to be of easy conscience at the bridge.[1] In this same connection it may be added that the man who has ill-treated the Vanghapara class of dogs in this world finds not his way across this crucial bridge.[2] Besides the bare announcement that the righteous souls can cross the bridge successfully and that the wicked ones fail so to do,[3] we are not furnished with a detailed description of the judgment at the bridge, although we have this information explicitly recorded in the Pahlavi accounts of the fate of the soul after death.
Heaven
Four heavens. In contrast to the single heaven referred to in the Gathas, we meet with a fourfold division of heaven in the Avestan period. Garonmana, or the Abode of Praise, remains the highest heaven, the realm of bliss that is reached by traversing the three lower heavens, called Humata, or Good Thought, Hukhta, or Good Word, and Hvarshta, or Good Deed, as beatific abodes for the soul. Garonmana, the fourth and the highest heaven, is frequently designated in the Younger Avesta as the place of anaghra raochah, or endless light.[4] The generic name, however, for all the four heavens is Vahishta ahu, or Best Existence. This heavenly region is the shining and all-happy abode of the righteous,[5] and in Garonmana dwell Ahura Mazda and his heavenly retinue, together with those human souls that have reached perfection through righteousness.[6] Ahura Mazda offered sacrifice unto Mithra from Garonmana.[7] The faithful beseech Mithra to lay their sacrifices in Garonmana.[8] It is beautiful and all-adorned.[9]
A cordial welcome awaits the pious souls in paradise. Vohu Manah, the premier archangel of Mazda, hails the pious souls on their arrival in paradise in congratulatory terms,[10] and he, as a leader of the heavenly host, introduces them to Ahura Mazda and the other heavenly beings.[11] In a different passage Ahura Mazda himself is depicted as welcoming the righteous
