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.
INTRODUCTION, IV.
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, com- posed 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 never- failing 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 vendIdad.
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 every- thing, 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.
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.
INTRODUCTION, IV.
. lix his body1. In the time of Herodotus, Persians, while in- voking 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 vendIdad.
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 (per- fect 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 god- dess 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.
» Yast XIX, 16.
3 Mitra means literally * a friend; * it is the light as friendly to man (Orm.
INTRODUCTION, IV.
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 Zoro- aster 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 VENDIDAD.
§ io. Whereas in India the fiends were daily driven farther and farther into the background, and by the pre- valence 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 four- cornered 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 four- pointed 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 sove- reignty, 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 vendIdAd.
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 con- queror 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 there- fore 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.
INTRODUCTION, IV.
lxv Hence came also the distinction of two Vai the good one and the bad one, which, probably by the natural con- nection of Vayu, the atmosphere, with the heavens 2 whose movement is Destiny 3, became at last the good Fate and the bad Fate, or Destiny bringing good and evil, life and death 4.
§ 1 8. A^i is not always vanquished; he may also conquer; and it is just because the serpent has seized upon the sky and darkened the light, that the battle breaks out. A,sri has carried off the sovereign light, the hv areno, from Yima Khshaeta, ‘the shining Yima5.
In the course of time Thraetaona, Yima, and Azl Da- haka became historical: it was told how King Jemshid (Yima Khshaeta) had been overthrown and killed by the usurper Zohak (Dahaka), a man with two snakes’ heads upon his shoulders, and how Zohak himself had been overthrown by a prince of the royal blood, Feridun (Thraetaona). Yet Zohak, though vanquished, could not be killed; he was bound to Mount Damavand, there to lie in bonds till the end of the world, when he shall be let loose, and then killed by Keresaspa0. The fiend is as long-lifed as the world, since as often as he is vanquished he appears again, as dark and fearful as ever7.
§ 19. While the serpent passed thus from mythology into legend, he still continued under another name, or, more correctly, under another form of his name, azi, a word which the Parsis converted into a pallid and lifeless abstrac- tion by identifying it with a similar word from the same root, meaning ‘ want.’ But that he was the very same being as A-cri, the snake, appears from his adversaries: like A^i, he fights against Atar, the fire, and strives to extinguish it 8, and together with the Pairikas, he wants to carry off the rain-floods, like the Indian Ahi!'.
§ ao. Mazdeism, as might be expected from its main a Cf. Farg. XIX, 16. 3 Orm. Ahr. § 257.
1 Farg. V, 8-9, text and notes.
8 See above, p. lxiii, n. 1, and Yast XIX. 8 Cf. § 39.
7 Cf. Roth, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenl. Gesellschaft II, 216.
8 Farg. XVIII, 19 seq.
8 Yasna LXVIII, 7 (LXVII, 18).
e lxvi vend!dAd.: principle, is very rich in demons. There are whole classes of them which belong terthe Indo-Iranian mythology.
The Vedic Yatus are found unaltered in the Avesta. The Yatu in the Vedas is the demon taking any form he pleases, the fiend as a wizard: so he is in the Avesta also, where the name is likewise extended to the Yatu-man, the ..sbVcercr.
§ 2i. With the Yatus are often associated the Pairikas (the Paris)1.
The Pairika corresponds in her origin (and perhaps as to her name) to the Indian Apsaras 2.
The light for which the storm god struggled was often compared, as is well known, to a fair maid or bride carried off by the fiend. There was a class of myths, in which, instead of being carried off, she was supposed to have given herself up, of her own free will, to the demon, and to have betrayed the god, her lover. In another form of myth, still more distant from the naturalistic origin, the Pairikas were ‘ nymphs of a fair, but erring line,’ who seduced the heroes to lead them to their ruin. Afterwards the Pari became at length the seduction of idolatry3.
In their oldest Avesta form they arc still demoniac nymphs, who rob the gods and men of the heavenly waters: they hover between heaven and earth, in the midst of the sea Vouru-kasha, to keep off the rain-floods, and they work together with Azi and Apaosha 4.
Then we sec the Pairika, under the name of Knathaiti, cleave to Keresaspa5. Keresaspa, like Thraetaona, is a great smiter of demons, who killed the snake Srvara, a twin- brother of Asi Dahaka 6. It was related in later tales that he was born immortal, but that having despised the holy religion he was killed, during his sleep, by a Turk, Niy&z7, which, being translated into old myth, would mean that he * Ibid. p. 176, n. 6. Then pairikam, the accusative of pairika, was inter- preted as a Pahlavi compound, pari-kdm, * love of the Paris' (Comm, ad Farg.
8 Farg. 1, 10. • Yasna IX, II (34); Yast XIX, 40.
INTRODUCTION, IV. IxVli gave himself up to the Pairika Khnatliaiti, who delivered him asleep to the fiend. Yet he must rise from his sleep, at the end of time, to kill Axri, and Khnatliaiti will be killed at the same time by Saoshya///1, the son of Zarathortra, which shows her to be a genuine sister of Ad.
§ 22. Then come the host of storm fiends, the Drvawfe, the Dvara///s, the Dregva;^s, all names meaning ‘ the run- ning ones/ and referring to the headlong course of the fiends in storm, ‘ the onsets of the wounding crew.’
One of the foremost amongst the Drva;//s, their leader in their onsets, is Aeshma, 4 * the raving/ c a fiend with the wounding spear/ Originally a mere epithet of the storm fiend, Aeshma was afterwards converted into an abstract, the demon of rage and anger, and became an expression for all moral wickedness, a mere name of Ahriman.
§ 23. A class of demons particularly interesting are the Varcnya daevas2 *. The phrase, an old one belonging to the Indo-European mythology, meant originally ‘ the gods in heaven/ ovp&vioi. OtoC; when the daevas were converted into demons (see § 41), they became ‘ the fiends in the heavens/ the fiends who assail the sky; and later on, as the meaning of the word Varcna was lost, ‘the fiends of the Varena land •/ and finally, nowadays, as their relation to Varena is lost to sight, they are turned by popular ety- mology, now into demons of lust, and now into demons of doubt a.
§ 24. To the Pairika is closely related Bflshyasta the yellow, the long-handed 4. She lulls back to sleep the world as soon as awaked, and makes the faithful forget in slumber the hour of prayer 6. But as at the same time she is said to have fallen upon Keresaspa 6, one sees that she belonged before to a more concrete sort of mythology, and was a sister to Khnathaiti and to the Pairikas.
§ 25. A member of the same family is Cahi, who was 1 Farg. XIX, 5.
2 F arg. X, 14. The Mazainy a daeva (see Farg. X, 16 n.) are often invoked with them (Yast V, 22; XIII, 37; XX, 8).
8 Aspendidrji. 4 Farg. XI, 9.
lxviii vendJdad.
originally the god’s bride giving herself up to the demon, and became then, by the progress of abstraction, the demon of unlawful love and unchastity1. The courtezan is her incarnation, as the sorcerer is that of the Yatu.
§ %6. Death gave rise to several personations.
Sauru, which in our texts is only the proper name of a demon2, was probably identical in meaning, as he is in name, with the Vedic Saru, ‘ the arrow,* a personification of the arrow of death as a godlike being 3.
The same idea seems to be conveyed by Ishuj hv&- thakht6, ‘the self-moving arrow4,’ a designation to be accounted for by the fact that 5aru, in India, before becoming the arrow of death, was the arrow of lightning with which the god killed his foe.
A more abstract personification is Ithy4?*6marshaonem^,, ‘ the unseen death,* death which creeps unawares.
Asto vidotuj, ‘the bone-divider V who, like the Yama of the Sanskrit epic, holds a noose around the neck of all living creatures7.
§ 27. In the conflict between gods and fiends man is active: he takes a part in it through the sacrifice.
The sacrifice is more than an act of worship, it is an act of assistance to the gods. Gods, like men, need drink and food to be strong; like men, they need praise and encourage- ment to be of good cheer8. When not strengthened by the sacrifice, they fly helpless before their foes. TLrtrya, worsted by Apaosha, cries to Ahura: ‘ O Ahura Mazda! men do not worship me with sacrifice and praise: should they wor- ship me with sacrifice and praise, they would bring me the strength of ten horses, ten bulls, ten mountains, ten rivers.* Ahura offers him a sacrifice, he brings him thereby the 1 Orm. Ahr. § 145. Cf. Farg. XXI, 1.
6 Farg. IV, 49. His mythical description might probably be completed by the Rabbinical ancl Arabian tales about the Breaking of the Sepulchre and the angels Monkir and Nakir (Sale, the Coran, Introd. p. 60, and Bargbs, Journal Asiatique, 1843).
7 See Farg. XIX, 29, n. 2. Closely related to Asto-vtdotu is Vizarcsha (ibid.); on Buiti, see Farg. XIX, 1, n. 3.
INTRODUCTION, IV.
lxix strength of ten horses, ten bulls, ten mountains, ten rivers, TLrtrya runs back to the battle-field and Apaosha flies before him \ § 28. The sacrifice is composed of two elements, offerings and spells.
The offerings are libations of holy water (zaothra)1 2, holy meat (myazda)3, and Haoma. The last offering is the most sacred and powerful of all.
Ilaoma, the Indian Soma, is an intoxicating plant, the juice of which is drunk by the faithful for their own benefit and for the benefit of their gods. It comprises in it the powers of life of all the vegetable kingdom.
There are two Haomas: one is the yellow or golden Haoma, which is the earthly Haoma, and which, when pre- pared for the sacrifice, is the king of healing plants4; the other is the white Haoma or Gaokerena, which grows up in the middle of the sea Vouru-kasha, surrounded by the ten thousand healing plants 5 *. It is by the drinking of Gaokerena that men, on the day of the resurrection, will become immortal °.
§ 29. Spell or prayer is not less powerful than the offer- ings. In the beginning of the world, it was by reciting the Honovcr (Ahuna Vairya) that Ormazd confounded Ahri- man7. Man, too, sends his prayer between the earth and the heavens, there to smite the fiends, the Ka/;?'aredhas and the Ka/^aredhis, the Kayadhas and the Kayadhis, the Za//das and the Yatus 8.
§ 30. A number of divinities sprang from the hearth of the altar, most of which were already in existence during the Indo-Iranian period.