A guard o’er my faithful
And so I grant progress and goodness
And the hate of the lie with the hate of her bondsmen
I would expel from the body—
Where is then the righteous lord that will smite them from life
And beguile them of license?
Mazda! there is the power which will banish and conquer.”[[177]]
THE YASNA.
The word Yasna means worship including sacrifice. This was the principal liturgy of the Zarathuśtrians, in which confession, invocation, prayer, exhortation and praise are all combined. The Gāthas are sung in the middle of it and in the Vendīdad Sadah; the Visparad is interpolated within it. Like other compositions of its kind, it is largely made up of the fragments of different ages and modes of composition. We have no reason to suppose that the Yasna existed in its present form in the earlier periods of Zarathuśtranism, but the fragments of which it is composed, may, some of them, reach back to that era, and even its present arrangement is comparatively early in the history of Mazdean literature. The following extracts have been chosen as representing the finest specimens of poetic fervor to be found in the Yasna: