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FARGARD III.
21
Holy One! Who are the Lord and the Master there?
Ahura Mazda answered: Urvatad-nara1, O Zarathustra and thyself, Zarathustra.'
FARGARD III.
The Earth.
'Les Guèbres,' says Chardin (ed. Langlès, VIII, 358), 'regardent l'agriculture, non seulement comme une profession belle et innocente, mais aussi comme méritoire et noble, et ils croient que c'est la première de toutes les vocations, celle pour quoi le Dieu souverain et les dieux inférieurs, comme ils parlent, ont le plus de complaisance et qu'ils recompensent le plus largement. Cette opinion, tournée en créance parmi eux, fait qu'ils se portent naturellement à travailler à la terre et qu'ils s'y exercent le plus : leurs prêtres leur enseignent que la plus vertueuse activité est d'engendrer des enfants (cf. Farg. IV, 47) et après de cultiver une terre qui serait en friche (cf. infra, § 4), de planter un arbre soit fruitier, soit autre.'
The classical writers (Xenophon, Oeconomica, IV, 4 seq.; Polybius, X, 28, quoted § 4, note) express themselves to the same effect, and their testimony has been lately corroborated, in a most unexpected way, by a Greek inscription, emanating from no less an authority than King Darius himself, who congratulates his satrap in Asia Minor, Gadates, 'for working well the King's earth and transplanting in lower Asia the fruits of the country beyond
1 Zarathustra had three sons during his lifetime, Isad-vâstra, Hvare-kithra, and Urvatad-nara, who were respectively the fathers and chiefs of the three classes, priests, warriors, and husbandmen. Urvatad-nara, as a husbandman, was chosen to be the ahu or temporal Lord of the Var, on account of the Var being underground. Zarathustra, as a heavenly priest, was, by right, the ratu or Spiritual Lord in Airyana Vaêgô, where he founded the Religion by a sacrifice (Bund. XXXIII and Introd. III, 15).
* Discovered at Deremendjik, near Magnesia, on the Maeander: by Cousin and Deschamps (Bulletin de Correspondance hellénique, XIII, 529).
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