Irano-Aryans and Indo-Aryans carried with them, the one to their adopted country in Bactria, the other to their first settlements in India. We have now to account for the difference and antagonism which ultimately arose in the development of these elementary religious ideas among Indians and Iranians.

We have seen that a large surplus population of non-agriculturists were easily supported in Upper India, and that a certain number applied themselves to the elaboration of language. A similar class of thinking men were set free to devote their attention to religious investigations. These men took advantage of the devotional feelings of their fellow-countrymen to advance their own interests. They formed themselves into an association of priests, and declared themselves the sole channels and instruments of all religious operations, the sole appointed mediators between men and gods. They even laid claim to divine attributes and powers in their own persons. Then, taking the belief in the one living all-investing Spirit of Heaven (the great Asura Varuna) as the basis of a new spiritual theory, they maintained that all Nature was a simple development or expansion of that Spirit, whose epithets or titles they changed from Varuna, All-investor,' and Asura, ‘Breather,' to Brahma," Expander.' They themselves were his highest human development, and therefore to be called Brahmana. Of course so lofty a doctrine could only be for the few. The masses were to be encouraged in their worship of the Devas. They were to be kept in religious subjection by the promotion of superstitious ideas. They were to be instigated to multiply material objects of adoration; to convert heroes and holy men into new Devas; to deify or demonise stocks and stones, trees, rivers, and animals, qualities of the mind, virtues and vices; to people earth, air, heaven, and hell, with gods, goddesses, demigods, and demons of all shapes, sizes, and degrees-semi-human, superhuman, many-headed, many-armed, many-eyed, wielding all sorts of weapons, borne through space on all sorts of beasts and birds-fulfilling every possible function as gods of creation or destruction, good or evil, beauty or deformity, wisdom or stupidity, peace or war, love or hatred, mercy or ferocity. Hence the three principal gods of the Veda-Sun, Fire, and Air-went through a process of multiplication first by eleven into thirty-three, and ultimately by 10,000,000 into 330,000,000. If the higher doctrine of the Brahmans was exaggegerated spiritual pantheism, this popular teaching was clearly something worse than exaggerated polytheism. It was polytheism of the grossest and most monstrous kind, aggravated by the worst forms of fetish superstitions.

In Bactria, on the other hand, the entire Iranian population were compelled to seek support in agricultural labour. Each man had his "Brahma might perhaps be rendered by Expansion,' and Brahma by 'Expander.'

piece of land and his homestead. Each man regarded the tilling of the soil as his noblest occupation. Each man, also, was his own priest, and aspired to no higher religion than the worship of the cherished gods of his fatherland-the deities of Sun, Fire, and Air, or the other deified powers of Nature through whose beneficent agency he cultivated his fields in peace and plenty. If he belonged to the more thoughtful minority, his homage was also given to the one eternal allpervading spirit of heaven, one of whose epithets passed among the Iranians from Asura into Ahura.

Of course the influence of the idolatrous Turanian races with whom they came into contact gradually led to some change in the religious ideas and practices of the Iranian population.

It must be noted, moreover, that the colder Bactrian climate caused Sun and Fire to receive more persistent and intensified homage among the Iranians than among the Indo-Aryans; just as among the latter the greater need of rain gave greater prominence to the worship of the spirit of the air, who, though he retained the name Vayu, was more commonly worshipped in India under the peculiarly Indian appellation Indra.

In process of time, too, other differences began to show themselves in the religious notions of the two kindred races-differences brought about not only by contact with the varying superstitions of the nonAryan tribes who preoccupied the soil in both countries, but by a curious change of attitude in the mind of the Iranians towards some of the beings called Devas. This change cannot, in my opinion, be wholly accounted for by any theories 12 of different processes of development under different influences in different localities, but must partly be attributed to the springing up of social jealousies, quarrels, and controversies between neighbouring races peculiarly liable from their juxtaposition to come into collision with each other.

The non-agricultural Indo-Aryans, be it observed, could not all be priests or scholars. A large number formed themselves into a military class, and as fighting men they could not be idle. They became not only defenders (Kshatriyas) but aggressors. Nor did they confine themselves to attacks and encroachments on the aboriginal occupants of Indian soil. They frequently looked with hankering eyes on the possessions of their relatives the Iranians, and organised raids through the mountain-passes for the seizure of their flocks and herds. Of course those who were attacked became in their turn assailants, and counter-raids on the part of the Iranians were probably not uncommon. Often the homesteads assaulted were so well fortified that severe combats took place, and much blood was shed. Now it was observed by the Iranians, who were generally vanquished by their more warlike relatives, that before every encounter the Indo-Aryans invoked the aid of their Devas, especially

Such as the theories elaborated by Professor Darmesteter and others,

their favourite Indra, supposed to be propitiated by offerings of intoxicating Soma-juice. What was more natural than that feelings of hatred towards some of these Devas should spring up in the mind of the aggrieved Iranians? To them the word Deva began to appear like a synonym for demon, and Indra, the spirit of the power of the air, became transformed into a spirit of evil. In the same way the word Asura, which was cherished by the Iranians as a name for their deities, acquired among the Indians an exactly opposite signification. There can be little doubt that some of the earliest battles of the world were fought out in Afghanistan and the passes into India, and were due to the quarrels and conflicts between Irano-Aryans and Indo-Aryans. At any rate it is certain that these formed the historical basis of the legendary accounts of constant warfare between gods and demons (Devas and Asuras), which abound in Sanskrit literature.

It was at a period when the religion of the Irano-Aryans had begun to suffer from the operation of such disturbing causes, that a great prophet and reformer appeared to arrest the advance of his fellow-countrymen in the path of superstition and idolatry, and to bid them fix their faith on the One Living God, Ahura, thenceforward to be known as Ahura Mazda, the Everliying and Omniscient Lord.13 This prophet and reformer was Spitama Zoroaster.

II. What, then, do we know of Zoroaster, and what was the character of the system he inaugurated?

Whether the theory propounded by Darmesteter that Zoroaster is a mythological personage who never existed anywhere except in myths, can be accepted, is to my mind more than doubtful. I need scarcely say that he is certainly not to be identified with Abraham, according to another theory actually propounded by some Muhammadan writers, and even accepted by a few Europeans. His name, as it appears in the Avesta, is Zarathushtra. This was Persianised into Zardusht, and has been Europeanised into Zoroaster. Probably there was but one great Zoroaster, just as there was but one great Buddha; but, like Buddha, he may have been preceded and followed by other great religious teachers, to all of whom the generic title Zarathushtra (supposed by Haug to mean 'venerable chief') may possibly have been applied. And this theory is supported by the fact that when the great Zarathushtra is expressly designated, it is common to prefix his family name Spitama 14 as a distinguishing epithet. Hence we often read of Spitama Zarathushtra, as we do of Gautama

13 There is a difference of opinion as to the exact meaning of Ahura Mazda. Darmesteter and others consider that Ahura means Sovereign or Lord, a secondary sense, the original Asura signifying 'living or 'breathing.' Haug thinks that Mazda, although phonetically equivalent to Medhas, 'wise,' 'omniscent,' also means 'creator.' It is noteworthy that as Deva changed its meaning to demon among the Iranians, so did Asura among the Indians.

14 Generally written Spitama, but in Pahlavi written Spītāmān.

Buddha. As to the parentage and biography of the great Iranian prophet nothing whatever of any historical value has come down to us. Greek and Roman philosophers believed Zoroaster to have been the inventor of magic. According to Eudoxus and Aristotle, quoted by Pliny, Zoroaster taught his system about six thousand years before Plato. Xanthos, an historian of Lydia, fixed the period of his career at six hundred years before the Trojan war, or about 1,800 years B.C. Other statements and allusions in Greek and Roman writers are equally untrustworthy; as, for example, that of Hermippos of Smyrna, who asserted that Zoroaster's powers of fasting enabled him to subsist for twenty years on cheese only. Haug informs us that Berosos, a Babylonian historian, described Zoroaster as a king of the Medians, who conquered Babylon about 2,200 B.C. According to others he was a Babylonian by birth. The Pārsīs themselves maintain that he flourished in the time of Darius Hystaspes (Gustashp), between 500 and 550 B.C., and that he was born at Ragha (Rai), near Teheran. This is not borne out by any allusions on the trilingual cuneiform inscriptions, nor by any satisfactory inferences deducible from other data. If, as is possible, Zoroaster and his immediate disciples were the authors of the Gāthās, or songs, which constitute the oldest part of the Avesta, and which in language, metre, and style closely resemble some of the Rig-Veda hymns, he must have lived nearly contemporaneously with, or not long subsequently to, the authors of those hymns. After a careful consideration of various conflicting probabilities, I am inclined to subscribe to the theory that he was born in the neighbourhood of Balkh in Bactria about the twelfth century B.C.16 A work, called Zardusht Namah, supposed to be his biography, was written in Persian by a Pārsī named Zartusht-Behram in the year 1277 of our era. Dr. Hyde of Oxford, who, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, was the first European to inquire scientifically into the Zoroastrian system, was also the first to give an account of this Zardusht Nāmah. Its absolute worthlessness, except as a collection of fantastic figments, was shown by the late Dr. John Wilson, of Bombay, who gave a summary of its contents in his Pārsī Religion.

13

The infant Zoroaster is described as having caused much consternation by behaving very differently from other infants, and bursting into a hearty laugh when he came into the world. This strange conduct filled the fraternity of magicians who appear to have been as active among the ancient Iranians as among the Egyptians and Jews -with the utmost dismay. Forthwith they cast about for the best means of getting rid of so dangerous a child. One stabbed him to

15 No mention is made of Brahmans in the Avesta. The leaders of the IndoAryans are called Kavis as in the Veda. Nor is there any mention of the Medes, Persians, and Magians in the Avesta.

To regard Zoroaster as a wholly mythological personage because myths gathered round his name is tantamount to doubting the existence of half the great personages of antiquity.

the heart with a dagger; another threw him into a blazing fire, in the midst of which the infant fell peaceably asleep; a third sent some oxen, and a fourth some wild horses, to trample him to death. Of course the child was altogether magic-proof. When he had developed into a youth he was translated bodily to heaven. There he was admitted to hold converse with God himself, but not until melted brass had been poured over his breast, and the whole inside of his body miraculously taken out and put back again, without causing him the slightest inconvenience. The first revelation he seems to have received during this colloquy was that God is formed of light, and the devils of darkness. He was then taught the whole Avesta and commanded to proclaim it to the world.

Much more worthy of attention than the extravagant fables of the Zartusht-Namah is Firdūsï's account in his Shāh Nāmah written about 1000 A.D. It is there said: At the time of King Kai Mustashp there appeared once a holy man before the king at Balkh; he called himself Zerdosht; he held in his hand a vessel containing miraculous fire, which was smokeless and burnt without wood or incense. He addressed the king and said: "I am a prophet, and will show thee the way to God; the fire in my hand I received from Paradise, God himself gave it to me, saying: Take it; therein is the image of heaven and earth; receive from me now the true religion; become enlightened and despise the world." The prophet had with him books which he said had been written by God Himself; he called them Avesta and Zend, and in their tenets the king was instructed.'

What, then, were the tenets of Zoroaster referred to in the above passage? Briefly it may be said that he did not aim at introducing a new religion, but at reforming an old one. He commenced his mission at a moment when his fellow-countrymen had begun to doubt the divinity of some of the Devas common to Bactria and India. Everywhere he found ready listeners and willing disciples. His object was to bring back his fellow-countrymen to what he believed to be the pure religion of their forefathers-the worship of the one living God under the oldest name of the god of heaven, Asura." He says of himself that he was sent to abolish Deva-worship and idolatry as fatal to body and soul, to spread life and truth and belief in the One God, to destroy lies and falsehood, to secure bodily as well as spiritual welfare, to propagate the blessings of civilisation, especially agriculture.18 The Devas were to be regarded as demons, not gods. Yet Zoroaster also says of himself that he had been directed to make no reforms without placing himself under the guidance of the angel Srosh (a personification of the national religion). He was to deal respectfully with the ancient creed. He was to perpetuate the adora

17 See Rigveda v. 41. 3, 83. 6; i. 131. 1; iii. 29. 14.

18 In one passage he is called a prophet of the Spirit of earth, Geus-urvā. (Haug's Lecture, p. 9.)