Then Ahura Mazda brings him a golden ring and a poniard, the emblems of sovereignty.
Thus, under the sway of Yima, three hundred winters passed away, and the earth was replenished with flocks and herds, with men and dogs and birds and with red blazing fires.
Three hundred winters mean three hundred periods or cycles. [pg 645] “Replenished,” mark well; that is to say, all this had been on it before; and thus is proven the knowledge of the doctrine about the successive Destructions of the World and its Life-Cycles. Once the “three hundred winters” were over, Ahura Mazda warns Yima that the Earth is becoming too full, and men have nowhere to live. Then Yima steps forward, and with the help of Spenta Ârmaita, the female Genius, or Spirit of the Earth, makes that Earth stretch out and become larger by one-third, after which “new flocks and herds and men” appear upon it. Ahura Mazda warns him again, and Yima makes the Earth by the same magic power to become larger by two-thirds. “Nine hundred winters” pass away, and Yima has to perform the ceremony for the third time. The whole of this is allegorical. The three processes of stretching the Earth, refer to the three successive Continents and Races issuing one after and from the other, as explained more fully elsewhere. After the third time, Ahura Mazda warns Yima in an assembly of “celestial gods” and “excellent mortals” that upon the material world the fatal winters are going to fall, and all life will perish. This is the old Mazdean symbolism for the “Flood,” and the coming cataclysm to Atlantis, which sweeps away every Race in its turn. Like Vaivasvata Manu and Noah, Yima makes a Vara—an Enclosure, an Ark—under the God's direction, and brings thither the seed of every living creature, animals and “Fires.”
It is of this “Earth” or new Continent that Zarathushtra became the law-giver and ruler. This was the Fourth Race in its beginning, after the men of the Third began to die out. Till then, as said above, there had been no regular death, but only a transformation, for men had no personality as yet. They had Monads—“Breaths” of the One Breath, as impersonal as the source from which they proceeded. They had bodies, or rather shadows of bodies, which were sinless, hence Karma-less. Therefore, as there was no Kâma Loka—least of all Nirvâna or even Devachan—for the “Souls” of men who had no personal Egos, there could be no intermediate periods between the incarnations. Like the Phœnix, primordial man resurrected out of his old into a new body. Each time, and with each new generation, he became more solid, more physically perfect, agreeably with the evolutionary law, which is the Law of Nature. Death came with the complete physical organism, and with it—moral decay.
This explanation shows one more old religion agreeing in its symbology with the Universal Doctrine.
Elsewhere the oldest Persian traditions, the relics of Mazdeism of the still older Magians, are given, and some of them explained. Mankind did not issue from one solitary couple. Nor was there ever a first man—whether Adam or Yima—but a first mankind.
It may, or may not, be “mitigated polygenism.” Once that both Creation ex nihilo (an absurdity) and a superhuman Creator or Creators (a fact) are made away with by Science, polygenism presents no more difficulties or inconveniences—rather fewer from a scientific point of view—than monogenism does.
In fact, it is as scientific as any other claim. For in his Introduction to Nott and Gliddon's Types of Mankind, Agassiz declares his belief in an indefinite number of “primordial races of men created separately”; and remarks that, “whilst in every zoological province animals are of different species, man, in spite of the diversity of his races, always forms one and the same human being.”
Occultism defines and limits the number of primordial races to seven, because of the seven “Progenitors,” or Prajâpatis, the evolvers of beings. These are neither Gods, nor supernatural Beings, but advanced Spirits from another and lower Planet, reborn on this Planet, and giving birth in their turn in the present Round to present Humanity. This doctrine is again corroborated by one of its echoes—among the Gnostics. In their anthropology and genesis of man they taught that “a certain company of seven Angels,” formed the first men, who were no better than senseless, gigantic, shadowy forms—“a mere wriggling worm” (!) writes Irenæus,[1465] who takes, as usual, the metaphor for reality.