The following are the names of the months, similarly compared, as far as the Zend names are ascertained from the

inscriptions:

Hebrew.

It will thus be seen that there is but a single point of reresemblance out of more than forty instances, and that is indirect. Adar is the Jewish name for February or March, and the Parsee for November; and, whatever we may think of this quasi coincidence, it is certain that the Jewish system was very amply developed before the Parsee language had an existence.

Mithra is the first of the Izeds-using the term in its more limited sense and his high powers and offices are symbolized by wonderful attributes. He has 1000 ears and 10,000 eyes; 35 possesses wide pastures, and makes the waste places fertile; is lord of all countries; is king of the living and the dead; guardian of all creatures; has under his command the four celestial birds- the cock, the raven, Carshipta that published the Law in the Var of Jemshid, and another not well identified; is benificent and compassionate, and giveth peace to Iran; is the companion of the sun and moon; flies through the space between the heaven and the earth, armed like Hercules with a club, to beat down the spirits of darkness; giveth rain and fruitful seasons, and all increase. The Greek writers generally believed that Mithra was the sun-god; and in this there was probably names of Metatron and Sandalphon are not Hebrew, but probably corrupted from the Greek. 35 Yasna, 1-9. Vd. xix.-52. 36 Yesht of Mithra. 37 Strabo Geogr., xv.-3. Suidus and Hesychius sub voce Mithra.

37

a foundation of truth, as the root of the Zend religion is Indian, and Mitra is a well known Vedic name of the sun. Still in the Avesta they are clearly distinct. They are repeatedly named together, and each has a separate liturgy, that of Mithra being placed first. Besides the Izeds named above, there are many others whose rank is more doubtful, together with a number of angels, spirits, genii, sacred birds and animals, personifications, and emblematic creatures. The whole, like the medieval saints, was the gradual accumulation of ages from the contributions of many tribes and provinces, whose popular and local divinities were successively assigned places in the national, and at first thinly inhabited heaven. Indeed the Izeds, even the best of them, are unknown to the earliest portions of the Avesta. The inscriptions are equally silent. In those of Behistun and Naksh-i-Rustam, Darius refers indeed to other gods, probably the Amshaspands, but mentions Ormazd only by name. The names of Mithra and Anaitis first occur in an inscription of Artaxarxes Mnemon, B.C. 400.38

In strong contrast to these celestial spirits are a vast number of deevs, daevas, or devils of 1000 different species.39 They are male and female, like the Izeds, but unlike them do not preserve the virginal state. They intermarry with each other, and produce a secondary growth of demons known as drukhs or daroudjis, who sometimes enter into and possess houses and the bodies of men, and produce diseases and infinite mischief.40 These deevs inhabit the regions of the North, and seem to take special delight in winter. Indeed their tastes and habits are all extremely perverse. The good angels in Gorotman, or heaven, sit on golden thrones in a palace redolent with sweet perfumes, and evince their refinement by the appropriation of flowers. Every flower of the Persian gardens was sacred to some of the celestials, its cultivation was a religious act, and it was held in the hand of the worshipper during his devotions. Thus the jessamin was sacred to Ormazd, the white lily to Bahman, and the eglantine to Rashne-rast. But the deevs skulked about in darkness, haunted burial places - which were not at all like Greenwood or Mount Auburn - lodged

41

38 Rawlinson's Herodotus, 1-210. 39 Yesht of Farvardin. 40 Anquetil's Zendavesta, 1-2-336. 41 Yeshts Sades, Boundehesh and Anquetil's Zendavesta, II.-531.

in desolate and gloomy spots,42 assumed the form of the serpent, the wolf, and of man,43 assaulted men by force and by wiles, and tempted them to sin. To combat these hosts of darkness, prayers, exorcisms, and above all the assistance of the angels, were alone efficacious. Between the spirits of light and darkness there was of course perpetual war; and it seems as if the multitude of angels had been created to combat the devils, and the devils to give employment to the angels.

The Fravashis.-The Fravashis, called in the later language ferouers or fervers, were beings of a purely spiritual nature, but unknown to the earliest remains of Zend scripture. This innovation is distinctly traced to Assyria, and its introduction is to be referred to the interval between the composition of the Gâthàs and the composition of the Vendidad. The Assyrian sculptures represent a guardian divinity as a winged figure partly enclosed in a circle, hovering beside or over the head of the king. This is found even on very early monuments, and may be seen, on opening Layard's Nineveh, anywhere. It occurs with equal frequency among the later decorations of Persepolis, and in Persian archæology is the emblem of the fravashi or ferouer.44 It is difficult to determine what was the precise idea attached to the fravashi, especially as the various documents are not quite consistent with each other. One authority is very explicit. "We extol the souls of the deceased, which are the fravashis of the pure." 45 But this will not hold good in all cases, for the soul and the fravashi are sometimes both named in the same passage; 46 and the worshipper even addresses prayers to the fravashi of his own soul.47 Powers, too, are ascribed to them, particularly in the later books inconsistent with such an idea. It is clear that every human being has a fravashi which existed from the foundation of the world. Thus we often meet with such a formula as this: "We praise all the fravashis of the departed pure, of the living pure, and of the pure yet unborn." 49 But even the deity himself, and the highest angels, have

42 Vendidad, vii.-139. 43 Anquetil's Zendavesta, 1-2-420, and Boundehesh. 44 Rawlinson's Herodotus, 1–211. 45 Yasna, xxvi.-21-35, so also xvii.-43, Compare Rev. xxii.-9. 46 Yasna. iv.-4, xxvi.-19. 47 Yasna, xxiii.-6. 48 Vispered, xii.-33. Yasna, xxiii.-6, and Yesht of Farvardin. 49 Yasna, xxiv.-14, xxvi.-20.

their fravashis. We read as follows: "I call upon and magnify the fravashis which were at first in these habitations, families, tribes and neighborhoods, which preserve the heaven, which preserve the water, which preserve the cattle, which preserve the children in the womb of the mother, so that they are protected and die not. I call upon and magnify the fravashi of Ormazd, of the Amshaspands, and all the pure fravashis of the heavenly Izeds." 50 According to Anquetil du Perron,51 it is only intelligent beings that have fravashis; but on the other hand we find mention of at least the fravashi of the cow; and Heeren maintains that everything animate or inanimate, which had a beginning, is conceived of as having a fravashi, which is its express image and the archetype according to which it was originally made. This, it will be observed, is Plato's doctrine of pre-existent ideas. There are also several passages which represent these ill-defined beings as guardian spirits, one of which would seem to belong to every creature, and as intercessors before the throne of Ormazd, for the objects of their care.52 This doctrine of the fravashis was widely disseminated in the East. It is found in Hesiod and Pindar, and appears in the New Testament quite distinctly in at least two instances: "Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones: for I say unto you that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven." Matt. xviii.-10. So when Peter, miraculously liberated from prison, comes to the house of a friend, his acquaintances at first refuse to believe that it is himself in proper person, but say, "It is his angel." 53 The same idea recurs in the wraith of the Scotch peasantry.

In the kingdom of Ahriman the spirits forming the antithesis to the fravashis were the pairikas, pairis or fairies, female characters of exquisite beauty and very winning ways, who enticed men to sin.

Fire and Water. The Zoroastrians have always been stigmatized as fire-worshippers, and the charge is not without foundation. The most detailed and authoritative passage on this point is so interesting that we shall give the prayer entire :

50 Yasna, xxiii.-1. 51 Zendav. i.-1-2-91. 52 Spiegel's Avesta, ii. Einleitung, xl. Visp. xxii.-33. Yasna, xxiii.-6; xxvi.-12. 53 Acts, xxii.-15.

"We draw near unto thee first, O Mazda-Ahura! by minist ration to the fire; unto thee, the most holy Spirit, who turnest back mischief on those who devise it. Happy is the man to whom thou comest in thy might, O Fire, son of Ahura-Mazda ! more friendly than the friendliest, more to be reverenced than the most adorable. Mayest thou bring help to us in the greatest of affairs. O Fire! thou knowest Ahura-Mazda; thou knowest the Heavenly. Thou art the holiest of those that bear the name of Vâzista. O Fire, Son of Ormazd! we draw near unto thee, with a pure heart and an upright spirit; with the words and actions of the good wisdom we draw nigh to thee. We praise thee, we acknowledge ourselves thy debtors, Mazda-Ahura. With all good thoughts, with all good words, with all good works, we draw near thee. We call upon thy body, Mazda-Ahura, the fairest of all bodies, the greatest among the great lights, that which men call the Sun." 54

At the same time fire is distinctly recognized as created by Ormazd; 55 and we must conclude that it received only a secondary kind of worship as one of the most distinctive emblems and manifestations of the deity. The present Parsees of India indignantly repel the imputation of worshipping anything but the Almighty. Indeed, as we shall presently have occasion to see, nothing could be more incorrect than to suppose that every object invoked in Parsee prayers was regarded as really a god.

The Mazdayasnas reckoned five different species of fire; first, the fire which is before the throne of Ormazd; second, animal life; third, vegetable life; fourth, volcanic fire, and fifth, common fire. These are the germs of all the creatures of Ormazd, and, under different forms, vivify Nature.56

The Parsees regard the fire with the utmost reverence. To furnish perfumes for the sacred fire and wood, dry, sound and clean, is a work of religious merit.57 No impurity must be allowed to enter the fire, even a culinary one. A pot may not be filled to the brim, lest it should boil over; 58 and a Parsee will not blow out a candle with his breath, but cuts off the ignited part of the wick, or blows out the flame with a fan.59 If a dead body or any similar impurity should be burned, the fire becomes defiled, and a long and tedious ceremony is required for its purification.60

54 Yasna, xxxvi. 58 Sadder Portu, lii.

55 Id. xxxiv.-4. 56 Id. xvii.-62. 57 Vd. xviii.-140 59 Anquetil's Zendav. ii.-567. 60 Vd. viii.-229, &c