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94
THE GÂTHAS.
the composer beseeches Ahura to grant those two "mighty and eternal ones,' which logically form the complement to each other, universal wholeness, welfare of soul and body, without which beatitude was inconceivable, and then the unlimited duration of that condition; for it is quite impossible that long life' alone was here meant by a term, the equivalent of which soon after designated the Bountiful Immortals. We have here again ample data for affirming the richness and depth of the religious conceptions.
The powerful and continuous two' are sought together with splendour as rewards, not for the gratification of any selfish sentiment, but in order to maintain Asha, the religious Order, on which the sacred polity, and the tribal, as well as the national wealth depended, but more than any general blessings, the individual sanctity of life. 2. And this is signalised as the highest good; and to this a prayer is added for the 'maya,' which recalls the supernatural wisdom of the Indian Hercules, about which much phantastic and highly coloured myth is grouped; but here, with the everrecurring contrast, the mâya is the mysterious wisdom of the Divine Benevolence, colourless and abstract indeed, but yet possessing how great religious depth!
3. The highest blessing, in another and more than once repeated phrase, is again besought, as 'the better than the good,' even the attainment of the one who guides to the straight paths,' which are the 'way, even the conceptions and revelations of the Saviours' (Y.XXXIV, 13; LIII, 2), in which the believer prospers, and Ahura dwells, as he dwells in his kingdom, and his chosen home' itself (Y. XLVI, 16). Whether this man who shows the paths' of the bodily and mental world' is the same as he who prays for the ayaptâ ahvau astvataskâ hyalka mananghô (the boons of the two worlds) in Y. XXVIII, 3, here referred to in the third person, there speaking in the first, and whether he is Zarathustra himself, are questions. It is only necessary to say that, if any relief is gained by the supposition, then beyond a doubt Zarathustra may have been the composer of both pieces or fragments, here, as in Y. XXVIII, 7, referring to himself as in the third person, there, in Y. XXVIII, also further representing another who prays, referring by name to him as in the third.
But was Zarathustra the only sacred singer, or was he the centre of a group only, of which he was the life? (Compare Yathrâ ve afsmâini (?) senghânî-Gâmåspå Hvôgvâ; Y. XLVI, 17; see also the Introduction.)
4. Proceeding as if the first three verses were absent from his
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