjywm), and it is hardly to be believed that the land should have lost its former name to take a new one from its king; it was not a new-fangled geographical division, like Lotharingia, and had lived a life of its own for a long time before. Its name Atarpatakan seems to mean 4 the land of the descent of fire,’ as it was there that fire came down from heaven (cf. Ammianus 1. c.)
3 The Pahlavi names of the cardinal points show that Media was the centre of orientation in Magian geography (Garrez, Journal Asiatique, 1869, II).
4 Magophonia (Herod. Ill, 79).
8 'Cls avTovt fiovov 9 djeovofiivovt (Diog. Lacrt. Prooem.); cf. Herod. 1, 132; Ammian. 1. 1.
• An echo of the old political history of Media seems to linger in Yast V, 29, which shows Azi Dahika reigning in Babylon (Bawru); as Azi, in his legendary character, represents the foreign invader, this passage can hardly be anything but a far remote echo of the struggles between Media and the Mesopotamian empires. The legend of Azi is localised only in Medic having risen sooner to a high degree of civilisation, should have given to religion and worship a more systematic and elaborate form, and in religion, as in politics, the best organised power must sooner or later get the upper hand. It is likely that it began with the conquest of Media by Cyrus: Media capta ferum victorem cepit...Cyrus is said to have introduced the Magian priesthood into Persia (Xenophon, Cyrop. VIII, i, 23), which agrees with the legend mentioned by Nikolaus that it was on the occasion of the miraculous escape of Croesus that the Persians remembered the old koyla of Zoroaster forbidding the dead to be burnt.
The Medic origin of the Magi accounts for a fact which perplexes at first sight, namely, the absence of the name of the Magi from the book written by themselves1; which is natural enough if the word Magu was not the name of the priest as a priest, but as a member of the tribe of the Magi. The proper word for a priest in the Avesta is Athravan, literally, ‘ fire-man,’ and that this was his name with the Persians too appears from the statement in Strabo (XV, 733) that the Magi arc also called II vpaiQoi. It is easy to conceive that the Persians, especially in ordinary parlance, would rather designate their priests after their origin than after their functions2; but the Magi themselves had no reason to follow the Persian custom, which was not always free from an implication of spite or scorn. The only passage into which the word found its way is just one that betrays the existence of this feeling: the enemy of the priests is lands: he addresses his prayers to Ahriman by the banks of the Sipit rfit (Bundahis 52, 11), his adversary Feridun is bom in Ghilan, he is bound to Mount Damavand (near Rai).
1 In their own language, the Zend; of which the modem representatives, if there be any left, should therefore be looked for in Atropatene or on the banks of the Caspian sea. The research is complicated by the growing intrusion of Persian words into the modem dialects, but as far as I can see from a very inadequate study of the matter, the dialect which exhibits most Zend features is the Tabs dialect, on the southern bank of the Aras.
9 The Pahlavi has ‘one who hates the Magu-men.* In the passage LIII (LII), 7, mag^us is not a Magian, and it is translated by magt, ‘holiness, godliness,’ related to the Vedic magha. Afterwards the two words were confounded, whence came the Greek statement that p&yot means at the same time ‘a priest* and ‘a god* (Apollon. Tyan. Ep. XVII).
Hi vend}dAd.
‘not called, as would be expected, an Athrava-Zbij, ‘ a hater of the Athravans ’ (cf. the Indian Brahma-dvish), but a Moghu-/bij, ‘a hater of the Magi1.* The name, it is true, became current in Pahlavi and modern Persian, but it was at a time when the old national quarrels between Media and Persia were quenched, and the word could no longer carry any offensive idea with it.
§ 16. The results of the foregoing research may be summed up as follows: — The original texts of the Avesta were not written by Persians, as they are in a language which was not used in Persia, they prescribe certain customs which were unknown to Persia, and proscribe others which were current in Persia. They were written in Media, by the priests of Ragha and Atropatene, in the language of Media, and they exhibit the ideas of the sacerdotal class under the Acliaemcnian dynasty.
It does not necessarily follow from this, that the original fragments were already written at the time of Herodotus2.
1 A further echo of the anti-Magian feelings may be heard in Yasna IX, 24 (75) • ‘ Haorria overthrew Keresani, who rose up to seize royalty, and he said, “ No longer shall henceforth the Athravans go through the lands and teach at their will.” * This is a curious instance of how easily legendary history may turn myths to its advantage. The struggle of Ilaoma against Keresani is an old Tndo-European myth, Keresani being the same as the Vcdic Kmanu, who wants to keep away Soma from the hands of men. His name becomes in the Avesta the name of an anti-Magian king [it may be Darius, the usurper (?)], and ten centuries later it was turned into an appellation of the Christian Kaisars of Rum (Kalasyak = * €/c/c\7jata[/c6s]; Tarsaka).
a If the interpretation of the end of the Behistun inscription (preserved only in the Scythian version) as given by Professor Oppert be correct, Darius must have made a collection of religious texts known as Avesta, whence it would follow, with great probability, that the present Avesta proceeded from Darius. The translation of the celebrated scholar is as follows: ‘J’ai fait une collection de textes (dippimas) ailleurs en langue arienne qui autrefois n’existait pas. Et j ai fait un texte de la Lei (de 1*A vesta; Haduk ukku) et un commentaire de la Loi, et la Benediction (la pricre, le Zend) et les Traductions.’ (Le peuple et la langue des Modes, pp. 155, 186.) The authority of Oppert is so great, and at the same time the passage is so obscure, that I hardly know if there be more temerity in rejecting his interpretation or in adopting it. Yet I beg to observe that the word dippimas is the usual Scythian transliteration of the Persian dipi, * an inscription,’ ami there is no apparent reason for departing from that meaning in this passage; if the word translated ‘ la Loi/ ukku, really represents here a Persian word Abasta, it need not denote the Avesta, the religious book, INTRODUCTION, ITT.
liii But as the Magi of that time sang songs of their gods during sacrifice, it is very likely that there was already a sacred literature in existence. The very fact that no sacrifice could be performed without the assistance of the Magi makes it highly probable that they were in possession of rites, prayers, and hymns very well composed and arranged, and not unlike those of the Brahmans; their authority can only be accounted for by the power of a strongly defined ritual and liturgy. There must, therefore, have been a collection of formulae and hymns, and it is quite possible that Herodotus may have heard the Magi sing, in the fifth century B. c., the very same Gathas which are sung nowadays by the Mobeds in Bombay. A part of the A vesta, the liturgical part, would therefore have been, in fact, a sacred book for the Persians. It had not been written by them, but it was sung for their benefit. That Zend hymns should have been sung before a Persian-speaking people is not stranger than Latin words being sung by Frenchmen, Germans, and Italians; the only difference being that, owing to the close affinity of Zend to Persian, the Persians may have been able to understand the prayers of their priests.
§ 17. It may, therefore, be fairly admitted that, on the whole, the present texts are derived from texts already existing under the Achamienian kings. Some parts of the collection are undoubtedly older than others; thus, the Gftthas are certainly older than the rest of the Avesta, as they are often quoted and praised in the Yasna and the Vendidad; but it is scarcely possibly to go farther than a logical chronology. One might feel inclined, at first sight, to assign to a very recent date, perhaps to the last revision of the Avesta, those long enumerations of gods so symmetrically elaborated in the Yasna, Visperad, and Vendidad. But the account of Mazdeism given by Plutarch shows that the as in that case the word would most certainly not have been translated in the Scythian version, but only transliterated; the ideogram for ‘Benediction, pricre,' may refer to religious inscriptions like Perscpolis I; the import of the whole passage would therefore be that Darius caused other inscriptions to be engraved, and wrote other edicts and religious formulae (the word ‘ traductions ’ is only a guess).
llV VENDIDAD.
llV VENDIDAD.
work of co-ordination was already terminated at the end of the Achaemenian period, and there is no part of the Avesta which, so far as the matter is concerned, may not have been written in those times. Nay, the Greek accounts of that period present us, in some measure, with a later stage of thought, and are pervaded with a stronger sense of symmetry, than the Avesta itself. Such passages as the latter end of the Zamyad Ya^t and Vcndid&d X, 9 seq. prove that, when they were composed, the seven Arch-D&vs were not yet pointedly contrasted with the seven Amshaspands, and therefore those passages might have been written long before the time of Philip. The theory of time and space as first principles of the world, of which only the germs are found in the Avesta, was fully developed in the time of Eudemos, a disciple of Aristotle.
§ 18. To what extent the Magian dogmatical conceptions. were admitted by the whole of the Iranian population, or how and by what process they spread among it, we cannot ascertain for want of documentary evidence. As regards ■their observances we are better instructed, and can form an idea of how far and in what particulars they differed from the other Iranians. The new principle they introduced, or, rather, developed into new consequences, was that of the purity of the elements. Fire, earth, and water had always been considered sacred things, and had received worship 1: the Magi drew from that principle the conclusion that burying the dead or burning the dead was defiling a god: as early as Herodotus they had already succeeded in preserving fire from that pollution, and cremation was a capital crime. The earth still continued to be defiled, notwithstanding the example they set; and it was only under the Sassanians, when Mazdeism became the religion of the state, that they won this point also.
The religious difference between the Persians and their Medic priests was therefore chiefly in observances. Out of the principles upon which the popular religion rested, the sacerdotal class drew by dint of logic, in a puritan spirit, lv lv the necessity of strict observances, the yoke of which was not willingly endured by the mass of the people. Many acts, insignificant in the eyes of the people, became repugnant to their consciences and their more refined logic. The people resisted, and for a time Magian observances were observed only by the Magi. The slow triumph of Magism can be dimly traced through the Achtxmenian period. Introduced by Cyrus, it reigned supreme for a time with the Pseudo-Smerdis, and was checked by Darius1. It seems to have resumed its progress under Xerxes; at least, it was reported that it was to carry out Magian principles that he destroyed the Greek temples, and that the first who wrote on the Zoroastrian lore was a Magian, named Osthanes, who had accompanied him to Greece2. New progress marked the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus. The epic history of Iran, as preserved in the Shah Namah, passes suddenly from the field of mythology to that of history with the reign of that king, which makes it likely that it was in his time that the legends of Media became national in Persia, &nd that his reign was an epoch in the political history of Magism3. But the real victory was not won till six centuries later, when national interest required a national religion. Then, as happens in every revolution, the ultra party, that had pushed to the extreme the principles common to all, took the lead; the Magi ascended the throne with Ardeshir, one of their pupils 4, and the Magian 1 Darius rebuilt the temples which the Magus Gaumala had destroyed (Behistun I, 63). The Magi, it is said, wanted the gods not to be imprisoned within four walls (Cic. dc Legibus II, 10): Xerxes behaved himself as their disciple, at least in Greece. Still the Magi seem to have at last given way on that point to the Perso- Assyrian customs, and there were temples even under the Sassanians.
2 Pliny, Hist. Nat. XXX, 1,8.
3 Cf. Westergaard, Preface to the Zend-Avesta, p. 17. This agrees with what we know of the fondness of Artaxerxes for religious novelties. It was he who blended the worship of the Assyrian Anat-Mylitta with that of the Iranian Anahita (the ascription of that innovation to Artaxerxes Mnemon by Clemens Alexandrinus (Stiomata I) must rest on a clerical error, as in the time of Herodotus, who wrote under Longimanus, the worship of Mylitta had already been introduced into Persia (1, 131)).
4 Agathias II, 26.
lvi vend!dad.
observances became the law of all Iran. But their triumph was not to be a long one; their principles required an effort too continuous and too severe to be ever made by any but priests, who might concentrate all their faculties in watching whether they had not dropped a hair upon the ground. A working people could not be imprisoned in such a religion, though it might be pure and high in its ethics. The triumph of Islam was a deliverance for the consciences of many *, and Magism, by enforcing its observances upon the nation, brought about the ruin of its dogmas, which were swept away at the same time: its triumph was the cause and signal of its fall1 2.
CHAPTER IV.
The Origin of the A vesta Religion, § 1. What was the religion of the Magi which we find reflected in the A vesta? and whence did it arise?
Magism, in its general form, may be summed up as follows: — The world, such as it is now, is twofold, being the work of two hostile beings, Ahura Mazda, the good principle, and Angra Mainyu, the evil principle; all that is good in the world comes from the former, all that is bad in it comes from the latter. The history of the world is the history of their conflict, how Angra Mainyu invaded the world of Ahura Mazda and marred it, and how he shall be expelled from it at last. Man is active in the conflict, his duty in it being laid before him in the law revealed by Ahura Mazda to Zaratluutra. When the appointed time is come, a son of the lawgiver, still unborn, named Saoshyawt, will appear, Angra Mainyu and hell will be destroyed, men will rise from the dead, and everlasting happiness will reign over the world.
1 De Gobineau, llistoire dcs Perses, II, 632 seq.
'‘We ought to discuss here the Scythian theory of Magism; but thus far we ha\e been unable to find anywhere a clear and consistent account of its thesis and of its arguments. Nothing is known of any Scythian religion, and what is ascribed to a so-called Scythian influence, the worship of the elements, is one of the oldest and most essential features of the Aryan religions.
Ivii Ivii We have tried in another book 1 to show that the religion of the Magi is derived from the same source as that of the Indian Rishis, that is, from the religion followed by the common forefathers of the Iranians and Indians, the Indo-Iranian religion. The Mazdean belief is, therefore, composed of two different strata; the one comprises all the gods, myths, and ideas which were already in existence during the Indo-Iranian period, whatever changes they may have undergone during the actual Iranian period; the other comprises the gods, myths, and ideas which were only developed after the separation of the two religions.
§ 2r. There were two general ideas at the bottom of the Indo-Iranian religion; first, that there is a law in nature, and, secondly, that there is a war in nature.
There is a law in nature, because everything goes on in a serene and mighty order. Days after days, seasons after seasons, years after years come and come again; there is a marvellous friendship between the sun and the moon, the dawn has never missed its appointed time and place, and the stars that shine in the night know where to go when the day is breaking. There is a God who fixed that neverfailing law, and on whom it rests for ever2.
There is a war in nature, because it contains powers that work for good and powers that work for evil: there arc such beings as benefit man, and such beings as injure him: there are gods and fiends. They struggle on, never and nowhere more apparent than in the storm, in which, under our very eyes, the fiend that carries off the light and streams of heaven fights with the god that gives them back to man and the thirsty earth.
There were, therefore, in the Indo-Iranian religion a latent monotheism and an unconscious dualism 3; both of which, in the further development of Indian thought, slowly disappeared; but Mazdeism lost neither of these two notions, 1 Ormazd et Ahriman, Paris, 1877. We beg, for the sake of brevity, to refer to that book for further demonstration.
8 Cf. Max MUller, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, p. 249.
3 J. Darmesteter, The Supreme God in the Indo-European Mythology, in the Contemporary Review, October, 1879, p. 283.
lviii nor did it add a new one, and its original action was to cling strongly and equally to both ideas and push them to an extreme.
§ 3. The God that has established the laws in nature is the Heaven God. He is the greatest of gods, since there is nothing above him nor outside of him; he has made everything, since everything is produced or takes place in him; he is the wisest of all gods, since with his eyes, the sun, moon, and stars, he sees everything1 *.
This god was named either after his bodily nature Varana, ‘ the all-embracing sky V or after his spiritual attributes Asura, ‘the Lord/ Asura vii’vavedas, ‘the all-knowing Lord,’ Asura Mazdha, ‘the Lord of high knowledge3.’
§ 4. The supreme Asura of the Indo-Iranian religion, the Heaven god, is called in the Avesta Ahura Mazda, ‘the all-knowing Lord4;’ his concrete name Varana, which became his usual name in India (Varuwa), was lost in Iran, and remained only as the name of the material heaven, and then of a mythical region, the Varena, which was the seat of the mythical fight between a storm god and a storm fiend r>.
§ 5. The spiritual attributes of the Heaven god were daily more and more strongly defined, and his material attributes were thrown farther into the background. Yet many features, though ever dimmer and dimmer, betray his former bodily or, rather, his sky nature. He is white, bright, seen afar, and his body is the greatest and fairest of all bodies; he has the sun for his eye, the rivers above for his spouses, the fire of lightning for his son; he wears the heaven as a star-spangled garment, he puts on the hard stone of heaven, he is the hardest of all gods0. He dwells in the infinite luminous space, and the infinite luminous space is his place, 1 ibid.
3 Or perhaps ‘ the Lord who bestows intelligence ’ (Benfey, 4 Asura Medha and Ahura Mazdao ’).
4 This is, at least, the meaning that attached to the name in the consciences of the composers of the Avesta.
8 Vide infra, § 12.
. lix his body1. In the time of Herodotus, Persians, while invoking Auramazda, the creator of earth and heaven, still knew who he was, and called the whole vault of the sky Zeus, that is to say, called it the supreme god2.
§ 6. In the Indo-Iranian religion, the supreme Asura, although he was the supreme god, was not the only god. There were near him and within him many mighty beings, the sun, wind, lightning, thunder, rain, prayer, sacrifice, which as soon as they struck the eye or the fancy of man, were at once turned into gods. If the Heaven Asura, greater in time and space, eternal and universal, everlasting and ever present, was without effort raised to the supreme rank by his twofold infinitude, there were other gods, of shorter but mightier life, who maintained against him their right to independence. The progress of religious thought might as well have gone on to transfer power from him to any of these gods, as to make his authority unrivalled. The former was the case in India: in the middle of the Vedic period, Indra, the dazzling god of storm, rose to supremacy in the Indian Pantheon, and outshines Varu//a with the roar and splendour of his feats; but soon to give way to a new and mystic king, Prayer or Brahman3.
Not so did Mazdeism, which struggled on towards unity. The Lord slowly brought everything under his unquestioned supremacy, and the other gods became not only his subjects, but his creatures. This movement was completed as early as the fourth century B.C. Nowhere can it be more clearly traced than in the Amesha Spewtas and Mithra.
§ 7. The Indo-Iranian Asura was often conceived as sevenfold: by the play of certain mythical formulae and the strength of certain mythical numbers, the ancestors of the Indo-Iranians had been led to speak of seven worlds, and the supreme god was often made sevenfold, as well as the worlds over which he ruled4. The names and the several 4 The seven worlds became in Persia the seven Karshvare of the earth: the earth is divided into seven Karshvare, only one of which is known and lx attributes of the seven gods had not been as yet defined, nor could they be then; after the separation of the two religions, these gods, named Aditya, ‘the infinite ones,’ in India, were by and by identified there with the sun, and their number was afterwards raised to twelve, to correspond to the twelve successive aspects of the sun. In Persia, the seven gods are known as Amesha Spe/ztas, ‘the undying and well-doing ones;’ they by and by, according to the new spirit that breathed in the religion, received the names of the deified abstractions1, Vohu-man6 (good thought), Asha Valmta (excellent holiness), Khshathra vairya (perfect sovereignty), Spe//ta Armaiti (divine piety), Ilaurvata/ and Amereta/ (health and immortality). The first of them all was and remained Ahura Mazda; but whereas formerly he had been only the first of them, he was now their father. ‘ I invoke the glory of the Amesha Spewtas, who all seven have one and the same thinking, one and the same speaking, one and the same doing, one and the same father and lord, Ahura Mazda2.5 § 8. In the Indo-Iranian religion, the Asura of Heaven was often invoked in company with Mitra3, the god of the heavenly light, and he let him share with himself the universal sovereignty. In the Veda, they are invoked as a pair (Mitra-Varu/ja), which enjoys the same power and rights as Varu//a alone, as there is nothing more in Mitra-Varu//a than in Varu//a alone, Mitra being the light of Heaven, that is, the light of Varu//a. But Ahura Mazda could no longer bear an equal, and Mithra became one of his accessible to man, the one on which we live, namely, Uvaniratha; which amounts to saying that there are seven eai ths. Farsi mythology knows also of seven heavens, //vaniratha itself was divided into seven climes (Orm. Ahr. § 7 2). An enumeration of the seven Karshvare is to he found in Karg. XIX, 39.
1 Most of which were already cither divine or holy in the Indo-lranian period: health and- immortality are invoked in the Vedas as in the Avesta (see J. Dahncstcter, Haurvata^ et Ameicta*, §§ 49 seq.); Asha Vahista is revered in the Vedas as Uita (vide infra, § 30); Spe/tta Armaiti is the Vcdic goddess Aramati (§ 30); Khshathra vairya is the same as the Frahmanical Kshatra; Vohu-mano is a personification of the Vedic sumati (Orm. Ahr.
» Yast XIX, 16.
3 Mitra means literally * a friend; * it is the light as friendly to man (Orm.
lxi creatures: ‘ This Mithra, the lord of wide pastures, I have created as worthy of sacrifice, as worthy of glorification, as I, Ahura Mazda, am myself1.’ But old formulae, no longer understood, in which Mithra and Ahura, or, rather, Mithra-Ahura, are invoked in an indivisible unity, dimly remind one that the Creator was formerly a brother to his creature.
§ 9. Thus came a time when Ahura was not only the maker of the world, the creator of the earth, water, trees, mountains, roads, wind, sleep, and light, was not only he who gives to man life, shape, and food, but was also the father of Tii’trya, the rain-bestowing god, of Verethraghna, the fiend-smiting god, and of Haoma, the tree of eternal life, the father of the six Amcsha Spe//tas, the father of all gods2.
Yet, with all his might, he still needs the help of some god, of such as free the oppressed heavens from the grasp of the fiend. When storm rages in the atmosphere he offers up a sacrifice to Vayu, the bright storm god, who moves in the wind, he entreats him: ‘ Grant me the favour, thou Vayu whose action is most high 3, that I may smite the world of Angra Mainyu, and that he may not smite mine I Vayu, whose action is most high, granted the asked-for favour to the creator Ahura Mazda4/ And when Zoroaster is born, Ahura entreats Ardvi Sura Anahita that the new-born hero may stand by him in the fight 5 (see § 40).
1 He preserved, however, a high situation, both in the concrete and in the abstract mythology. As the god of the heavenly light, the lord of vast luminous space, of the wide pastures above (cf. § 16), he became later the god of the sun (Deo invicto Soli Mithrae; in Persian Mi hr is the Sun). As light and truth arc one and the same thing, viewed with the eyes of the body and of the mind, he became the gocl of truth and faith. He punishes the Mithra-drug*, ‘him who lies to Mithra’ (or ‘who lies to the contract,’ since Mithra as a neuter noun means ‘friendship, agreement, contract’); he is a judge in hell, in company with Rashnu, ‘the true one,’ the god of truth, a mere offshoot of Mithra in his moral character (Farg. IV, 54).
2 Cf. Plut. de Iside, XLVII.
5 Or, who workest in the heights above.
a In the same way his Greek counterpart, Zeus, the god of heaven, the lord and father both of gods and men, when besieged by the Titans, calls Thetis, Prometheus, and the llecatonchirs to help him.
lxii § io. Whereas in India the fiends were daily driven farther and farther into the background, and by the prevalence of the metaphysical spirit gods and fiends came to be nothing more than changing and fleeting creatures of the everlasting, indifferent Being, Persia took her demons in real earnest; she feared them, she hated them, and the vague and unconscious dualism that lay at the bottom of the Indo-Iranian religion has its unsteady outlines sharply defined, and became the very form and frame of Mazdeism. The conflict was no more seen and heard in the passing storm only, but it raged through all the avenues of space and time. The Evil became a power of itself, engaged in an open and never-ceasing warfare with the Good. The Good was centred in the supreme god, in Ahura Mazda, the bright god of Heaven, the all-knowing Lord, the Maker, who, as the author of every good thing, was ‘the good Spirit/ Spc/zta Mainyu. In front of him and opposed to him slowly rose the evil Spirit, Angra Mainyu.
Wc will briefly explain what became, in Mazdeism, of the several elements of the Indo-Iranian dualism, and then we will show how the whole system took a regular form.
§ ii. The war in nature was waged in the storm. The Vedas describe it as a battle fought by a god, Indra, armed with the lightning and thunder, against a serpent, A hi, who has carried off the dawns or the rivers, described as goddesses or as milch cows, and who keeps them captive in the folds of the cloud.
This myth appears in a still simpler form in the Avesta: it is a fight for the possession of the light of hv aren6 between Atar and Kz\ Dah&ka k Atar means ‘ fire;* he is both a thing and a person. He is sometimes described as the weapon of Ahura1 2, but usually as his son3, as the fire that springs from heaven can be conceived either as flung by it, or as born of it 4.
Azi Dahaka, ‘the fiendish snake,* is a three-headed 4 Cf. Clermont-Ganneau, in the Revue Critique, 1877, No. 52.
INTRODUCTION, IV, Ixiii dragon, who strives to seize and put out the /*T/aren6: he takes hold of it, but Atar frightens him away aud recovers the light.
The scene of the fight is the sea Vouru-kasha, a sea from which all the waters on the earth fall down with the winds and the clouds; in other words, they fight in the sea above *, in the atmospheric field of battle a.
§ 12. The same myth in the Vedas was described as a feat of Traitana or Trita Aptya, ‘Trita,*the son of waters,1 2 * * 5 who killed the three-headed, six-eyed fiend, and let loose the cows3. ‘The son of waters4’ is both in the Vedas and in the Avesta a name- of the fire-god, as born from the cloud, in the lightning. The same tale is told in the same terms in the Avesta: Thraetaona Athwya killed Az\ Dahaka (the fiendish snake), the three-mouthed, three-headed, six-eyed,...the most dreadful Dru^ created by Angra Mainyu5. The scene of the battle is ‘the fourcornered Varena6 *,’ which afterwards became a country on the earth, when Thraetaona himself and Azi became earthly kings, but which was formerly nothing less than ‘the fourpointed VaruwaV that is, ‘the four-sided Ovpavos’ the Heavens.
§ 13. The fight for the waters was described in a myth of later growth, a sort of refacimento, the myth of Tirtrya and Apaosha. Apaosha8 keeps away the rain: Tiitrya0, worsted at first, then strengthened by a sacrifice which has been offered to him by Mazda, knocks down Apaosha10 with his club, the fire Vazfota n, and the waters stream freely 1 The Avarcno, Persian khurrah and farr, is properly the light of sovereignty, the glory from above which makes the king an earthly god. He who possesses it reigns, he who loses it falls down; when Yima lost it he perished and Azi Dahaka reigned; as when light disappears, the fiend rules supreme. Vide infra, § 39; and cf. Yt. XIX, 32 seq.
4 Generally, apam napat. 5 Yasna IX, 8 (25).
10 Called also Spengaghra (Farg. XIX, 40).
11 It is the groaning of the fiend under the stroke of that club that is heard in thunder (Bundahis 17, 11; cf. Farg. XIX, 40).
Ixiv down the seven Karshvare, led by the winds, by the son of the waters, and by the light that dwells in the waters l.
§ 14. The god that conquers light is chiefly praised in the Vedas under the name of Indra Vntrahan, ‘ Indra the ficnd-smitcr.’ His Iranian brother is named Verethraghna, which became by and by the genius of Victory (Bahram). Yet although he assumed a more abstract character than Indra, he retained the mythical features of the storm god 2, and his original nature was so little forgotten that he was worshipped on earth as a fire, the Bahram fire, which was believed to be an emanation from the fire above 3, and the most powerful protector of the land against foes and fiends.
§ 15. In the Indo:Iranian mythology, Vayu was the word for both the atmosphere and the bright god who fights and conquers in it..
As a god, Vayu became in Mazdcism Vayu, ‘ a god conqueror of light, a smiter of the fiends, all made of light, who moves in a golden car, with sonorous rings V Ahura Mazda invokes him for help against Angra Mainyu 5.
§ 16. Another name of Vayu is Rama //z/astra: this word meant originally ‘ the god of the resting-place with good pastures,’ the clouds in the atmosphere being often viewed as a herd of cows0, and the Indian Vayu as a good shepherd7. Hence came the connection of Rama hv astra with Mithra, ‘ the lord of the wide pastures V In later times, chiefly owing to a mistake in language (Zwastra being thought to be related to the root Az/arcz, ‘ to taste Rama hv astra became the god who gives a good flavour to aliments ®. 8 - § 17. Considered as a thing, as the atmosphere, Vayu is the place where the god and the fiend meet: there is therefore a part of it which belongs to.the good and another part which Belongs to the evil10. Hence came the later notion that between Ormazd and Ahriman there is a void space, Vai, in which their meeting takes place11.
4 Yt. XV. 5 Cf. above, p. lxi. 6 See above, §11.
lxv