paid to Mithra, the sun-god, to Spenta Aramaiti, the earth spirit, and to Anahita, the goddess of the waters.[1] As subordinates of Ahura-Mazda, these divinities still held an established place, and were made the immediate objects of the rites and ceremonies imposed on the pious Iranian. Hence the sanctity of fire, earth, and water became an article of faith, and it was believed to be a heinous crime to contaminate them with any impurity. Whatever was evil was esteemed to be impure, and, therefore, the work of Angra-Mainyu. The Druj Nasu, a female demon, personifying the lie, was regarded as his universal agent, and as being present imminently under all adverse circumstances. Such were the principles of Mazdeism, the rigid application of which, and they were rigidly applied by the Magi, was productive of many curious sociological phenomena strangely at variance with the customs of other nations.[2] Death was
- [Footnote: Dinkard, a religious compilation of the eighth century. The book was
unknown to the Greeks and Romans, but Pausanias (v, 27) mentions that the Magi had a volume from which they read. Darmsteter (Sacred Books of the East, Lond., 1895, Introd. to Vendidâd) considers that the composition is almost in its entirety of a date subsequent to Alexander. The sacred books of the Parsees, as far as they have been translated, are to be found in Max Müller's series (Lond., 1880, etc.), just mentioned, vols. iv, xxiii, xxxi (Zend-Avesta), and v, xviii, xxiv, xxxviii (religious treatises in Pahlavi).]*
- ↑ Mithra, so-named, long enjoyed a supremacy among the Aryans both in India and Persia. Spenta Aramaiti is one of the Amesha Spentas (later Amshaspands, that is, "Holy Immortals," or Council of Ormuzd, but, although they appear in the Avesta, Darmsteter (loc. cit.) argues a Platonic and, therefore, late origin for them. Thus Vohu Manô ("Good Thought"), their chief and the premier of Ormuzd, appears to be an exact counterpart of the Philonic Logos. Anahita stands for the Vedic Varuna, the waters of the sky, but the name is that of the Babylonian Venus, and her attributes are partly of the concupiscent type.
- ↑ The Vendidâd ("laws against the evil ones") is the nask which
