ing" into a land where there are ten months of winter to two of summer. This is descriptive of the present climate of Thibet-the country in the immediate vicinity of that which the Aryans deserted. Each subsequent movement of the tribes is referred in the same way to the malignant actions of Angro Mainyus; and the suggestion does not seem extravagant that the angels with their flaming swords who, according to the Semitic traditions, drove their first parents from Paradise, were also physical convulsions, probably of a volcanic kind. But this by the way. The question before us is the one of antiquity. What do we know of Zoroaster? Was he a mythical or was he an historical personage? One writer tells us he was "a priest of the fire-worshippers, and found the doctrine of good and evil already in vogue." Another, that "he was a Chaldean who introduced his doctrines into Persia and Central Asia;" another, that "he was the Median conqueror of Babylon, who vanquished the realm and city of the Chaldees, and founded the second Babylonian dynasty;" another, that "he was identical with the patriarch Ham, the great progenitor of the Turanians; another, that "he was identical with Abraham;" another, that he was contemporary with Abraham; another, that he was a Magian, and perhaps a Scyth; or even that Zoroaster was the mere eponym of a Scythic tribe.

His date is necessarily of like uncertainty. Some of the classic Greeks place him 5000 years before the Trojan war, i.e., 6184 B.C. Bunsen says, "The date of Zoroaster as fixed by Aristotle cannot be so very irrational. He and Eudoxus, according to Pliny place him 6000 Dr. Haug writes,

years before the death of Plato," &c.1 "Under no circumstances can we assign him a later date than B.C. 1000; and one may even find reasons for placing his era much earlier, and making him a contemporary of Moses." Between these extremes there is ample room

"2

1 Egypt, &c., Book iv. part vi.

Essays on the Sacred Writings of the Parsis, p. 299.

for speculation. Even if we allow to Zoroaster no earlier epoch than the latest admitted by Dr. Haug, this would not militate against the antiquity of the monotheism of the Zend-Avesta. We should still be at liberty to assume that Zoroaster found the doctrine, which he propagated, already in existence; and that he was but the mouthpiece of it, just as Moses was of similar doctrines amongst the Shemites. But it is hard to believe that Zarathustra Spitama (Zoroaster was the Greek corruption of his name) was a fictitious being. The stamp of some mighty genius is still legible upon the all-but-effaced traditions of a crumbled past. The oldest parts of the Avesta already apotheosise him. Even when the first of the sacred writings were composed, Spitama was adored as the prophet and associate of Ahuramazda, the Supreme God. And in further proof that he was no longer in existence, Dr. Spiegel notices that in the Yazna, he is named in the third person, as is Moses in the concluding chapters of the Pentateuch.

With reference to the question of antiquity, it is not very clear that the language of Zoroaster is of later date than the Sanskrit of the Veda. The Zend of the Yazna was already obsolescent at the time of the Behistun inscriptions; and we are assured that the language of the Avesta was certainly not that of Zarathustra.1 Dr. Haug distinctly affirms that Zend is the "elder sister of Sanskrit,” both being descended in common from some still older stem. "Zend," says Bunsen, "if compared with classical Sanskrit, exhibits, in many points of grammar, features of a more primitive character than Sanskrit." 2 Professor Müller thinks otherwise. In any case the student cannot escape the conviction of vast antiquity; and the following passage also expresses this view. "The tendency of modern criticism, with only few exceptions, is to carry back the age of Zoroaster into prehistoric times;

1 Cf. Chips, vol. i. p. 88.

2 Outlines of the Philosophy of Universal History, vol. i. p. 112.

>

or, representing him as the 'Vyasa' of the Perso-Aryans, to invest him with the dubious, half-impersonal character which attaches to his Hindu prototype the so-called author of the earliest Veda."1

As to where he came from, we might argue, as Zend was the language in which Zoroastrianism was taught and preserved, that Zend was the language, if not the precise idiom of its founder: then, as Zend was the language of Bactria, that Bactria was the birthplace of Zoroaster. In the Bundehesh, one of the sacred books of the Parsees, we are explicitly told that Zarathustra propagated his religion in Airyana Vaêga. And while nothing whatever is said of his incoming, his departure from that land is recorded.2

This brings us back to the doubtful point above referred to. Where was Airyana Vaêga? In his "Eran, the Land between the Indus and the Tigris," &c., Dr. Spiegel notices that the traditional birthplace of Zoroaster was Arran. And he identifies this Arran, named in the Avesta, with the Chaldean Haran mentioned in Genesis xi. 28; assuming, as there is ample precedent for doing, that the name given to Abram's brother is the name of a place. "The departure spot of the Hebrew people, to which their own history points, is Haran, which land seems to be identical with Aran, i.e., Airyana Vaêga." Here then, according to Dr. Spiegel, is the clue to the similarity between Genesis and the Avesta. "Whatever ideas," says Professor Müller in his review of the "Eran," are shared in common by Genesis and the Avesta, must be referred to that very ancient period when personal intercourse was still possible between Abraham and Zoroaster, the prophets of the Jews and the Iranians." Professor Müller disputes the opinion. "This name [Arran] is given by medieval Mohammedan writers to the plain washed by the Araxes, and was identified by

1 Hardwick, ubi supra, p. 523.

2 Cf. Spiegel, Eranische Altertums Kunde, Erster Band.

Anquatil Duperron with the name Airyana Vaêga, &c. The Parsis place this sacred country in the vicinity of Atropatene, and it is clearly meant as the northernmost country known to the author or authors of the ZendAvesta. We think Dr. Spiegel is right in defending the geographical position assigned by tradition to Airyana Vaêga, against modern theories that would place it more eastward in the plain of Pamer; nor do we hesitate to admit that the name (Airyana Vaega, i.e., the seed of the Aryan) might have been changed into Arran."1 But while admitting that the birthplace of Zoroaster might be in Northern Media, to the west of the Caspian, instead of to the east, in Bactria, Professor Müller declines to identify the starting-point of the Hebrews with this Arran of the western provinces: and he entirely objects to the inferred intercourse between Abraham and Zoroaster; for, he argues, the MSS. of both religions are, comparatively speaking, so modern, that there is no saying which may or may not have borrowed from the other. This is true enough. Yet it hinders not that what is common to the two religions may have been due to intercourse somewhere.

M. Lenormant is very decidedly of opinion that the Airyana Vaêga of the Aryans is the Eden of the Hebrews; and that the Zendic Paradise was in the highlands of the Hindu Kush. The placing of Airyana Vaêga in Atropatene is, says he, "nothing but a transfer, of sufficiently modern times; it is a localisation of a sacred tradition which has nothing primitive in it; and only came into existence when the true site was forgotten which the authors of the Zend-Avesta had in view when they spoke of the cradle of the human race. The actual site of the Airyana Vaêga in the original and most ancient conception is to the east of the Caspian Sea and the lake of Aral." 2

1 Chips, i. p. 149.

2 Les Origines de l'Histoire, Fr. Lenormant, tome deuxième, Ire partie.

Whichever opinion we embrace, the very dispute points to an antiquity that, like all colossal forms, becomes more vast as we contemplate it. And considering that we have some data for estimating the epoch of the Hebrew origins, or at any rate the epoch of Abraham, no date that we can assign to this would prevent our placing Zoroastrianism at a far remoter period.

But while the question of relative antiquity remains in abeyance, that of Zoroaster's theology has ceased to be problematical. A single passage from a scholar like Dr. Haug, who has devoted a lifetime to the subject, must suffice to sum up what I could easily convince you is the unanimous verdict of the best informed. "The leading idea of his theology is Monotheism, i.e., that there are not many gods, but only one; and the principle of his speculative philosophy was dualism, i.e., the supposition of the primeval causes of the real world and of the intellectual," &c. "Spitama Zarathustra's conception of Ahuramazda as the Supreme Being is perfectly identical with the notion. of Elohim (God) or Jehovah which we find in the books of the Old Testament."1 Ahuramazda is called by him. "the Creator of the earthly and spiritual life, the Lord of the whole universe, in whose hands are all the creatures." The common notion that he professed a theological dualism like that of the Christian is erroneous. As the prophet Amos says (chap. iii. 6), “Shall there be evil in a city and the Lord hath not done it?" as Isaiah says for Jehovah, "I make peace and create evil: I the Lord do all these things," so Zoroaster would have made his God speak. "A separate evil spirit," says Haug, "of equal power with Ahuramazda, and always opposed to him, is entirely foreign to Zarathustra's theology." It is a corrupt interpretation by later times to suppose that the two principles were two separate spiritual beings; they were both united in Ahuramazda, Even the dualism of modern

1 Essays on the Sacred Writings of the Parsis, p. 300, ff.