Transcriber’s Note:

Footnotes have been re-sequenced for uniqueness, have been collected at the end of the text, and are linked for ease of reference. The author notes, in her guide to pronunciation, that the diacritical marks “have been largely omitted” in the footnotes.

Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please see the transcriber’s [note] at the end of this text for details regarding the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation.

Any corrections are indicated using an underline highlight. Placing the cursor over the correction will produce the original text in a small popup.

In the index, references to footnotes are hyperlinked to the specific note, rather than the page it appears on.

Any corrections are indicated as hyperlinks, which will navigate the reader to the corresponding entry in the corrections table in the note at the end of the text.

FAC SIMILE OF A PORTION OF THE TITLE PAGE OF AN ILLUMINATED
“SHĀH NĀMAH” (SEE PREFACE)

PERSIAN LITERATURE
ANCIENT AND MODERN

BY

ELIZABETH A. REED

Member of the Philosophical Society of Great Britain

Member of the International Congress of Orientalists

Author of Hindu Literature, etc.

CHICAGO

S.C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY

1893

Copyright, 1893.

By S.C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY.

The Lakeside Press

R.R. DONNELLEY & SONS CO., CHICAGO

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PERSIAN LITERATURE, ANCIENT AND MODERN.

PREFACE.

There is a growing interest in the literatures of the Orient, but the difficulties in this field of investigation have been so great that few students have taken time to recover the gems from the worthless matter surrounding them. The author of the present volume, however, has chosen to devote years of persistent effort to the work of collecting and condensing the historic facts pertaining to this subject, and giving them to the public, together with the finest thoughts to be found upon the pages of these early manuscripts.

No labor has been spared to attain accuracy of statement, no difficulties have been ignored in these years of research, and the results, so far as completed, are now before the reader in two volumes: the one recently published on Hindū Literature, and the present work on Persian Literature.

Although this book was partially written long before the publication of its predecessor, still it might never have been completed, but for the kindly reception which a generous public gave to the preceding volume.

Cordial thanks are due to the American press, which not only gave to “Hindū Literature” hundreds of favorable notices, but in many instances devoted whole columns to able reviews of the work.

It is also a rare pleasure to acknowledge the courtesies of the British press, and especially the great kindness of leading European scholars, who have sent words of warm approval and congratulation to the author.

In the present volume the subject has been simplified as far as possible, by arranging the work in four chronological divisions; the epoch of Persian poetry being again divided into seven distinct periods, corresponding to the times of the leading poets, who have been called “The Persian Pleiades.”

Not only does their literature present seven leading poets, but this number appears to have a peculiar charm for the Persian literati, and hence we find in this field of Eastern fable, the “Seven Evil Spirits” of Anū, the “Seven Labors of Rustem,” the “Seven Great Feats of Isfendiyār,” “The Seven Fair Faces” of Nizāmī, the “Seven Thrones” of Jāmi, and various other combinations of the same number.

In this as well as previous works, the author wishes to acknowledge the great value of the Chicago Public Library, where a wealth of Oriental lore is ever at the service of the student; here are valuable works which bear on the history and literature of the Sanskṛit, Hebrew, Chaldaic, Persian, Arabic and other Asiatic tongues, besides many volumes in the modern languages.

Among the literati of Europe the author is indebted to such men as Prof. A.H. Sayce, Sir M. Monier-Williams, W. St. Chad Boscawen, Prof. F. Max Müller, Dr. Haug, Dr. L.H. Mills, and Ernest A. Budge; also Profs. Darmesteter, Eastwick, Atkinson, Davie and Owsley, the credits being given where the quotations are made.

Grateful acknowledgement is especially made to Prof. A.H. Sayce, of the Oxford University; to Sir M. Monier-Williams, and to Mr. Theo. G. Pinches, of the British Museum, each of these distinguished scholars having examined portions of the manuscript and affixed their valuable notes thereunto.

Cordial thanks are also due to Dr. R. Rost, of the India Office in London, who laid before the artist all the illuminated Persian manuscripts in that vast collection of Eastern lore, and to the honorable Council of the India Office, who placed these rare literary treasures at the author’s service without the customary precaution of taking a bond therefor. The frontispiece is a section of the illuminated title-page of a Persian manuscript of priceless value. This is a copy of the Shāh Nāmah, which is a large folio, the pages being beautifully written in four columns. Each page is illuminated with delicate paintings, which are a triumph of art. This old manuscript, which is now invaluable, was purchased for the India House Collection at the celebrated Hastings sale about twenty-five years since. Our illustration gives only a portion of the page, and thus the full size of the figure has been preserved, which is far better than to mar the beauty of the work by reducing it.

The author is also desirous of expressing thanks to S.C. Griggs & Co. for the beautiful typography of these volumes: it is a matter of congratulation that the courage of this house in assuming the publication of works, which are generally supposed to be needed only by scholars, has been so fully justified.

Carlyle has said, “If a book comes from the heart, it will contrive to reach the hearts of others.” If this be true, no apology is needed for the preparation of these volumes upon Oriental literature, for the work is constantly pursued with an intense love of the subject, and it is hoped that the reader will share to a certain extent the enthusiasm of

THE AUTHOR.

PRONUNCIATION.

A little attention to the diacritical points will enable the reader to readily pronounce the proper names in Persian literature.

These points, however, have been largely omitted in the foot-notes, the system of pronunciation being fully indicated in the body of the book.

Fac Simile of a Portion of a Page of the Oldest Zend Manuscript.
(See Page 117.

PERSIAN LITERATURE.

DIVISION I.
The Early Tablets and Mythology.

CHAPTER I.
HISTORIC OUTLINE.

ORIGIN OF PERSIAN LITERATURE—ACCAD AND SUMER—LITERATURE OF NINEVEH—BABYLON—ĪRĀN OR PERSIA—PHYSICAL FEATURES—PERSIAN ART—MANUSCRIPTS—EARLY LITERATURE—THE ARABIAN CONQUEST—LITERATURE OF MODERN PERSIA—PERSIAN ROMANCE.

Every nation has a literature peculiarly her own, even though it may find its sources in foreign fields. As Persia was founded upon the ruins of more ancient monarchies, as she gathered into the halls of her kings the spoils of conquered nations, so also her literature was enriched by the philosophy and science, the poetry and mythology of her predecessors. The resistless horde, which poured down from the mountains and swept all of Western Asia into its current, formed the kindred tribes into a single monarchy, and this monarchy gathered unto herself, not only the wealth and military glory, but also the culture and learning of the nations she had conquered. The whole civilized world was taxed to maintain the splendors of her court; the imperial purple was found in the city of Tyre, and her fleets also came from Phœnicia, for the experience of this maritime people was indispensable to their Persian masters. Indian groves furnished the costly woods of aloe and of sandal that burned upon her altars, while Syria and the islands of the sea filled her flagons with wine.

The richest fruits were brought from the sunny shores of Malay, and even the desert sent tributes of incense and gold. Herds of camels came from Yemen, and horses of the finest Arabian blood were found in the royal stables. What wonder, then, that the nation which rifled continents to supply her magnificence should appropriate also the wealth of the world of letters that came under her sway? In the background of Persian power there lies an historic past which is replete with the literary treasures of the Orient.

ACCAD AND SUMER.

There is the far away land of ancient Babylonia, with her territory divided into Accad[^[1]] and Sumer or Shinar. These were the northern and southern divisions of the country.

According to Prof. Sayce, “the whole of Babylonia was originally inhabited by a non-Semitic race, but the Semites established their power in Accad, or North Babylonia, at an earlier date than they did in Sumer in the south; the non-Semitic dynasties and culture lingered longer therefore in Sumer.”[^[2]]

Their land was the home of the palm tree, and from the highlands, where their rivers found their source, down to the shores of the Persian Gulf, it presented a wealth of foliage and blossoms. Fields that were covered with ripening grain awaited the sickle of the reaper, while the fruit trees bent beneath their burdens, and the vines gleamed in the sunlight with clusters of gold and purple.

Although we know little of this primitive people, a few of their imperishable records have come down to us, and light is thus thrown upon the literary culture which prevailed from the Euphrates to the Nile long before the Exodus. We have the inscriptions[^[3]] of Dungi, the king of “Ur of the Chaldees,” and also “king of Sumer and Accad.” We have, too, a portion of the clay tablets recounting the glory of Sargon I, who carried his conquests into the land of the Elamites, and even subdued the Hittites in northern Syria. The independent states of Babylonia also were brought under his sway, and he claimed to be “the sovereign of the four regions of the world,” while his Accadian subjects gave him the name of “the king of justice and the deviser of prosperity.” He was the patron of letters, and in the library[^[4]] of this old Semitic king, in the city of Accad, there was written on pages of clay a work on astronomy and astrology in seventy-two books.

Long before the poets of India, of Greece or of Persia began to weave their gorgeous web of mythology, the seers of Accad and of Shinar watched beside the great loom of Nature, as she wove out the curtains of the morning and the crimson draperies of the setting sun. They listened to the battle of the elements around their mountain peaks, and dreamt of the storm-king; they heard the musical murmurs of the wind, as it whispered to the closing flowers; they felt the benediction of the night, with its voices of peace, and the divine poem of earth’s beauty found an echo in their hearts.

The bloom of Accadian poetry may be placed about four thousand years before our own times, when the primeval teachings of Nature had become the theme of the poet, and been voiced in the measures of song.

But the scientific impulse of ancient Accad remained an impulse only, the methods of science were undiscovered, and the student was led astray by his own fancies and misconceptions; still amidst all the false science of a primitive Chaldea there were germs of truth, which have been developed even in our own times. The classic writers said truly that Babylonia was the birthplace of astronomy. It was also the birthplace of mathematics; and although their figures were simple, the Chaldeans attained quite a proficiency in their calculations. The library at Larsa or Senkereh was famous for its mathematical works, and it formed a nucleus for students from various portions the country.

LITERATURE OF NINEVEH.

On the banks of the Tigris, a great city lifted her battlements and arches towards the skies, and became the home of Assyrian Kings. According to Diodorus[^[5]] her walls were an hundred feet high, and so broad that four chariots could be driven abreast upon them, while fifteen hundred towers, apparently impregnable, arose from their massive foundations. Nineveh was the home of imperial splendor, and twenty-two kings were taxed to supply the materials for her costly palaces where the finest sculptures of the East were found. Assyrian art covered her angles with graceful curves, and built her temples with their gilded domes, while the interior walls were adorned with sculptured slabs of white alabaster. The germs of Greek art, as well as Greek mythology, were found in the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates, for here were Doric and Ionic columns; here were Corinthian capitals, with architrave, frieze and cornice, and yet the latest of these must have been carved before the earliest date which has been assigned to any work of Grecian art. Though her culture was confined to certain classes, and the great mass of her population could not discern between their right hands and their left, still, for centuries Nineveh[^[6]] was the mistress of the East, even Babylon being subject to her power.

She reached the zenith of her glory under the rule of Assur-bani-pal (the Sardanapalus of the Greeks). He was the grand monarch of Assyria, and under his reign the treasures of the world flowed to this common centre, while the name of Nineveh was feared from the frontiers of India to the shores of the Ægean sea. Ambitious in his schemes of conquest, and luxurious in the splendors of his court, he nevertheless confided his military movements largely to the hands of his ablest generals, and devoted much attention to the accumulation of his strange library at the capital city. Here he gathered the literary treasures of the Orient, and scribes were kept busy copying and translating early works, or writing original books, either in the Assyrian or the Accadian tongue. The decaying literature of Babylonia was forwarded to Nineveh, where it was copied and edited by the Assyrians. A new text was the most valuable present that any city could send to this literary king, and it was received with the enthusiasm exhibited by a modern scholar on the reception of a rare manuscript. It is to the library of Assur-bani-pal, that we are indebted for much of our knowledge of Babylonian literature—stored away in those curious vaults, were thousands of books written upon pages of clay. There were historical and mythological works, legal records, geographical and astronomical documents, as well as poetical productions. There were lists of stones and trees, of birds and beasts, besides the official copies of treaties, petitions to the king, and the royal proclamations. Strangers came from the court of Egypt, from Lydia, and from Cyprus to this ancient seat of learning. But while the king was absorbed in his favorite pursuits, the spirit of revolution was abroad in the land,—Elam, Babylonia, Arabia, Palestine, Egypt and Lydia made a common cause against the reigning monarch, the insurrection being led by the king’s own brother, the viceroy of Babylon. This great revolt shook the very foundations of the Assyrian monarchy, and ushered in the decline of an empire which extended from the borders of India to the Nubian mountains, and from the sands of Arabia to the snowy peaks of the Caucasus.

In a few years even Nineveh was captured and utterly destroyed, while her empire was shared between Media and Babylon.

BABYLON.

This was “the golden city” that gathered unto herself the wealth of conquered kingdoms and the dominion of many tribes. The multitude of gods in her pantheon represented the ideals of the various races of men who laid their offerings at her feet.

Babylon was the “hammer of the whole earth,” and she forced the tributes of the nations into her treasury, and their legions into her armies. She was “the glory of kingdoms,” and she gathered the culture of a thousand years into a great historic result that contained the arts and science, the literature, the wealth, and the commerce of half the world. The culmination of her power was in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, who was the Augustus of the Babylonian age.

He reconstructed the fallen temples of her idols and carried the hideous images in triumphal processions to their palatial courts.

Gold, silver and precious stones made bright the altars and temples of Baal, of Merodach, of Nebo, of Molech, and of Ashtaroth.

The choicest cedars were brought from the mountains of Lebanon. “The cedar of the roofing of the walls of Nebo, with gold I overlaid.... Strong bulls of copper, and dreadful serpents standing upright on their thresholds I erected. The cell of the lord of the gods—Merodach, I made to glisten like suns the walls thereof, with large gold like rubble stone.... I had them made brilliant as the sun.” Nebuchadnezzar was the undisputed master of Western Asia, and the walls of his palace were hung with historic pictures of Chaldean thrones, and draped with the most gorgeous tapestries of the Eastern looms, while in his princely halls the cool air fell from glittering fountains, and the royal abode was filled with music, light, and costly perfume. He built the wondrous hanging gardens, where the almond trees waved their sprays of silvery blossoms, and the palms tossed their plumes in the sunlight,—there the pink fingers of the dawn opened the hearts of the roses, and white lilies nestled amid the green slopes and fragrant shades, while the breezes came up from the great river laden with the breath of lotus blossoms and the soft music of her waves. This haughty king was also the patron of letters, and his inscriptions throw a vivid light upon his pride of power, and magnificence—his constant devotion to his idols, and his never ceasing admiration of his capital city,—“this great Babylon which I have built.” His books were written largely upon stone, and stored away beyond the reach of conquering kings. The literary treasures, which may even yet lie buried beneath her soil, probably belong to the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar, and owe their existence to him. In his days, too, there flourished the family of Egebi, who were tradesmen. This Jewish family is mentioned as early as the reign of Esar-haddon, and for five successive generations they deposited their legal documents in earthen jars which served the purpose of safes. These thrifty capitalists continued in prosperity even to the end of the reign of Darius the Great, and although coined money was then unknown and the precious metals[^[7]] were reckoned by weight, they, like the Rothschilds of our own day, loaned money to the kings of their generation, and their well kept records are of great value as a chronological index of the times[^[8]] in which they were written. The literature of the Babylonians, like that of the Hindūs, claims a fabulous antiquity. They enumerated ten kings who lived before the flood, whose reigns occupied four hundred and thirty-two thousand years, or more than forty-three centuries each, and during this immense cycle of time, there were strange creatures, half man and half fish, who ascended from the ocean and taught the tribes of Babylonia the rudiments of civilization. There were men with the bodies of birds and the tails of fishes, and men also with the beaks and faces of birds who in other respects wore the form of humanity.

But their literature was not all fable, though they really cared very little what the condition of their country had been before the deluge, for they were engaged in recounting the conquests of their own kings, and the power and splendor of their idols. Babylon, the Queen of the East, with her arts and sciences, with her painting and sculpture, was like other Asiatic cities, a hot-bed of moral corruption; even her religion was a craze of sorcery and enchantments—of witchcraft and horrible sensuality. Her high priests were astrologers and soothsayers, while her gods were the personification of evil. “Moloch demanded the best and dearest that the worshipper could grant him, and the parent was required to offer his eldest or only son as a sacrifice, while the victim’s cries were drowned by the noise of drums and flutes. When Agathokles defeated the Carthaginians, the noblest of the citizens offered in expiation three hundred of their children to Baal-Moloch.”[Baal-Moloch.”][^[9]]

The worship of Ishtar[^[10]] demanded that every female devotee should begin her womanhood by public prostitution in the temple of the goddess, and young girls were often burned upon her altars, while young men were either burned or mutilated. Abominations even more revolting than these were practiced in connection with the worship of Bel, and the nations around her drank of her wine and were maddened with the frenzy of her corruption. What wonder, then, that even before the “Lady of Kingdoms” reached the zenith of her glory, the cry of the prophets had rung out in unmeasured denunciation of her crimes? “Therefore I will execute judgment upon the graven images of Babylon ... and all her slain shall fall in the midst of her ... the treacherous dealeth treacherously, and the spoiler spoileth. Go up, O Elam, besiege, O Media.... Babylon is fallen, is fallen, and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground.”[^[11]]

Elam and Media combined their forces, and set their troops in battle array, while hundreds of banners waved in the sunlight. “Elam bare the quiver with chariots of men and horsemen,” and they marched to the “two leaved gates” of the city. Every sword in the ranks was true to the young commander, and his victory was easily won. Babylon was conquered, and the story of her decay was written upon her forehead. The seat of government was removed, the city was left in desolation, and her gates were smitten with destruction. Ruin fell upon her battlements, the owl and the bittern dwelt amidst her prostrate columns, while the wild beasts of the desert made their den in her fallen palaces.

ĪRĀN OR PERSIA.

Persia is often called Īrān, this being the name which the Persians themselves gave to their kingdom. Persepolis was for a long time the capital, but for almost twelve centuries after the fall of that beautiful city, the capital was located at Shīrāz. The oldest certain use of the name Persia is found in the prophets,[^[12]] and the kingdom was formed by the combination of the Medians with the Persians. These hardy mountaineers were brave and merciless, their troops of horsemen, armed with lance and quiver, swept down from the highlands with irresistible force, and drew the wandering tribes of the East into one great army. Frugal in their mode of life, strong in nerve and sinew, and severe in military discipline, even their kings believed that nothing was so servile as luxury and nothing so royal as toil.

The hardy tribes of Īrān which Cyrus led to victory were trained to manly exercise; they taught their children to endure hardship, to ride, to shoot and to tell the truth. They were strangers to dissipation, and so loyal to age that parricide was inconceivable to them. The royal edict was so inflexible that “the laws of the Medes and Persians” passed into a proverb. Their loyalty to their kings degenerated into servility, even legal injustice being considered a benefit to the victim, for which he should be duly grateful. No edict was too severe to be promptly obeyed, the very cruelty of their kings being considered a mark of greatness; they buried men alive in honor of the elements, they flayed their officials for bribery, while mutilation and stoning were legal punishments.

This hardy race of soldiers, that could rush into battle, almost without rations, was a terror to the pampered Lydian and the luxurious Babylonian, for the ideal life of the Persian was continual conquest, even his symbol of Ormazd being a winged warrior with bow and threatening hand. But when the contest was over, the conquerors irrigated the plains of Babylonia so faithfully that they were able to gather three harvests a year from the fertile soil. The roads of the kingdom were supplied with post-stations, and constantly traversed by government couriers, while a great commercial intercourse was carried even to the shores of Greece. It was not an enervated people that laid the wonderful masonry in the foundations of Persepolis, and reared the marble columns that still mock the changes of more than two thousand years. But luxury crept in with continued power, and after a time, it was said that the royal table was daily spread for fifteen thousand guests, even though the king dined alone. Their nobles were clothed in purple and decorated with jewels, while the person of the king was resplendent with diamonds and rubies. In the royal treasury pearls were piled up like the sands of the sea, and diamonds glittered amidst masses of amethyst and sapphire. The royal helmet and buckler flashed with the green light of emeralds and the crimson fire of the ruby.

But still they retained traces of the primitive simplicity which belonged to the early mountain tribes, and the constructive energy of their kings went on, building and planning, and forcing into their courts the splendors of rifled cities. Darius flung the floating bridge across the Bosphorus, that afterward furnished a highway for Alexander; their summer palaces rose upon the mountains of Media, while their winter homes, with marble pillars and graceful colonnades, were placed in sunny vales where fountains gleamed through the glossy leaves and the nightingale built her nest among thickets of roses. It is said of Artaxerxes that even while he wore upon his person jewels to the value of thousands of talents, he would still lead his army on foot through mountain passes, carrying his own quiver and shield, and forcing his way up the most rugged heights.

The Persians were quick to learn, and gladly appropriated to themselves the civilization of Nineveh and Babylon; but luxury and dissipation will unnerve the strongest empire, and after a time the designing beauties of the harem became the rulers of weak and wicked princes, and though Persian magnificence lasted from Darius to the last Persian king, their final failure was due to their own corruption as much as to the forces of Alexander the Great. The Īrānian mind seemed to be the harbinger of progress, in the simplicity of its beginnings, in its striving for the noble, the manly, and the true, but the selfishness of the later Persian kings developed not only into luxury, but also into dissipation: reclining on couches with golden feet, drinking the wines[^[13]] of Helbon and Shīrāz, they yielded to no rule except their own pleasure—there was no precept of morality that they could not violate at will, no law in their legal code that involved the recognition of the rights of other nations; and this intense self-worship prepared the way for the coming conqueror. The government of Persia became what the government of Turkey now is—a highly centralized bureaucracy, the members of which owed their offices to an irresponsible despot; the people of Persia therefore hailed Alexander as their deliverer from disintegration and decay.

PHYSICAL FEATURES OF PERSIA.

“The Land of the Lion and the Sun,” presents the strongest physical contrasts; with the king of the forest and the king of day emblazoned upon her banners, she extended her dominion over rocky steppes and barren sands, as well as fertile fields and stately forests. Persia proper was a comparatively small province, but the tide of conquest gathered many nations beneath her banners, and the dominion of Cyrus extended from the Mediterranean to the Indus, and from the snowy peaks of the Caucasus, downward to the shores of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. The court of Darius was enriched by tributes from Egypt and Babylonia, from Assyria and India, from Media, Lydia, Phœnicia and many other lands.

Modern Persia occupies the larger portion of the great Īrānian plateau, which rises to the height of from four to eight thousand feet, between the valleys of the Indus and the Tigris, and covers more than a million square miles. On the northwest the Persian Empire is united to the mountains of Asia Minor by the high lands of Armenia, while on the northeast the Paropansius and the Hindū Kush connect it with the Himālayas of ancient India. The eastern and western boundaries are traced with more or less uncertainty, amidst high ranges of mountains broken here and there by deserts and valleys. The fertile lowlands are found in the forest-clad regions south of the Caspian Sea, and down toward the shore of the Persian Gulf.

Although she has of late exercised but little influence in the world’s political councils, she retains a fair position among the Asiatics, and the fact that a portion of her territory is under Russian influence, while the rest is controlled to a greater or less extent by England, would indicate that in the near future her political position may become one of great importance. She still occupies a territory which is more than twice the area of France, and her climate varies according to the contrasting features of her formation, being rough and cold in the mountain ranges, and often severe on the great table-lands where the sandstorms rage across the desert, while other portions of the empire are luxuriant with tropical foliage.

Down by the shores of the gulf the rice fields lift their dainty plumes, farther away the acres of barley lie like golden billows in the sunlight, and the cots of the peasantry are nestled under groups of flowering trees. Beyond them rises the forest of almost primeval grandeur where the great trunks of the trees are clothed with velvet mosses and encircled with floral vines. Here the green shades of the wood are relieved by the vivid scarlet of the pomegranate blossoms, and streams that leap from snowy hills come dashing through the woodlands, laden with life and rippling with music. Far away in the distance, the barren table-lands arise, and beyond these the mountain ridges press upward, dim and silent against the fields of blue, and the white clouds drop their feathery snows upon peaks which are unsoiled by the foot of man.

PERSIAN ART.

The primitive cradle of art has been found on the banks of the Tigris, and in the valley of the Euphrates. It has been shown that Greece was largely indebted to the sculptured slabs and columns of Nineveh for her first models, and perhaps also to the pictured walls of Babylon for the inspiration that glowed upon her canvas. But Asiatic art, like Oriental literature, is tropical in its luxuriance and gorgeous in its decorations[decorations]. The classic taste of Greece subdued its more extravagant features, and presented the simplicity of chaste designs. The Persians, with their spirit of monopoly, appropriated the sculptured forms of fallen Nineveh, and absorbed also the love of painting, and the passion for gorgeous draperies, which were characteristic of Babylon.

But the Īrānian race had not the patience of fine detail and elaboration which is found in the old Assyrian sculptures, the military dash of the early warring tribes showed itself even in their statuary. The partial stiffness of their outlines was, however, atoned for in the spirited poise of their figures. They presented but few pictures of domestic life, but there were hunting scenes and battle fields, terrific struggles of their heroes with wild animals, and the triumphant march of their conquerors—there were gorgeous processions bearing tributes to the king, and historic pictures of his victories. Darius the Great was often represented in simple dress, but always in the attitude of heroism or tragedy, sometimes grasping a monster by the horn, while he drives the dagger into its vitals, and again, with the symbol of Ormazd hovering in a winged circle above him, he conquers the king of the forest.

In his Behistun inscriptions he is represented as the “king of kings,” standing with his right foot on the prostrate form of a conquered foe, while nine captive kings stand before him, with their hands in bonds and their heads uncrowned. The wondrous architecture of Persepolis, though laid with massive masonry, was made rich and graceful as that of a Greek temple, for the lofty marble pillars, more than sixty feet in height, were finished with capitals of sculptured animals reposing upon beds of lotus blossoms.

Their helmets and breastplates were often inlaid with silver and enameled with gold, and as the troops marched to the field of battle, the sun flashed upon shields where pictures of Zal and Rustem were inlaid with burnished gold[^[14]] and the designs upon the royal armor were resplendent with rubies and diamonds.

Persian art has been essentially industrial, and it is claimed that what is known as Russia leather was first manufactured in Persia, while legend says, that the artisans achieved their success by carrying their work to the peak of Mount Elvend, where the lightnings imparted a peculiar value to the texture.

The arts of Nineveh, of Babylon, and of Egypt culminated in the ages past, but the rare porcelains, tiles, and mosaics—the vases and carved metals of Persia, are still the pride of Asia. Their carpets, tapestries and brocades are unrivaled in the markets of the world, while the richly embroidered shawls and portiéres of Kermān still present their delicate combinations of palm leaves with the soft coloring of the floral borders.

MANUSCRIPTS.

One of the important features of art is exhibited in their beautiful manuscripts, where the finest calligraphy is often combined with floral designs upon a golden background. The letters of their language run easily and gracefully into each other, and the Egyptian reeds with which they write, are fashioned for the finest touches of the penman.

Calligraphy is called “a golden profession,” and a small but exquisite copy of the Korān has been valued at one hundred thousand dollars, while the artistic penman, who executed a copy of a popular poem, had his mouth stuffed with pearls, in addition to the promised reward.

Less fortunate, however, was Mīr Amar, a celebrated calligraphist of the fifteenth century. Being summoned to court to prepare an elaborate copy of the Shāh Nāmah, and his progress being too slow to satisfy the royal ambition, his beautiful manuscript was torn to pieces before his eyes, and Mīr Amar was then hastened to the executioner. Yet such was the extreme beauty of his work, that after the lapse of three hundred years, short screeds from his pen are set in gold and sold at fabulous prices.

Although the printing press is invading the domain of the Persian scribe, the art of calligraphy is still cultivated, and artistic penmen are held in great repute.

EARLY LITERATURE.

It is evident that the early kings of Persia possessed royal libraries, containing historical records and official decrees, for in the book of Ezra[^[15]] it is said that “search was made in the house of rolls,” in Babylon, for the imperial decree of Cyrus concerning the rebuilding of the temple. It was afterwards found at Ecbatana “in the palace that is in the province of the Medes,” the decree having been made in the first year of King Cyrus. But aside from some of the inscriptions, the earliest literature we now have belonging to this people is the Zend-Avesta, our present version of which was possibly derived from texts which already existed in the time of the Achæmenian kings. Although there are no facts to prove that the text of the Avesta as we now possess it was committed to writing previous to the Sassanian dynasty[^[16]] Prof. Darmesteter thinks it possible that “Herodotus may have heard the Magi sing, in the fifth century before Christ, the very same Gāthas which are sung now a days by the Mobeds of Bombay.”[^[17]]

As some of these early texts must have existed before the fifth century B.C. we place them chronologically before the inscriptions of Darius the Great.[^[18]]

Historians claim that ancient Persian manuscripts were destroyed, when Alexander, in a condition of drunkenness, ordered the beautiful city of Persepolis to be set on fire, in order to please the courtesan Thais.

The modern worshippers of Alexander, however, have placed around his name all the possible glory of military achievement with a vast amount of rhetoric, concerning “the young hero” and “the thunder of his tread.” They claim, indeed, that he had very few faults, except cruelty, drunkenness, and some worse forms of dissipation. Their defense of this barbarous act is that “only the palace and its environs were burned” at this particular time, and that this was an act of requital for the pillage of Athens, and also to impress the Persians with a due sense of his own importance. Whatever may have been the motive, or physical condition, of the incendiary, it is highly probable that when the palace, and its environs were burned, the royal libraries went down in the flames, and certain it is, that from the time of the Macedonian conquest to the foundation of the Sassanian dynasty, the history of the Persian language and literature is almost a blank page. The legends of the Sassanian coins, the inscriptions of their emperors, and the translation of the Avesta, by Sassanian scholars, represent another phase of the language and literature of Īrān.

The men who, at the rising of the new national dynasty, became the reformers, teachers, and prophets of Persia, formed their language and the whole train of their ideas upon a Semitic model. The grammar of the Sassanian dialect, however, was Persian, and “this was a period of religious and metaphysical delirium, when everything became everything, when Māyā and Sophia, Mitra and Christ, Virāf and Isaiah, Belus and Kronos were mixed up in one jumbled system of inane speculation, from which at last the East was delivered by the doctrines of Mohammed, and the West by the pure Christianity of the Teutonic nations.”[^[19]]

It was five hundred years after Alexander before Persian literature and religion were revived, and the books of the Zend-Avesta collected, either from scattered manuscripts or from oral tradition. The first collection of traditions, which finally resulted in the Shāh-Nāmah, was made also during the Sassanian dynasty. Firdusī tells us that there was a Pahlevan, of the family of the Dihkans,[^[20]] who loved to study the traditions of antiquity. He therefore summoned from the provinces, all the old men who could remember portions of the ancient legends, and questioned them concerning the stories of the country. The Dihkan then wrote down the traditions of the kings and the changes in the empire as they had been recited to him. But this work, which was commenced under Nushirvan and finished under Yezdejird, the last of the Sassanians, was destroyed by the command of Omar, the Arabian chieftain.

The scanty literature of the Sassanian age was somewhat augmented by a notable collection of Sanskṛit fables which was brought to the court of the Persian king, Koshrou,[^[21]] and translated into the Persian, or Pahlavī tongue. This collection comprised the fables of the Panćatantra and the Hitopadeśa, and from it the later European fables of La Fontaine probably originated.

THE MOHAMMEDAN CONQUEST.

The warring tribes of the desert massed themselves together under the banner of the crescent. They were animated by Mohammed’s doctrine of anarchy—the claim of a common right to their neighbors’ goods, and trained to dash into the very jaws of death by his promise of a sensual heaven to every man who fell upon the battle-field.

Therefore these fearless sons of the desert, stimulated by hunger and avarice, swept with irresistible force over the fair provinces around them. They raided the great cities of Central Asia, and gathered to themselves the treasures, which had been hoarded by the Aryan and the Turk. When in the seventh century they saw Persia weakened by internal dissensions and foreign wars, they gladly gathered under the standard of Omar to descend upon the wealth of her cities.

It was an old quarrel that they longed to settle with the Sassanian kings, reaching back through the history of their tribes to the time when they had raided northern Persia, and had been driven back by Ardeshir—they remembered, too, that Shapur had afterward ravaged Arabia to the very gates of Medīna, and seized their territory down to the shores of Yemen, on the southern sea. All the force of traditional hatred and revenge was therefore added to their avarice, and lust for power, when these fearless warriors sprang to the saddle and rode to the conquest of Persia. Their terrible war-cry of Allah-il-Allah, rang through rifled cities, and seemed to rise from the very dust which was spurned from the feet of Arabian horses, until Persian nationality was crushed by the invaders. Her treasures of literature were again destroyed, so far as the conquerors could complete their work of devastation, and the altar fires of the Pārsīs were quenched in the long night of Mohammedan rule, while the Korān supplanted the Avesta even upon its native soil.

LITERATURE OF MODERN PERSIA.

Modern Persian literature may be said to begin with the reconstruction of the National Epic.[^[22]] This work marks an important era, in even the language of Persia, for it seems to close the biography of that peculiar tongue. There has been but little, of either growth or decay, in its structure since that period, although it becomes more and more encumbered with foreign words.

The Persian Epic could be reconstructed only when the national feeling began to reassert itself, and it was at this period that the patriotism of the people began to recover from the benumbing pressure of Mohammedan rule, and especially in the eastern portions of the empire, a distinctively Persian spirit was revived. It is true that Mohammedanism had taken root even in the national party, but the Arabic tongue was no longer favored by the governors of the eastern provinces. Persian again became the court language of these dignitaries, the native poets were encouraged and began to collect once more the traditions of the empire.

It is claimed that Jacob, the son of Leis,[^[23]] the first prince of Persian blood, who declared himself independent of the Caliphs, procured fragments of the early National Epic, and had it rearranged and continued. Then followed the dynasty of the Samanians who claimed descent from the Sassanian kings, and they pursued the same popular policy. The later dynasty of the Gaznevides also encouraged the growth of the national spirit, and the great Persian Epic was written during the reign of Mahmūd the Great, who was the second king of the Gaznevide dynasty. By his command, collections of old books were made all over the empire, and men who knew the ancient poems were summoned to his court. It was from these materials that Firdusī composed his Shāh-Nāmah. “Traditions,” says the poet, “have been given me; nothing of what is worth knowing has been forgotten; all that I shall say others have said before me.”

Hence the heroes in the Shāh-Nāmah exhibit many of the traits of the Vedic deities—traits which have lived through the Zoroastrian period, the Achæmenian dynasty, the Macedonian rule, the Parthian wars, and even the Arabian conquest, to be reproduced in the poem of Firdusī.

The modern phase of their literature is emphatically an age of poetry; the Persians of these later centuries seem to have been born with a song on their lips, for their poets are numbered by thousands. Not only their books of polite literature, but their histories, ethics and science, nay, even their mathematics and grammar are written in rhyme. There are many volumes of these productions that cannot be dignified by the name of poetry, but their literature is tropical in its development and their annals bear the names of many illustrious poets. Firdusī, author of the great Epic, must always stand at the head of Persian poetry; but Sā’dī with his Būstān and Gūlistān, will ever be a favorite with his own people.

Nizāmī of the twelfth century has given us, perhaps, the best version of the beautiful Arabian tragedy of Lilī and Majnūn, and Hāfiz says of the author:

“Not all the treasured lore of ancient days

Can boast the sweetness of Nizāmī’s lays.”

The clear and harmonious style of Hāfiz, who belonged to the fourteenth century, has a fascination of its own, and it is claimed that the prophet Khizer carried to the waiting lips of the poet the water from the fountain of life, and therefore his words are immortal among the sons of men.

Jāmi is entitled to a goodly rank in the world of poetry, even though his Yūsuf and Zulaikhā, which has also been versified by many other Persian poets, seems to have been written for the express purpose of showing how an unprincipled woman may pursue a good man for a series of years, marry him at last, almost against his will, and make him wish himself in heaven the next day. The Persians may well be called the Italians of Asia, for, although they are burdened with sentiment and a certain exuberance of style, which meets with little favor in our colder clime, we accord them our sympathy in the beauty of their dreams and the tenderness of their thought.

PERSIAN ROMANCE.

The Arabic and even the Turkish tongue has intruded upon the classic Persian of Firdusī, but as the English has borrowed from all nations, and yet retains its own individuality, so also the Persian tongue, while absorbing and adapting the wealth of others, still retains its personal character, modified only by the changes of time.

In borrowing from the language of her neighbors, Persia has not hesitated to adopt also portions of their literature. During the reign of the Moslem kings the choicest mental productions from India, and even from Greece, found the way to their courts. Alp Arslan, around whose throne stood twelve hundred princes, was a lover of letters, and from the banks of the Euphrates to the feet of the Himālayas a wealth of literature was called, to be wrought up by Persian scholars and poets under royal patronage. There was an active rivalry in literary culture, and much of the fire of Arabian poetry brightened the pages of Persian romance. There were the mystic lights and shadows of nomadic life, and desert voices mingled with the strains of native singers.

The terrible contrasts of life and death—the unyielding resentments and jealousies—passionate loves and hates, which are so distinctively Arabian, began to fill the pages of Īrānian romance with tragedy.

Even the vivid description of the Moslems could scarcely add to the gorgeousness of Persian fancy, where Oriental lovers wandered in the greenest of valleys, while around them floated the soft perfume of the orange blossoms. It could not add to the fabulous wealth of their nobles, where camels were burdened with the choicest of gems, and vines of gold were laden with grapes of amethyst. But it did add the element of fierce revenge and the tragedy of violent death, represented by the pitiless simoon and the shifting sand column, the hopeless wastes, the bitter waters, and the dry bones of perished caravans. It added the life-springs of the oasis, as well as the rushing whirlwind; it added the palm tree of the desert, with her feet in the burning sand and her head in the morning light—a symbol of the watch-fires of faith above the desert places of life. The best literature of Persia in our own age is largely the reproduction in various forms of her standard poets; her romances, however, still rival the Arabian Nights in their startling combinations and bewildering descriptions. The imagination of her writers is not bound by the rules of our northern clime, and there is nothing too wild or improbable to find a place in Oriental story. There are rayless caverns of sorcery in a wilderness of mystery; there are mountains of emerald[^[24]] and hills of ruby[^[25]]; there are enchanted valleys, rich with fabulous treasure, and rivers gushing from fairy fountains. There is always the grand uprising of the king of day and the endless cycle of the stars—for this poetic people cannot forget the teaching of the Pārsī and the Sabean. In the literature found on the banks of these southern seas there is also the restfulness of night, with its coolness and dews, to be followed by the glory of the morning and the fragrance from the hearts of the roses.

Persian literature rings with voices from ruined cities, and mingles the story of the past with the dreams of her future. Her treasures are drawn from the records of Chaldean kings; her historic pictures have caught the light of early crowns and repeated the story of their magnificence. Her annals are filled with the victories of her Cyrus, with the extended dominions of her great Darius, and the gorgeousness of her later sovereigns. Her poets have immortalized her myths as well as her heroes, and the Oriental world has contributed to the pages of her romance.

CHAPTER II.
THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS.

EARLY LITERATURE—HISTORIC TABLETS—THE INSCRIPTIONS OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR—THE FALL OF BABYLON—CYRUS, THE ACHÆMENIAN—BEHISTUN INSCRIPTIONS—DARIUS AT PERSEPOLIS—INSCRIPTIONS OF XERXES—ARTAXERXES—A LATER PERSIAN TABLET—RÉSUMÉ.

The early literature of Persia takes root in ancient soil, and the foundation of her world of letters must be sought for amidst the graven stones of forgotten tribes. The Persian heritage was not only the land of ancient Babylonia, but also the Chaldean and Semitic lore, which lay in the vaults of her kings, or lived upon the marble walls of her ruined palaces.

The story of a great civilization, and the poetry, as well as the prose of human history, were recorded upon the rocks or buried beneath the soil of Mesopotamia. It was even written in gold and alabaster, and placed in the corner-stones of temples that have lain beneath the tread of armies for three thousand years. When the stone is rolled away from the sepulchre of a buried literature, and the records of forgotten ages come with resurrection power into the living present, the heart of man must listen to the voice of these historic witnesses.

One of the greatest triumphs of modern science is the solution of the cuneiform inscriptions of antiquity. To the herculean labors of Grotofend, Bournouf, Lassen, Rawlinson, Layard, Oppert, Rassam, Sayce, Talbot, and others, the world owes a debt it can never pay. Their solution of these obscure alphabets, and the language, grammar and meaning of these old inscriptions rank with the grandest discoveries of modern science. They have not hesitated to devote their lives to the drudgery of cuneiform study, a score of years if necessary, being given to the solution of a single inscription. Without their long, unceasing labor many of the most valuable records of the past must have remained a sealed book. In vain would the spade of the explorer have exhumed the imperial libraries of Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar if no light could be thrown upon their strange inscriptions. In vain would the historic tablets of Karnak, or the cylinders of Babylon be brought before the bar of modern criticism, if no key could be found to their problems. It has been necessary to bring to this formidable task an understanding of the Chaldaic, and also of the old Accadian tongue. But even this did not suffice, and it would have been impossible to do more than to decipher a few proper names on the walls of Persian palaces without the aid of other ancient languages. As Lassen remarks: “It seems indeed providential that these inscriptions should be rescued from the dust of centuries at the very time when the discovery of Zend and Sanskṛit had enabled Europeans to successfully grapple with their difficulties, for at any other period in the world’s history they could only have been a strange combination of wedges[^[26]] or arrow heads, even in the eyes of Oriental scholars.” It is difficult to appreciate the long and tedious processes by which these men were compelled to shape their own intellectual tools, and test their own laborious methods; but even to those who have not time to follow their intricate path of research, the result of their labors is indeed marvelous. The accuracy of their work has been sufficiently verified. At the suggestion of the Royal Asiatic Society, four translations of several hundred lines of the inscription of Tiglath-Pileser I. were made independently by Sir Henry Rawlinson, Mr. Fox Talbot, Dr. Hincks and Dr. Oppert, and submitted under seal to the secretary of that society. When opened and compared, it was found that they exhibited a remarkable resemblance to each other, even in the transliteration of proper names, and the rendering of individual passages. This triumphant result abundantly proved the fact that their method was a sound one, and that they were working on a solid basis.

Absolute certainty, of course, is unattainable at present, but the decipherment of these inscriptions has reached a degree of accuracy sufficient for all practical purposes. Scholars, perhaps, will always dispute about the exact meaning of certain words or phrases, as they do in reference to the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, but in either case it is seldom that any important point turns upon the particular shade of meaning. Still, it is evident that the Orientalists who have undertaken to restore the early chronology of Assyria and Babylonia have a difficult task in hand.

One of the points most surely settled by the deciphering of these inscriptions is, that so far as certain peoples are concerned the world of letters extends much farther back than has generally been supposed.

HISTORIC TABLETS.

There are philological tablets which are apparently designed, in some cases, to give the manner in which the names of Semitic kings were pronounced or written by their Accadian subjects.

An instance of this is found in the name of Sargon of Accad, the ancient hero of the Semitic population of Chaldea, who founded the first Semitic empire in the country and established a great library in his capital city, Accad, near Sippara. The seal of his librarian, which is of beautiful workmanship, is now in Paris, and has been published by M. de Clercq,[^[27]] while a copy of his annals, together with those of his son Naram-Sin, may be found in Western Asia Inscriptions.[^[28]]

Among these early records we also find tablets[^[29]] which have been exhumed, placed in the British Museum and translated, bearing the old Assyrian record of the flood, which is marvelously like the account found in Genesis, even to the “building of the ship,” which contained “the seed of all life,” and the raven and the dove which were sent forth from its windows after the waters began to recede. Another tablet[^[30]] describes the building of some great tower or “stronghold,” apparently by command of the king, but the gods are represented as being angry, for it is stated that “Babylon corruptly to sin went, and small and great mingled on the mound.... To their stronghold in the night he made an end. In anger also the secret counsel he poured out—to scatter (them abroad) his face he set. He gave a command to make strange their speech.... Violently they wept—very much they wept.”

There is a fragment of a tablet,[^[31]] on which was written an Accadian poem; on being translated it was found to contain a description of certain cities, of which the names were not given. It was recorded, however, that they were destroyed by a rain of fire, and the legend gives an account of a person who escaped the general destruction.

The inscriptions of ancient kings reveal to a certain extent the times and the facts connected with their reigns, but in discussing the tablets and monuments, the pillars and palace walls of these royal historians, it must be borne in mind that these heathen kings were far from infallible, and whatever resulted in their own aggrandizement was most eagerly recorded, while their military defeats and political humiliations were either passed over in silence or qualified to such an extent as to virtually lose their force. This is especially true of Sennacherib, who has the reputation among Assyriologists of being “the least trustworthy of the royal historians of Assyria.” Nevertheless, these records are of inestimable value as giving an account of their own wars and achievements by interested participants.

A hexagonal prism of clay, which was found at Nineveh and carried to the British Museum[^[32]] contains an account of the first eight years of the reign of Sennacherib and of his siege of Jerusalem under the reign of King Hezekiah, when, according to the tablets, the king of Jerusalem “had given command to strengthen the bulwarks of the great gate of the city,” when it was found to be so strong that the Assyrian king refrained from assaulting it.[^[33]]

The strange libraries of Assyria and Babylon abounded also in astronomical and astrological reports, the records of lawsuits, contract tablets and other inscriptions, also a number of official dispatches sent by the king of Jerusalem and other potentates to foreign courts.

There are also Assyrian deeds of real estate,[^[34]] bills of sale of Israelites for slaves, also a bill of sale of a woman to an Egyptian lady (Nitocris), who made the purchase in order to obtain a wife for her son, as well as the contract tablets of Belshazzar, and the “annals” of other kings.

Hundreds of these historic tablets have been brought to light, for the soil ruled over by Persian kings was indeed rich in this imperishable literature. Manuscripts may fade beneath the touch of time, or be burned by barbarian invaders, but these clay tablets have safely kept their records beneath the dust of centuries, and the germs of their thought lived, and were developed among other races, after they had lain for ages in the valley of the Euphrates.

THE INSCRIPTIONS OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR.

These annals begin by declaring him to be “the King of Babylon, the exalted prince, the worshipper of the god Marduk, the prince supreme, the beloved of the god Nebo.” This mighty king was the patron of all forms of idolatry, and one of the principal objects of his reign appears to have been the restoration of the idol temples, and the reconstruction of their images. The first or “lofty-headed,” was the shrine of the god Bel. The celebrated golden image which Nebuchadnezzar set up represented this god.[^[35]] There is but little genuine history[^[36]] in his inscriptions, as he seemed to consider the account of the rebuilding of the city, and the restoration of the idol temples, of more importance than the record of his military triumphs. The work of rebuilding Babylon was surely a necessity, for the Babylonians having rebelled, Sennacherib had almost wholly destroyed it.[^[37]] The vengeance of the Assyrian king must have been terrible, for in the Bavian inscription, he declares that he swept the city from end to end—that he destroyed the houses, threw down the wall and fortifications, and the ruins were, by his order, thrown into the river. It is true that he and Assur-bani-pal reconstructed many buildings, but Babylon[^[38]] never regained her title of “the Glory of the East” until the time of Nebuchadnezzar, who was engaged throughout his long reign[^[39]] in rebuilding the temples and cities of his kingdom.

There are in the British Museum some thirty or forty inscriptions of this king, which record the structure of great buildings. There are also a few fragments pertaining to his historical career, but the account thus given is so incomplete, that while it agrees with the Biblical record of his campaigns, it is far less definite in detail. Nebuchadnezzar III, son of Nabupolasser, came to the throne in the latter part of the seventh century B. C, having taken command of the Babylonian army during the war between his father and Necho, the king of Egypt. He routed the Egyptian troops at Carchemish, “and took all that pertained to the king of Egypt, from the river of Egypt unto the river Euphrates.”[Euphrates.”][^[40]]

No royal penman ever took greater delight in recording his achievements than did Nebuchadnezzar in describing the glories of his capital city: “Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of the kingdom, by the might of my power, and for the honor of my majesty?”[^[41]] Upon the cylinders found at Senkereh in the ruins of the temple of the sun, upon tablets taken from the ruins of Birs Nimrud,[^[42]] which still rise one hundred and fifty-three feet above the level of the plain, and elsewhere, we find the boastful records of this haughty monarch, and in one instance a single inscription consists of six hundred and nineteen lines. Thus writes the great king:

“The fanes of Babylon I built, I adorned. Four thousand cubits complete, the walls of Babylon, whose banner is invincible, as a high fortress by the ford of the rising sun, I carried around Babylon its fosse which I dug. With cement and brick I reared up a tall tower at its side like a mountain. I built the great gates, whose walls I constructed with pine woods and covering of copper. I overlaid them to keep off enemies from the front of the wall of unconquered Babylon. Those large gates for the admiration of multitudes of men, with wreathed work I filled—the invincible castle of Babylon, which no king had previously effected, the city of Babylon I fitted to be a treasure city,”[^[43]] etc.

These few lines indicate the style and general character of the chronicles found upon many cylinders and slabs. During his reign Jerusalem was besieged, and captured[^[44]] after a siege of a year and a half. King Zedekiah fled by night “by the way of the gate between the two walls which is in the king’s garden,” but was overtaken in the plains of Jericho, and brought before the king of Babylon at Riblah, where his sons were slain before him and his eyes were destroyed. A few years later Nebuchadnezzar besieged Tyre, with doubtful success. He had left Gedaliah in charge of Judah, but the new ruler was slain by Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah. Again the king of Babylon came to take vengeance, and carried the Jews away to Babylon. He afterward turned his attention to the capture of Egypt, whose king had incited Palestine to rebellion. Nebuchadnezzar defeated and deposed him, swept over Egypt and installed a king who was tributary to Babylon.[^[45]] After this he devoted himself to the rebuilding of his city, using thousands of captives as laborers and drawing upon all his provinces for his supplies.

All the writers of this period give their testimony to the glory of his city, his palaces, temples, hanging gardens, and the golden images of his gods. He builded the shrines of multitudes of gods at Babylon, and Jeremiah alludes to this fact when he says: “For it is a land of graven images, and they confide in their idols.”[^[46]] The prophets of Israel never stayed in their denunciation of this idolatrous king, even though they and their people were within the grasp of his mailed hand.

The land of Palestine has been called “the Piedmont of Western Asia;” being situated midway between the two great empires of Egypt and Assyria, it became the battle-field of the Orient, and it was here that the fiercest conflict was waged. But during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar the Chaldean supremacy in Asia remained unshaken, for the active policy of that iron-handed ruler, with his mighty army kept all Western Asia under his control.

THE FALL OF BABYLON.

There are several tablets pertaining to the fall of Babylon which throw additional light upon that event. It appears from these chronicles that Belshazzar reigned in connection with his father Nabonidus, Belshazzar being the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar on the maternal side. Under the date of the ninth year of Nabonidus,[^[47]] the record says: “Nabonidus, the king, was in the city of Teva, the son of the king (Belshazzar), the chieftains, and the soldiers were in the land of Accad (North Babylonia).... The king until the month Nisan (first month) to Babylon went not, Nebo to Babylon came not, Bel went not forth.... In the month Nisan, Cyrus, king of Persia, his army gathered, and below Arbela the river Tigris he crossed.” The chronicle is here mutilated, and it can be seen only that Cyrus, marching across the northern part of the Euphratean valley, levied tribute upon some distant king. This may have been one of the campaigns in the war against Crœsus, king of Lydia, and the rising power of the now united Medes and Persians was anxiously watched by the rulers of Babylonia. Nabonidus appears from the record to have been a weak ruler, leaving the government and command of the army largely in the hands of his son. Says Boscawen, the eminent Assyriologist: “From the seventh year[^[48]] of his father’s reign until the fall of the empire, Belshazzar appears to have been the leading spirit and ruler of the kingdom, and this may account, in some measure, for his prominence in the book of Daniel.”[^[49]] In the cylinder inscription of Nabonidus, found in the temple of the Moon-god at Ur, the king thus prays for his son:

1. “As for me, Nabonidus, king of Babylon,

2. In the fullness of thy

3. Great divinity, (grant me)

4. Length of life

5. To remote days.

6. And for Belshazzar,

7. My first-born son,

8. The offspring of my heart,

9. Reverence for thy great divinity

10. Establish thou in his heart.”[^[50]]

Another tablet, by a contemporary scribe, gives a brief account of the fall of Babylon, which throws a most important light upon this great event, enabling historians to fix the year, month and day of the capture of the city, and as proving its agreement with the statements of classical writers, and the author of the book of Daniel. The ancient writers all agree, that the fall of Babylon took place by a surprise, the attack being made on the night of a great festival. Herodotus thus describes it: “The outer part of the city had already been taken, while those in the centre, who, as the Babylonians say, knew nothing of the matter, owing to the extent of the city, were dancing and making merry, for it so happened that a festival was being celebrated.”

Xenophon claims that the attack was made “when Cyrus perceived that the Babylonians celebrated a festival at a fixed time, at which they feasted for the whole night.” The Hebrew prophets,[^[51]] also, were not unaware of this surprise upon the “Lady of Kingdoms,” and among the inscriptions taken from Babylon is a large tablet, containing, when complete, the calendar of the year, with notes appended to each day, specifying whether it was lucky or unlucky, whether it was a fast or a feast day. The calendar of the month Duza, or Tammuz, the month in which Babylon was taken, is fortunately complete, and contains a record of the festivals which were celebrated therein. The month opens with a festival of the Sun-god, or Tammuz, as the summer sun, restored in all his beauty (after his death in winter) to his bride, who is Ishtar, the moon. This festival is the same as that of Atys, the Phyrgian Adonis, which is celebrated at the same time. The festivals of Tammuz and Ishtar, his wife, extended over all the first half of the month, the second being the day of lamentation, and the sixth, the procession. On the fifteenth day of the month they celebrated the great marriage feast of Tammuz and his bride, and it consisted of wild orgies, such as can only be found in the lascivious East. It was this festival which Belshazzar was celebrating on the night in which Babylon was taken, and it was probably the only one in which not only the king, but also his “wives and concubines,” would be present. There may have been an air of desperation imparted to the conduct of Belshazzar by the knowledge that, by the flight of his father and defeat of his army, the kingdom was virtually lost, and that this was probably his last festival as a Babylonian ruler. The gold and silver vessels which were brought forth at this reckless feast had been captured at the sacking of the temple at Jerusalem, and stored in the temple of Bel Merodach, and were brought from there in obedience to the command of Belshazzar, who was the last of the line of Nimrod. It is evident from the tablets and other authorities that the army of Cyrus, commanded by Gobyras,[^[52]] entered the city “without fighting” on the night of the fifteenth of the month Tammuz, and the outposts were captured while the revelers were unconscious of the near approach of the foe. But within the walls and at the scene of festivity, surrounding the king, there was not only the tramp of armed men, but also the clash of swords and spears, a short but decisive combat, and Babylon, “the glory of kingdoms,” became the victor’s prize.[^[53]]

The walls of the Chaldean palace were rich with gorgeous draperies on that fatal night. The golden cups were filled with costly wines, and long festoons of flowers were hung from wall and ceiling; there were beautiful faces, and the flashing of jewels, with music and mirth in the royal hall, but that festal scene was the back-ground of the death of an empire. “Babylon the Great” had fallen in the midst of her splendor—had fallen with her temples and palaces, into the hand of the Persian king.

CYRUS—THE ACHÆMENIAN.

The numerous inscriptions of Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, and the three Artaxerxes found at Persepolis, at Mount Elvend, at Susa, and Suez, are the most important of the historical inscriptions of Persian kings, except that at Behistun. The Persian texts have been repeatedly and carefully edited. Following the preparatory labors of Grotofend, Rask, Beer and Jacquet, the documents have been carefully examined and explained by MM. Burnouf, Lassen, Sir H. Rawlinson, Benfey, Spiegel and Dr. Oppert.

The Median versions appeared afterward, coming from the competent hands of MM. Westergaard, De Saulcy, Holtzmann, Norris and Mardtmann, while the Assyrian translations have been examined by scholars whose work is equally careful, therefore, no doubt can be entertained concerning its general accuracy.

The supposed tomb of Cyrus merely bears in three languages—Persian, Median and Assyrian—the simple statement that “I am Cyrus, the King, the Achæmenian.” There is, however, an Assyrian inscription on a Babylonian brick which was brought over to England by Loftus and translated by Sir Henry Rawlinson, which declares that “Cyrus, King of Babylon, Priest of the Pyramid and of the Tower (was) son of Cambyses, the Mighty Prince.” This apparently simple legend is of great historical importance, as it proves that Herodotus[^[54]] was right in calling Cyrus’s father Cambyses, a name which was afterward borne also by the successor of Cyrus. The inscription also states, in harmony with Herodotus, that the former Cambyses was not a king, but merely a private individual.

BEHISTUN INSCRIPTIONS.

Not only is the soil of Persia rich in historic lore, but even the cliffs of her mountains were “graven with an iron pen” where her records were “laid in the rock forever.” At Behistun, far above the plain, is found an imperishable record of the reign of Darius Hystaspes.[^[55]]

Major Rawlinson at last succeeded in scaling the heights and making casts of the mystic characters to be taken away and translated. The great inscription is written in three languages, and extends to nearly a thousand lines of cuneiform writing. It is at least four hundred feet above the plain, and this intrepid soldier, during the space of several years, made the perilous ascent a multitude of times, always bringing away, at the peril of his life, some portion of this great historic record. After thirteen years of persistent effort he succeeded in copying the whole inscription, and placing it in such a form that other scholars could assist him in the translation of it. The casts of the Scythic[Scythic] version were given into the care of Mr. E. Norris, the well-known Oriental scholar, who published from them an independent translation in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. The Persian text was translated by Major Rawlinson, and Dr. Julius Oppert states that he devoted twenty years of his own life to the Median version.

In the subject-matter of this long inscription, King Darius follows the custom of other potentates, and records only his triumphs, though he boastingly tells of the barbarities he practiced upon would-be usurpers. The record opens with a long line of genealogies, giving the names of the kings who reigned before him. “And Darius the king says, on that account we called ourselves Achæmenian of race; from ancient times we have been mighty, from ancient times we have been kings.”[^[56]]

The royal historian then recites the countries over which he reigned, including Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Arabia, and Egypt, besides minor provinces, twenty-three in all, and he says, “These are the provinces that called themselves mine; they brought tribute to me, what was ordered by me unto them, in the night time as well as in the day time, that they executed.”[^[57]]

The history is then given of various pretenders who led revolts against him. The whole account of these rebellions occupies many lines of cuneiform writing, but victory was always gained by the crown, and the usurpers were put to death in the most barbarous manner. Their noses and ears and tongues were cut off, their eyes were put out, and in this pitiable condition they were chained to the palace where “all the people saw” them, and afterward they were carried away and placed upon crosses. The penalty inflicted upon each one is given in detail, but there is a great uniformity in the accounts, although the punishment was sometimes varied by hanging the leader of the revolt, together with his principal followers. Often a decree of extermination was issued against all the people engaged in the rebellion. The great inscription is finished with a pictorial representation of the nine kings which Darius took in battle, one of whom claimed to be Bardes, the son of Cyrus. Another claimed to be the king of Susiana;[^[58]] another led the revolt of the Babylonians; the fourth caused the rebellion of the Medians; the fifth, like the second, proclaimed himself the king of Susiana, while the sixth led the Sagartians in an attack upon their king. “The seventh was a Persian who lied and said, ’I am Smerdis, son of Cyrus, and he caused the revolt of Persia.’”[^[59]] The eighth proclaimed himself king of Babylon, and the ninth claimed to exercise kingly power over the Margians. The first of these is represented by a prostrate figure, upon which the victorious king is trampling, the others are standing in the position of captives, and are branded as imposters by the inscriptions beneath them. The king also recorded the names of the warriors who assisted him in his campaigns, and requested those who might succeed him upon the Persian throne, to “remember to show favor to the descendants of these men.”

DARIUS AT PERSEPOLIS.

Afar in the mountains of Persia stand the ruins of the capital city of her ancient kings. Porch and temple, hall and palace, lie together amidst the desolation wrought by the ages. The long stairway still leads to the great plateau, while the gray marble pillars stand like sentinels above the ruins at their feet, and the moonlight gleams upon sepulchres of Persian monarchs. But even here, on panel and column, we find symbols graven by a forgotten hand—the desert voice of the past, still boasting of the grandeur of her fallen kings.

An inscription on the door of a ruined palace, written in Persian, Median, and Assyrian, recounts the greatness of “Darius the great king,—the king of kings,—the king of the lands,—the son of Hystaspes, the Achæmenian (who) has built the palace.” The “lands which are numerous” over which he holds sway are declared to be “Susiana, Media, Babylon, Arabia, Assyria, Egypt, Armenia, Cappadocia, Lycia, the Ionians, those of the continent and those of the sea, and the Eastern lands, Sagartia, Parthia, Sarangia, Aria, Bactria, Sogdiana, Chorasmia, Sattagydia, Arachotis, India, Gandaria, the Maxyans, Karka (Carthage), Sacians, and the Maka.”[Maka.”][^[60]]

Darius the king says “If thou say it may be so I shall not fear the other Ahriman.[^[61]] Protect the Persian people. If the Persian people are protected by thee, Ormazd, the Good Principle, which has always destroyed the demon, will descend as ruler on this house. The great Ormazd, who is the greatest among all the gods, is he who created the heaven, and created the earth, who created the men and the Good Principle, and who made Darius king, and gave to Darius the king, the royalty over this wide earth, which contains many lands; Persia and Media, and other lands and other tongues, on the mountains, and in the plains, of this side of the sea, and on the side beyond the sea; of this side of the desert, and on the side beyond the desert.” The inscriptions of Darius at Mount Elvend, at Susa, and at Suez, are merely repetitions of the greatness of Darius and of Ormazd.

INSCRIPTIONS OF XERXES.

These are engraved upon the staircase and columns at Persepolis, and like the texts of Darius, they are employed chiefly to represent the greatness of the king, and the greatness of Ormazd. Says Dr. Oppert, “The texts of Xerxes are very uniform, and not very important. The real resulting fact is the name of the king, Khsayarsa, which proves to be identical with Ahasuerus”[^[62]] of the Book of Esther. There are also legends on vases which were found in Egypt, at Susa and Halicarnassus. The vase found at Halicarnassus is now in the gold room of the British Museum, bearing the inscription of “Xerxes the great king.”

ARTAXERXES.

The texts of this monarch, which are written in Persian, Median and Assyrian, are found on the bases of columns at Susa, and also at Persepolis, as well as upon vases. They comprise the records of three kings—Artaxerxes I, II and III.

We are indebted to the excavations of Loftus at Susa for the records of Artaxerxes II; these are far more important than the inscriptions of his predecessor, which merely illustrate the egotism of their author. The text which is borne upon these columns brings down to us a new historical statement, to the effect that the palace at Susa was burned under the reign of Artaxerxes I, and restored by his grandson. During this period the Persian monarchs resided principally at Babylon, and Darius II died there.

The great importance of these texts arises from the fact that they give the genealogy of the Achæmenidæ, and confirm the statements transmitted to us on this subject by the Greeks, which are in direct opposition to the traditions of the modern Persians. The text of Artaxerxes III contains the genealogy of that king upward to the names of Hystaspes and Arsames, who were the father and grandfather of Darius Hystaspes of the Achæmenian line.

A LATER PERSIAN TABLET.

A much later tablet is merely a note of hand given by a Persian king (Pacorus II), with a promise to pay “in the month of Iyar (April) in the Temple of the sun in Babylon,” and it also bears the names of four witnesses. This little clay tablet was discovered by Dr. Oppert in the Museum of the Society of Antiquarians at Zurich, and has been carefully translated by him. It is interesting mostly from the fact of its comparatively modern origin, King Pacorus II having been contemporary with the Emperor Titus and Domitian. Some of the names mentioned upon it are Babylonish, and some of them Persian. All the witnesses, however, bear Persian names which may even be called modern. King Pacorus II commenced his reign A.D. 77, and hence this is the only tablet, so far as known, which belongs to the Christian era.

RÉSUMÉ.

These sculptured temples and graven stones have lain in the path of the ages with silent lips, but the questioning hand of the nineteenth century has broken the spell and wrested the story of the past even from the “heaps” of Nineveh and Babylon. From mountain cliff, from palace wall, from corner-stone and fallen pillar comes the same historic voice that speaks to us from the forgotten libraries of buried kings.

The literature of the tablets comes into our own age, leading a splendid retinue of historic figures—Sargon, the early king of Accad, with his imperishable library, with the monuments and tablets of Assyria, then Nineveh, “that great city,” with her temples and palaces, where the gilded tiles of many a a dome flashed back the glory of the setting sun—Babylon, “the joy of the whole earth,” and “the beauty of the Chaldee’s excellency,” who for centuries held her position as the queen of the world’s commerce, and through whose hands the wealth of the Euphrates flowed down to the Persian Gulf. Babylon, with her maze of life and color, with her silver vases and golden vessels, with her princely halls and gorgeous hangings, with the breath of the myrtle and the bay, borne upward from her terraced gardens and moonlight meads.

Then the scene changes, and the kingly Cyrus is riding at the head of his Medo-Persian cohorts, and the crown of the Orient is within his grasp. “Bel boweth down—Nebo stoopeth,” and the seat of government is removed, and “the daughter of the Chaldeans” sits in the dust beneath the foot of the invader.

Later still, Darius the Great is enthroned on Persian soil; haughtily he wears the imperial purple, and the crown of many kingdoms, while upon the face of Persia’s mountains, he writes himself “The king of kings.” But a reckless policy led the Persian host to a sure defeat upon the plains of Marathon, and prepared the way for the humiliation of Xerxes, and the later triumphs of Alexander. Then the sons of the desert poured like a mountain torrent over the plains of Īrān, and the star and crescent flashed everywhere from banners on Persian soil, while to-day the Arab pitches his tent amidst the ruins of ancient cities, and only the spade of the explorer reveals their buried treasures.

CHAPTER III.
THE POETRY AND MYTHOLOGY OF THE TABLETS.

PRIMITIVE MYTHOLOGY—ANŪ—SEVEN EVIL SPIRITS—ACCADIAN POEM—ASSUR—HEA—NIN-CI-GAL—SIN, THE MOON GOD—HEA-BANI—NERGAL—MERODACH—NEBO—NINIP—CHEMOSH—INCANTATIONS TO FIRE AND WATER—IM—BAAL—TAMMUZ-ISHTAR—ISHTAR OF ARBELA—ISHTAR OF ERECH—LEGEND OF ISHTAR AND IZDŪBAR-ISHTAR, QUEEN OF LOVE AND BEAUTY—THE DESCENT OF ISHTAR.

The East was the home of poetry and the land of mythology before the hundred gates of Palmyra were swung upon their massive hinges, or the crown of her beautiful queen had been set with its moonlight pearls. A land which was rich with jewels and radiant with flowers, held in her background a mythology so primitive that it appears to have been the mother of them all. Tablet and palace walls have alike been questioned concerning these early myths, and behind the dust of the centuries, in the legends that lie beneath them, we find stories of gods like Indra, the storm-king of the Hindūs, and Jove of Olympus—like Odin and Thor of the Northmen. Even the gigantic symbols that guarded the portals of ancient hall and palace are replete with wonder, for their strange wings have sheltered the very beginnings of mythology. Chaldea’s cosmogonies comprehend the ideas of the Greek and Norseman—nay, even the wildest dreams of Hindū and Persian are apparently drawn from this common source.[^[63]]

The intelligent study of Persian literature compels an examination of the early myths and legends where her poetry and romance found their sources—compels the study not only of the inscriptions of Persian kings, but of the tablets which have brought down to us the idols of a primitive people. Therefore, it is the province of this chapter to give a brief yet comprehensive outline of the principal deities and legends which seem to form the basis not only of Persian mythology, but of the luxuriant growth of myth and fable which has permeated India, Greece, and Rome, as well as Northern Europe.

A Chaldean legend of the creation is found upon a clay tablet which contains a description of the struggle between the evil powers of darkness and chaos, and the bright powers of light and order. This is doubtless the origin of the struggle between good and evil—the unceasing contest between Ormazd and Ahriman which forms the key-note of Persian thought so fully illustrated in the Avesta.

There are two contradictory tablets of the creation. The one coming from the library at Cutha and the other from the royal library at Nineveh. This latter consists of seven tablets, as the creation is described as consisting of seven successive acts. It presents a curious similarity to the account of the creation long before recorded in Genesis, the word Tīamat which is used to represent chaos seems to be the same as the biblical word tehom, the deep. A radical difference, however, is found in the fact that in the Assyrian story, Tīamat has become a mythological personage—the dragon mother of a chaotic brood. The legend in its present form is assigned by Prof. Sayce to about the time of Assur-bani-pal.[^[64]] The oldest tablets are those which are written in the primitive Accadian tongue, and many of these have been found in the library of Assur-bani-pal,[^[65]] having evidently been copied from the earlier text and supplied with interlinear translations in the Assyrian tongue.

The Assyrians counted no less than three hundred spirits of heaven and six hundred spirits of earth, all of which (as well as the rest of their mythology) appears to have been borrowed from the primitive population of that country. Indeed it would appear that ancient Babylonia was the birthplace of that common mythology[^[66]] which in various forms afterward became the heritage of so many nations.

Elaborate and costly temples were built for these deities of an idolatrous people, and when the image of a god was brought into his newly built temple there were festivals and processions, and wild rejoicing among the worshippers.

The principal gods mentioned in these early tablets may be briefly sketched as follows:

ANŪ.

The sky god and ruler of the highest heaven, whose messengers are evil spirits. The Canaanite town of Beth-anath, mentioned in Joshua,[^[67]] was named for Anat, the wife of Anū.

SEVEN EVIL SPIRITS.

These messengers of Anū are elsewhere described as the seven storm-clouds, or the winds, and their leader seems to have been the dragon Tīamat[^[68]] (the deep), who was defeated by Bel-Merodach in the war of the gods. The tablets have preserved an Accadian poem on this subject, the author of which is represented as living in the Babylonian city of Eridu,[^[69]] where his horizon was bounded by the mountains of Susiani, and the battle of the elements raging around their summit suggested to his poet-mind the warring of evil spirits.

It was these seven storm-spirits who were represented as attacking the moon when it was eclipsed, a description of which is given in an Accadian poem[^[70]] translated by Prof. Talbot. Here they are regarded as the allies of the incubus, or nightmare, which is supposed to attack the moon.

ACCADIAN POEM ON THE SEVEN EVIL SPIRITS.

“O, Fire-god! those seven, how were they born? how grew they up?

Those seven in the mountain of the sunset were born.

Those seven in the mountain of the sunrise grew up.

In the hollows of the earth have they their dwelling;

On the high places of the earth are they proclaimed.

Among the gods their couch they have not;

Their name in heaven and earth exists not.

Seven are they; in the mountain of the sunset do they rise;

Seven are they; in the mountain of the sunrise do they set.

Let the Fire-god seize upon the incubus;

Those baleful seven may he remove, and their bodies may he bind.

Order and kindness know they not,

Prayer and supplication hear they not.

Unto Hea they are hostile;

Disturbing the lily in the torrents are they.

Baleful are they, baleful are they,

Seven are they, seven are they.”

“They are the dark storms of heaven which unto fire unite themselves;

They are the destructive tempests which, on a fine day, sudden darkness cause;

With storms and meteors they rush,

Their rage ignites the thunderbolts of Im,

From the right hand of the thunder they dart forth.

They are seven, these evil spirits, and death they fear not;

They are seven, these evil spirits, who rush like a hurricane,

And fall like fire-brands on the earth.”[^[71]]

Here we have more than a suggestion of the origin of some of the early songs of the Vedas, for these seven storm-spirits are represented by the Marūts of the Hindūs—“the shakers of the earth”—who dash through the heavens in chariots drawn by dappled deer. In this primitive mythology we find also

ASSUR.

The “god of judges” was the especial patron of Assyria, and afterward made to express the power of the later Assyrian empire by becoming “father of the gods” and the head of the pantheon.

The Assyrian kings claimed that their power was derived from this deity, and in one of the inscriptions it is said that

“The universal king,[^[72]] king of Assyria, the king whom Assur,

King of the spirits of heaven, appointed with a kingdom,

Without rival has filled his hand.

From the great sea of the rising of the sun

To the great sea of the setting of the sun

His hand conquered and has subdued in all entirety.”

In the inscriptions of Shalmanesar II, all honor is also ascribed to this god; he is invoked as “Assur, the great lord, the king of all the great gods.”

And it is said: “By the command of Assur, the great lord, my lord,

I approached the mountain of Shitamrat—

The mountain I stormed.

Akhuni trusted to the multitude of his troops and came forth to meet me;

He drew up in battle array.

I launched among them the weapons of Assur, my lord;

I utterly defeated them.

I cut off the heads of his soldiers and dyed the mountains with the blood of his fighting men.

Many of his troops flung themselves against the rocks of the mountains.”[^[73]]

On his return, the victorious king purified his weapons in the sea, and sacrificed victims to his gods. He erected a statue of himself, overlooking the sea, and inscribed it with the glory of Assur.

HEA.

Hea[^[74]] was the god of chaos[chaos] or the deep; he was “the king of the abyss who determines destinies.”

In later times he was also called “the god of the waters,” and from him some of the attributes of Neptune may have been derived. It was said that Chaos was his wife.

NIN-CI-GAL.

In later mythology Nin-ci-gal, instead of Chaos, was the wife of Hea—she was the “lady of the mighty country” and “queen of the dead.” This goddess may have been the prototype of Proserpine, who was carried away by Pluto in his golden chariot to be the “queen of hades.”

SIN.

This name signifies brightness, and the moon-god was the father of Ishtar. Nannaru, “the brilliant one,” was one of his titles.

A golden tablet[^[75]] found in the “timmin,” or cornerstone of a palace or temple at Khorsabed, contains an account of the splendid temples which King Sargon II built in a town near Nineveh (Dur Sārkin) and dedicated to Hea, Sin (the moon-god), Chemosh (the sun-god), and Ninip, the god of forces. The king’s inscription[^[76]] states that “I constructed palaces covered with skins, sandal wood, ebony, cedar, tamarisk, pine, cypress, and wood of pistachio tree.” Among the gods presented on the tablets we find also

HEA-BANI.

This god was the companion of Izdūbar, and on account of the peculiar circumstances attending his death was shut out of heaven. He is represented as a satyr, with the legs, head, and tail of an ox. This figure occurs very frequently on the gems, and may always be recognized by these characteristics. He is doubtless the original of Mendes, the goat-formed god of Egypt, and also of Pan, the goat-footed god of the Arcadian herdsman with his pipe of seven reeds. Hea-bani is represented as dwelling in a remote place three days’ journey from Erech, and it was said that he lived in a cave and associated with the cattle and the creeping things of the field.

NERGAL,

the patron deity of Cutha, is identified with Nerra, the god of pestilence, and also with Ner, the mythical monarch of Babylonia, who it was claimed reigned before the flood. He was “the god of bows and arms.” The cuneiform inscriptions show that the Lion-god, under the name of Nergal[^[77]] was worshipped at Kuti or Cutha, where an elaborate temple was built in his honor, and an Assyrian copy of an old Babylonian text belonging to the library of Cutha, speaks of “the memorial stone which I wrote for thee, for the worship of Nergal which I left for thee.” According to Dr. Oppert, Nergal represented the planet Mars, hence the Grecian god of war, “raging round the field,” appears to have been merely a perpetuation of this early deity.

BEL MERODACH,

or Marduk, whose temple, according to the inscription, was built by Nebuchadnezzar, with its costly woods, “its silver and molten gold, and precious stones” and “sea-clay” (amber), “with its seats of splendid gold, with lapis-lazuli and alabaster blocks,” which are still found in the ruins of Babylon. And the king made the great festival Lilmuku, when the image of Merodach[^[78]] was brought into the temple.[^[79]] The inscription also speaks[^[80]] of the temple as receiving “within itself the abundant tribute of the kings of nations, and of all peoples.”[^[81]]

NEBO.

From this god the name of Nebuchadnezzar was derived, and he was the favorite deity of that king. He was the eldest son of Merodach, and was “the bestower of thrones in heaven and earth.” In a ten-column inscription of Nebuchadnezzar, which is engraved upon black basalt, and now forms part of the India House Collection, the king speaks of building a temple in Babylon “to Nebo of lofty intelligence, who hath bestowed on me the scepter of justice to preside over all peoples.” He says, “The pine portico of the shrine of Nebo, with gold I caused to cover,”[^[82]] etc. Nebo[^[83]] or Nabo and Merodach are both used as the component parts of the names of certain kings of Babylon.

NINIP,

“the son of the zenith,” and “the lord of strong actions,” finds an echo in Grecian mythology as Hercūles, who received his sword from Mercury, his bow from Apollo, his golden breastplate from Vulcan, his horses from Neptune, and his robe from Minerva, the goddess of wisdom.

Hercūles, who appears in Persian mythology as Mithras, the unconquered sun, is traced back to his Phœnician origin in the line of Baal. Therefore, the Persian Mithras represents Chemosh and Tammuz, both of whom are sun-gods as well as the “god of forces,” for the sun is the most powerful influence in the planetary world. The mysteries of Mithras were celebrated with much pomp and splendor on the revival of the Persian religion under the Sassanidæ. The word appears in many ancient Persian names.

DAGON.

The Assyrian Dagon was usually associated with Anū, the sky-god, and the worship of both was carried as far west as Canaan.[^[84]] He is spoken of in the tablets as “Dagon, the hero of the great gods, the beloved of thy heart, the prince, the favorite of Bel,” etc. The name is a word of Accadian origin, meaning “exalted.”

MOLECH.

Of Molech little is said in the tablets, except that “he took the children,”[^[85]] but a curious fragment of an old Accadian hymn indicates that the children of these highlanders were offered, as burnt offerings, in very early times; and hence, says Prof. Sayce, “the bloody sacrifices offered to Molech were no Semitic invention, but handed on to them, with so much else, by the Turānian population of Chaldea.”[^[86]] The Mosaic law was especially severe upon this “abomination” of human sacrifices, the death penalty being ordered for every such offence.[^[87]]

CHEMOSH.

This sun-god was worshipped as the Supreme, and in his honor, his early worshippers sang praises, offered sacrifices and performed incantations. The success of Mesha, king of Moab, in his revolt against the king of Israel, was commemorated by the erection of the celebrated Moabite stone[^[88]] whereon was recorded the inscription ascribing his victory to Chemosh, his favorite deity. The principal title of Chemosh[^[89]] was “Judge of heaven and earth,” but he afterward held a less important position in the Chaldaic-Babylonian pantheon, which was adopted by the Assyrians, and was considered inferior to Sin, the moon-god, who was sometimes said to be his father. There are several tablets bearing magical incantations and songs to the sun-god.

But the hideous idols that occupied the palatial temples of Chemosh at Larsam, in Southern Chaldea, and at Sippara, in the north of Babylonia, became more refined in the poetry of the Vedas, and he appeared in the mythology of the Hindūs as Sūrya, the god[the god] of day, who rode across the heavens in a car of flame drawn by milk-white horses.

INCANTATIONS TO FIRE AND WATER

There are also Assyrian incantations to fire and water, which represent the imagery of the primitive Babylonians, and these inscriptions also suggest a possible foundation for the hymns of the Ṛig-veda. There is a great similarity of style between the literature of the tablets and the early hymns of the Hindūs. The tablets speak of “An incantation to the waters pure, the waters of the Euphrates—the water in which the abyss firmly is established, the noble mouth of Hea shines upon them.

Waters they are shining (clear), waters they are bright. The god of the river puts him (the enchanter) to flight,” etc. In the incantation to fire, there are also many eloquent passages: “The Fire-god—the prince which is in the lofty country—the warrior, son of the abyss—the god of fire with thy holy fires—in the house of darkness, light thou art establishing.

Of Bronze and lead, the mixer of them thou (art). Of silver and gold, the blesser of them thou (art).”[^[90]] This Fire-god of the Accadians was represented by the Hindū Agni, from whose body issued seven streams of glory, and by Loki, whose burning breath is poured from the throbbing mountains of the Northmen.

IM.

In this pantheon of mythology, as defined by the tablets, Im was the god of the sky, sometimes called Rimmon, the god of lightning and storms, of rain and thunder. He is represented among the Hindūs as Indra, who furiously drives his tawny steeds to the battle of the elements. With the Greek and Latins he was personated by Zeus and Jupiter, “the cloud-compelling Jove,” while among the Northmen he wears the form of Thor, whose frown is the gathering of the storm-clouds, and whose angry voice echoes in the thunder-bolt.

BAAL,

or Bel (plural Baalim), was also an important character, and indeed, according to Dr. Oppert, all of the Phœnician gods were included under the general name of Baal,[^[91]] and human sacrifices were often made upon their blood-stained altars. He had a magnificent temple in Tyre, which was founded by Hiram, where he had symbolic pillars, one of gold and one of smaragdus. An inscription[^[92]] on the sarcophagus of Esmunazar, king of the two Sidons, claims that he, too, built a temple to Ashtaroth, and “placed there the images of Ashtaroth,” and also “the temple of Baal-Sidon, and the temple of Astarte, who bears the name of this Baal;” that is, the temple of Baal and the temple of Astarte, or Ashtaroth, at Sidon.

The grossest sensuality characterized some forms of the worship of Baal and Ashtaroth. Indeed, it can only be compared to the unmentionable rites which two thousand years later pertained to the worship of Kṛishṇa and Śiva.

In the inscription of Tiglath Pilesar I, Baal is called “the King of Constellations,” and the fact that he was thus worshipped is a peculiar explanation of the frequent condemnation in the book of Kings of the worship of “the host of Heaven,” which is repeatedly spoken of in connection with the altars of Baal.[^[93]]

TAMMUZ.

This is another form of the sun-god, who is represented as being slain by the boar’s tusk of winter. June is the month of Tammuz, and his festival began with the cutting of the sacred fir tree in which the god had hidden himself. A tablet in the British Museum states that the sacred dark fir tree which grew in the city of Eridu, was the couch of the mother goddess.[^[94]] The sacred tree having been cut and carried into the idol-temple, there came the search for Tammuz, when the devotees ran wildly about weeping and wailing for the lost one,[^[95]] and cutting themselves with knives. His wife, Ishtar, descended to the lower world to search for him, and the tablets furnish another poem which seems to celebrate a temple similar to that recorded by Maimonides, in which the Babylonian gods gathered around the image of the sun-god, to lament his death. The statue of Tammuz was placed on a bier and followed by bands of mourners, crying and singing a funeral dirge. He is also called Dūzi, “the son.” Tammuz is the proper Syriac name for Adonis of the Greeks.

ISHTAR.

This goddess, who is sometimes called Astarte, was the most important female deity of this early pantheon. The Persian form of the word is Astara. In Phœnician it is Ashtaroth,[^[96]] and according to Dr. Oppert all the Phœnician goddesses were included under this general name. Another form of the name afterward appeared in Greek mythology as Asteria, and it was applied to the beautiful goddess who fled from the suit of Jove, and, flinging herself down from heaven into the sea, became the island afterward named Delos.

The farther back we go in the world’s history the nearer we approach to the original idea of monotheism, and originally there was only one goddess, Ishtar or Ashtaroth, personifying both love and war, but two such opposite characteristics could not long remain the leading attributes of the same deity, and hence after a time, there were mentioned three goddesses bearing the same name.

ISHTAR OF ARBELA

was the goddess of war, the “Lady of Battles.” She was the daughter of Anū, whose messengers were the seven evil spirits, and the favorite goddess of King Assur-bani-pal, who claims that he received his bow from her, though he declares in his inscriptions that he worshipped also Bel or Baal, and Nebo; he frequently implores the protection of Ishtar.

“Oh, thou, goddess of goddesses, terrible in battle, goddess in war, queen of the gods! Teūman, king of Elam, he gathered his army and prepared for war; he urges his fighting men to go to Assyria. Oh, thou, archer of the gods, like a weight, in the midst of the battle, throw him down and crush him.”[^[97]] Ishtar of Arbela afterward became the Bellona of the Latins, and the Enyo of the Greeks. Under the name of Anatis, or Anāhid, she was worshipped in Armenia, and also in Cappadocia, where she had a splendid temple, served by a college of priests, and more than six thousand temple servants. Her image, according to Pliny,[^[98]] was of solid gold, and her high priest was second only to the king himself. Strabo calls this goddess Enyo, and Berosus considers that she is identical with Venus. The inscriptions of Artaxerxes, discovered at Susa, call her Anāhid, which was the Persian name of the planet Venus. The characteristics of Venus, the queen of beauty, may seem somewhat at variance with Ishtar of Arbela, the goddess of war, but it will be remembered that the Greeks of Cythera, one of the Ionian islands, worshipped an armed Venus, and from this island she took the name of Cythera; the fable that she rose from the sea probably means that her worship was introduced into the island by a maritime people, doubtless the Phœnicians.

ISHTAR OF ERECH,

the daughter of Anū and Annatu, is another form of this popular goddess, and one of the Assyrian tablets refers to the dedication of horses at the temple of Bit-ili at Erech, where the king of Elam dedicated white horses with silver saddles to Ishtar, the tutelar divinity of Erech.

In the sixth tablet of the Izdūbar series, we find an Ishtar whose characteristics are so different from either the goddess of love or the goddess of war, that we are constrained to believe that it must refer to Ishtar of Erech. She here appears as the queen of witchcraft, resembling the Hecate of the Greeks in her funereal abode. Indeed, Hecate was fabled to be the daughter of Asteria, which is merely the Greek form of the name Ishtar, and Pausanius[^[99]] mentions an Astrateia whose worship was brought to Greece from the East.

LEGEND OF ISHTAR AND IZDŪBAR.

The student of comparative mythology will recognize in the above legend the original idea of much of the classic lore of Greece. Izdūbar’s return, and the throwing off of his disguise, suggest the adventures of Ulysses as related by Homer, and his return to Ithaca as a beggar.

“Next came Ulysses lowly at the door,

A figure despicable, old and poor;

In squalid vests with many a gaping rent,

Propped on a staff and trembling as he went.”

Odyssey, Book xvii.

The character of Ishtar as presented in this tablet is apparently a prototype not only of Hecate, but also of Medea, whose chariot was drawn by winged serpents, and the cauldron or pot, which Ishtar filled with her magic herbs, suggests the statement of Ovid that Medea on one occasion spent no less than nine days and nights in collecting herbs for her cauldron.[^[103]] The character of Ishtar may also have suggested that of Circe, who

“Mixed the potion, fraudulent of soul,

The poison mantled in a golden bowl,”

and she loved Ulysses as Ishtar loved Izdūbar, even though she had transformed all of his companions into swine.

In column II of the tablet under consideration, we find the story of the king whom Ishtar changed into a leopard, “and his own dogs bit him to pieces.” No one can doubt that we see here the original of the Greek fable of Actæon, the hero who offended the goddess Diana, when she revenged herself by changing him into a deer, and his dogs no longer knowing their master, fell upon him and tore him to pieces.[^[104]] The classic authors of Greece and Rome, however, attribute the fate of Actæon to the vengeance of the strong and graceful Diana, whom he offended by allowing his eyes to rest upon her rich beauty, while the tablet ascribes the fate of the king to the wanton cruelty of Ishtar.

Diana is sometimes identified with Hecate, the daughter of Asteria or Ishtar, and she retains the characteristics of her mother by appearing as the goddess of the moon. Her temple at Ephesus, with its hundred and twenty-seven columns of Parian marble, was one of the “Seven Wonders of the World,” but the hideous idol within it was roughly carved of wood, not as a beautiful huntress, but as an Egyptian monster, whose deformity was hidden by a curtain.[^[105]]

The same Diana, however, in the hands of Grecian poets, becomes the strong and beautiful goddess of the chase, followed by her train of nymphs in pursuit of flying deer with golden horns.

Assyrian literature has evidently furnished the basis of several stories which are found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, besides that of Pyramus and Thisbe, which, as he expressly states, is a tale of Babylon.

ISHTAR, THE QUEEN OF LOVE AND BEAUTY.

Ishtar of Nineveh, who is identified with Beltis, the wife of Baal, became the goddess of love, “the divine queen” or “divine lady” of Kidmūri, which was the name of her temple at Nineveh. She was the daughter of Sin, the moon-god; indeed, she is sometimes represented as the full moon, for which reason she is called the goddess Fifteen in Assyria, because the month consisting of thirty days, the moon was full on the fifteenth. She is the prototype of Freyja, the weeping goddess of love among the Northmen, and the Aphrodite of the Greeks—the beautiful nymph who sprang from the soft foam of the sea, and was received in a land of flowers, by the gold-filleted Seasons, who clothed her in garments immortal. Her chariot was drawn by milk-white swans, and her garlands were of rose and myrtle.

Ishtar of Nineveh appears as the imperious queen of love and beauty, and was undoubtedly the original of the Latin Venus. Indeed, Anthon says, “There is none of the Olympians of whom the foreign origin is so probable as this goddess, and she is generally regarded as being the same with the Astarte (Ashtaroth) of the Phœnicians.”[^[106]] We find upon the tablets a beautiful legend concerning her visit to Hades. She went in search of her husband Tammuz, as Orpheus was afterward represented as going to recover his wife, when the music from his golden shell stopped the wheel of Ixion, and made Tantalus forget his thirst. So also Hermöd, the son of Odin, in the mythology of the Northmen rode to Hel upon the fleet-footed Sleipnir in order to rescue his brother Balder.

It was doubtless through the Phœnicians that this legend reached the Greeks, and was there reproduced in a form almost identical with the fable of the tablets. Adonis, the sun-god, who was the hero, was killed by the tusk of a wild boar, even as Tammuz, the sun-god of Assyria, was slain by the boar’s tusk of winter. Venus, the queen of love and beauty, was inconsolable at his loss, and at last obtained from Proserpina, the queen of hades, permission for Adonis to spend every alternate six months with her upon the earth, while the rest of the time should be passed in hades. Thus also the Osiris of the Egyptians was supposed to be dead or absent forty days in each year, during which time the people lamented his loss, as the Syrians did that of Tammuz, as the Greeks did that of Adonis, and as also the Northmen mourned for Frey.

Ishtar is represented as going down to the regions of darkness wearing rings and jewels, with a diadem and girdle set with precious stones, and this fact would seem to indicate that the ancient city, which afterward came under the rule of Persian kings, was the home of the idea that whatever was buried with the dead would go with them to the other shore. Hence India, for ages, burned the favorite wives, with the dead bodies of her rajas, while other tribes placed living women in the graves of their chiefs, and our own Indians provide dogs and weapons for the use of their braves when they reach the “happy hunting grounds.” We give the following legend complete, as it is found upon the tablets:

THE DESCENT OF ISHTAR.

(Here follow a few lines which are unworthy of repetition, as they very coarsely describe the pitiable condition of the world when forsaken by the goddess of love.)

Surely here is poetry—the haughty queen of love and beauty imperiously demands an entrance into the land of shadows that she may recover her beloved. She threatens to break down the very gates of hades and raise the dead to devour the living if her wish is refused. She shrinks at no sacrifice which her love-lighted mission may cost. A great crown is taken from her head, but she stays not. Her jewels and precious stones—her girdle of priceless gems—is taken from her, and still she presses forward in quest of her love.

But when at last the seven gates of hades have closed upon her luxurious form, the world misses her joyous presence—the splendor is stolen from Beauty’s eyes—the crimson touch of life has faded from her lips—the doves and sun-birds no longer chant their love songs in the crowns of the palm trees, and the sorrowing night bird trills the plaintive tale to the closed and weeping roses. Nay, even the sky seems to forget to light up the couch of the dying sun with draperies of crimson and gold, and all the world is shrouded in darkness and cold despair. But Hea, in his ocean home, hears the wail of the gods who mourn the absence of Ishtar, and he comes to the rescue. The seven gates of hades swing again upon their hinges, and with crowns and jewels and girdle restored, the imperial goddess comes forth to resume her sway amid the flowers of a love-lighted earth.

CHAPTER IV.
PERSIAN MYTHOLOGY.

THE COMMON SOURCE OF MYTHOLOGY—MYTHICAL MOUNTAINS—RIVERS—MYTHICAL BIRDS—AHŪRA MAZDA—ATAR—THE STORM GOD—YIMA—THE CHINVAT BRIDGE—MITHRA—RÉSUMÉ.

We have briefly sketched in the preceding chapter the more tolerable features of a mythology which is evidently the common source of the later pantheons. The picture of human sacrifices, and practices which are still more revolting, have been avoided, as unnecessary to the general purpose, while the poetic figures of these ancient myths are dwelt upon with peculiar pleasure.

Persian civilization was to a great extent the product of Babylonian elements, and her mythology was born of that type of sensual idolatry too gross for description. But the Persians were a poetic people, and in their hands these ancient myths were refined and somewhat elevated. The hideous idols called sun-images, which were used in the worship of Chemosh, gave place to the adoration of the sun itself, as the great source of all physical light. It was by the hand of Persia that the sacred bull of Egypt was smitten down, and also the golden couch of Baal, with all its attendant horrors. But even Persia is accused of having at times practiced the horrible rite of human sacrifice, and the Babylonian Venus found admission, even among the people whose king had stabbed the Egyptian Apis, and overturned his shrine.[^[113]]

Persia was a land of extremes, and the richest part of her dominions was fated to lie beneath the early snows, and feel the severity of winter, while the central portion of the country was one vast desert, whose scorching simoons were as much to be dreaded as the snows of her northern table-lands. The early settlers of Īrān, therefore, were forced to win their bread and develop their resources by the most arduous labor, and the dreamy mythology of the Hindūs gave way in their minds to the sterner conflict between good and evil.

The opposition between light and darkness became a prominent feature of their mythology, for the battles which raged in Hindū skies between Indra, the storm king, and his constant enemy, Vṛitra, became to the sons of Īrān a personal strife with the powers of nature, and instead of dreaming of a contest in the clouds, they sang of the daily battle in lives which were crowded with hardship. Hence it is that Ormazd and Ahriman, in their continual strife, form the background of the national mythology, although Persia took the sun for her emblem, and called her kings by his royal name; a flashing globe was the signal light above the imperial tent, and the golden eagle was perched upon the ensign that led the Persian troops to victory.

MYTHICAL MOUNTAINS.

The silent mountains standing calmly beneath the skies of blue, while the ages come and go, always command the reverence of the human heart. With forests around their feet, the gray peaks reach upward to dim and ashen heights, where the white snow lies unpolluted by the foot of man. Their frost-crowns gleam in the sunlight of noon, or change to tints of opal and crimson light beneath the farewell fires of the setting sun. No wonder, then, that in the fables of all people the gods are enthroned on wondrous heights. The old Assyrian kings wrote upon their strange tablets of “the world mountain,” which, although rooted in hades, still supported the heavens with all their starry hosts. The world was bound to it with a rope, like that with which the sea was churned in the later Hindū legend, for the lost ambrosia of the gods,[^[114]] or like the golden cord of Homer with which Zeus proposed to suspend the nether earth, after binding the cord about Olympus.[^[115]] This mythical mountain was the abode of the gods, and it was this of which the Babylonian king said:

“I will exalt my throne above the stars of God;

I will sit upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north;

I will be like the Most High.”[^[116]]

It was between the “Twin Mountains” that the sun passed in its rising and setting, and the rocky gates were guarded by the “scorpion men,” whose heads were at the portals of heaven, and their feet in hell beneath.[^[117]]

In the mythology of the Hindūs, Mount Meru rises in her solitary grandeur in the very centre of the earth to the height of sixty-four thousand miles; and there on her sun-kissed crown, amidst gardens of fabulous beauty, and flowers that never of winter hear—where the skies are of rose and pearl, and the dreamlike harmonies of far-off voices are borne upon the air, we find the heaven of Indra, the abode of the gods.[^[118]]

Among the Greeks the gates of Olympus open to receive the imperial throng, when

“The gods with Jove assume their thrones of gold.”

When the chambers of the east were opened, and floods of light were poured upon the peak, the Greek poet dreamt that:

“The sounding hinges ring on either side,

The gloomy volumes pierced with light divide,

The chariot mounts, where deep in ambient skies

Confused Olympus’ hundred heads arise—

Where far apart the Thunderer fills his throne

O’er all the gods, superior and alone.”

But even the storm-swept heights of Olympus, where the chariots of the gods were crushed to fragments beneath the lightnings of Jove, were not lofty enough for the spirit of the Norseman. Odin’s Valhal, with its roof of shields and walls of gleaming spears, lies in heaven itself, and higher still is Gimle, the gold-roofed hall of the higher gods. Far away to the northward, on the heights of the Nida mountains, stands a hall of shining gold which is the home of the Sindre race.[^[119]] These are they who smelt earth’s gold from her rough brown stone, and flashing through her crystals, the tints which are hidden in the hearts of the roses, they are changed to rubies and garnets. These are they who make the sapphires blue with the fresh lips of the violet, and mould earth’s tears into her purest pearls.

In Persian mythology we find a trace of “the world mountain” of the old Assyrian kings, as well as a thought which is akin to the vine-clad bowers of Meru, the shining gates of Olympus, and the Nida mountains of the Norsemen, for here the Qāf mountains surround the world after the manner of the annular system described in the Mahā-Bhārata.[^[120]] This mythical range is pure emerald, and although it surrounds the world, it is placed between two of the horns of a white ox, named Kornit or Kajūta. He has four thousand horns, and the distance from one horn to another could not be traversed in five hundred years. These mountains are the abode of giants, fairies and peris, while their life-giving fountains confer immortality upon those who taste of their waters.

The highest portion of the emerald range is the Alborz,[^[121]] where the fabled Sīmūrgh builds her colossal nest of sandal wood, and the woven branches of aloe and myrtle trees. Mount Alborz is represented as standing upon the earth, while her crown of light reposes in the region far beyond the stars. It is Hara-Berezaita (the lofty mountain)—the sphere of endless light, where the supreme god of Persian mythology dwells in his own temple which is the “abode of song.” This is the “Mother of Mountains” and from it have grown all the heights that stand upon the earth; it is the fabled center of the world, and around it the sun, moon and stars revolve. Hence, in the Vendīdad[^[122]] we find the following hymn:

“Up, rise and roll along, thou swift horsed sun,

Above Hara-Berezaita and produce light for the world.

Up, rise up, thou moon—

Rise up, ye stars, rise up above Hara-Berezaita

And produce light for the world,

And mayest thou, O man, rise up along the path made by Mazda—

Along the way made by the gods,

The watery way they opened.”

RIVERS.

In the mythology of every people we find mystic rivers in connection with the worship of their divinities. They are winding everywhere through the enchanted land of fable. Often born in the highlands of the celestial mountains, they are represented as coming down to earth with the glint of the sunlight on their waves. The great river of Egypt, which is supposed to give life to the gods as well as men, is thus fabled to have sprung from the mountains of the sky, and a “Hymn to the Nile,” recorded on a clay tablet, begins with the words:

“Adoration to the Nile!

Hail to thee, O Nile!

Who comest to give life to Egypt!

Thou givest the earth to drink, inexhaustible one!

Thou descendest from the sky.”[^[123]]

In Greek mythology, we find the river ocean flowing around the earth, with its calm current unbroken by storm, and unswerved by the angry tempest. The sea, with her sun-kissed billows, received her waters from this unfailing fountain, and far beyond the northern mountains, where the “golden gardens” gleamed in the sunlight and the winds were rocked to sleep, there lived a happy people, where sorrow could not enter and death would never come.

Among the Hindūs, the sacred Ganges flowed at first only through the blue fields of heaven, and fell to the earth from the divine feet of Vishnū:

“And white foam clouds and silver spray

Were wildly tossed on high,

Like swans that urge their homeward way

Across the autumn sky.”

The Norseman also sings of heavenly rivers, as well as the Ifing, which flows in a never-freezing current between the world of men and the world of gods; he sings, too, of the river Gyöll, which flows nearest to the gates of Hel,[^[124]] and over whose golden bridge the countless bands of the dead are passing.

In Persian mythology there is a crystal stream which gushes from a golden precipice of the mythical mountain and descends to the earth from the heavens, as does the celestial Gangā of the Hindūs. This is the heavenly spring from which all the waters of the earth come down.... It is the Ardvi Sūra Anāhita which ever flows in a life-giving current, bringing blessings unto man and receiving in return the sacrifices of the material world.

This river has a thousand cells and a thousand channels, and each of these extend as far as a swiftly mounted horseman can ride in forty days; in each channel there stands a palace gleaming with an hundred windows and a thousand columns; these palaces are surrounded with ten thousand balconies founded in the distant channels of the river, and within their courts are luxurious beds, “well scented and covered with pillows.” In the golden ravines around these palace halls are the wondrous fountains of the Ardvi Sūra Anāhita, and the stream rushes down from the summit of the mountain with a volume greater than all the rivers of earth, and falls into the bosom of the celestial sea that lies at the foot of the Hara-Berezaita. When the waters of the river fall into the Vourū-Kasha, the waves of the sea boil over the shores, and the billows chant a song of welcome.

This celestial spring, with its mighty torrent of waters, is personified as a beautiful goddess[^[125]]—a maiden tall and shapely, who is born of a glorious race. She is stately and noble, strong as the current of a mighty river, and pure as the snows that lie on the mountain’s crown. Her beautiful arms are white and thick, her hair is long and luxuriant, for she is large and comely, radiant with the glory of a perfect womanhood.

This glorious maid of the mountain has four white horses, which were made for her by Ahūra Mazda; one is the snow, and one is the wind, while the others are the rain and the cloud; thus it happens that ever upon the earth it is snowing, or the rain is somewhere coming down to gladden the flowers with refreshing touch.

The beautiful goddess springs from a golden fissure in the highest peak, and mounting her chariot draws the reins above her white steeds and drives them down the steep incline, which is a thousand times the height of a man, and continual sacrifice is offered to her brightness and glory.

Clothed with a golden mantle and wearing a crown radiant with the light of an hundred gems, she comes dashing down the mountain side, thinking in her heart: “Who will praise me? Who will offer me a sacrifice with libations?”

The cloud-sea represents the “dewy treasures” of the Hindūs—the rains which are held in the reluctant cloud, and only drawn therefrom by the lightning bolts of Indra, who is assisted in the battle by the Maruts when they “harness their deer for victory.”[^[126]] The Persian Vendīdad represents a continual interchange between the waters of the earth and sky.

“As the Vourū-Kasha is the gathering place of the waters

Rise up, go up the ærial way and go down upon the earth....

The large river that is known afar

That is as large as all the waters of earth

Runs from the height down to the sea, Vourū-Kasha.”[^[127]]

MYTHICAL BIRDS.

Birds have always held a prominent place in the various mythologies. Among the Assyrians, the zu or vulture was the symbol of the “god of the storm-cloud,” who was believed to have stolen the laws and attributes of Bel for the benefit of mankind, and to have been punished for the theft by transformation into a vulture.[^[128]]

In Egyptian mythology, the tablets represent Isis as a bird. “For she is Isis, the charmer, the avenger of her brother, who seeks him without failing, who traverses the earth with lamentations, without resting before she has found him—creating the light with her feathers, producing the wind with her wings, celebrating the sacred dances, and depositing her brother in the tomb ... raising the remains of the god, with immovable heart ... she makes him grow, his arm becomes strong in the great dwelling.”[^[129]]

In the Hindū poem of the Rāmāyaṇa, during the banishment of the innocent and beautiful Sīta, the pitying birds dipped their pinions in the sacred waters of the Ganges, and fanned her feverish face, that she might not faint with the heat.[^[130]] In the same poem we have also descriptions of Garuḍa, the eagle-steed of Vishṇu, and Sampati, the sacred vulture, who gave information concerning the demon king that carried away the beautiful princess. Hindū mythology also contains “the celestial birds,” who were acquainted with right and wrong, and who, in one of the Purāṇas answered the questions of the sages, and also gave an account of the creation.

In northern Europe we find a wondrous eagle, who sits amongst the branches of the Ygdrasil—that beautiful tree of Norse mythology, whose three great roots strike downward among the Anglo-Saxons, Scandinavians, and Germans. This great ash tree spreads its life-giving arms through the heavens, and on the topmost bough is the eagle “who knows many things,” and between his eyes sits the keen-eyed hawk, Vedfolner.[^[131]]

We have also the Griffin of chivalry, the fabulous monster, half bird and half lion, that protected the gold of the Hyperborean regions from the one-eyed Arimaspians, and the Phœnix of Egyptian fable—the bird of gold and crimson plumage, that is burned upon her nest of spices every thousand years, and as often springs to life from her ashes. The Turks have their Kerkes, and the Japanese their Kirni, while China exhibits a nondescript dragon, which is a combination of bird and reptile. In the Greek Iliad we have the imperial bird of Jove—“Strong sovereign of the plumy race” bearing a signal from the god. Among the Persian myths we find the Karmak, a gigantic bird “which overshadowed the earth, and kept off the rain until the rivers were dried up.” And the law was brought to the Var of Yima by the bird Karśipta who recites the Avesta in the language of birds.

The raven was sacred to Apollo, and in Persia the priests of the sun were named ravens. In the Avesta this bird is called “the swiftest of all—the highest of the flying creatures ... he alone of all living things—he or none—overtakes the flight of an arrow, however well it has been shot; he grazes in the hidden ways of the mountains, he grazes in the depths of the vales, he grazes on the summit of the trees listening to the voices of the birds.”[^[132]] Again it is said of the Vārengaṇa or raven: “Take thou a feather of that bird, with that feather thou shalt rub thine own body—with that feather thou shalt curse thine enemies; if a man holds a bone of that strong bird, no one can smite or turn to flight that fortunate man. The feather of that bird of birds brings him help, it brings unto him the homage of men, it maintains him in glory.”[^[133]] It is said that the glory departed from Yima three times in the shape of a raven, and the raven is also one of the incarnations of the genius of Victory.

The Saēna, which, in later literature, is the Sīnamrū or Sīmūrgh, occupies an important place in Persian mythology. His resting place is on the Jaḍ-bēsh, or the tree of the eagle; this tree is the bearer of all seeds, and when the Sīmūrgh leaves it in his flight, a thousand twigs will shoot from the tree, and when he returns and alights thereon, he breaks off the thousand twigs, and sheds the seed from them. Then the bird Chaṉmrōsh who always sits near, watching the tree, will collect the seed which falls from the Jaḍ-bēsh, or tree of all seeds, and carry it to the fountain where Tishtar (or Tiśtrya) receives the waters, so that Tishtar may gather the seed of all kinds with the waters, and may shower it down upon the world with the rain.[^[134]]

The Sīmūrgh was the son of Ahūm-stut, who was perhaps “the holy falcon—praiser of the lord.” He builds his nest amidst the cliffs of Mount Alborz, and the gigantic structure is woven with the branches of the aloe and the fragrant sandal-wood. Around it gleam the white cliffs in the sunlight, and precious stones lie beneath it, for it is far beyond the reach of man. The Sīmūrgh became, in later literature, a mythical incarnation of supreme wisdom.

AHŪRA-MAZDA.

This deity is represented as the supreme god of the Persians, the creator of the other gods, and the ruler of them all.

The word Ahūra appears to have much kinship with Asūra, of the Hindū mythology. In the early portions of the Ṛig-veda this word has a good meaning, but in the latter part of the same work the Asūra[Asūra] is represented as a black demon, who committed fearful devastation until he was defeated by Indra. Among the Persians, Asūra, or Ahūra is pictured as the sky-god, who is represented among the Hindūs as Varuṇa, who looks down from heaven with his countless starry eyes and “wields the universe as the gamesters handle dice.”[^[135]]

The heaven of Ahūra-Mazda surrounds the highest peaks of the “Lofty Mountain” in the upper air, and it is called the “Abode of Song.” It is said “the maker Ahūra-Mazda has built a dwelling on the Hara-Berezaita, the bright mountain around which the daily stars revolve.... With his arms lifted up towards immortality, Mithra, the lord of wide pastures, drives forward a beautiful chariot, wrought by Ahūra-Mazda and inlaid with stars.”[^[136]]

The attributes of Ahriman, the serpent, or evil principle, became personified, and the various forms of falsehood, darkness and death became abstract demons. So, also, Ahūra-Mazda was afterward worshipped as a multitude of deities, and thus it happened that victory, benevolence, sovereignty, and even health were each worshipped as a separate divinity, and gathered together in the heavenly councils as a band of Yazatas or angels. These are numbered by thousands, but the one demanding the greatest reverence is

ATAR.

This is the god of fire. He was called the “most great Yazata,” and as such he commanded the undying worship of the Persian devotee.

The first duty of each Pārsī householder was to cherish the sacred fire upon his own hearth, feeding it only with delicate bits of fragrant sandal wood, while the fires in the temples were committed to the care of the priests. Atar is the Persian form of the Hindū Agni, the guardian of the home, and the symbol of social union.

The cypress tree was planted in front of their fire temples, and when it had reached a towering height, it was surrounded by a gilded palace like a sheath of flame,[^[137]] while more simple altars arose from their mountain tops and blazed with the sacred symbol.

THE STORM GOD.

The Persian myth of the struggle of Tiśtrya with Apaosha, the drouth fiend, in order to obtain rain, is merely another form of the battle of the elements in the Ṛig-veda, when Indra rides forth to the conflict and shoots his arrows into the gathering clouds.

The early idolaters worshipped the host of heaven, and from this doubtless arose the worship of the star Sirius as the storm god—Tiśtrya. The rising of this star to a prominent position marks the period of the ever welcome rains, when the parched earth drinks in the refreshing flood, and the flowers spring from the soil.

The dog-days are supposed to represent the time of Tiśtrya’s great conflict with Apaosha, and the battle is long and closely contested before he conquers his foe.

The storm god comes into the arena in three different forms; he first attacks the foe in the form of a beautiful youth, then as a bull with golden horns, and at last as a white horse with golden caparison and golden ears. The drouth fiend is represented as a black horse, and “They meet together hoof against hoof, they fight for three days and three nights, and then the Deva[^[138]] proves too strong for bright and glorious Tiśtrya; he overcomes him.” Tiśtrya then flees from the sea and cries out: “Oh Ahūra-Mazda, men do not worship me with sacrifice and praise, invoking me by my own name; should they worship me with sacrifice and praise, invoking me by my own name as the other Yazatas are invoked, they would bring me the strength of ten horses, of ten camels, ten bulls, ten mountains and ten rivers.”

Ahūra then offers him a sacrifice, in which he is invoked by his own name, and which gives him the strength of ten horses, of ten camels, ten bulls, ten mountains and ten rivers, whereupon Tiśtrya returns to the conflict, and Apaosha flies before him. The white horse being victorious, the copious rains come down, glad brooks spring from the rocky hillsides—they come with pearly sandaled feet, laden with love and mercy to the sun-parched plain; hence the following hymn:

“We sacrifice unto Tiśtrya[Tiśtrya], the bright and glorious star,

For whom the longing flocks and herds and men are looking forward

When shall we see him rise up, the bright and glorious star Tiśtrya....

For whom long the standing waters and the running spring waters,

The stream waters and the rain waters?

When will the springs with a flow run to the beautiful places and fields?[^[139]]

And to the roots of the plants that they may grow with a powerful growth?”

YIMA.

The Persian god of death is scarcely changed from the Hindū Yama, who is “the king of death and the judge of the dead.” Among the Hindūs, however, he appears as the first of men who died, while among the Persians he has many ancestors. He offered sacrifices upon the summit of “the beautiful mountain,” and prayed the gods to grant him power and dominion. Thus he became a king over men and even over the Devas. As the regions of Pluto were guarded by the three-headed dog Cerberus, and the path of Yama was watched by two terrible dogs of the “four-eyed tawny breed of Sarama,” so also the souls of good men are defended from the howling and pursuing demons, by the dogs that guard

THE CHINVAT BRIDGE.

The Chinvat[^[140]] or Kinvaḍ bridge reaches to Mount Alborz, and it is also called the “Bridge of the Gatherer,” over which the souls of the righteous pass easily into the abodes of bliss, while the wicked fall from it into the den of falsehood and iniquity.

The Mohammedans call it the Al-Sirat, and it is represented in the Korān as being finer than the thread of a famished spider and sharper than a two-edged sword.

More beautiful by far is the Bi-frost, or rainbow arch of the Norseman—the bridge between heaven and earth, which was also borrowed from Chaldea:

“A link that binds us to the skies

A bridge of rainbows thrown across

The gulf of tears and sighs.”

And every day the gods come down to the judgment hall, of the Udar fountain, at the roots of the great ash tree and ride back on heavenly steeds across the bridge of many hues.

MITHRA.

As fire is the favorite symbol of the Persian, so the sun-gods are their most important deities, and of these Mithra stands at the head. One of the Sanskṛit names for the sun is Mitra, and the Persian form of the word retains its full significance, as the pure light of day. The sun is never without his shrine, and he is also represented in the human form. His terrible power, especially in tropical climes, could not fail to be recognized, and hence the Persian swore by the sun, while the temples and images consecrated to this god of day arose in every part of the land. Persian decrees of the fourth and fifth centuries demanded the highest worship for the sun itself, while fire and water should receive inferior service. Christians were persecuted for refusing to perform these services in Armenia[^[141]] and the Roman Emperor Julian centered his apostasy in the philosophy which permitted him to call the sun the living image of God and even God himself.[^[142]]

Mithra is represented in the Avesta as riding across the broad arch of heaven, his chariot drawn by milk-white steeds whose feet are shod with gold and silver, while the god himself wears a golden helmet and a silver breastplate. He is represented as “The first of the heavenly gods who reaches over Hara, who, foremost in battle array, takes hold of the summits, and from thence looks with a beneficent eye over the abodes of the Āryans, where the valiant chiefs draw up their many troops in array; where the high mountains, rich in pastures and waters, yield plenty to the cattle; where the deep lakes with salt water stands; where the wide flowing rivers swell and hurry.... Four stallions draw that chariot, all of the same white color, living on heavenly food and undying.... The hoofs of their fore feet are shod with gold, the hoofs of their hind feet are shod with silver.”[^[143]]

This is the Persian picture of the Hindū myth, where the god of day is represented as coming out of the crimson chambers of the east, in his fiery car, while his white steeds are led by the fair goddess of the morning, wearing her garments of silver and changeful opal fire.[^[144]]

The mythology of Mazdeism is very rich with demons, many classes of which belong to the Indo-Īrānian period. The Vedic Yātus are found unchanged in the Avesta, and these are demons who can assume any form they choose. The Pairikas in the oldest Avesta are the fiendish females, who rob the gods and men of the heavenly waters. They hover between heaven and earth in the midst of the sea Vourū-Kasha, to keep off the rain floods, working in harmony with Apaosha, the drouth fiend. There are many other female demons, which it is unnecessary to describe, as their characteristics are most revolting.

There is also a host of storm fiends, called “the running ones” on account of the headlong course of the fiends in a storm—“the onsets of the wounding crew.” The Devas represent demons which belong to the Indo-European mythology, and the term originally meant “the gods in heaven.” When they were converted into evil spirits they became “the fiends in the heavens” or the fiends who assail the sky, but they afterwards became the demons of lust and doubt. Death gave rise to several abstractions, such as Saurū, which was identical in meaning as well as name with the Vedic Sarū, “the arrow,” a personification of the arrow of death, as a god-like being. The same idea is conveyed by Iśus, the self-moving arrow, a designation which is perhaps accounted for from the fact that Sarū, in India, before becoming the arrow of death, was the arrow of lightning, with which the god killed his foe. The god of death in another form becomes “the bone divider” who, like the Yama of the Mahā-bhārata, holds a noose around the neck of all living creatures. In the conflict between gods and fiends he takes an active part through the sacrifice. The sacrifice is more than an act of worship, it is an act of assistance to the gods. Gods, like men, need drink and food to be strong; like men, they need praise and encouragement in order to be brave; when not strengthened by the sacrifice they fly before their foes.

Sraosha is the priest-god, he first tied the sticks into bundles and offered up sacrifice to Ahūra; he first sang the holy hymns and thrice each day and night he smites the demon crew with his uplifted club, and thus protects the world of the living from the terrors of the night, when the fiends rush upon the earth; it is he who protects the dead from the terrors of death, from the assault of Ahriman. It will be through a sacrifice performed by Ormazd and Sraosha that Ahriman will finally be vanquished. A number of divinities sprang from the hearth of the altar, most of them having existed during the Indo-Īrānian period. Piety, who every day brings her offerings and prayers to the altar, was worshipped in the Vedas as Aramati, the goddess who every morning and evening, being anointed with sacred butter, offers herself up to Agni. She was praised in the Avesta as an abstract genius, but there are yet a few practices which preserve the evident traces of the old myths in relation to her union with Atar, the fire-god. The riches that go up to heaven in the offerings of man, and come down to earth in the gifts of the gods, were deified as Rāta, the gift, Ashi, the felicity, and more vividly in Parendi, the keeper of treasures, who comes on a sounding chariot, a sister to the Vedic Puramdhi.

Thus we have seen the fabulous “world mountain” of early Babylonia pervading the mythologies of Europe and Asia, taking the form of the star-crowned Olympus on the Ægean sea, and of Meru, with her fadeless flowers, in the valleys of India. In northern Europe it is represented by the Nida mountains with their golden palaces, and in Persia by the beautiful Hara with her crown of living light.

The Chaldean river of death, Datilla, flows also through the realms of Grecia under the name of Styx, and in the regions of the north it becomes the Ifing, and also the Gyöll. Again the mythical river seems to mount upward, and like the heavenly Nile, the Ganges springs from celestial heights and flows through the starry highlands of heaven, while the silvery torrents of the Persian stream come pouring down from the white summit of the Hara-Berezaita.

The early Baal, with all the unspeakable abominations attending his worship, becomes refined in the form of Zeus or Jove, who hurls his lightnings from the brow of Olympus, and in the Ahūra-Mazda of the Persians, whose throne is “the lofty mountain.” Tammuz and Chemosh, whose hideous images called forth the contempt of the prophets, appear in the Persian pantheon as Mithra with his glittering steeds; Ashtaroth of Sidon, and Diana of Ephesus, lay aside their revolting sensuality, and come forth as the chaste and strong Diana of Grecian poetry, or the fair goddess of the dawn among the Hindūs and Persians. The germs of European and Asiatic mythology are therefore found in that cradle of idolatry, where the image-worship of Babylonia received the rebuke of the prophets, and where the red altars of Baal and Moloch were stained with human blood even amidst the highest forms of early art and culture.

DIVISION II.
The Period of the Zend-Avesta.

CHAPTER V.
THE ZEND-AVESTA.

DERIVATION AND LANGUAGE—DIVISIONS—AGE OF THE ZEND-AVESTA—MANUSCRIPTS—ZARATHUŚTRA—THE EARLY PĀRSĪS—THE MODERN PĀRSĪS.

We use the ordinary form of the word, Zend-Avesta, for though some Orientalists claim that it should be called the Avesta-Zend, it is an open question whether this is the original and only correct term. According to the Pārsīs, Avesta means the sacred text, and Zend its Pahlavī translation, but in the Pahlavī translations themselves, the original work is called the Avesta-Zend, although there is no reason given for this course. Neither the word Avesta nor Zend occurs in the original Zend texts. The word Avesta, however, seems to be the Sanskṛit avastha, meaning “authorized text,” while Max Müller[^[145]] claims that the name Zend was originally a corruption of the Sanskṛit word Khandas, or “metrical language,” which is a name given by the Brāhmans to the hymns of the Veda. The word Zend, or Zand, is also used to designate the language[^[146]] in which the greater part of the Avesta is written.

In relation to its antiquity, the Zend ranks next to the Sanskṛit, and such authorities as Westergaard and Spiegel, while differing upon many points, agree in considering the Veda the safest key to an understanding of the Avesta. Many of the gods which are unknown to any of the Indo-European nations are worshipped under the same name in Sanskṛit and in Zend, and indeed many of the gods of the Zoroastrians seem to be mere reflections of the more primitive gods of the Veda, but at times the tendency to monotheism in the Zoroastrian religions would appear to be a solemn protest against the worship of all the powers of nature which is found in the Veda. Although there is much kinship between the two tongues, and many striking similarities between the gods of the two mythologies, it does not necessarily prove that portions of the Zend-Avesta were borrowed from the Veda. It does prove, however, that the two works proceeded from a common source of Āryan tradition, and it also proves that the Sanskṛit and the Zend continued to live side by side long after they were separated from the common stock of the Indo-European tongues.

There are decided differences between the themes of the Veda and the Avesta, but the link which binds them to a common source is never broken. Some Orientalists claim that there was a schism between the two and that the differences are the result of a religious revolution, while others argue that there was only a long and slow movement which led, by insensible degrees, the vague dualism of the Indo-Īrānians onward to the sharply defined dualism of the Magi. It has been clearly shown that the mythologies of Europe and Asia have a common origin in the idolatry found the valley of the Euphrates; so also the Veda and the Zend-Avesta are two great literary productions flowing from the same fountain head, which is found in the Indo-Īrānian period.

DIVISIONS.

The Zend-Avesta, or sacred books of the Pārsīs, is really a collection of various fragments. The first part, which may be called the Avesta proper, contains the Vendīdad, the Visparad and the Yasna. The Vendīdad is a compilation of religious lore and mythological tales, the Visparad is a collection of litanies for the sacrifice, while the Yasna, too, is composed of litanies, but it also contains five hymns or Gāthas written in a different dialect, which is older than the language of the greater part of the Avesta.

These three books are found in manuscripts in two different forms. Sometimes either of them is found alone or accompanied by a Pahlavī translation, or the three are mingled together according to the requirements of the liturgy.

The second portion of this work is generally known as the Khorda-Avesta, and is composed of short prayers, which are recited not only by the priests but by all the faithful, at certain moments of the day, month or year, and in the presence of the different elements. It is also customary to include in the Khorda or small Avesta, the Yaśts or hymns of praise to the several Izads or Yazatas.

The sacredness of the Avesta is to a certain extent reflected upon a work called the Bundehesh, which was written in Pahlavī, or mediæval Persian, during the Sassanian age. According to the Pārsī traditions the bulk of Zoroastrian literature was formerly much greater than now. It is claimed that the Vendīdad is the only survivor of the twenty-one Nosks or books which formed the primitive Avesta revealed by Ormazd to Zoroaster, and also that the eighteen Yaśts were originally thirty in number, there having been one for each of the Izads who preside over the thirty days of the month. The classic authors agree with the Pārsīs in the statement that the early books of the Zend-Avesta were much more extensive than at present, the sacred literature of the Zoroastrians having suffered heavy losses in consequence of the ravages of the Persian empire by Greeks and Arabians. It appears from the third book of the Dīnkard that at the time of Alexander’s invasion there were only two complete copies of the sacred books, one of which was traced upon skins in golden letters and deposited in the royal archives at Persepolis, where it was burned by Alexander[^[147]] while the other having been placed in another treasury fell into the hands of the Greeks, and was translated into their language. The Arḍā-Vīrāf-nāmak mentions only one copy of the Avesta, which was deposited in the archives at Persepolis and burned by Alexander; it also mentions the fact that he killed many of the priests and nobles. Both of these accounts were written, it is true, long after the events they describe, so they merely represent the tradition which had been handed down from one generation to the next, but as they were written before the Arabian conquest[^[148]] they cannot have confounded the ravages of Alexander with those of the Mohammedans, and their accounts are freely confirmed by classic writers.[^[149]]

AGE OF THE ZEND-AVESTA.

There is no data by which the age of the Zend-Avesta may be definitely determined. It is certain, however, that as the Zend is later than the Sanskṛit, so also the Avesta is later than the Vedas. It is also certain that this work is not the product of any one generation, as several centuries have intervened between the dates of the earliest and latest portions. The Gāthas which form the earliest portion of the work, are written[written] in the old Āryan metre, but the favorite deities of the Hindūs are absent from the Gāthas, although they reappear in various forms in the later portions of the Avesta. It is evident that the migrating tribes, in consequence of their separation from their brethren in Īrān, soon became estranged from them, and their most favored gods fell slowly into neglect or disfavor. Considerable time must have been required for the accomplishment of so great a change. The oldest portions of the Avesta may therefore fall a few centuries this side of the hymns of the Ṛig-veda, while the oldest portions of the later Avesta may be placed at a period somewhat later than Darius.[^[150]] We have a right to suppose that the hymns and other portions of the Avesta which were then in existence were gathered together and committed to writing about the time of Darius, and according to Dr. Oppert’s rendering of the Behistun inscription, the Persian king says: “By the grace of Ormazd, I have made the writings for others in the Āryan language, which was not done before; and the text of the law and the collection.... I made and wrote, and I sent abroad; then the old writings among all countries I restored for the sake of the people.”[^[151]] Thus Darius claims to have restored the writings that had been destroyed or injured by the Magian revolt, but the word Avesta had not yet become a technical term;[^[152]] it was the care of Darius that gave it a fixed and restricted sense. Five centuries afterwards, during the Sassanian period, these books were again gathered, either from scattered manuscripts or from oral traditions, and the later Avesta took a definite form in the hands of Adarbad under King Shapur II,[^[153]] who, like another Diocletian, aimed at the extirpation of the Christian faith. Mazdeism having been shaken by the Manichean heresy, a definite form was thus given to the religious code of Īrān, and it was then promulgated as the sacred law of the nation. We may conclude, therefore, that even the most modern portions of the Avesta cannot belong to a later date than the fourth century of the Christian era.

As the Pārsīs are the ruins of a people, so also their sacred books represent the ruins of a religion. There has been no other great belief in the world that left such poor monuments of its fallen splendor. Yet great is the value of the Avesta, and the belief of the few surviving Pārsīs, in the eyes of the historian, as they present to us the last reflex of the ideas which prevailed in Īrān during the five centuries which preceded and the seven which followed the birth of Christ. By the help of the Pārsī religion and the Avesta, we are enabled to go back to that momentous period in the history of literature which saw the blending of the Āryan mind with the Semitic, and thus opened the second stage of Āryan thought.[^[154]]

MANUSCRIPTS.

The recovery of the manuscripts of the Zend-Avesta, and the translation of them proved to be a herculean task for Orientalists, and more than one valuable life has been given largely to this work. For an hundred years this great problem has cost tireless effort, for its solution demanded as much pioneer work as the deciphering of the cuneiform inscriptions of the ancient kings.

We are largely indebted to Anquetil Duperron, the young Frenchman who was so fearless in his enthusiasm that he enlisted[^[155]] as a private soldier in order to secure a passage to India, and spent six years in that country collecting the manuscripts of the Avesta, and in trying to obtain from the Dastūrs a knowledge of their contents. But his was pioneer work, and his translation of the Avesta, which was made with the assistance of Dastūr Dārāb, was by no means trustworthy; it was in fact a French translation of a Persian rendering which had itself been made from a Pahlavī version of the Zend original.[^[156]]

Afterward Dr. Rask went to Bombay in the interests of the Danish government and after collecting many valuable manuscripts, wrote his essay “On the Age and Genuineness of the Zend Language.”

About the middle of the present century, Westergaard, who is also a Dane, and one of the most accomplished Zend scholars of Europe, published an edition of the sacred books of the Zoroastrians.

Burnouf, Spiegel and Bopp were also enthusiastic[enthusiastic] students of these books of the Magian literature, and after a time Dr. Haug, a young and enthusiastic German, was appointed to a professorship of Sanskṛit in the Poona College; while here he availed himself of his opportunity to make a thorough study of the literature of the Pārsīs. He contributed a valuable collection of “Essays” on the subject.

There are at present five editions, more or less complete, of the Zend-Avesta. The first was lithographed and published[^[157]] under Burnouf’s direction in Paris, and the second was transcribed into Roman characters and published[^[158]] at Leipsic by Prof Brockhaus. The third edition was presented in Zend characters, and was prepared[^[159]] by Prof. Spiegel, and the fourth was published at Copenhagen,[^[160]] by Westergaard; there are also one or two editions of the Zend-Avesta published in India with Gujerātī translations, which are sometimes quoted by native scholars.

The Yasna, being that portion of the Zend-Avesta containing the Gāthas, which are supposed to be the original hymns of Zoroaster, is the oldest and most important part of the Magian literature. Early in the present century,[^[161]] Dr. Rask succeeded in bringing to Europe a celebrated manuscript of the Yasna with Pahlavī translation which is now in the University Library of Copenhagen,[^[162]] and this is the only document of the kind upon the continent of Europe.

Another priceless manuscript has for centuries been hereditary property in the family of a High Priest of the Pārsīs,[^[163]] who has now presented it to the University at Oxford, and through the courtesy of Prof. F. Max Müller we are enabled to give our readers a fac simile representation[^[164]] of this famous Yasna manuscript which constitutes one of the fundamental documents of Zend philology. It contains nearly eight hundred pages,[^[165]] and was written by Mihirāpān Kaī-Khūsrō, the same copyist who transcribed the Copenhagen manuscript, but it is from a different original.

ZARATHUŚTRA.

Zarathuśtra or Zoroaster[^[166]] is supposed to have been the prophet of Īrān, and the author of the earliest hymns or Gāthas, but the fact that the composition of the books of the Zend-Avesta, extended over a period of several centuries, precludes the possibility of their authorship by any one individual. There is no historic record of the birth, the life or the death of Zarathuśtra, and this fact, together with the vast amount of myth and legend which has grown up around his name, has led some Orientalists to question whether or not such a man ever lived at all.

Firdusī teaches in a mythical way that he belonged to the time of Darius. Hyde, Prideaux and several others claim that Zarathuśtra was the same as the Persian Zerdūsht, the great patriarch of the Magi, who lived between the beginning of the reign of Cyrus and the end of that of Darius Hystaspes, while others still claim that the prophet of Īrān belonged to an earlier date.[^[167]] It seems probable that he was a veritable personage, who, although not necessarily the author of any considerable portion of the Zend-Avesta, may have led the departure in this direction from the mythology of the Vedas, toward the simpler forms of Mazdeism, but whether he lived and first taught among the mountains of Media, or in the land of Baktriana, is an open question.

Indeed, the controversy which prevails among scholars upon the exegesis of the Zend-Avesta is one of unusual severity, and while the storm seems to center upon the value of the Asiatic translations, there are other questions which are involved; the personality of Zarathuśtra[^[168]] is not only questioned, but even amongst those who admit that he was an historical personage, the field of his early labors, the exact time to which he belonged, and many other points are subjects of spirited discussion.

In the Gāthas, or earlier hymns, Zarathuśtra appears as a toiling prophet, and his sphere does not seem to have been greatly restricted. The objects of his concern were provinces as well as villages, and the masses as well as individuals. His circle was largely composed of the reigning prince and prominent chieftains—and these, together with a priesthood comparatively pure, were the greater part of his public. The king, the people, and the peers were all portions of it.

It is claimed that Zarathuśtra had three sons, and these were respectively the fathers and chiefs of the three classes, priests, warriors and herdsmen; they played little part, however, in the Mazdean system, and are possibly only three subdivisions of Zarathuśtra, who was “the first priest, the first warrior and the first husbandman.”

But when the student leaves the Gāthas and turns to the Yaśts or the Vendīdad, he goes from ground which is apparently historic into a land of fable. He leaves behind him the toiling prophet, who is apparently real, and meets the Zarathuśtra of these latter productions in the form of a fantastic demi-god. He is no longer described as one who brings new truth and drives away error, but as one who overthrows demons—the valiant smiter of fiends, like Tiśtrya and Vāyu. He smites them chiefly, it is true, with spiritual weapons, but he also repels the assaults of Ahriman with the stones which Ahūra[Ahūra] gave him—stones which are as large as a house[^[169]]—missiles like those that were hurled at their foes by Indra, by Agni and by Thor. These are “the flames wherewith, as with a stone,[^[170]] the storm-god smites the fiend.” A singular incident of Zarathuśtra’s birth, according to Pliny, and later Pārsī tradition, is that he alone of all mortals laughed while being born. This tradition would indicate that his nativity was in the region which was the birthplace of the Vedic Marūts—those storm genii which are “born of the laughter of the lightnings.”

Zarathuśtra is not the only lawgiver and prophet which the Avesta recognizes. Gayo Maratan, Yima and even the bird Karśipta,[^[171]] appear under different names, forms and functions, as god-like champions in the struggle for light, and they knew the law as well as Zarathuśtra. Many of the features of Zarathuśtra point to a god, but the mythology has probably grown up around a man, and the existing mythic elements have been woven into a halo to surround a human face. There has been much of individual genius in the formation of Mazdeism, but the system as a whole was probably produced by the elaboration of successive generations of the priesthood.

THE EARLY PĀRSĪS.

It is evident to the historian that the Zend-Avesta should be carefully studied by all who value the records of the human race, but its influence for good or evil cannot be determined without understanding something of the character and habits of the people to whom it peculiarly belonged. There have been periods in the world’s history when the religion of the Pārsīs threatened to dominate over all others. If Persia had won the battles of Marathon and Salamis, and thus succeeded in the final conquest of Greece, the worship of Ormazd might have become the religion of the whole civilized world. Persia already ruled over the Assyrian and Babylonian empires; the Jews were under her power, and the sacred monuments of Egypt had been mutilated by the Persian soldiery.

Again, during the Sassanian dynasty, the national faith had revived to such an extent that Shapur II gathered the sacred books and issued their code of law to the people, while the sufferings of the persecuted Christians in the east were as terrible as they had ever been in the west—Rome herself being rivaled in the work of cruelty. But the power of Persia was broken by the Mohammedan conquest, and the war-cry of the Moslem was the herald of defeated tyranny; hence it is that Mazdeism, although once the fear of the world, has for a thousand years had but little interest except for the historian. It was once the state religion of a powerful empire, but it was virtually driven away from its native soil by the sons of the desert, and the star and crescent waved in triumph above its broken altars. Deprived of political influence, and without even the prestige of an enlightened priesthood, many of its votaries became exiles in a foreign land, while the few that remained on Persian soil almost disappeared under the iron hand of Mohammedan rule. In less than a century after their defeat, nearly all the conquered people who remained upon their native soil were brought over to the faith of their new rulers, either by persecution or policy, or by the attractive power of a simpler creed, while those who clung to the faith of their fathers sought a new home in the land of the Hindūs, and found a refuge on the western coast of India and the peninsula of Gujarāt. Here they could worship their old gods, repeat their old prayers, and perform their old rites; and here they still live, and thrive to a certain extent, while their co-religionists in Persia are daily becoming fewer in numbers.[^[172]]

The Pārsīs of the old school used mats for seats, and ate with their fingers from platters, but these and similar practices were cleanly and refined when compared to some of their revolting and loathsome ceremonies. Anthon says, “If the religion of Zoroaster was originally pure and sublime, it speedily degenerated and allied itself to many very gross and hideous forms of superstition; if we were to judge of its tendency by the practice of its votaries, we should be led to think of it more harshly than it may have deserved. The court manners were equally marked by luxury and cruelty—by luxury refined until it had killed all natural enjoyment, and by cruelty carried to the most loathsome excess that perverted ingenuity could suggest. It is above all the barbarity of the women that fills the Persian chronicles with their most horrible stories, and we learn from the same sources the dreadful depravity of their character, and the vast extent of their influence.”[^[173]] It is a well known fact in the world’s history that the influence of an unprincipled woman is much stronger over a man who yields to her power than is the influence of kindness and truth to win him to higher associations, and therefore we find that at a certain period, the men of Persia, cramped by the rigid power of ceremonials, and surrounded by the ministers to their artificial wants, became the slaves of their priests and concubines. It is probably true that even after the people had lost much of the original purity and simplicity of their manners, the noble youth of Persia were still educated in the severe discipline of their ancestors, which is represented as nearly resembling that of the Spartan, but gradually the ancient discipline became either wholly obsolete or degenerated into empty forms.

THE MODERN PĀRSĪS.

The religion of the Pārsīs is sometimes called Dualism, on account of its main tenet; it is called Mazdeism, because Ahūra Mazda is its supreme god; it is called Magism, because its priesthood are the Magi; it is called Zoroastrianism, as representing the doctrines of its supposed founder, and it is also called Fire Worship, because fire has for centuries apparently received the adoration[^[174]] of the people.

At present the number of the Pārsīs in western India is estimated at about one hundred thousand, while Yezd and Kermān together can claim only about fifty-five thousand. Hence, while the colonies upon the soil of India have retained their strength much better than the others, the grand total is very small, being only about one-tenth of one per cent. of the population of the world. They are still known as Fire-Worshippers, although they protest against the name, as indicating that they are mere idolators. It is doubtless true that at one time fire itself was worshipped, and Atar, the fire-god, held high rank among the Zoroastrians. The primitive Āryan hearth, upon which the sacred element blazed, was also an object of adoration, and the Pārsīs still admit that in their youth they are taught to face some luminous object while worshipping God, although they claim that they look upon fire as merely an emblem of divine power. There is certainly the existence of a strong national instinct—an indescribable one—which is felt by every Pārsī in regard to both light and fire. They are the only Eastern people who abstain entirely from smoking, and they will not even blow out a candle unless compelled to do so.

The modern Pārsīs believe in monotheism, and use a table, as well as knives and forks at their meals. Their prayers are recited in the old Zend language, although neither he who repeats, nor they who listen can understand a word that is said. Every one goes to the fire temple when he chooses and recites his prayers himself, or pays the priest to recite them for him. Among the whole body of priests, there are perhaps not more than twenty who can lay any claim to a knowledge of the Zend-Avesta, and even these have only learned the meaning of the words they are taught, without knowing the language either philosophically or grammatically.

The modern Pārsīs are monogamists, and hence the manifold evils of the harem are abolished from among the people. They do not eat anything which is prepared by a cook belonging to another creed. They also object to beef and pork. Their priesthood is hereditary. None but the son of a priest can take the orders, and it is not obligatory upon him to do so. The high priest is called Dastūr, while the others are called Mobed. They are greatly attached to their religion on account of its former glory, and it is felt that the relinquishment of it would be the giving up of all that was most sacred and precious to their forefathers. Still they have, in many essential points, unconsciously approached the doctrines of Christianity, and if they could but read the Zend-Avesta they would find that their faith is no longer the faith of the Yasna or the Vendīdad.[^[175]] As historical relics these works will always be of value, but as the oracles of faith they lack the vitality of principle necessary for the building of human character.

CHAPTER VI.
THE TEACHINGS OF THE ZEND-AVESTA.

THE GĀTHAS—THE WAIL OF THE KINE—THE LAST GĀTHA—THE MARRIAGE SONG—THE YASNA—COMMENTARY ON THE FORMULAS—THE YASNA HAPTANG-HĀITI—THE SROSH YAŚT—THE YASNA CONCLUDING.

The teachings of the Zend-Avesta have been partially treated in the chapter devoted to Persian mythology, but other features of the work seem to demand attention here. Briefly presented, the present world is two-fold, being the work of two hostile beings—Ahūra-Mazda, the good principle, and Angra Mainyu, or Ahriman, the evil principle. All that is good in the present state of things comes from the former, and all that is evil from the latter. The history of the world is the history of the conflict between these two powers, as Angra Mainyu invaded the world of Ahūra Mazda, and marred its beauty and truth. Man is active in the conflict, his duty being revealed to him in the law which was given by Ahūra Mazda to Zarathuśtra.

Although of later date, it is evident that the religion of the Pārsīs is derived from the same source as that of the Hindūs—derived from the faith of the Āryan forefathers of the Hindūs and the Īrānians. We therefore find two strata in the mythology which is under discussion; the one comprises all the gods and myths which were already in existence during the Indo-Īrānian period, and the other comprises the gods and myths which were only developed after the separation of the two mythologies.

There are two principal points in the Indo-Īrānian religion. First, that there is a law in nature; and second, that there is also war in nature. There is law in nature, because day returns with its golden splendor and night with its eloquent mystery; seed-time and harvest, the planting and the fruiting, succeed each other with unfailing regularity. There is war in nature, because it contains powers that work for evil, as well as those that work for good. Hence the unceasing struggle goes on, and it is never more apparent to the human eye than in a storm, where a fiend seems to bear away the waters which the earth so sadly needs, and fights with the god who at last brings them to the thirsting plants. Amidst all the various myths of the Indo-Īrānian system there is a monotheism and an unconscious dualism. But both of these disappeared in the further development of Hindū mythology. Mazdeism, however, lost neither of these two ideas; it clung strongly to them both.

Hence we have the Ahūra-Mazda, “the lord of high knowledge,” “the all-embracing sky.” He was the Varuṇa of the Hindūs, but this name was lost in Īrān, or remained only as the name of a mythical region—the Varena, which was the scene of a mythical fight between a storm-fiend and a storm-god.

Ahūra, the heaven-god, is white, and his body is the fairest and greatest of bodies. He is wedded to the rivers, and the sun is his eye, while the lightnings are his children, and he wears the heavens as a star-spangled garment.

In the time of Herodotus, the Persians, while invoking Ahūra-Mazda as the creator of heaven and earth, still called the whole vault of the sky the supreme god. This deity slowly brought everything under his sway, and the other gods finally became, not only his subjects, but also his creatures.

While the single elements of Mazdeism do not differ essentially from those of the Vedic and the Indo-European mythology generally, still the grouping of these elements in a new order presents them in a new form. Thus we find that in Mazdeism everything is referred either to Ahūra Mazda or to Angra Mainyu as its source, and hence the world is divided into two parts, in each of which a strong unity prevails, representing the dualism of this system. Ahūra is all light, truth, goodness and knowledge, while Angra Mainyu, or Ahriman, is all darkness, falsehood, wickedness and ignorance.

Man, according to his deeds, belongs to Ormazd or to Ahriman. He belongs to Ormazd if he sacrifices to him, and helps him by good thoughts, words and deeds; if he enlarges his dominion and makes the realm of Ahriman smaller by destroying his creatures; while the man who is a friend of Ahriman and represents evil thoughts and evil deeds, who slays the creatures of Ormazd, is classed as a demon. Even animals are classified as belonging to one spirit or the other, in accordance with the idea that they had been incarnations of either the god or the fiend.

Killing the Ahriman creatures is killing Ahriman himself, and many sins can thus be atoned for, while killing Ormazdean animals is an abomination like the killing of the god. The struggle between the good and evil, however, is limited, for the world is not to last forever, and Ahriman will be defeated at last.

There had been an old myth that the world would end in a fearful winter like that of the Eddic Fimbul, which would be succeeded by an eternal spring, but as a storm is the ordinary symbol of strife, the view which finally obtained in their mythology, is the prediction that the world will finally end in a battle of the elements.

The Pārsīs came at last to a pure monotheism, and to a certain extent this change may have been influenced by the creed of the Moslem that “there is one God, and Mohammed is his prophet,” but the difference in sentiment cannot be ascribed to any one generation, for it is really deeper and wider than the movement which, in earlier times, brought the Magi from an imperfect form of dualism to one which was much more decided in its presentations.[^[176]]

THE GĀTHAS.

The five Gāthas which have been attributed to Zarathuśtra are doubtless the earliest portions of the Zend-Avesta. They comprise seventeen sections of poetical matter, equal in extent to twenty-five or thirty hymns of the Ṛig-veda. They are composed in the ancient Āryan metre, and ascribe supreme power to Ahūra Mazda, who is opposed constantly by the spirit of evil.

In these early songs, the kine, as the representative of the people, laments the burden which is laid upon Īrānian life. The effort to win their bread by honest labor is opposed, although not entirely frustrated, by the Deva-worshipping tribes, who still struggle with the Zarathuśtrians for the control of the territory. The kine, therefore, lifts her wail to Ahūra, who responds by the appointment of Zarathuśtra as the being who is entrusted with her redemption; and he, accepting his commission, begins his labors. We then have a series of lamentations and praises addressed by Zarathuśtra and his immediate associates to Ahūra; also exhortations which are addressed to the people.

These hymns were composed amidst an agricultural people, many of whom were also herdsmen. Their land and their cattle being their most valuable property, the raids of the Deva-worshippers were looked upon as most terrible visitations. In the course of these invasions, we have also intimations of an organized effort on the part of the foe to overwhelm the Zarathuśtrians, and it appears that at times they very nearly accomplished their object, sanguinary conflicts being repeatedly alluded to. It may be inferred by the prevalence of the thankful tone in the Gāthas, that the Zarathuśtrians were not conquered during the Gāthic period, although at the time that the last hymns of the series were written, the struggle was by no means over.

There is an historical tone in the Gāthas, which should be carefully observed. Their doctrines and exhortations concern an actual religious movement, which was taking place at the time of their composition, and that movement was apparently pure and earnest. Their tone is always serious, and nearly all the myths are dropped; even the old Āryan gods, who reappear in the later Avesta, being ignored with a single exception.

In the first Gātha, the soul of the kine, as representing the herds of the Īrānian people, raises her voice in lamentation. She asks why and for whom she was made, since afflictions compass her and her life is constantly threatened by the incursions of predatory tribes. She also beseeches the Bountiful Immortals to instruct her as to the benefits of agriculture, and confirm her protectors in the science, as the only remedy for her sufferings.

THE WAIL OF THE KINE.

“Unto you, O Ahūra and Asha, the soul of the kine cried aloud,

‘For whom did ye create me?

And for whom did ye fashion me?

On me comes the assault of wrath and of violent power;

The blow of desolation and thievish might.

None other pasture given have I than you;

Therefore do ye teach me good tillage

For the fields, mine only hope of welfare.’”

Ahūra speaks:

“Upon this the Creator of the kine asked of Righteousness,

‘How was thy guardian for the kine appointed by thee,

When having power over all her fate ye made her?

In what manner did ye secure for her, together with pasture

A cattle-chief who was both skilled and energetic?

Whom did ye select as her life’s master

Who might hurl back the fury of the wicked?’”

Asha answers:

To him the Divine Righteousness answered:

“Great was our perplexity;

A chieftain who was capable of smiting back their fury

And who was himself without hate

Was not to be obtained by us.”

Zarathuśtra intercedes:

“The Great Creator is himself most mindful

Of the uttered indications which have been fulfilled beforehand

In the deeds of demon gods.

The Ahūra is the discerning arbiter;

So shall it be to us as he shall will.

Therefore it is that we both,

My soul and the soul of the mother kine,

Are working our supplications for the two worlds

To Ahūra, and he will answer,

‘Not for the righteous—

Not for the thrifty tiller of the earth,

Shall there be destruction together with the wicked?’”

Ahūra speaks:

Upon this the Lord spake thus:

“Not in this manner is a spiritual master found;

Therefore thee have I named

For such a head to the tiller of the ground.

... This man is found

Who alone has hearkened to our enunciations:

Zarathuśtra Spitama

I will give him the good abode

And authoritative place.”

Voice of the Kine:

Upon this the soul of the kine lamented:

“Woe is upon me

Since I have obtained for myself in my wounding

A lord who is powerless to effect his wish,

The voice of a feeble and pusillanimous man;

Whereas I desire one who is lord over his will,

And able as one of royal state,—

Who is able to accomplish what he desires to effect.”

Zarathuśtra:

“Do ye, O Ahūra, and thou, O Righteousness,

Grant gladness unto these:

Bestow upon them the peaceful amenities of home

And quiet happiness....

Do ye now therefore assign unto us your aid in abundance

For our great cause.

May we be partakers of the bountiful grace of these your equals,

Your counsellors and servants.”

Zarathuśtra, having entered upon the duties of his office, composes a liturgy for the benefit of his colleagues, which is given in the second hymn. The doctrine of dualism is next taught. The progress and struggles of the cause are presented. There is a song of thankfulness offered in gratitude for improved fortunes.

In the third Gātha, salvation is announced as universal for believers, and also contains the reflections of Zarathuśtra upon the sublimity and bountifulness of Ahūra. There are also personal hopes and appeals.

THE LAST GĀTHA.

While the matter of this hymn is homogeneous with that of the other Gāthas, it bears some evidence of having been composed in the latter portion of Zarathuśtra’s life. The subject is a marriage song of a political and religious character. The freshness and vigor of the style may indicate Zarathuśtrian influence, if not authorship. The marriage festival of the prophet’s daughter must have been a semi-political occasion, and the author would naturally express himself in reference to the struggle which was still going on.

THE MARRIAGE SONG.

“That best prayer has been answered,

The prayer of Zarathuśtra Spitama

That Ahūra Mazda

Might grant him those boons

Which flow from the Good Order;

Even a life that is prospered for eternal duration;

And also those who deceived him;

May he also grant him,

As the good faith’s disciples in word and in deed.”

The master of the feast then speaks as follows:

“And him will they give thee,

Oh Pouroukista,

Young as thou art of the daughters of Zarathuśtra,

Him will they give thee

As a help in the true service Asha and Mazda,

As a chief and a guardian.

Counsel well then together,

And act in just action.”

The bride answers:

“I will love him,

Since from my father he gained me.

For the master and toilers,

And for the lord-kinsman,

He, the Good Mind’s bright blessing.

The pure to the pure ones.

And to me be the insight which I gain from his counsel.

Mazda grant it for good conscience forever.”

Priestly master of the feast:

“Monitions for the marrying,

I speak to you, maidens,

And heed ye my saying:

By these laws of the faith which I utter

Obtain ye the life of the good mind

On earth and in heaven.

And to you, bride and bridegroom,

Let each one the other in righteousness cherish,

Thus alone unto each shall the home life be happy.

Thus real are these things, ye men and ye women

From the lie-demon protecting

A guard o’er my faithful

And so I grant progress and goodness

And the hate of the lie with the hate of her bondsmen

I would expel from the body—

Where is then the righteous lord that will smite them from life

And beguile them of license?

Mazda! there is the power which will banish and conquer.”[^[177]]

THE YASNA.

The word Yasna means worship including sacrifice. This was the principal liturgy of the Zarathuśtrians, in which confession, invocation, prayer, exhortation and praise are all combined. The Gāthas are sung in the middle of it and in the Vendīdad Sadah; the Visparad is interpolated within it. Like other compositions of its kind, it is largely made up of the fragments of different ages and modes of composition. We have no reason to suppose that the Yasna existed in its present form in the earlier periods of Zarathuśtranism, but the fragments of which it is composed, may, some of them, reach back to that era, and even its present arrangement is comparatively early in the history of Mazdean literature. The following extracts have been chosen as representing the finest specimens of poetic fervor to be found in the Yasna:

COMMENCEMENT OF THE SACRIFICE.

“I will announce and I will complete my Yasna to Ahūra Mazda,

The radiant and glorious, the greatest and best,

The one whose body is the most perfect,

Who has fashioned us,

And who has nourished and protected us,

Who is the most bounteous spirit....

“I will announce and I will complete my Yasna to the Good Mind,

And to Righteousness the best,

To the Universal Weal and Immortality,

To the body of the Kine and to the Kine’s soul,

And to the fire of Ahūra Mazda,

Who, more than all the Bountiful Immortals

Has made the effort for our success....

“I will announce and I will complete my Yasna to Mithra of the wide pastures,

Of the thousand ears, and of the myriad eyes

The Izad of the spoken name.[^[178]]

“I celebrate and complete my Yasna to the Fravishas[^[179]] of the saints,

And to those women who have many sons,

And to a prosperous home life

Which continues without reverse throughout the year,

And to that might which strikes victoriously....

“I announce and complete my Yasna to the Māhya,

The monthly festivals, lords of the ritual order,

To the new and the later moon, and to the full moon which scatters night....

“I announce and complete my Yasna to the yearly feasts....

Yea, I celebrate and complete my Yasna

To the seasons, lords of the ritual order....

“I announce and complete my Yasna

To all those who are the thirty and three,[^[180]]

Lords of the ritual order....

“To Ahūra and to Mithra, to the star Tiśtrya,

The resplendent and glorious,

To the moon and the resplendent sun,

Him of the rapid steeds, the eye of Ahūra Mazda.”

The sacrifice is long continued, and the gods are again approached with interminable ritual, and the naming of the objects of propitiation; the offerings are then made to each of the gods, the fire of earth receiving especial attention, as well as the stars of heaven and all the Bountiful Immortals.

At each presentation of the offering by the priest, the object of propitiation is named. There are invocations and dedications almost without number, Zarathuśtra being also mentioned as an object of worship.

“And we worship Zarathuśtra Spitama in our sacrifice,

The holy lord of the ritual order,

And we worship every Izad as we worship him;

And we worship also the Fravisha of Zarathuśtra Spitama, the saint.

And we worship the utterances of Zarathuśtra and his religion,

His faith and his love.

And we worship the former religions of the world devoted to Righteousness,

Which were instituted at the creation,

The holy religion of Ahūra Mazda,

The resplendent and glorious....

And we worship the milk offering and the libation,

The two which cause the waters to flow forth,

And we worship all waters and all plants,

And all good men and all good women.”[^[181]]

COMMENTARY ON THE FORMULAS.

This commentary is written in the Zend language, and is valuable as a specimen of early exegesis. Zarathuśtra is here represented as holding a conversation with Ahūra Mazda, and in reply to his questions Ahūra says: “Whoever in this world of mine shall mentally recall a portion of the Ahuna-vairya (formulas), and having thus recalled it, shall undertone it, and then utter it aloud; whoever shall worship thus, then even with threefold safety and speed I will bring his soul over the bridge of Kinvaḍ (Chinvat). I who am Ahūra Mazda will help him to pass over it to heaven, the best life, and to the lights of heaven.”

“And whoever, O Zarathuśtra, while undertoning the parts of the Ahuna-vairya, takes aught therefrom, I who am Ahūra Mazda will draw his soul off from the better world; yea, so far will I withdraw it as the earth is large and wide.

“And this word is the most emphatic of the words which have ever been pronounced, or which are now spoken, or which shall be spoken in the future, for this utterance is of such a nature that if all the living world should learn it, and learning, hold fast by it, they would be redeemed from their mortality.”[^[182]]

THE YASNA HAPTANG-HĀITA.

This Yasna of the “Seven Chapters” appears to rank next in antiquity to the Gāthas, but the tone is considerably changed, although the dialect remains the same. We have here a stronger personification of the Bountiful Immortals, while fire is still worshipped; also the earth and grass. We find here praise to Ahūra and the Immortals, to fire, to the creation, to the earth and to sacred waters. The sacrifice to the “Soul of the Kine” is also given, and the sacrifices to both earth and heaven, to the stormy wind that Mazda made, also to the peaks of the beautiful mountain.

“And we worship the Good Mind and the spirits of the saints. And we sacrifice to the fish of fifty-five fins, and to the Unicorn which stands in Vourūkasha, and to the sea where he stands, and to the Haoma, golden flowered, growing on the heights. We sacrifice to Haoma, that driveth death afar, and to the flood streams of the waters, and to the great flight of the birds, and to the approach of the Fire-priests as they approach us from afar,[^[183]] and seek to gain the provinces and spread the ritual law.”[^[184]]

The Yasna also includes several Yaśts, or hymns of praise, some of which contain poetry as well as praise. As Sraosha is the only divinity of the later groups mentioned in the first four Gāthas, the Yaśt which is dedicated to him appears to rank in antiquity next to those fragments which are found in the Gāthic dialect. The name of Sraosha appears still to retain its meaning as the abstract quality of obedience although it is personified.

THE SRAŌSHA YAŚT.

“Propitiation be to Sraosha, Obedience the blessed, the Mighty,

The incarnate mind of reason,

Whose body is the Mithra,—

Him of the daring spear devoted to the Lord

For his worship, homage, propitiation and praise.

“We worship Sraosha, the blessed, the stately,

Him who smites with the blow of victory,

For his splendor and his glory,

For his might and the blow which smites with victory.

“I will worship him with the Yasna of the Izads.

And we worship all the words of Zarathuśtra

And all the deeds well done for him...

“We worship Sraosha, the blessed,

Whom four racers draw in harness,

White and shining, beautiful and powerful

Quick to learn and fleet,

Obeying before speech,

Heeding orders from the mind,

With their hoofs of horn, gold-covered,

Fleeter than our horses, swifter than the winds;

More rapid than the rain-drops as they fall,

Yea, fleeter than the clouds or well-winged birds,

Or the well-shot arrow as it flies

Which overtake not these swift ones

As they fly after them pursuing,

But which are never overtaken when they flee,

Which plunge away from all the weapons

And draw Sraosha with them,

The good Sraosha and the blessed.

“We worship Obedience, the blessed,

Who, though so lofty and so high, yea, so stately,

Yet stoops to Mazda’s creatures, even to the girdle....

For his splendor and his glory,

For his might which smites to victory.

I will worship him with the Yasna of the Izads,

And may he come to aid us,

He who smites with victory.

Obedience the blessed.”[^[185]]

THE YASNA CONCLUDING.

This Yasna, having been composed long after the supposed time of Zarathuśtra, can hardly be genuine in its present shape. It may, however, be an elaboration of an earlier document.

“Frashaośtra the holy, asked the saintly Zarathuśtra, ‘What is, in very truth, the memorized recital of the rites? What is the completed delivery of the Gāthas?’”

“Zarathuśtra said, ‘We worship Ahūra Mazda with our sacrifice as the holy lord of the ritual order, and we sacrifice to Zarathuśtra likewise as the holy lord of the ritual order, and we sacrifice to the Fravisha of Zarathuśtra, the saint.

‘And we sacrifice to the Bountiful Immortals, the guardians of the saints, and we sacrifice to all the good, heroic and bounteous Fravishas of the saints.... And we worship all the five Gāthas, the holy ones and the entire Yasna, and the sounding of its chants.

‘And we sacrifice to all the springs of water and to the water streams as well, and to growing plants and forest trees, and to the entire land and heaven, and to all the stars, and to the moon and sun, even to all the lights without beginning....

‘We sacrifice to the active man and to the man of good intent, for the hindrance of darkness, of wasting of the strength and life, and to health and healing.

‘We sacrifice to the Yasna’s ending words, and to them which end the Gāthas, and we sacrifice to the bounteous hymns themselves, which rule in the ritual course, the holy ones....

‘And we sacrifice to the souls of the dead which are the Fravishas of the saints, and we sacrifice to that lofty Lord who is Ahūra Mazda himself.’”

CHAPTER VII.
TEACHINGS OF THE ZEND-AVESTA, CONCLUDED.

THE VENDĪDAD—FARGARD II—THE VARA OF YIMA—THE LAWS OF PURIFICATION—DISPOSITION OF THE DEAD—PUNISHMENTS—THE PLACE OF REWARD—THE VISPARAD—TEACHING OF THE MODERN PĀRSĪS.

This portion of the Zend-Avesta is also a collection of fragments, although the Pārsī tradition claims that it has been preserved entire. The Vendīdad has often been called the book of the laws of the Pārsīs, but the greater portion of the rules here given pertain to the laws of purification. The first two chapters deal largely with mythical matter, and are remnants of an old epic and cosmogonic literature—the first dealing with the creation of Ahūra and the marring of his work by the evil principle, and the second treating of Yima as the founder of civilization. Three chapters of a mythical nature about the origin of medicine are placed at the end of the book, and the nineteenth Fargard or section treats of the revelation of the law by Ahūra to Zarathuśtra. The other seventeen chapters deal largely with observances and ceremonies, although mythical fragments are occasionally met with, which have more or less connection with the text, many of them, perhaps, being interpolations of a later date. About eight chapters[^[186]] are devoted to the impurity of the dead and the method of dispelling it; this subject is also treated in other Fargards, while two long sections are devoted to the care of the dog, the food which is due him and the penalties for offenses against him.[^[187]] The apparent lack of order is, perhaps, largely due to the form of expression which was adopted by the first composers of the Vendīdād. The law is revealed by Ahūra in a series of answers, which are given in reply to the questions of Zarathuśtra, and as these queries are not of a general character, but refer to details, the matter is presented in fragments, each of which (consisting of a question with its answer) appears as an independent passage.

FARGARD II.

This is the most poetical chapter in the work, and is devoted to Yima. Ahūra here proposes that Yima, the son of Vīvanghat, shall receive the law from him and carry it to men. Yima, however, refuses to do so, whereupon Ahūra gives him a commission, bidding him to keep his creatures and make them prosper. Yima, therefore, makes the creatures of Ahūra to thrive and increase, keeps death and disease away from them, and three times enlarges the earth, which had become too small for its inhabitants. On the approach of a dreadful winter, which was to destroy every living thing, Yima, being advised by Ahūra, built a Vara to preserve the seed of all animal and vegetable life,[life,] and there the blessed still live happily under his rule. The world, after lasting a long year of twelve millenniums, was to end in a dire winter, to be followed by an everlasting spring, when men, being sent back to earth from the heavens, should enjoy upon the earth the same happiness which they had found after death in the realms of Yima. But when a more definite form was taken by the Mazdean cosmology the world was made to end by fire, and therefore the Vara of Yima, instead of remaining the paradise from which the inhabitants of earth return, came to be a comparatively modern representative of Noah’s Ark. In the Vedas, Yama is the first man, the first priest and “the first of all who died”; he brought worship here below, as well as life, and “first he stretched out the thread of sacrifice.”

Yima had at first the same right as his Hindū prototype to the title of a founder of religion, but he lost it, as in the course of the development of Mazdeism, Zarathuśtra became the law-giver. Zarathuśtra asked of Ahūra Mazda:

“Who was the first mortal before myself, Zarathuśtra,

With whom thou, Ahūra Mazda, did’st converse?

To whom did’st thou teach the law of Ahūra?”

Ahūra answered:

“The fair Yima, the great shepherd,

O holy Zarathuśtra!

He was the first mortal before thee

With whom I, Ahūra Mazda, did converse—

Whom I taught the law of Ahūra—

The law of Zarathuśtra.

“Unto him, O Zarathuśtra,

I, Ahūra Mazda, spake, saying:

‘Fair Yima, son of Vīvanghat,

Be thou the bearer of my law,’

But the fair Yima replied,

‘I was not born, I was not taught

To be the preacher and the bearer of thy law.’

Then I, Ahūra Mazda, said thus unto him:

‘Since thou wantest not to be my preacher

And the bearer of my law,

Then make thou my worlds to thrive—

Make my worlds increase;

Undertake thou to nourish, to rule

And to watch over my world.’

And the fair Yima replied unto me:

‘Yes, I will make thy worlds thrive—

I will make thy worlds increase—

Yes, I will nourish and rule

And watch over thy world.’

Then I, Ahūra Mazda,

Brought the implements unto him,

A golden ring and a poniard

Inlaid with gold,[^[188]]

Behold here Yima bears the royal sway.”

Thus, under the sway of Yima, three hundred winters passed away,

And the earth was replenished with flocks and herds,

With men, and dogs and birds, and with red blazing fires,

‘Till there was no more room for flocks and herds and men.

Then Yima stepped forward toward the luminous space

To meet the sun, and he pressed the earth with the golden ring

And bored it with the poniard, saying, thus:

“O Spenta Ārmaiti,[^[189]] kindly open asunder, and stretch thyself afar

To bear flocks and herds and men.”

And Yima made the earth grow larger by one-third than it was before, and there came flocks and herds and men, at his will, as many as he wished.

THE VARA OF YIMA.

Ahūra Mazda then called a council of the gods, and here he spake to Yima saying, “Upon the material earth the fatal winters are going to fall that shall make the snow-flakes thick and deep on the peaks of the highest mountains, and all the beasts shall perish that live in the wilderness, and those that live on the mountains, and those that live in the bosom of the vale. Therefore make thee a Vara, long as a riding-ground on every side of the square, to be an abode for men and a fold for flocks. There thou shalt make the waters flow, there thou shalt settle birds by the evergreen banks that bear the never-failing food. There shalt thou establish dwelling places and bring the greatest, the best and the finest of the earth, both men and women; thou shalt bring the animals, and the seeds of the trees, two of every kind to be kept there, so long as men shall stay in the Vara.”

And Yima made a Vara, and brought into it all the varieties of cattle and of plants, and the men in the Vara which Yima made, live the happiest life,[^[190]] and he who brought the law of Ahūra into the Vara was the bird Karśipta. And Yima sealed up the Vara with the golden ring, and he made a door and a window which was self-shining within. And Ahūra Mazda said “There the stars, the moon and the sun, only once a year seem to rise and set, and the year seems only a day.”

THE LAWS OF PURIFICATION.

The larger portion of the Vendīdad is devoted to a description, with numberless repetitions, of the Mazdean laws of purification and the long ceremonies pertaining to them. Impurity or uncleanness may be described as the condition of a person or thing that is possessed of a demon, and the process of purification is for the purpose of expelling the evil presence. Death is the triumph of the demon, and therefore it is the principal cause of uncleanness; when a man dies, as soon as the soul has left the body, the Drūj Nasu, or Corpse-Drūj, comes from the regions of hell, and falls upon the body, and whoever thereafter touches the corpse is not only unclean himself, but every one whom he touches is also unclean.

The Drūj is expelled from the dead by the Sag-dīd, or “the look of the dog;” “a four-eyed dog,” or “a white one with yellow ears,” must be brought near the body, and made to look upon the dead, and as soon as he has done so the Drūj hastens back to hell.[^[191]] The Drūj is expelled from the living by a process which is too revolting for description. The ceremonies are accompanied by the constant repetition of spells like the following: “Perish, O fiendish Drūj! Perish, O brood of the fiend! Rush away, O Drūj! Perish away to the regions of the north, never more to give unto death the living world.”

The feeling out of which these ceremonies grew was not original with Mazdeism; the Hindū also considered himself in danger while burning the corpse, and he cried aloud, “Away, go away, O Death! injure not our sons and our men.”[^[192]]

The Pārsīs, not being able to find a four-eyed dog, interpreted the law to mean a dog with two spots above the eyes, while in practice they are still less particular, and the Sag-dīd may be performed by a house-dog, or by a dog four months old. As birds of prey are fiend-smiters as well as the dog, the devotee may claim their services when there is no dog at hand. The four-eyed dog, which the ceremony originally called for, is doubtless a reproduction of “the four-eyed dogs of the tawny breed of Saramā,” belonging to Yama,[^[193]] which guard the realms of death in Hindū mythology. The identity of the four-eyed dog of the Pārsīs with the dogs of Yama is confirmed by the tradition that the yellow-eared dog watches at the head of the Chinvat bridge, and, as the souls of the faithful pass over, he barks to drive away the fiend who would drag them down to hell. Wherever a corpse is carried, death walks beside it all the way, from the house to the last resting-place, and the fatal presence constantly threatens the living who are near the path-way.

DISPOSITION OF THE DEAD.

As the centre of contagion is in the corpse, it must be disposed of in such a way that death may not be spread abroad. The old Indo-European customs have in this respect been completely changed by Mazdeism. The corpse was formerly either burned or buried; both of these customs, however, are held to be sacreligious in the Avesta. The elements, fire, earth, and water, are holy, and even during the Indo-Īrānian period they were already so considered, being represented in the Vedas as objects of worship. But this did not prevent the Hindūs from burning their dead, and the dead man was really considered as a traveler to the other world, while the kindly fire was supposed to carry him on flashing pinions to his heavenly abode. The funeral fire, like that of the sacrifice, was the god that goes from earth to heaven, the mediator most friendly to man.

In Persia, however, it remained more distant from him and represented the purest offspring of the good spirit; therefore no uncleanness could be allowed to enter it. Its only function appears to be the repelling of the fiends by its blaze. In every place where the Pārsīs are settled, an everlasting fire is still kept, which is always fed by perfumes and costly woods, and wherever its flames are carried by the wind, it kills thousand of fiends. No degradation must be inflicted upon this sacred element, even blowing it with the human breath is a crime, because the outgoing breath is unclean; burning the dead is therefore the most criminal act; in the time of Strabo[^[194]] it was a capital crime, and the Avesta places it in the list of sins for which there is no atonement.

Water was looked upon in the same light, and throwing dead matter into it was as unpardonable as to pollute the sacred flame with its presence. The Magi are said to have overthrown a king for having built bath-houses, and the Jews were forbidden to practice their ablutions; in some cases the sick were even forbidden to drink it, unless it was decided that death would be caused by longer abstinence. The earth was equally holy, for in her bosom there dwelt Spenta Ārmaiti, the goddess of the earth, and to defile her sacred dwelling by burying the dead was also a deed for which there was no atonement.

In earlier times the Persians practiced burial even after burning had been forbidden. Cambyses aroused the national indignation by cremating the body of Amasis, and years later the Persians were still burying their dead. Afterward, however, when the Mazdean law became dominant, the worship of the earth was included, although it was sometime before it was considered as sacred as fire and water. In later times the Persians builded Dakhmas, or “Towers of Silence” for the bodies of their dead; these towers were about twenty feet high, and they enclosed an annular stone pavement on which the bodies were placed. These towers were usually built on the summit of a mountain far from the haunts of men. A barren cliff was chosen, free from trees or water, and the tower was even separated from the earth herself, for it was isolated by a layer of stones and bricks, while it was claimed that a golden thread ran between the tower and the earth. Here, afar from the world of men, the dead were left to lie “beholding the sun.” The Avesta and commentary are especially emphatic upon this point, for “it is as if the dead man’s life were thus prolonged, since he can still behold the sun.”

PUNISHMENTS.

The penalties for the violation of the Persian law were very severe, and human life was considered of very little value, capital punishment being inflicted even for the killing of a dog. Their laws were far more barbarous than those of England in Sir William Blackstone’s time, when one hundred and sixty offenses[^[195]] were declared by act of Parliament to be worthy of instant death;[^[196]] and death was the most humane of the Persian punishments, when it was promptly inflicted, for their methods were too terrible for description. Two hundred stripes were awarded if one tilled land in which a corpse had been buried within a year, or if the mother of a very young child drank water. Four hundred stripes were the penalty if one covered with a cloth a dead man’s feet, and eight hundred if he covered the whole body. The penalty for killing a puppy was five hundred stripes, six hundred for killing a stray dog, eight hundred for a shepherd’s dog, and ten thousand stripes for killing a water-dog.[^[197]]

In the old Āryan legislation there were many crimes which were considered more criminal than murder, and Persians who defiled the earth were not more severely punished than were the Greeks who defiled the ground of Delos, nor would the Athenians, who put Atarbes to death, have wondered at the awful punishment inflicted for the killing of the Persian water-dog. There are but few laws in the Vendīdad, however absurd, that may not find a counterpart in the legislation of the Greeks or Latins.

Every crime, according to the Persian law, makes the guilty man[^[198]] liable to two penalties, one here on earth and another in the next world, but in ancient Persia, as in modern legislation, there was a money value attached to many crimes, and the rich criminal escaped by paying his fine, so far as this present world was concerned. In the next, however, his money is of no value to him; when he comes to the head of Chinvat bridge, his conscience becomes a maiden, either of divine beauty, or of fiendish deformity, according to his merits. The bridge itself, which reaches over the awful chasm of hell to the heavenly shore on the other side, widens, if he be a good man, to the width of nine javelins; but for the souls of the wicked it narrows to a thread and they fall down into hell.

THE PLACE OF REWARD.

“O, Maker of the material world! where are the rewards given? where does the rewarding take place?”

Ahūra Mazda answered: “When the man is dead, when his time is over, then the hellish evil-doing Daevas assail him; and when the third night is gone—when the dawn appears and brightens up, and makes Mithra, the god with the beautiful weapons, reach the all-happy mountains, and the sun is rising. Then the fiend carries off in bonds[^[199]] the souls of the wicked, who live in sin. The soul enters the way made by Time, and open both to the wicked and the righteous. At the head of the Chinvat bridge, the holy bridge made by Mazda, they ask for the reward for the goods which they have given away here below. Then comes the well-shapen, strong and noble maiden, with the dogs (that keep the Chinvat bridge) at her side—she is graceful and of high understanding.

“She[“She] makes the soul of the righteous one to go up above the Hara-berezaita; above the Chinvat bridge she places it in the presence of the heavenly gods themselves; Vohu-manō from his golden seat exclaims, ‘How hast thou come to us, thou holy one, from that decaying world into this undecaying one? Gladly pass the souls of the righteous to the golden seat of Ahūra Mazda—to the abode of all the other holy beings.”[^[200]]

THE VISPARAD.

The word Visparad means “all the chiefs,” referring to “the lords of the ritual,” therefore the various chapters are merely used in the course of the sacrifice. The following extracts will give the reader a definite idea concerning the literary merit of this portion of the Zend-Avesta:

In this Zaothra, with this Baresman,

I desire to approach the lords of the ritual

Which are spiritual with my praise;

And I desire to approach the earthly lords as well.

And I desire to approach the lords of the water with my praise

And the lords of the land;

And I desire to approach with my praise,

Those chiefs which strike the wing,

And those that wander wild at large,

And those of the cloven hoof, who are chiefs of the ritual.

And in this Zaothra with this Baresman,

I desire to approach thee, Zarathuśtra Spitama,...

I desire to approach the man who recites the ritual rites

Who is maintaining thus the thought, well thought,

And the word well spoken, and the deed well done.

I desire to approach the seasons with my praise

The holy lords of the ritual order,....

And I desire to approach those mountains with my praise,

* * * * * * * * * *

Which shine with holiness, abundantly glorious,

And Mithra of the wide pastures,

And I desire to approach the question,

Asked of Ahūra, and the lore of the lord—

And the farm-house of the man possessed of pastures,

And the pasture produced for the kine of blessed gift,

And the holy cattle-breeding man.

And we worship the fire here, Ahūra Mazda’s son,

And the Izads, having the seed of fire in them;

And we worship the Fravishas of the saints

And we worship Sraosha who smites to victory

And the holy man, and the entire creation of the clean.

* * * * * * * * * *

And we sacrifice to the fields and the waters...

We take up our homage to the good waters,

And to the fertile fruit-trees,

And the Fravishas of the saints, and to the kine.

And we sacrifice to that listening, that hears our prayers,

And to that mercy, and to the hearing of our homage,

And to that mercy shown in response to our praise,

And we sacrifice to that good praise which is without hypocrisy.

And which has no malice as its end.

* * * * * * * * * *

With this chant fully chanted,

And which is for the Bountiful Immortals

And by means of these ceremonial actions,

We desire to utter our supplications for the kine.

It is that chant which the saint has recognized

As good and fruitful of blessed gifts,

And which the sinner does not know.

May we never reach that misfortune

That the sinner may outstrip us in our chanting.

Nor in the matter of the plan thought out,

Or in words delivered, or ceremonies done,

Nor yet in any offering whatever, when he approaches us for harm.[^[201]]

TEACHING OF THE MODERN PĀRSĪS.

This résumé of the ancient books will be closed by a brief explanation of their faith in Dualism, as given by some learned Indian Pārsīs of Bombay to Sir M. Monier-Williams during his stay in India. In speaking of the Dualism of Zoroaster, as understood in modern times, Prof. Williams says:

“The explanation given to me was that Zoroaster, although a believer in one Supreme Being, and a teacher of Monotheism, set himself to account for the existence of evil, which could not have its source in an all-wise Creator.

He therefore taught that two opposite—but not opposing, forces, which he calls ‘twins,’ were inherent in the nature of the Supreme Being, called by him Ahūra Mazda (or in Persian Ormazd), and emanated from that Being, just as in Hindūism, Vishṇu and Śiva emanate from the Supreme Brahmā. These two forces were set in motion by Ahūra Mazda, as his appointed mode of maintaining the continuity of the Universe.

The one was constructive, the other destructive.

One created and composed. The other disintegrated and decomposed, but only to co-operate with the creative principle by providing fresh material for the work of re-composition.

Hence there could be no new life without death, no existence without non-existence.

Hence, also, according to Zoroaster, there was originally no really antagonistic force of evil opposed to good.

The creative energy was called Ahūra Mazda’s beneficent spirit (Spento-Mainyus), and the destructive force was called his maleficent spirit (Angro-Mainyus, afterwards corrupted into Ahriman), but only because the idea of evil is connected with dissolution.

The two spirits were merely antagonistic in name.

They were in reality co-operative and mutually helpful.

They were essential to the alternating processes of construction and dissolution, through which the cosmical being was perpetuated.

The only real antagonism was that alternately brought about by the free agent, man, who could hasten the work of destruction, or retard the work of construction by his own acts.

It is therefore held, that the so-called dualistic doctrines of Zoroaster were compatible with the absolute unity of the one God (symbolized especially by fire).

Ultimately, however, Zoroastrianism crystallized into a hard and uncompromising dualism. That is to say, in process of time, Spento-Mainyus became merely another name for Ahūra Mazda, as the eternal principle of good, while Angro-Mainyus or Ahriman became altogether dissociated from Ahūra Mazda, and converted into an eternal principle of evil.

These two principles are believed to be the sources of two opposite creations which were incessantly at war.

On the one side is a celestial hierarchy, at the head of which is Ormazd; on the other side, a demoniacal, at the head of which is Ahriman. They are opposed to each other as light to darkness—as falsehood to truth.

The whole energy of a religious Indian Pārsī is concentrated on the endeavor to make himself—so to speak—demon-proof, and this can only be accomplished by absolute purity (in thought, word and deed), symbolized by whiteness. He is ever on his guard against bodily defilement, and never goes out to his daily occupation, without first putting on a sacred white shirt and a sacred white girdle. Even the most highly educated and Anglicized Pārsīs are most rigorous observers of this custom, though it is probable that their real creed has little in common with the old and superstitious belief in demons and evil spirits, but rather consists in a kind of cold and monotheistic pantheism.

How far Zoroastrian dualism had affected the religion of the Babylonians at the time of the Jewish captivity is doubtful, but that the Hebrew prophets of those days had to contend with dualistic ideas seems probable from these words: ‘I am the Lord, and there is none else. I form the light and create darkness; I make peace and create evil. I the Lord do all these things.’[^[202]] The New Testament, on the other hand, might be thought by a superficial reader to lend some support to dualistic doctrines.... I need scarcely point out, however, that the Bible account of the origin, nature, and destiny of Satan and his angels differs, toto cælo from the Zoroastrian description of Ahriman and his host. Nor need I add that the various monistic, pantheistic, and dualistic theories, briefly alluded to in this paper, are utterly at variance with the Christian doctrine of a Personal, Eternal and Infinite Being, existing and working outside man, and outside the material universe, which He has Himself created, and controlling both, and in the case of human beings, working not only outside man, but in and through him.”[^[203]]

DIVISION III.
The Time of the Mohammedan Conquest
and the Korān.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE KORĀN.

SUCCESSOR OF THE ZEND-AVESTA—AUTHOR OF THE KORĀN—FIRST REVELATIONS—THE HIGRAH—CONTINUED WARFARE—DEATH OF MOHAMMED—RECENSION OF THE TEXT—TEACHING OF THE KORĀN—HEAVEN—HELL—PREDESTINATION—POLYGAMY—LITERARY STYLE OF THE KORĀN.

The Korān or Qur’ān[^[204]] was the immediate successor of the Zend-Avesta upon Persian soil. When the star and crescent of the Arabian banners floated in triumph over the land of Īrān, and the altars of the Pārsīs were stricken down, when the people themselves were either driven from their native land or humiliated by their conquerors, then the new creed supplanted the old, and the war-cry of Islām became the watchword of the new faith.[^[205]] By methods peculiarly their own, the invaders set up the standard of their prophet, and his law became the law of the land.

The Arabian peninsula extends southward from Babylonia and Syria down to the Indian Ocean; its eastern coast is washed by the waves of the Persian Gulf, while the western boundary forms the shore of the Red Sea. The low lands on these shores lie at the feet of barren ranges of hills, which lead upward from the coast of the Red Sea to the highlands beyond them. This rugged frontier was the barrier from whence the desert tribes had effectually resisted the attacks of the nations who fought around them for the dominion of the Orient. Persia, Egypt and Rome had each unsuccessfully tried to penetrate this rocky fortress of Arabia and conquer its hardy defenders. Although the Arabs were mostly a nomadic race, whose wealth consisted largely of camels and horses, still their country contained cities and towns, and of these the most important were Mecca and Medīna, where the creed of Islām found its early home.

The religion of the Arabs was Sabænism, or the worship of the host of heaven, but in the time of Mohammed the comparatively simple star-worship had been greatly corrupted, and countless superstitious rites and practices had been introduced. The wandering Arabs had peopled the desert wastes with imaginary beings, and they fancied that every rock and cavern—every stream in the oasis—and every palm tree had its presiding genius.

The vast solitudes, with their terrible stillness—the simoon and the sand column—the breaking of a storm on a distant mountain, and the change of a dry ravine into a rushing torrent—these and other surroundings produced a strong effect upon the vivid imaginations of the children of the desert; and at last their pantheon contained three hundred and sixty-five idols.

When, therefore, the voice of Mohammed rang out upon the startled air, with the cry “There is one God, and Mohammed is his prophet,” it came as an omen of strife and bloodshed. Devotion to his tribe and to his gods being one of the strongest characteristics of the Arab, innovations were fought against, with all the fierceness of a vindictive race. A few followers gathered around the new prophet, and then began that series of conflicts, which, after years of fraternal strife, resulted in the triumphant rule of the new creed.

Christianity had long been partially established in Arabia, and some of the more important tribes had embraced it, but neither Christianity nor Judaism was generally accepted by these restless sons of the desert; the logic of the sword, however, is an argument that every man can appreciate, and Mohammed proved to be a successful military leader, giving the spoils of war to his followers in this world as well as promises of reward in the next. Knowing the value of unity of action among his followers, he never abandoned his designs upon Syria, and thus the turbulent tribes of the desert found ample scope for their warlike propensities, while a successful raid was always rewarded with rich booty. The triumphs of Islām were largely due to the love of exciting raids, and the desire for the spoils of conquest.

THE AUTHOR OF THE KORĀN.

However fiercely the contest may be waged around the origin of the Zend Avesta, there is no question among scholars in relation to the authorship of its successor. The individual portions of the Korān were not always written down immediately, as Mohammed often repeated them several times, sometimes forgetting the original statement, and sometimes changing it; he says, however: “Whatever verse we may annul or cause thee to forget, we will bring a better one than it or one like it.”[^[206]] It is seriously questioned among the Arabs whether he could read or write—one party claiming that he could and the other maintaining that he could not. On some occasions he certainly employed an amanuensis, and tradition claims that he would frequently direct in which sūrah the passage dictated should be placed. The arrangement of the Korān, however, was left to those who came after him.

The exact date of Mohammed’s birth is uncertain,[^[207]] but he began life in the shadow of poverty; all that he inherited from his father being five camels and a slave girl. The boy having lost his mother when he was only six years old was obliged, in his youth, to attend the sheep and goats of the Meccans in order to obtain a livelihood, and this position is still considered by the Bedawīn to be very degrading to any one except a woman. At the age of twenty-four he married a rich widow, who was fifteen years his senior, and it is said that this marriage was eminently a happy one. Three years after her death he married Āyesha, who was in the habit of saying that she never was jealous of any of his wives except the first. Six children were born of this marriage, two of whom were sons, but they died at an early age.

FIRST REVELATIONS.

Mohammed had reached his fortieth year when he claimed to receive the first revelations. Perhaps they might be considered the natural result of his mode of life, his habits of thought and especially of his physical condition. For many years he had suffered from nervous troubles, and tradition claims that the disease was epilepsy. Medical men of to-day would, perhaps, be more likely to diagnose the case as one of the forms of hysteria, which is often accompanied with hallucination, and also with a certain amount of deception, both voluntary and otherwise. Persons who were thus afflicted were supposed by the Arab to be possessed by an evil spirit, and the complaint is made in various places in the Korān that he was regarded in this light by his own people. His faithful wife Hadigah[, however, believed in him from the first. The earlier chapters of the Korān are full of enthusiasm, and they indicate that the author at that time believed in the reality of his revelations. His daughters soon became converts to his teachings, and they were followed by other relatives and friends. Although his first converts were mostly women and slaves, he afterward secured the adhesion of influential chiefs. But the new faith incurred the open hostility of the great majority of the Meccans, and the position of its converts became critical. While the more powerful were comparatively secure, the weaker ones, especially the slaves and women, were severely persecuted, and in some cases they suffered martyrdom.

The surroundings became so dangerous that Mohammed advised his little band of followers to seek safety in flight, and they emigrated to the Christian country of Abyssinia until the colony there numbered about one hundred souls. The Qurāiś were much annoyed by the escape of the Muslims, and sent a deputation to the king of Abyssinia demanding the return of the fugitives. The request was refused, and the failure of their attempt increased the hostility of the Qurāiś toward those who still remained in Mecca.

Being left almost alone, and exposed to constant danger, Mohammed conceived the idea of a compromise. The Qurāiś promised that if he would recognize the divinity of their three principal idols—Allāt, Al ’Huzzā and Manāt, they would acknowledge him to be the apostle of Allāh. He, therefore, recited one day before a public assembly, the following words from the Korān:[^[208]] “Have ye considered Allāt and Al ’Huzza and Manāt the other third?” He then added: “They are the two high-soaring cranes, and verily their intercession may be hoped for.” When, therefore, he came to the last words of the chapter, “Adore God, then, and worship,” the Meccans, true to their promise, prostrated themselves to the ground and worshipped as they were bidden.

A great political victory was thus gained, at the sacrifice, however, of the very principle that many of his followers had given their lives to maintain. He keenly felt his own humiliation in the matter, and on the morrow he hastened to recant from his new position, and condemned his own cowardice in a manly way, declaring what he undoubtedly believed, that the words had been put into his mouth by Satan. The recantation brought upon him redoubled hatred, and at last his whole family were placed under a ban to such an extent, that they could not join the Meccan caravans, and being unable to equip one of their own, they lost their means of livelihood. At last they took refuge, with what few provisions they could collect, in a ravine in the mountains, being able to sally forth for food only during the sacred months, when every man’s person and property were safe. After two years of privation their foes became tired of the restriction which they had placed upon the clan, and voluntarily allowed the prisoners to mingle with the rest of the world.

Mohammed, however, again incurred the contempt of the public by adding another wife to the three he already possessed. It was not the number of his household that created the Arabian scandal, but the fact that the new candidate for his favor had been divorced from her husband with this object in view—having been surrendered by him when he learned that Mohammed admired her.

The prophet claimed, however, that he had a revelation sanctioning his conduct in this matter.

THE HIGRAH.

Between the inhabitants of Yaṭ[h.]rib and those of Mecca there existed a strong feeling of animosity, and therefore the former tribe were inclined to favor the claims of the new prophet. After some careful negotiations, the leaders espoused his cause, and the persecution of the Qurāiś then became so violent that the followers of Mohammed at Mecca fled from the city. At last there were only three members of the new faith left in the community, and these were Abū Bekr, Alī and Mohammed himself.

His enemies now held a council of war, and decided that eleven men, each belonging to one of the most influential families in the city, should simultaneously attack and murder Mohammed, and by thus dividing the responsibility, avoid the deserved penalty, as the clan of the prophet would not be sufficiently powerful to avenge themselves upon so many families. Mohammed, however, received a warning of their design, and giving Alī his mantle, ordered him to pretend to be asleep on the couch usually occupied by himself, and thus divert the attention of his enemies. In the meantime Mohammed and Abū Bekr escaped from a back window in the house of the latter, and hid themselves in a cavern of a mountain more than a mile from Mecca, before their absence was discovered. A vigorous search was at once instituted, and for three days they lay concealed, while tradition claims that a spider wove a web across the mouth of the cave and the pursuers, thinking that no one had entered it, passed by in their search.

At length they ventured out once more, and succeeded in reaching Yaṭ[h.]rib in safety. Here they were soon joined by Alī, who had been allowed to leave after a few hours’ imprisonment. This was the celebrated Higrah or “flight,” from which the Mohammedan era is dated.[^[209]]

As soon as possible after he was established at Medīna, Mohammed built a mosque and proceeded to institute regular rites. He also appointed Bilāl, an Abyssinian slave, to call the believers to five daily prayers. He tried to conciliate the Jews of Medīna by adapting his religion as far as possible to their own, but when it became evident that they would never accept him as their prophet, he withdrew his concessions, and instead of turning his face toward Jerusalem while in prayer, he turned toward the Kaābah at Mecca.

As soon as he felt sufficiently strong, he began to agitate the idea of a crusade against the city of his birth, which had compelled him to fly from her borders, in order to save his life. After some petty raids upon their property he decided to attack a rich caravan which was returning from Syria laden with valuable merchandise. The returning Arabians were, many of them, influential men of Mecca, and they sent a swift messenger to the city for aid. Their call was responded to by nearly a thousand men, but although the contest was long and bitter, the Muslims won the victory; some of Mohammed’s bitterest foes were slain, many prisoners were captured and rich booty was taken. Of the captives six were executed by Mohammed’s order, some embraced his views and others were ransomed by their friends.

This victory[^[210]] gave Mohammed so much military prestige that he lost no time in following up the advantage thus gained. The Jews were the first people upon whom his vengeance was visited, and his first victim amongst them was a woman, who was put to death, and soon afterward a whole Jewish tribe was attacked, their property confiscated and the people sent into exile.

CONTINUED WARFARE.

Years of bloodshed followed the early military triumphs of Islāmism, and the contest between Mecca and Medīna was continued, with varied results, until a truce of ten years was agreed upon;[^[211]] any of the Meccans who chose to do so were allowed to join the ranks of Mohammed, by the conditions of the treaty, while upon the other hand those who preferred to leave him and espouse the cause of the Meccans were permitted to do so.

This was a political triumph for Mohammed, as it recognized his position as an independent chief, and he availed himself of the opportunity thus given him to reduce the neighboring tribes to submission. He also wrote letters to the king of Persia, to the Byzantine Emperor and the ruler of Abyssinia, ordering them to embrace his faith and submit to his rule. One favorable reply only was received, which came from a governor of Egypt, and he sent in addition to other presents two female slaves, one of whom was a Coptic girl, whom Mohammed added to his already numerous family of wives. The Muslim troops afterward experienced a terrible defeat on the Syrian frontier,[^[212]] but the prestige of the leader was soon re-established by new victories and the accession of various tribes. Two years after the conclusion of the treaty, a tribe which was under the protection of Mohammed was attacked by a tribe which was an ally of the Meccans. This was a violation of the compact, and Mohammed gladly availed himself of the opportunity thus offered him for the renewal of hostilities. Explanations and apologies were alike useless, and he prepared for an expedition against Mecca.

On becoming master of the capital of Arabia, his first act was to repair the Kaābah, or ancient shrine of Arabian worship, and then proclaiming a general amnesty, the Meccans readily embraced the creed of Islām, and flocked to his standard, hoping for the rewards which the prophet promised in Paradise, as well as the rich spoils from the conquered tribes around them. In his first victories he gave the Meccan chiefs more than their share of the booty, for the purpose of kindling their enthusiasm, but in so doing he incurred the displeasure of his old adherents, and he only appeased their wrath by promising never again to make his residence at Mecca or to desert their own city.

DEATH OF MOHAMMED.

The ninth year after the flight is called “the year of deputations,” as it marked the adhesion of numerous tribes to his cause; it was also the last year in which Mohammed was able to conduct military expeditions in person. The Arabs, with characteristic fickleness, were not always loyal to their chief, even during his lifetime. Tribe after tribe raised the standard of revolt, and required the close attention of the chieftain during the last years of his life.

He controlled them largely by keeping them occupied with new conquests, and animated by the constant hope of still greater booty, and this became the bond of unity, which, perhaps more than anything else, saved his newly established government from disruption.

At the time of his last pilgrimage to Mecca he stood upon an elevation and addressed the assembled thousands of his followers, admonishing them to stand firmly by the faith which he had taught them. Soon afterward his health failed, but he rallied a little and went to the mosque at Medīna, where a large congregation had gathered to hear the latest news from their leader. Mounting the lower steps of the pulpit, he said a few parting words to the people, and then gave some careful injunctions to the general whom he had entrusted with the command of an army to Syria; having finished his admonitions he went to the rooms of his favorite wife, Āyesha, and here he breathed his last.[^[213]] That his successors were able military leaders, is abundantly proven by the later story of Persia and other conquered lands.

RECENSION OF THE TEXT.

At the time of Mohammed’s death, no collected edition of the Korān was in existence. Many fragments were in possession of his followers, which had been written down at different times, and upon various materials, but by far the greater portion was preserved only in the memories of men, and liable at any moment to be carried away by death. Abū-Bekr, or Omar, had a collection made during his reign, and he employed a native of Medīna to collect and arrange the text from the best available material. This he did, collecting the texts which were written on palm-leaves, skins, blade-bones, and other material, besides recording what could be gathered from the memories of men. He then presented the Caliph with a copy, which was, perhaps very much like the one we now have. It was compiled without reference to any chronological order, and with very little regard to the logical connection of the various portions. The longer chapters were placed at the beginning, and the shorter ones at the end, without regard to the order in which they were written, and there were many odd verses inserted, apparently for no other reason, than because they were in harmony with the rhythm. There were very few vowel points, and these often make a great difference in the meaning of words. The wording of many passages which were copied from memory, was disputed, for the reason that the persons who remembered them did not agree in their statements.

In the present recension of the text there are comparatively few different versions recognized, but it is evident that great variations have existed from the time when the first copy was collected, as even then the various wordings were hotly contested.

Some twenty years later, the Caliph Othmān appointed a commission, consisting of Zāid, the original editor, and three men of Mohammed’s own tribe, to decide more definitely upon the proper text.

When this edition was completed, Othmān sent copies to all the principal cities in the empire, and his recension has remained the authorized text, having been adopted by all schools of Mohammedan theologians from the time of its completion[^[214]] to the present.

No attempt was made in this work to present any chronological arrangement, although the chapters have prefixed to them the name of the place where they were supposed to be revealed. Attempts have been made by both Arabic and European scholars to prepare an intelligible chronological arrangement, but it will be seen that the work is one of great difficulty. The most critical effort upon this subject, and the most successful, has been made by Nöldeke, whose arrangement is the best which Arabic tradition, combined with European criticism, can furnish.

TEACHING OF THE KORĀN.

The Korān is largely composed of fanciful stories, which have been woven around the characters and incidents of Biblical narration. There are however some cardinal points of doctrine which are freely taught, and the great central creed of Mohammedanism is that “There is no god but God, and Mohammed is his prophet.”

The confession of this Kelimah, or creed, is the first duty of every convert, and after this he is required to pray, fast, give alms, and make pilgrimages. The name of God in Arabic is Allah, being composed of the article al, “the,” and ilāh, “a god.” It is a very old Semitic word and is evidently connected with, or derived from the El and Elohīm of the Hebrews. According to Muslim theology, Allāh is eternal, and everlasting—comprehending all things, but comprehended of nothing. His attributes are expressed by ninety-nine epithets which are used in the Korān, and which in Arabic are single words, and generally participial forms, but in the translation they are sometimes rendered by verbs as “He creates” for “He is the creator.”

Besides a belief in God, the Korān requires a belief in angels; it is claimed that they are pure, without distinction of sex; are created of fire, and neither eat nor drink. Two angels are appointed for each human being, and one stands at his right hand, and the other at his left; the one recording his good deeds, and the other his transgressions of the law. Munkīr and Nakīr are the two angels who preside at the “examination of the tomb.” They visit a man in his grave immediately after his burial, and examine him concerning the soundness of his faith. If he acknowledge that there is but one God, and that Mohammed is his prophet, they allow him to rest in peace, otherwise they beat him with iron maces until he roars so loud that he is heard by all the beings in the universe, except men and ginns. They then press the earth down upon him, and leave him to be torn by dragons and serpents until the resurrection.

The ginns (collectively gāhn) represent a class of beings who are inferior to the angels, but they are also created out of fire, and are both good and evil. Their abode is Mount Qāf, the mountain of emerald which, in Persian mythology, surrounds the world.

HEAVEN.

Heaven, according to the Korān and the traditions, consists of seven divisions, as follows: The Garden of Eternity—The Abode of Peace—The Abode of Rest—The Garden of Eden—The Garden of Resort—The Garden of Pleasure—The Garden of the Most High, and The Garden of Paradise. “Who created seven heavens in stories?... Why, look again! canst thou see a flaw?... And we have adorned the lower heaven with lamps; and set them to pelt the devils with: and we have prepared them for the torment of the blaze.”

“And the fellows of the right hand—what right lucky fellows!

These are they who are brought nigh in gardens of pleasure!

And gold-weft couches, reclining on them!

Around them shall go eternal youths, with goblets and ewers and a cup of flowing wine; no head-ache shall they feel therefrom, nor shall their wits be dimmed!

And fruits such as they deem the best;

And flesh of fowls as they desire;

And bright and large-eyed maids like hidden pearls;

And the fellows of the right—what right lucky fellows!

Amid thornless lote trees

And trees with piles of fruit;

And outspread shade,

And water outpoured;

And fruit in abundance, neither bitter nor forbidden;

* * * * * * * * * *

And God will guard them from the evil of that day and will cast on them brightness and joy;

And their reward for their patience shall be Paradise and silk!

Reclining thereon upon couches, they shall neither see therein the sun nor piercing cold;

And close down upon them shall be its shadows;

And lowered over them its fruits to cull;

And they shall be served round with vessels of silver and goblets that are as flagons—

Flagons of silver shall they mete out!...

And there shall go round them eternal boys;

When thou seest them thou wilt think them scattered pearls;

And when thou seest them thou shalt see pleasure and a great estate!

On them shall be garments of green embroidered satin and brocade;

And they shall be adorned with bracelets of silver.”[^[215]]

HELL.

Hell also has seven divisions, which are arranged in the following order: Gehenna—The Flaming Fire—The Raging Fire that splits everything to pieces—The Blaze—The Scorching Fire—The Fierce Fire—The Abyss.

“It is thus that we reward sinners; for them is the couch of hell-fire with an awning above them! Thus do we reward the unjust!...

The fellows of the fire shall call out to the fellows of Paradise, ‘Pour out upon us water, or something God has provided you with.’ They will say ‘God has prohibited them both to those that misbelieve.’ ...

Faces on that day shall be humble, laboring, toiling—shall broil upon a burning fire; shall be given to drink from a boiling spring!

No food shall they have save from the foul thorn, which shall not fatten nor avail against hunger!

And the fellows of the left—what unlucky fellows!

In hot blasts and boiling water;

And a shade of pitchy smoke,

Neither cool nor generous!

Verily, they were affluent ere this, and did persist in mighty crime and say ‘What, when we die and have become dust and bones, shall we then indeed be raised?’

Then ye, Oh ye who err! who say it is a lie!

Shall eat of the Zaqqūm tree!

And fill yourselves with it!

And drink thereon of boiling water!

And drink as drinks the thirsty camel.

This is their entertainment on the judgment day!

Whenever a new troop is brought forward to be thrown into hell they shall hear its brayings as it boils, for it shall well nigh burst for rage, and the treasures of hell shall come forward and shall ask them, ‘Did not a warner come to you?’ They shall stay, ‘Yea! a warner came to us, and we called him a liar,’

And they shall say, ‘Had we but listened or had sense we had not been among the fellows of the blaze!’”[^[216]]

PREDESTINATION.

The Korān teaches the doctrine of predestination in its most radical form; every act of every living being having been written down from all eternity in “the preserved tablet.” This predestination is called taqdīr “meeting out,” or quismeh, “apportioning.”

It is said in the Korān that “God leads astray whom he will, and guides whom he will.”[^[217]]

The Arabians were glad to argue that they were not responsible for their deeds, but every act of theirs being foreordained it was therefore justified. They were forbidden to turn back in battle, for he who turns back “save turning to fight or rallying to a troop, brings down upon himself wrath from God, and his resort is hell, and an ill journey shall it be.”

They were exonerated from all charge of killing unbelievers, even in battle, for it is said, “Ye did not slay them, but it was God who slew them; nor didst thou shoot, when thou didst shoot, but God did shoot.”[^[218]] When the Abyssinian, Abrahat el Aśram, marched upon Mecca with a large body of troops and elephants, he was suddenly defeated, and when the Korān was written it was said, “Hast thou not seen what thy Lord did with the fellows of the elephant? Did he not make their strategem lead them astray, and send down on them birds in flocks, to throw down on them stones of baked clay, and make them like blades of herbage eaten down?”[^[219]] This legend of the destruction of an army by flocks of birds who carried stones in their beaks has been repeated in various forms in Oriental story. The object of the invader was supposed to be the destruction of the Kaābah, a shrine to which devotion had been paid from time immemorial. This was the one thing which the scattered Arabian people had in common, and which gave to them a national feeling. Mohammed, therefore, did not abolish it, but cleared it of its idols and dedicated it to the new faith. As it was predestinated that the Kaābah should stand throughout the ages, it was readily supposed that even the birds of heaven would repulse the forces of the infidel invader.

POLYGAMY.

One of the most fatal blots upon the creed of Islām is the open countenance which it gives to polygamy. We have not here the case of a prophet placed in the midst of an ignorant and barbarous people, who confronted and modified institutions which he could not at once suppress, but we have Mohammed inculcating the doctrine of polygamy, by both precept and example. It is repeatedly taught in the Korān, and men are commanded to “Marry what seems good to you of women, by twos, or threes, or by fours.”[^[220]] When his other wives objected to the introduction of the Coptic slave girl, Mary, into the harem of Mohammed, he claimed to receive a revelation from heaven justifying his conduct. He also divorced the woman who gave the information to the others, and banished them all (except the Coptic girl) from his presence for the space of a month. He enjoined his followers to treat their wives and slaves more kindly, but they could marry and divorce them at pleasure; the Korān, however, states that “If he divorce her a third time, he cannot marry her after that until she marry another husband:” if the new husband divorces her, however, the first may marry her again.

They were also allowed to exchange wives, but it is said: “If ye wish to exchange one wife for another, and have given one of them a talent, then do not take from it anything.”[^[221]]

They required the most careful conduct and seclusion in their wives, and the penalty for adultery was imprisonment for life, but of their partners in guilt it was said, “if they turn again and amend, leave them alone.”[^[222]] Again it is said, “Men stand superior to women.... But those wives whose perverseness ye fear, admonish them and remove them into a bedchamber and beat them; but if they submit to you, do not seek a way against them.”[^[223]]

The Mohammedans of Persia have by no means forgotten their early training, and they still fill their Anderoons with as many women as they can afford. Every Persian house is constructed on the plan of secrecy. No windows are visible from the street, but the interior is built around courts or gardens, with beautiful fountains and fragrant flowers; indeed, there may be groves of fruit trees which cannot be seen from the street. In the main portion of the house the lord of the mansion lives and transacts his business during the day, while the inmates of his Anderoon are kept in the most rigid seclusion, passing their time as best they may, in doing fine embroidery, and possibly acquiring some proficiency in music or painting. They cannot go out at all without a mantle or veil which covers them from head to foot; and when the wives of the Shah go upon the street they are not only followed by the royal guards, but the event is announced by a herald, the shops are closed and the streets must be deserted.

Still, it is claimed that with all their seclusion and ignorance, the women of Persia have a certain amount of influence, and if one man wishes the assistance of another, he confides the matter to one or all of his wives, and they visit the wives of the man whose aid is needed, and by solicitation and costly presents the object is often accomplished. It is said that many important transactions in Persia are conducted in this way.

LITERARY STYLE OF THE KORĀN.

The language of the Korān is generally considered the most perfect form of Arabian speech. It must be remembered, however, that the acknowledged position of the book, as a work of divine authorship, made it impossible for any Muslim to criticize the Korān, either in regard to its mode of expression or its doctrinal teaching. On the contrary, it became the standard by which other Arabian compositions must be judged. All literary critics assumed that the Korān must be right, and therefore other works only approached merit in proportion as they more or less successfully imitated its style.

The language of this literary model of Arabia is surely rugged and forcible, even though it is not elegant or refined. Mohammed often spoke with a rude and startling eloquence; there was no mistaking the language of his fierce denunciations, for instance: “Verily, those who disbelieve in our signs, we will broil them with fire; whenever their skins are well done, then we will change them for other skins, that they may taste the torment.”[^[224]]

Each chapter of the Korān is called a Sūrah—an Arabic word which signifies a course of bricks in a wall. These Sūrahs resolve themselves into two different classes; the one claiming to have been given at Mecca, the other including only the revelations which were supposed to be received at Medīna after the flight. The earlier Sūrahs have a tone of enthusiasm and impassioned eloquence, which is not found in the later productions. The style of these earlier chapters is often poetic, and sometimes almost sublime; the principal doctrine found in them is monotheism, and the author seeks to impress his followers by his eloquence rather than by his logic; by appealing to their emotions rather than to their reason. He called upon nature to witness the presence of God, and proclaimed vengeance against those who still clung to their idols. He also gave the most glowing pictures of the future reward of believers, and the most revolting descriptions of the unending tortures designed for those who refused to accept his message.

In the Sūrahs of the later portion of the Meccan period, we find long stories which are woven in a fanciful way around the characters of Biblical narrative, still showing, however, more or less of the poetic fire and eloquence of Mohammed’s earliest productions.

At a later period he appears in Medīna, as a military leader of great ability and influence. He is now surrounded, not only by the loyal friends who have shared his persecutions, and accompanied him in his flight, but also by a large class who have been forced to adhere to his cause, and whose sincerity is so questionable that they are openly called “hypocrites.”

The style of the Sūrahs which were given amidst these surroundings, and during the later years of the author’s life, varies greatly from that of the earlier chapters. We find here incidents which are scarcely embellished, and which are often expressed in the most prosaic language. Instead of the impassioned appeal of an orator, we have the more authoritative language of an acknowledged chief, giving his people whatever instruction they may require. He still follows, however, the rhythmical style of expression, which has so long been characteristic of the Arabians. The Arabs of the desert still employ it to a great extent in their formal orations, while the peculiar style of the Korān remains their standard of literary excellence.

DIVISION IV.
The Period Succeeding the Mohammedan
Conquest.

CHAPTER IX.
THE ANWĀR-I-SUHALI.

HISTORY OF THE WORK—PREFACE—THE BEES AND THEIR HABITS—THE TWO PIGEONS—THE BLIND MAN AND HIS WHIP—AMICABLE INSTRUCTION—THE PIGEONS AND THE RAT—THE ANTELOPE AND THE CROW—THE ELEPHANT AND THE JACKAL—GEMS FROM THE HITOPADEŚA.

There were two collections of early fables in Sanskṛit literature, called the Panćatantra and the Hitopadeśa, and during the reign of the Sassanian kings a quaint old book containing these stories was brought to the Persian court and translated into the Pahlavī tongue. This was a notable event in the history of Āryan literature, and since that time[^[225]] this rare collection of simple stories has passed through more mutations than has the Roman Empire; it is now extant, under various names, in more than twenty languages, the Persian version being known as the Anwār-i-Suhali, or “The Lights of Canopus.”[^[226]] It is recorded that King Nūshirvan commissioned an officer of state to procure a translation of this work, and, being obtained after years of difficulty, it was deposited in the cabinet of the king’s most precious treasures, and was regarded as a model of wisdom and didactic philosophy. But at the time of the Arabian conquest, this work, with many others, was destroyed by the vandals of the desert. More than a hundred years later the book was discovered and translated into Arabic by Almokaffa,[^[227]] it then passed through the hands of several Arabic poets, and was afterward retranslated into Persian, first into verse, by Rudāki in the tenth century, and into prose in the twelfth century by Nasrāllah. As early as the eleventh century the Arabic work of Almokaffa was translated into Greek by Simeon, and then passed into the Italian. Again the Arabic text was translated into Hebrew by Rabbi Joel, and this Hebrew version became the principal source of the European books of fable. Before the end of the fifteenth century, John of Capua had published a Latin version, and a more elegant Persian rendering was made in the beginning of the fifteenth century by Husain Va’iz. A Turkish translation had been made early in the tenth century, but there was no Hindūstānī version until much later. The number of translations indicated the extreme popularity of the work in Europe, and in the sixteenth century it was read in German, Italian, Spanish and French. The English has not so many versions, although both Sir William Jones and Prof. Max Müller have translated the Hitapodeśa, and Prof. Eastwick has given us a faithful reproduction of Husain Va’iz’s work, the Anwār-i-Suhali.

The Persian version is the book which candidates for the position of interpreter are required to read after the Gūlistān, as the great number of words and the variety of its style make it the best book in the language to be studied by one who wishes to make rapid progress in Persian. In the present century Major Stewart, professor of Persian at the East India College at Haileyburg, published a translation of the seventh book of this work, and dedicated it to the civil and military employés of the East India Company. The repetition of metaphor and highly florid style of composition is often offensive to the English reader, but these very characteristics form its greatest attraction in the eye of Persian litterateurs, and many stories are delightful to them which are wearisome or repulsive to the simpler taste of the western student. In this fanciful work kings are represented as sitting on thrones as stable as the firmament, while they touch the stars with their foreheads, and have all other kings to serve them. Royalty is always just, wise, valiant and most beneficent—ministers are invariably gifted with intellects which are an ornament to the world, and they can solve all problems with a single thought. Mountains rival the planets in their height, and all gardens are fair as dreams of paradise, while the heroes conquer animals so furious that even their appearance frightens the constellations out of the heavens. These absurdities are so prominent that they tempt the student to turn away in disgust, but those who patiently peruse the book will discover many beautiful thoughts, many striking and practical ideas, which are forcibly and often beautifully expressed.

The preface is similar to that of many other Persian works, being composed very largely of a eulogy upon Mohammed, and especially upon the royal dignitary to whom the work is dedicated.

A brief extract from this literary curiosity will give the reader an example of the fulsome praise which Persian authors thought best to bestow upon the kings or court officials who encouraged their pursuits.

“And he is the great Amīr, the place where all excellences and high qualities centre, through the sublimity of his spirit, ... who, without compliment, is the star Canopus shining from the right hand of Yaman, and a sun diffusing radiance, from the dawning place of affection and fidelity.

Where Canopus falls thy ray, and where

Thou risest, fortune’s marks are surely there.

“With[“With] a view to the universal diffusion of what is advantageous to mankind, and the multiplying of what is beneficial to the high and low, he condescended to favor me with an intimation of his high will, that this humble individual, devoid of ability, and this insignificant person of small capital, should be bold enough to clothe the said book in a new dress, and bestow fresh ornament upon the beauty of its tales of esoteric meaning, which were veiled and concealed by the curtain of obscure words and difficult expressions, by presenting on the stages of lucid style and the chambers of becoming metaphors after a fashion that the eye of every examiner, without a glance of penetration, may enjoy a share of the loveliness of these beauties, of the ornamented bridal chamber of narrative, and the heart of every wise person, without the trouble of imagining, may obtain the fruition of union with those delicately reared ones of the closet of the mind.”[^[228]]

A preface of this kind is surely calculated to deter the student from seeking further for the beauties of this peculiar work, but when divested of the cumbersome verbiage these stories will be found both quaint and pleasing. A few of the best of them are here given in simple phrase:

THE BEES AND THEIR HABITS.

There stood in the garden an old tree, whose leaves had fallen, and there was no vitality with which to replace them. The hatchet of the peasant Time had mutilated its limbs, and the saw of the carpenter Fortune had sharpened its teeth in making shreds of its warp and woof. The centre of the tree had become hollow, and a busy swarm of bees had made it their fortress. When the king heard the buzzing of the little workers, he inquired of his sage why these little insects gathered in the tree, and at whose command they resorted to the meadow. Then the minister replied: “O, fortunate prince, they are a tribe doing much good and little harm. They have a queen larger in bulk than themselves, and have placed their heads on the line of obedience to her majesty; she is seated upon a square throne of wax, and she has appointed to their several offices her vizier and chamberlain, her porter and guard, her spy and deputy. The ingenuity of her attendants is such that each one prepares hexagonal chambers of wax, having no inequality in their partitions, and the best geometricians would be unable to do such work without instruments. When this work approaches completion they come forth from their abode at the queen’s command, and a noble bee explains to them that they must not exchange their cleanliness for grossness, nor pollute their purity by evil associations. They therefore sit only beside the fair lily or fragrant rose, in order to draw therefrom the purest honey. When they come to the home the warders try them by smelling, and if they have kept their sacred trust and avoided all impure associations, permission is given them to re-enter the immaculate chambers of white wax. But there are many blossoms which, though beautiful to the eye, will poison those who touch them, and the foolish bee who is attracted by their deceitful loveliness is also polluted by their fatal breath; when he comes to the portals of the hive the quick scent of the warders detect the fact if he has been polluted by evil surroundings, and the offender is quickly punished by decapitation. If, however, the warders should be negligent enough to allow the culprit to enter, and the queen of this spotless palace should detect the offensive taint, both the culprit and the careless warders will be conducted to the place of punishment and the warders will be executed first. It is recorded that Jamshid, ‘Emperor of the World,’ borrowed from these wise disciplinarians the regulations respecting warders and guards, the appointment of chamberlains and door-keepers, and also the arrangement of thrones and regal cushions, which, in the course of time, perfected our customs.”

Upon hearing this wonderful illustration of the effects of bad company upon the unfortunate bee, and learning that every man carries with him a portion of the vileness of his evil companions, the king exclaimed: “I have been convinced to-day that the society of some persons is more hurtful than the poison of a viper, and the association with them more dangerous than a position which involves the peril of one’s life, and I reason therefrom that it may be better to live in seclusion.” But the sage replied: “Great leaders have preferred the companionship of the good and true, but when a sincere friend is not to be found, then indeed solitude is better than society.”

THE TWO PIGEONS.

There were two faithful pigeons who at one time consorted together in one nest, with their loyal hearts undisturbed by treachery, and free from misfortune. One was named Bāzindah (playful), and the other was called Nawāzindah (caressing), while every morning and evening their voices were mingled in the soft notes of love. But some were envious of the happy pair, and evil counsellors attempted to “sever love, and friend from friend divide.”

An anxious desire for travel was carefully instilled into the ambitious heart of Bāzindah, and he said to his loving mate, “How long shall we continue in one nest, and spend our time in one abode? I feel a desire to wander through different parts of the world, for, in a few days of travel, many marvelous things are seen, and many experiences are gained. There is no honor awarded until the sword comes forth from the scabbard upon the field of the brave; the sky is ever journeying, and it is the highest of all things, while the earth which is ever still is always trampled down, and kicked by all things, both high and low: