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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[SEPTEMBER, 1902.
genii of the world, the holy Spanyao (comparative degree) and the wicked Angro. But the passage viewed in its context, what has gone before and what follows, discloses that by Spanyao is not meant Mazda himself. Lastly, and this is of paramount import, the most amiable of the Yazatas, the most revered, the most puissant antagonist of the realm of the wicked, he who constitutes not less than the sacrosanct fire, the focus of the cult throughout the posterior Avesta, Haoma, is nowhere mentioned in the Gathic writings.24
This pervading divergence is explicable only on the assumption that the Gathas with their accesBories are the oldest records of the creed, and that the texts written in the other dialect mark a degree in their subseqnent evolution. It were not impossible in itself that the two tendencies had sprung up synchronously in diverse regions, let us say in East and North-West Iran, and had continued to develop independently, till they were fused one with the other under the Arsacides or the Sassanides. It is likewise possible, at all events in abstracto, that the far purer, more philosophic, idealistic doctrine of the Gathas was the outcome of a reformation of the flagrant dualistic mythological scheme represented in the other books, with all their train of Yazatas and many a factor of the old Aryan faith, so that the latter books would be in reality the older of the two sets. But both the above possibilities are precluded, first by what we stated with reference to the languages, and next by the indisputable
circumstance that the last-named later doctrine is built upon that of the Gathas, which it has modified, popularized, and deteriorated. The later religious phase is to be anderstood in the light of the Gathas, just as the Christian dogma is to be interpreted in the light of the New Testament and not rice versa. The more antique elements, myths, fables, and ritual, which are in point of fact found in the other chapters of the Yasna, in several parts of the Vendidad and in the Yasht, do not predicate a higher antiquity of these writings. They are the resuscitated vestiges of an antecedent epoch, which have been reduced so far as possible to an unison with the Zarathushtrian gospel.
The Gathic texts make up the principal components of the Staota Yesnya, of the Stot Yasht Nask, which, as we saw, is the core of the Yasna. But they are not the only ones of their kind. We light on the Gathic texts, likewise in the so-called younger Yasna, in the chapters, that is, which stand in the commencement and at the close of this Nask ;25 in the Mazdayasnian confession of faith, introdnced by a concise enlogium and terminating in a more exhaustive one ;36 in the lesser Srosh Yasht erroneously so dubbed, though it is an invocation addressed to the water and the Fravashis;47 and finally in a benediction over the cattle and the pious household.38 The last-mentioned piece in all likelihood originally belonged to the Hodhakhta Nask. I would hazard a surmise that the whole Stot Yasht Nask or Staota Yesnya at first embraced exclusively Gathic texts, and that subsequently a few other similar texts of a different extraction were joined on to them, 80 as in the ceremonial not to dispense with any of the holiest vouchers of the most ancient revelation, which men still possessed, and that the extant Yasna is a latter-day growth issuing from this complex, called forth to meet the requirements of the Hoama ceremouy and the rituals of the funeral services, of fire adoration, and the reverencing of the element of water,
24 Yamna 42, an appendix to the Yama Haptanghaiti, speaks indeed of three Haomas, but it is universally known that this chapter is of a very late date, an after addition written in bad Gathio. Even if we usume, ms will be clear later on in Chapter II., that the Haoma worship was no East Iranian heritage, this argument retains its full force, for at the time the old Gatha texts arose it was yet unknown to the Zarathushtrian, and it occupies a conspicuous place in the other books of the Avesta.
* Ha 1-18 and 55-72. * Prastuya, HA 11, 17-18. Pravarant or Praoretish, Ha 12, 1-8. Aatwyd or Aslaothwanom, Ha 12, 9-18, 7.
* Ha 56. The piece begins with the constantly recurring formula : Seraosho idha astw, Let there be hearing. In the first word mon erroneously discovered the genius graosha and oonfused the old text with the much later Srosh Yasht which follows in Ha 57.
Ha 68, 4-7. The verses 1-8 form an introduction, and verse 6 the close of the thus completed 8taota Yomya It is all in almost pure Gathio dialoot. Vorne 9 is a still lator addition in the younger idiom,
