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THE GÂTHAS.
YASNA XLV. THE DOCTRINE OF DUALISM. HOMAGE TO AHURA.
This hymn bears fewer traces of a fragmentary condition than others. It recalls Y. XXX, and, like it, appears to belong to a period, or to an interval, of political repose and theological activity. It is smoother and more artificial than is usual, and it goes straight on its way from beginning to end. A powerful adversary had just been crushed. It was the dussasti of Y. XXXII, 9. This may · well have been the result of the conflict alluded to in Y. XLIV, 15,
16, and possibly in Y. LI, 9, 10, also urged on by the fierce Y. XXXI, 18 probably often repeated in lost hymns.
An assembly is addressed as in Y. XXX, 1, but this time as coming from near and from far.' It may very possibly have been the winning side in a late struggle. The first verse sounds like a congratulation.
It might be said to be intended to be sung, if not shouted, to a multitude whose outskirts were by no means within easy reach with the voice. At all events attention is summoned with three differing expressions. 'Awake your ears to the sound,' literally sound ye,' in a receptive sense; (' let the sound peal in your ears'), then
‘listen' (sraotâ); and then “ponder' (mãzdaunghôdům). The · Antizarathustra, the evil teacher par eminence, has been defeated,' he declares, and he will never again destroy the peace of our lives (Y. XXXII, 9, 11). His evil creed has been silenced, and his tongue can no longer shout out its periods of persuasion or invective (Y. XXXI, 12) beside our preachers.'
2. He then reiterates the chief doctrine for which the parties had been at war, and which they should now see clearly in the light of their victory. "The foul evils of society do not lie within the control of the holy Ahura in such a manner as that he either originates, or tolerates them. They are, on the contrary, the product of the personified Anger of the Daêvas, the Mainyu in its evil sense, the Angra (angry ?) Spirit. Between this being, or personified abstraction, and Ahura, there is a gulf fixed. (Never do we see any aspersions upon Ahura's name, or a suspicion of His purity as shown by complicity with cruelty, or the toleration of evil passions.) • It is also to be noted that the defeated dussasti may have possibly been a Daêva-worshipper chiefly as being a heretic from this Faith
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