CHAP. after the migrations of the Celt, the Teuton and III. the Slave across the bounds of eastern Europe.

Examples of such kinship.

Fresh and still more definite information is reflected on this subject from the ancient books of the Hindús. The names of certain gods and heroes, who were strangers, it would seem, to the mythology of other kindred tribes, continued to be held in equal reverence by the A'ryan on the Sutlej and his brethren on the Persian Gulf. The memory, for example, of a Hindú sun-god with the title Vivaswat is lingering in the Zend Vivanghwat, whom the Persian honoured as the father of the mighty Yima, first and best of human rulers; and although in stories of the Indo-Aryan, Vivaswat had two sons, Manu and Yama, each invested with transcendant dignity, and so inheriting a separate empire, one within the sphere of the living and the other of the dead, it is impossible to doubt the common parentage and ultimate identity of Yima and Yama. In like manner, the mysterious soma of the Védas, treated there not only as the best of sacrificial plants but also as a true divinity, had been reflected in the sacred homa3 whose enlivening juices, first expressed by Vivan

1 Lassen, Ind. Alt. 1. 518, 519.
2 Part II. p. 14, n. 1, pp. 18, 19,
154.

3 Burnouf, Études, in the Journal
Asiat. (1844), p. 475, and Spiegel,
Avesta, I. 8. This change of a Sans-
krit sibilant into a Zendic aspirate is
of constant occurrence: e. g. the geo-
graphical name hapta hendu of the
Avesta is the sapta sindhu of the
Véda; both referring to the north
of India, or the land of the 'Seven
Rivers' (i. e. the Five of the Pan-

jáb, together with the Indus and the Saraswati). The word Saraswati itself is also traceable in Haraqaiti. Rawlinson (Journal of As. Soc. XV. 251, n. 1), who mentions this example, adds: "The proper names of men, too, both in the Vendidad, in the cuneiform inscriptions, and even in the Greek notices of Persia, are in many cases Vedic or Puranic, and can almost always be referred to a Sanscrit etymology, thus authenticating the connexion of the races.'

ghwat, were celebrated with a kindred fervour in CHAP. the earliest of the Zendic hymns.

III.

tion between

ans and

of Perso-Ary

ans.

But facts, which have thus tended to authenti- Religious cate the old connexion of the Persians and Hindús, differences may also be adduced to illustrate the grounds of the separatheir eventual separation. It is not material for Indo-Aryour present purpose to consider in what part Asia the divergence had originated; whether (as some think) in the locality which formed the cradle of the human race, and so anterior to the first dispersion; or whether (as is far more probable) that schism was consummated at a period, when the Aryan character was fully formed beneath the glowing skies of India. But be this as it may, we have now ample reason for concluding that the final rupture in that primitive population was in part' at least connected with religious differences. Rebelling, it would seem, against the wild-grown nature-worship' which had characterised the earlier period of their history, or dissatisfied, perhaps, with the account there given of conflicts which they felt to be proceeding in the outer and the inner world, one section of the Aryans fell away from the society of their brethren, and in close analogy with later times and distant countries left the traces of the feud engrained in their religious phraseology. Thus, the Sanskrit name for god, déva, bearing Verbal witness to the ancient worship of the element of this schism. light, is plainly kindred to the Zend daeva; and yet this latter tongue had ceased to use it of divinities in general, and confined it to a class of hostile

Gründen erfolgt sei.' Spiegel, Aves-
ta, I. 9.

Part 11. p. 12, n. 2.

traces of

CHAP. genii following in the train of the great Evil One. III. The highest also of the Vaidic gods, the glorious

Reputed

Zoroas trianism.'

Indra', whom the warm imagination of the early Aryan had been wont to picture as diffusing genial showers upon the earth, or chasing from the clouds the various ministers of evil, had become in Persia, as in later stages of Hindú mythology, a spirit of inferior rank; yet with the noticeable difference, that the Perso-Aryans had proceeded to invest their Andra with malevolent attributes. In further proof of this revulsion in men's thoughts, it is contended by some writers that the first of good divinities among the Persians, viz. Ahura, or Ahura-mazda (Ormazd), is etymologically connected with Asura in the mythology of the Old Hindú; who was accustomed to employ the title as descriptive of the multitudinous demons dreaded by himself, or by his household, though it seems to have been treated by the earliest of the Vaidic poets as a word of no ill-omen.

Every fresh investigation into the degree of founder of these divergences, as well as the distinct formation and consolidation of the Perso-Aryan creed, is fitly prefaced by a question as to the antiquity and origin of its reputed founder. Not long after the Christian era3 it was usual to ascribe the planting of the sacred system of the Persians to an indi

1 Part II. pp. 9, 15.

2 e. g. Spiegel, I. 9, followed by Dr Donaldson, Christ. Orthod. p. 128: but cf. Burnouf, Commentaire sur le Yaçna, I. 78, Paris, 1833.

3 See a list of the conflicting testimonies with respect to his age in Dr John Wilson, The Pársí Religion, pp. 398-400, Bombay, 1843. Döl

linger, Heidenthum, p. 352, staggered by these contradictions, has revived the theory of more than one Zoroaster, or at least distinguishes between Zarathustra the Perso-A'ryan prophet and the Zoroaster, Zarades, or Zaratus of Greek writers, who was really, he thinks, a type, or mythical creation, representing a

III.

vidual teacher, whom they designated Zarathustra CHAP. (Zoroaster); and the scanty remnants of that people, who have found a shelter from the fury of the Moslem, in the towns of western India, or the wilderness of Yezd, look up with reverence to the same Zartûsht as the great prophet of Parseeism'. There is also evidence to shew that in the judgment of at least some Persians, he had flourished in the reign of king Vistáspa2, or (according to a common change) Gustásp; and other writers3, starting from this incident, have not unnaturally referred the ministry of Zoroaster, and the earliest publication of the Zoroastrian tenets, to the life-time of Hystaspes, father of the great Darius.

Now if it be meant that Zoroaster, a contem- Ormazdworship porary of Darius, was the actual author of the sys-older than tem of religion, in which Ahura-mazda (Ormazd) the reign of became the principal object of men's worship, we have reasons the most cogent and conclusive for

totally different (Hamitic) form of heathenism, but ultimately confounded with the historic Zarathustra, when the fame of the latter had extended to Western nations: cf. Westergaard, Zendavesta, 'Pref.' pp. 16 sq. Copenhagen, 1852-54.

1 Dosabhoy Framjee, The Parsees, pp. 238 sq. Lond. 1858.

2 See Spiegel, Avesta, I. 41 sq. who quotes the traditional account of the Bombay Parsees. A regular history of their 'legislator,' the ZartushtNámah, written in the 13th century after Christ, has been translated from the Persian by Mr Eastwick, and is appended to Dr J. Wilson's Pársí Religion.

3 Ammianus Marcellinus (Lib. XXIII. c. 6), of the 4th cent. after

Christ, is most explicit on this point.
He also says that Zoroaster was a
Bactrian, that he made additions to
the creed of the Magi, deriving these
additions' ex Chaldæorum arcanis ;'
and further that he visited the north
of India, and reaching a secluded
spot among forests, conferred with
members of the Bráhmanical order.
The testimony of Agathias (of the
6th cent. after Christ) is more valu-
able (II. 24), because he professes to
give the opinions of the Persians
themselves; yet while repeating the
story that Zoroaster lived at the court
of Hystaspes, he added, as the view
of the Persians, that it was very
doubtful whether this Hystaspes was
the father of Darius (εἴτε καὶ ἄλλος
οὗτος ὑπῆρχεν Υστάσπης).

Darius.

III.

CHAP. rejecting such interpretation. Ormazd had long been reverenced as 'the god of the Aryans',' when Darius wrote the history of his exploits upon the rock of Behistun: indeed some passages in that magnificent inscription will not suffer us to doubt that the great movement headed by Darius was essentially religious, aiming at the restoration of an ancient faith which had been threatened, and in part subverted, by the influence of the Magus. The first care of the victorious prince was 'to rebuild the temples which Gomates had destroyed, and to restore to the people the sacred chants and worship, of which Gomates had deprived them3;' and, as indicating both the nature and extent of the corruption, he declares expressly that 'the lie had become abounding in the land, both in Persia and in Media, and in the other provinces.' Supposing, therefore, the age of Zoroaster to have been the fifth or sixth century before Christ, we are reduced to the necessity of concluding that his mission had been rather to restore and purify, than to initiate the sacred system which was afterwards connected with his name. He must have been, as he indeed is sometimes represented, nothing more than one important member in a series of 'ancient Persian prophets".