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SEPTEMBER, 1902.)
THE RELIGION OF THE IRANIAN PEOPLES.
869
- In the rest of the Apesta books, setting aside sporadio quotations, no Gatha texts are forthcoming. They are inditod entirely in the later Baktrian. They all, however, do not date back to the same age; and if in the present state of our knowledge it is beyond our reach to differentiate with precision the anterior from the subsequent portion, still critical inquiry has yielded here and there incontestible results, and has facilitated an analysis of their textual composition.
Thus there is no question but that the Vendidad, which now numbers twenty-two chapters, originally closed with the sixteenth. The seventeenth was tagged ou later, and hence the repetition of the formula which ende the sixteenth as well as the seventeenth. (The passage in question is not devoid of interest. It runs (8. B. E. IV., p. 189 er 192): All wicked embodiments of the Drug are Ecorners of the Judge: all scorners of the Judge are rebels against the Sovereign; all rebels against the Sovereign are ungodly men; and all ungodly ren are worthy of death. [Tr.] ). All the ensuing chapters are so many supplements made up of texts, which in a measure bear on the main theme. This principal theme is appropriately tresied of in Fargarde 5 to 16. For the thirteenth, fourteenth. and the fifteenth, which are taken up with the dog, the favourite domestio animal of the Persians, who almost put it on the same level with humanity, are not out of place here; dogs as well as the beaver and hedge-bog, which were classed with them, being the destroyers of evil genii. Still citations and excerpts from metrical and mythological fragments, to which the prose texts furnish a gloss and the mutual contradiction of many an injunction, and the recurrence of the same prescriptions over and over again in a more or less modified guise, argue that even those Fargards are a conglomeration of heterogeneous texte.90 The seventh chapter bears on the face of It evidence of a later construction than the fifth, from which it rehearses passages word for word, and at the same time attempers the commandments therein inculcated. The seventh is in point of time even preceded by the sixth, which mentions as little as the eighth, the Dakhmas, the towers for the disposal of corpses.S0 It is not settled whether the first four chapters must be held as an introduction by the same hand or as the amplifications of a posterior editor. But this mach is positive, that a text of considerable antiquity anderlies the first Fargard, which is supplemented at places to accord with latter-day ideas. It is a catalogue of the countries which Ahura Mazda created, beautifal and comfortable for his worshippers, but which are marred by the counter-creations of Anghro Mainyush. Perobance already the older portion deviates from its original configuration. At all events a discrepancy obtains between what is related of Aíryanam Vaejo, the aboriginal Aryan land, in the beginning and what is said of it in Sections 2 and 3. In the former it is a paradise so charming that, but for the production on the Creator's part of more regions habitable and beautiful, all organized beings would have repaired thither. In the latter it is a real country, which has been unfit to live in because of its prolonged inclement winter ; a country where is located the heart, the very centre of winter, and on which impetuous cold bears down from all quarters. This second delineation is assuredly the earlier one. The lands catalogued make up only a part of Iran, and the editor was alive to it, that this defective list must elicit astonishment in his age. He therefore subjoins the note that there were other regions too, in several respects of superior excellence, which he has not enumerated.
Again, the second Fargard is a Zarathushtrian version of the Aryan hero Yima (Yama), the king of primeval humanity, who reigned 900 years, and during which period, owing to the multiplying of his subjects, the earth had twice to be enlarged. But since he apprehended the rain of everything terrestrial in a severe winter, at the behest of Ahura Mazda, he prepared an enclosed space (vara) to which he migrated with the seeds of cattle, men, dogs, birds, and with blazing ftre,
> Comp. the archaio pastoral songs in 8, 24-88, the mythiu prosentment of Mazda and the waters in 5; 17, 20, 21. Repetitions constantly occur.
Pargard 7, 16 has a quotation from the very late Yama 65, 6 and 7, 52 accords with Parg. 19, 81, and Yasht 22, 16 - both well known as of a very younger age. The strange reference to the Dakhmas in 7, 49 indicates that they were held at once to be impure and necessary: "O Maker of the material world, thon Holy One ! How long after the corpse of a dead man has been laid down on a Dakhma is the ground whereon the Dakhma standa clean agato"-8. B. E., IV. 88 (Tr.) What is enjoined in Farg. 5 in reppect of the purifiontion of womeo delivered of a still-born child is modified by 7, 70-79,
