[189]. Spenta Armaiti is a general name for heavenly counsellors, and they represent also the genii of the earth and waters. Under Ahura were six Amesha Spentas, which were at first mere personifications of virtues and moral powers, but as their lord and father ruled over the whole world, in later times they took each a part of the world under especial care. The dominion of the trees and waters was vested in Haurvatad and Ameretad, or Health and Immortality; here we find the influence of the old Indo-Iranian formulæ, in which waters and trees were invoked as the springs of health and life. Perfect Sovereignty had molten brass for his emblem, as the god in the storm established his empire by means of that “molten brass,” the fire of lightning, and he thus became the king of metals in general. Asha Vahista, the holy order of the world, as maintained chiefly by the sacrificial fire, became the genius of fire. Armaiti seems to have become a goddess of the earth as early as the Indo-Iranian period, and Vohu-mano, or Good Thought, had the living creation left to his superintendence. These Amesha Spentas projected, as it were, out of themselves as many demons who were hardly more than inverted images of the gods they were to oppose; for instance. Health and Immortality were opposed by Sickness and Decay, but these very demons were changed into the rulers of hunger and thirst when they came in contact with the genii of the waters and the trees. Vohu-mano, or Good Thought, was reflected in Evil Thought, and after these came the symmetrical armies of numberless gods and fiends.—Darmesteter in Sa. Bks. E.
[190]. According to the hymns of the Rig-veda, “Yama the king, the gatherer of the people, has descried a path for many which leads from the depths to the heights; he first found out a resting place from which nobody can turn out the occupants; on the way the forefathers have gone, the sons will follow them.”—Rig-veda, X, 14, 1, 2.
[191]. The Druj went back to hell in the shape of a fly. The fly that came to smell of a dead body was thought to be a corpse-spirit that came to take possession of the dead in the name of Ahriman.
[192]. Rig-veda, X, 18, 1.
[193]. Hindu Literature, p. 35.
[194]. Strabo XV, 14; Herod. I, 138.
[195]. The Mosaic law mentions only seventeen crimes as being worthy of capital punishment.
[196]. Blackstone’s Commentaries, IV, 4. 15, 18.
[197]. Says Prof. Darmesteter: “It may be doubted whether the murder of a water-dog could actually have been punished with ten thousand stripes unless we suppose that human endurance was different in ancient Persia from what it is elsewhere; in the time of Chardin the number of stripes inflicted on the guilty never exceeded three hundred; in the old German law, two hundred; in the Mosaic law, forty.”—Sa. Bks. E., Vol. IV, p. 99, Int.
[198]. The penalties for uncleanness in men were far more severe upon woman; after giving birth to a child she was forbidden to taste of water, as her touch would defile the element, and at times her food was handed to her upon a long-handled spoon. Woman was made a creature of contract, and disposed of by a bill of sale; like land or cattle, she was classed under “the fifth contract,” being considered more valuable than cattle, but far cheaper than real estate. They were sometimes sold in the cradle and often when only two or three years of age.—See Dosabhoy Framjee’s work on The Parsis, p. 77.