The pictures these songs present of the deep religious and poetic fervor of the early Aryans, both before and after their descent into the plains of India, of their pastoral and agricultural life, divided into separate and distinct classes, as priest, king, shepherd, warrior, and tiller of the soil, are in themselves the most comprehensive and valuable of historical records.
The first and most important fact to be found in the study of these hymns is that every home, every dwelling, has its own altar, which is the family hearth, called the "dâdgâh" by the Fire-worshippers—that "holy of holies" of which father and mother were priest and priestess. This fire is the ancient "avesta," to which were attached three mystical interpretations—first, "womanly purity;" second, the "inviolability of the family;" and third, "the sacredness attached to the mother as the transmitter of human life."
There is no doubt that from the Assyrians, Chaldeans, and the early Iranians, who were then one with the purer Hindoos of to-day, this worship of nature, and especially of fire in its triple significance, was propagated southward among the Egyptians, westward among the Greeks, and by them introduced into Italy.
The Greeks met together to worship in their Prytaneia. Here they consulted together for the public good, and there was a constant fire burning on the altar, which was called "vesta." The Vestal Virgins of the Romans had their origin in the same idea. Many of the oldest and some of the most modern usages still to be found among the Parsees, Hindoos, Jews, Greeks, Mohammedans, and Roman Catholics bear reference to this early worship of the "household fire," and many of the problems, puzzles, and contradictions that are found in the religious symbols of the world stand clear and evident when submitted to this light.
The word "Light" is used in the New Testament as the highest symbol of Christ—"the Light of the world," "the Light that lighteth every man who cometh into the world." Every instance also of God's acceptance of sacrifice and prayer in the Old Testament is made evident to the people through the medium of fire, as seen in the case of David, in the dedication of Solomon's temple, and when Elijah demanded that extraordinary proof from Jehovah that Baal was not God. From Genesis to the Revelation, from the first offerings of Cain and Abel to "the city that had no need of a sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it, for the glory of the Lord did lighten it and the Lamb is the light thereof," this symbol of light is the dearest to the human heart, and ever recurring and conspicuous as the fittest and purest to be applied to the Deity.
It is as a symbol, not as a material element, that the worshippers of fire have clung to it through all times; and their adherence and tenacity are all the more remarkable when we consider the changes that have passed over all primitive institutions. We ourselves have had a succession of different religions and gods—the divinities of the Phœnicians, then those of the Greeks and Romans, which superseded the terrible gods of the Norsemen and the aboriginal deities of the Druids, our ancestors. All these in time have given place to the sublime teachings of Christ. Our religious forms are changing even to-day as religious convictions become wider, deeper, and more comprehensive than ever.
But the Parsees, those ancient Sun- and Fire-worshippers, still offer up their prayers in the old Pehlevi—a language which is the elder sister of the ancient Sanskrit—in which the Zend-Avesta, the sacred books of the Zoroastrians, are written, and older by far than the cuneiform inscriptions of Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes;[15] still wear the same old conical cap in the form of ascending flame, preserved in the shape of the bishop's mitre in the Christian symbolic dress; still adhere to the rites, ceremonies, manners, and customs peculiar to their earliest fathers, invoking the invisible fire upon which they called centuries before the building of the temple of Solomon.
The race has survived the destruction of Babylon and Assyria—outlived the beautiful gods of the Greeks, who beat them down by land and sea. It has persistently overcome the hatred and persecution of the Scythian and Tartar hordes, the rage and fury of the Moslems, the intolerance and prejudice of all sects and nations, and, strange to say, even when placed between the currents of new ideas, which ceaselessly move and transform those around them, the Fire-worshipper, like the Jew, stands alone, as if he were beyond time and above change.
From the time of Xerxes, four hundred and eighty-six years B. C., we have to date the decline of the Persian empire. Even the old heroic name of Iran—Ayiran, from the Sanskrit Ariya, "the noble"—has passed away for the word Persia, which, whether we apply it to the country, to the people, or to the language, is a misnomer. Pars, or Fars, is only a province of the great empire of "Iran." It was owing to the fact that the language of its chief city, Shiraz, was considered the most elegant and fashionable speech of the Iranians that the name of the province Pars was gradually used to distinguish the people, the entire country, and the language.
To the ancient world Zoroastrianism was known by the name of "Mazdasnah" or "Mazdayasnah," the doctrine of "universal knowledge." It was revealed by the "Pure Spirit," called also the "Excellent Word," pure, efficacious—"the word that Zoroaster has conveyed to men," which is the "Good Law." The priests were called Madhi, or middlemen, go-betweens, corrupted into Magi, which name is very commonly applied to the priests of the Zoroastrian religion by the Greek authors, beginning with Herodotus, who had travelled in Media and confounded the name of the priests of Magism and the Median religion with that of Zoroastrianism.