fire altar,[1] Baresman or the sacred twigs, Zaothra or libations, one's own soul and Fravashi,[2] the Gathas, the chapters of the Yasna Haptanghaiti,[3] metres, lines, words of the chapters of the Haptanghaiti,[4] intellect, conscience,[5] knowledge,[6] and even sleep.[7] Thus the creator and his creature, angel and man, ceremonial implements and secriptural texts are all alike made the objects of adoration and praise.
Zarathushtra's monologues in the Gathas as against his dialogues in the Avesta. In the Gathas the prophet addressed several questions to Ahura Mazda, but the replies were left to be inferred from the context. An advance is made upon this method, and now we have Zoroaster depicted as putting questions, and Ahura Mazda himself as answering them categorically. To invest their compositions with divine sanction and prophetic authority, the later sages wrote in the form of a dialogue between Ahura Mazda and his prophet. The greater part of the Vendidad and some of the Yashts are composed in this style. Escorted by the celestial Yazatas, Ahura Mazda comes down to Airyana Vaejah to attend a meeting of mortals convened by Yima, and warns him of the coming destructive winter and frost.[8]
The Avesta looks with unrelenting abhorrence upon idols and images of divinities. Idolatry in any form is sin. The Shah Namah abounds in passages depicting the Persian kings and heroes as conducting a crusade against idols and idol-worship. The conquering armies of Persia always destroyed the idols and razed their temples to the ground. Herodotus writes that the Persians did not erect idols.[9] Sotion adds that they hated idols.[10] The statues of different divinities were, however, not unknown among the Achaemenians. The winged figure floating over the head of Darius on the rock sculptures at Behistan is probably a representation of Auramazda. We have it on the authority of Berosus that the Achaemenian king Artaxerxes Mnemon (b.c. 404–358) had statues erected to Anahita in Baby-
