that Achaemcnfan Persia admitted the former, and there is evidence that she did not admit the latter. But, at the same time, it appears that both the belief and the practice were already in existence, though peculiar to one class, the sacerdotal class, the Magi.
The question whether the Achcemenian kings believed in dualism and knew of Ahriman, is not yet settled. Much stress has often been laid on the absence of the name of Ahriman in the religious formulae engraved by Darius and Xerxes on the rocks at Pcrsepolis and Naq^-i Rustam1. But it is never safe to draw wide conclusions from negative facts: Darius and Xerxes speak of Auramazda quite in the style of the Avesta, and their not speaking of Ahriman is no sufficient proof of their not knowing him; they did not intend to publish a complete creed, nor had they to inscribe articles of faith.
The account of the Persian religion in Herodotus also leaves, or seems to leave, Ahriman unnoticed. But it must be borne in mind that he does not expound the religious conceptions of the Persians, but only their religious cus- toms; he describes their worship more than their dogmas, and not a single tenet is mentioned. He seems even not to know anything of Ormazd, who was, however, most certainly the supreme god of Persia in his days; yet, in fact, he clearly alludes to Ormazd, when he states that the Persians worship Zeus on the summits of mountains, and call by the name of Zeus the whole circle of the heavens, which exactly agrees with the character of Ormazd 2 3. In the same way the existence of Ahriman is indirectly pointed to by the duty enforced upon the faithful to perse- cute and kill noxious animals, as it was only on account of 1 Professor Oppert thinks he has found in Darius’ inscriptions an express mention of Ahriman (Le peuple et le languc des Modes, p. 199); yet the philological interpretation of the passage seems to me still too obscure to allow of any decisive opinion. Plutarch introduces Artaxerxes I speaking of ’Apcijidvios, but whether the king is made to speak the language of his own time, or that of Plutarch’s time, is left doubtful. As to the allusions in Isaiah (xlv), they do not necessarily refer to dualism in particular, but to all religions not monotheistic. (Cf. Ormazd et Ahriman, § 241.)
3 Vide infra, IV, 5.
INTRODUCTION, III.
xlv their being creatures of the evil principle and incarnations of it, that this custom was enjoined as a religious duty l. It appears, it is true, from the words of Herodotus, that it was only a custom peculiar to the Magi 2; but it shows, at least, that the belief in Ahriman was already then in existence, and that dualism was constituted, at least, as a Magian article of faith.
If we pass now from dogma to practice, we find that the most important practice of the Avesta law was either dis- regarded by the Achaemcnian kings, or unknown to them. According to the Avesta burying corpses in the earth is one of the most heinous sins that can be committed 3; we know that under the Sassanians a prime minister, Seoses, paid with his life for an infraction of that law 4 *. Corpses were to be laid down on the summits of mountains, there to be devoured by birds and dogs; the exposure of corpses was the most striking practice of Mazdean profession, and its adoption was the sign of conversion f>. Now under the Achamienian rule, not only the burial of the dead was not forbidden, but it was the general practice. Persians, says Herodotus, bury their dead in the earth, after having coated them with wax G. But Herodotus, immediately after stating that the Persians inter their dead, adds that the Magi do not follow the general practice, but lay the corpses down on the ground, to be devoured by birds. So what became a law for all people, whether laymen or priests, under the rule of the Sassanians, was only the custom of the Magi, under the Achexmenians.
The obvious conclusion is that the ideas and customs which arc found in the Avesta were already in existence under the Achaemenian kings; but that taken as a whole, they were not the general ideas and customs of the whole of Persia, but only of the sacerdotal caste7. There were 1 Vide infra, IV, 35; cf. Fargard XIII, 5 seq.; XIV, 5.
4 Procopius, De Bello Persico, 1, 1 1.
7 There are other features of the Avesta religion which appear to have been foreign to Persia, but are attributed to the Magi. The Avaetvodatha, the holiness of marriage between next of kin, even to incest, was unknown to xlvi vendidAd.
therefore, practically, two religions in Iran, the one for laymen and the other for priests. The Avesta was ori- ginally the sacred book only of the Magi, and the progress of the religious evolution was to extend to laymen what was the custom of the priests.
§ 14. We are now able to understand how it was that the sacred book of Persia was written in a non-Persian dialect: it had been written in the language of its composers, the Magi, who were not Persians. Between the priests and the people there was not only a difference of calling, but also a difference of race, as the sacerdotal caste came from a non-Persian province. What that province was we know both from Greek historians and from Parsi traditions.
All classical writers, from Herodotus down to Ammianus, agree in pointing to Media as the seat and native place of the Magi. ‘ In Media/ says Marccllinus (XXIII, 6), 4 are the fertile fields of the Magi...(having been taught in the magic science by King Hystaspes) they handed it down to their posterity, and thus from Hystaspes to the present age an immense family was developed, hereditarily devoted to the worship of the gods...In former times their number was very scanty..., but they grew up by and by into the number and name of a nation, and inhabiting towns without walls they were allowed to live according to their own laws, protected by religious awe/ Putting aside the legendary ac- count of their origin, one sees from this passage that in the time of Marccllinus1 (fourth cent. A.D.) there was in Media a tribe, called Magi, which had the hereditary privilege of pro- viding Iran with priests. Strabo, writing three centuries before Marcellinus, considered the Magi as a sacerdotal tribe spread over the land2. Lastly, we see in Herodotus (III, 65) that the usurpation of the Magian Smerdis was interpreted Persia under Cambyses (ITerod. Ill, 31), but it is highly praised in the Avesta, and was practised under the Sassanians (Agathias II, 31); in the times before the Sassanians it is mentioned only as a law of the Magi (Diog. Laert. Prooem. 6; Catullus, Carm. XC).
1 Or of the historians from whom he copies. Still he seems to speak from contemporary evidence. Sozomenus (Hist. Eccles. II, 9) states that the care of worship belonged hereditarily to the Magi ‘ as to a sacerdotal race,* Samp 71 <f>v\ov UpariKuv.
INTRODUCTION, III.
xlvii by Cambyses as an attempt of the Mcdcs to recover the hegemony they had lost, and when we learn from Herodotus (I, 101) that the Medes were divided into several tribes, Busae, Paraetakeni, Strouchatcs, Arizanti, Budii, and Magi, without his making any remark on the last name, we can hardly have any doubt that the priests known as Magi belonged to the tribe of the Magi, that they were named after their origin, and that the account of Marcellinus may be correct even for so early a period as that of Herodotus.
§ 15. Parsi traditions agree with Greek testimonies.
That the priesthood was hereditary, we sec from the state- ment in the Bundahi.?, that all the Maubeds arc descend- ants from King Minochihr1, and even nowadays the priest- hood cannot extend beyond the priestly families; the son of a Dastur is not obliged to be a Dastur, but no one that is not the son of a Dastur can become one2.
That they came from Media, we see from the traditions about the native place of Zoroaster, their chief and the founder of their religion. Although epic legends place the cradle of Mazdean power in Bactria, at the court of King Vfotasp, Bactria was only the first conquest of Zoroaster, it was neither his native place, nor the cradle of his religion. Although there are two different traditions on this point, both agree in pointing to Media; according to the one he was born in Rai, that is in Media, properly so called; according to the other he was born in Shiz, that is in Media Atropatcne.
The former tradition seems to be the older; it is ex- pressed directly in the Pahlavi Commentary to Vendidad I, 16 3 *; and there is in the Avesta itself (Yasna XIX, 18 (50)) a passage that either alludes to it or shows how it originated.
‘ How many masters are there? 5 1 Bundahis 79, 13.
2 Dosabhoy Framjee, The Parsees, &c. p. 277.
8 ‘Ragha of the three races,’ that is to say, Atropatene (vide infra); some say it is * Rai.’ It is * of the three races ’ because the three classes, priests, warriors, husbandmen, ‘ were well organized there. Some say that Zartust was bom there..., those three classes were born from him.’ Cf. Bundahis 79, 15, and Farg. II, 43, n. 2. Rai is the Greek 'Fayai.
xlviii vendIdad.
i There are the master of the house, the lord of the borough, the lord of the town, the lord of the province, and the Zarathujtra (the high-priest) as the fifth. So is it in all lands, except in the Zarathu^trian realm; for there are there only four masters, in Ragha, the Zarathujtrian city V ‘Who are they?’
‘They are the master of the house, the lord of the borough, the lord of the town, and Zarathujtra is the fourth2 3/ This amounts to saying that the high-priest, the Mau- bedan Maubcd, held in Rai the position of the da//vyuma, or lord of the land, and was the chief magistrate. It may be suspected that this was the independent sacerdotal state which is spoken of in Marcellinus, and this suspicion is raised to a certain degree of probability by the following lines in Yaqilt: 1 Ustfinawand, a celebrated fortress in the district of Dan- bawand, in the province of Rai. It is very old, and was strongly fortified. It is said to have been in existence for more than 3000 years, and to have been the stronghold of the Masmoghan of the land during the times of paganism. This word, which designates the high-priest of the Zoroas- trian religion, is composed of mas, “great,1 ” and moghan, which means “magian.” Khaled besieged it, and destroyed the power of the last of them V According to another tradition Zarathuilra was born in Atropatcnc. The very same commentary which describes Ragha as being identical with Rai, and the native place of Zartu^t, also informs us that Ragha was thought by others 1 Or possibly, ‘ in the Zarathustrian Ragha.’
2 The Commentary has here: • that is to say, he was the fourth master in his own land.’
Their spreading and wandering over Mazdean lands appears from Yasna XL11, 6 (XLI, 54): 1 We bless the coming of the Athravans, who come from afar to bring holiness to countries;* cf. infra, p. lii, note 1, and Farg. XIII, 22.
3 Dictionnairc geographique de la Perse, traduit par Barbier de Meynard, p. 33. Cf. Spiegel, Eranische Alterthumskunde III, 565. A dim recollection of this Magian dynasty seems to survive in the account ap. Diog. Laert. (Proocm. 2) that Zoroaster was followed by a long series of Magi, Osthanae Astrampsychi, and Pazatae, till the destruction of the Persian empire by Alexander.
INTRODUCTION, III.
xlix to be Atropatenc. Traditions, of which unfortunately we have only late records, make him a native of Shiz, the capital of Atropatcne1: c In Shiz is the fire temple of Azerckhsh, the most celebrated of the Pyraea of the Magi; in the days of the fire worship, the kings always came on foot, upon pilgrimage. The temple of Azerckhsh is ascribed to Zeratusht, the founder of the Magian religion, who went, it is said, from Shiz to the mountain of Sebilan, and, after remaining there some time in retirement, returned with the Zend-Avesta, which, although written in the old Persian language, could not be understood without a commentary. After this he declared himself to be a prophet2.’
Now we read in the BundahL? that Zartu^t founded his religion by offering a sacrifice in Iran Ve^ ( Airyanem Vae^o) Although this detail referred originally to the mythical cha- racter of Zoroaster, and Iran Vcg- was primitively no real country, yet as it was afterwards identified with the basin of the Aras (Vanguhi Daitya)4, this identification is a proof that the cradle of the new religion was looked for on the banks of the Aras. In the A vesta itself we read that Zoro- aster was born and received the law from Ormazd on a mountain, by the river Dare^a 5, a name which strikingly reminds one of the modern Darah river, which falls from the Sebilan mount into the Aras.
To decide which of the two places, Rai or Atropatene, had the better claim to be called the native place of Zoro- aster is of course impossible. The conflict of the two traditions must be interpreted as an indication that both places were important scats of the Magian worship. That both traditions may rely on the Avesta is perhaps a sign that the Avesta contains two scries of documents, the one emanating from the Magi of Ragha, and the other from the 1 The Persian Gazn, the Byzantine Gaza, Ganzaka, the site of which was identified by Sir Heniy Rawlinson with Takht i Suleiman (Memoir on the Site of the Atropatenian Ecbatana, in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, M d 1 vendidAd.
Magi of Atropatene1; Which of the two places had the older claim is also a question hardly to be settled in the present state of our knowledge2.
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 INTRODUCTION, III.
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 organ- ised 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 con- ceive 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 con- founded, 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.
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 sacri- fice 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 nowa- days 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 sym- metry, 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 bury- ing 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, INTRODUCTION, III.
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 repug- nant 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 princi- ples 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: —