This was a work of some time, for every now and then he seemed doubtful of his operations, rubbing out and replacing the signs and figures in new squares. When he had scrawled on the board to his satisfaction he began to compare it with the hieroglyphics on his revolving table, deciphering and studying the stars on each of his tablets with the utmost care. He then turned up his wan face and began to gaze alternately at the bit of sky seen through the open trapdoor and to examine the strange hieroglyphics on the table. The stars presiding at my birth were evidently unpropitious. He foretold for me many deaths among relations and friends, long and cruel separations by strange seas and oceans being placed between my friends and me; softening it off, however, by predicting a long life, a happy old age, and a numerous progeny of grand- and great-grandchildren; which, indeed, are the chief sources of happiness in the Parsee household.

He then foretold my husband's future, which was even less auspicious, saying that a great shadow of one of the planets would cross his path in middle life, which if he survived he would live to a good old age, etc., etc.

It was not what the old astrologer and Fire-priest said so much as his perfect faith in his own rendering of the position of the stars that most impressed me. The floating locks of gray hair, the serious brow, the deep, thoughtful, contemplative look on that face, were all very striking: his head full of the mystery of the stars and his heart ever revolving the secret destiny of human life were as strange and marked as any of the many lives whose future he believed he could so easily decipher.

In the Zend-Avesta—or, more properly, the Avesta-Zand—the religious books of the Parsees, we find the Gâthas, or sacred hymns, of the ancient Fire-priests, and these in their turn may be traced directly to the Rig Vèdas, the oldest of the Aryan Scriptures, a collection of a thousand hymns, more or less, called "Mantras," or Mind-born songs, composed and recited by various priests and poets, the earliest of whom lived about three thousand, and the latest not far from twenty-six hundred, years ago. These hymns, some of which are very beautiful, composed and sung long before the Aryans left their home in the Hindoo Kush[12] Mountains, were inspired by its soaring mountains—"roofs of the world," as they called them—capped with snow, clear blue skies, and by the rushing waters leaping in gladness out of the heart of the hills.

"They found the mountains ever near mighty to defend them, the lakes and rivers eager to serve them."[13] "Sparkling bright with mighty splendor, she carries the clouds across the plains; the unconquered Sindhui, Indus, the quickest of the quick, like a beautiful mare, a sight to see; by their swiftness, depth, as well as by the sweetness of their waters; the birds by their delicious warbling; the winds by the fragrant dust of flowers which they bore along on their invisible wings, the clouds by their refreshing shadows."

Light, as seen in the sun, moon, and stars, dawn and sunrise, fire in all its mysterious forms—the spark struck from the flint, the fire that burned their oblations, the holy flames that were lighted on the domestic hearth—became their earliest objects of worship. These they celebrate in the Rig Vèda, and in these they saw, with their deep intuitive insight, thousands of years ago, an "all-productive cosmic energy."

Thus, the simple act of rubbing two dried pieces of wood together in order to obtain fire became a religious ceremony, and the tiny flint which served to kindle fire became their first idol, and gave those ancient Aryans the first hint of the wonderous power of heat, at once their god, the ministering angel of their lives, and their first step toward civilization.

This vital fire of the universe, with every upward dart of flame issuing out of the cold, hard rock, starting out of dried wood, streaming in jets spontaneously out of the heart of the earth itself, and flaming luridly from mountain-tops, was an object so full of mystery, so potent, ever present, even when invisible, ever within call, lurking in the rock and air, water and tree, waiting to be called into life, vanishing at a breath, naturally became the highest symbol of the unseen to those primitive worshippers of nature.

The early Aryan priest, who was to his race what our poets and thinkers are to us to-day, on awakening at dawn turned his face to the east, and, waiting for the light, cried, "Arise! arise! the breath of our life has come, the darkness has fled." The fire had to be kindled by men. "She, the Dawn, brought us light by striking down darkness.—Shine for us with thy best rays, O thou bright Dawn! thou who lengthenest our lives, thou beloved of all, thou mother of the morning clouds, leader of the days, gold-colored and lovely to behold!" When the sun at last climbed the mountain-tops and shone upon his worshipper, he sang a deeper hymn of joy to the Creator: "In the beginning there arose the source of golden light. He was the first-born lord of all that is. He established the earth and the sky. He gives us life, he gives us strength—whose shadow is immortality, whose absence is death—he who through his power is the only king of this breathing and awakening world."[14]

These songs were not only sung, but transmitted from father to son, long before the age of a written alphabet, as a sacred, inviolable inheritance, preserved from century to century in the religious memory of the Aryan priest, even as they were recited to us evening after evening at the "Aviary" by our modern pundit without book or notes or text.