All these contrasts are most marked on the slopes of the north-eastern edge, in Margiana, Bactria, and Sogdiana, which lay open to the steppes of the Caspian Sea. Here were fruitful, blooming valleys with luxuriant vegetation on the banks of the mountain streams, yet, wherever the mountains receded, the endless desert at once began. If the stars shone clear through the night on mountains and table-lands, in the pure and vapourless atmosphere of Iran, sand-storms and mist lay on the northern desert. The winds blowing from the north brought icy cold in the winter; in the summer they drove the sand of the deserts over the fruitful fields, to which water has to be laboriously conveyed in the time of the greatest heat, while eternal winter reigned in the heights of Belurdagh and Hindu Kush. There was also the continual fear of the nomads who dwelt on the steppes to the north, who made attacks on the fruitful slopes and valleys. We have already shown that it was precisely on the slopes of the Hindu Kush that the necessity of protection against the nations of the steppes led to a combination of the forces of the tribes who were settled there, and gave the impulse to the formation of a larger polity.

In such a territory, when the tribes had once become settled in the more favoured regions, amid such struggles against nature and the plundering neighbours, it is clear that the conception of the contrast between good and evil spirits must become more widely developed and sharply pointed—that it should indeed form the hinge of all religious ideas. The good spirits had given fruit and increase to many excellent lands; but the evil spirits destroyed these blessings with their storms of sand and snow, their cold and heat, their beasts of prey and serpents. Wherever the herds throve and the fields were fruitful, there the good spirits were gracious; where the pastures withered, and the fields were covered with sand, the wicked spirits had maliciously rendered of no avail the labours of men. In the valleys of Bactria and Sogdiana there was labour, industry, increase and fruit; beyond, in the steppe, all was barren; the storms went whirling round, and wild hordes of robbers roamed to and fro. Thus in these regions the conception of the struggle of the good spirits, and the evil, which injure, torment, punish and murder men, was most lively, the religious feeling of these conceptions most completely penetrated and governed the minds of men.

All creatures were oppressed by the evil spirits, so the Avesta told us (p. 129); and therefore Auramazda determines to teach Zarathrustra "the wise sayings." No new belief or new forms of worship are to be introduced; the means of protection against the evil ones were to be multiplied and strengthened. We know what importance the Arians in India ascribed to the correct prayer and invocation, what power over the spirits and indeed over the deities themselves they ascribed to the correct words, what a defensive power they attributed to the sayings of the Atharvan. The same ideas were current among the Arians of Iran. The heaven of the good god and holy spirits is, in the Avesta, the "dwelling of invocations" (Garonmana). Hence the first point in the reform was that new formulæ and prayers should be added to the old prayers and incantations. The fire that slays demons is to burn day and night on the hearth, and must always be tended with hard, dry, well-hewn wood; the spirits of light, the great Mithra, the sun, the stars, are to be earnestly invoked along with the victorious Verethraghna, and Çraosha the slayer of demons, the life-giving god, to whom Haoma is to be offered; and the libation of Haoma is to be frequently offered to the spirits of light. If men prayed constantly to the good spirits, and cursed the evil, if they made use of the holy sayings when they observed that the evil beings came, then wicked creatures would certainly remain far from house, and farm, and field. According to the Avesta, Zarathrustra first uttered the Ahuna vairya, and Angromainyu says that though the deities have not been able to drive him from the earth, Zarathrustra will smite him with the Ahuna vairya.[225] In the minds of the priests of the Avesta, this prayer is itself a mighty being to which worship is to be offered, just as in the Vedas the holy prayers and some parts of the ritual—nay even the verse-measure of the hymns—are treated as divine powers.

It was an old Arian conception, which we have observed widely spread on the Ganges, that filth and pollution and contact with what is impure and dead gave the evil spirit power over those who had contracted such defilement. This uncleanness must be removed, and its operation checked. The reform, which bears the name of Zarathrustra, must have extended and increased in Iran the rules for purification and the removal of uncleanness. These regulations, carried out in long and wearisome detail on the basis of this new movement, are before us in the Vendidad. The Avesta says: Zarathrustra was the first who praised the Asha Vahista (i. e. the best truthfulness which is at the same time the highest purity) and represents Angromainyu as exclaiming; "that Zarathrustra made him as hot by the Ashi Vahista as metal is made in the melting."[226]

Whatever gave increase and life, water and trees and good soil, and the animals which were useful to men, were the work of the good spirits, the good creation; the steppes, the desert, the heat, the fierce cold, the beasts of prey, these were the work of the evil ones, the bad creation. Did not a man increase life and growth if he industriously cultivated his field, watered it well, and extended it towards the desert, if he destroyed the animals and insects which did harm to the fields and trees, if he gave room to fruitfulness against unfertility? Did he not extend and sustain the good creation, and lessen the evil, if he planted and watered, and diminished the harmful animals, the serpents, the worms, and beasts of prey? By such work a man took the side of the good spirits against the evil, and fought with them. It was in the will and power of man by the act of his hands, by labour and effort, to strengthen the good creation. The importance which the Avesta ascribes to the cultivation of the land, we may regard as a prominent trait of the reform, as an essential part of its ethical importance. Beside warriors and priests the Avesta knows only the agricultural class.

In the Veda the gods of the light and the highest heaven, Mithra and Varuna, are the guardians of truth and purity, the avengers and punishers of evil deeds. The invocation of Mithra in the Avesta, given above, showed us that the Arians of Iran recognised in this deity the spirit of purity, the inevitable avenger of injustice. With his all-penetrating eye he watches, not only over purity of body, but also over purity of soul. We may regard it as certain that the reform carried a long step forward the ethical impulse which lay in this conception of Mithra—a conception current on both sides of the Indus. This view is supported by the great importance which the Avesta ascribes to truthfulness, in the decisive value given to this virtue for the purity of the soul, and the identification of purity with truthfulness. As filth defiles the body, so, according to the Avesta, does a lie defile the soul. Lying and deception are the worst sins of which a man can be guilty. The ethical advance is obvious when the evil spirits are not merely regarded as doing harm to men, but it is emphatically stated that they deceive men, and a lie is the essence of the evil spirits. In the Avesta a part of them have simply the name of the spirits of deception, of the Druj. The suppliants of the true gods are called Ashavan, i. e. the true, the pure; the worshippers of the evil spirits are liars.

The ideas of the Veda about the hosts of the spirits of ancestors, and the entrance of the good and pious into the heaven of light, are also current among the Arians of Iran. These the reform could not leave untouched. From the ethical characteristic which marks them, from the severe inculcation of a pure, true, active life, it proceeded to the idea of a sort of judgment on the souls after death. The detailed form in which this idea is presented to us in the Avesta will be given below.

In all religions, when they have reached a certain stage of development, the impulse arises to find the unity of the divine being among the multifarious crowd of deities. On the Ganges the Brahmans or priests attained to this unity by elevating the power of the holy acts which controlled the deities, and was mightier than they, into the lord of the gods, by uniting with this conception the great breath or world-soul, the source of life springing up in nature. In Iran the reform did not look on nature as one, like the Brahmans on the Ganges, and owing to the character of the land and the strong contrasts there met with it could not easily perceive in it any single whole; on the contrary, it comprehended in unity, on the one hand, the good beneficent side of nature, which gives increase, light, and life to men; and, on the other, ranged the harmful powers together in opposition to the good. Hence it came about that the spirits which worked on either side were, so to speak, combined, and the two totals came forward in opposition. To these totals the reform sought to give unity by placing a chieftain at the head of each, the good and the bad. The chief of the good was Ahura, i. e. the lord, who is also denoted by the name Mazda, i. e. the wise, but he is generally invoked by the united title Ahura Mazda (Auramazda in the dialect of Western Iran), the wise lord; occasionally, in the Avesta, he is called Çpentomainyu, i. e. the spirit of holy mind, the holy spirit. In the Rigveda the name Ahura Mazda, in the form Asura Medha, is used for more than one god of light. The chief of the evil spirits was Angromainyu, i. e. he that thinks evil, the destroying spirit.

The good and the evil spirits are regarded as active, the one on the beneficent, the other on the injurious side of nature. It was a step in advance when the reform arrived at the conception, that as the good and evil spirits ruled the life of nature and man, so in the beginning of the world, at the time of its origin, the good and evil spirits must have been active; the good was from the beginning the work of the good; the evil the work of the evil. As the heavenly and infernal spirits were regarded as in perpetual activity, the reform could not here, as in India, look on nature and men as emanations from a being in repose—from the world-soul—the nature of which became ever less pure and bright, less really itself, as the emanations advanced. Instead of an emanation, the active force and contrast of the spirits gave rise to the idea that the world was brought into being by the will and power of the two supreme spirits to a creation of the world. The good side of the world must have been the work of the chief of the good spirits, the evil side the work of the evil. Auramazda created the good, but immediately he created it, Angromainyu created the evil in order to destroy the good. And as at the creation, so also in the created world, the mutual opposition of the good and evil god, the struggle of their hosts, goes on. There is no direct contest between Auramazda and Angromainyu; they operate against each other for increase and destruction, life and death, and for the souls of men; the direct conflict against evil remains, even after the reform, with the old spirits, with Mithra, Verethragna, Çraosha, and Tistrya.

From this we may without hesitation draw the inference that Auramazda and Angromainyu did not belong to the original belief of the Arians of Iran. From the absence of any myth about Auramazda, and the character of the names, "the wise lord," "the destroying spirit," it further follows that the gods thus named could not be the creation of any primitive religious feeling. These names belong to a period of reflection, which strives to make a presentment of the general operation of the good and evil powers, of their intellectual and ethical characteristics, and at the same time seeks to express their nature, as well as their relation to the world. Finally, the wavering position which Auramazda takes up in the Avesta towards the old deities, shows that he is of later origin. Though now the supreme deity, he sacrifices to Tistrya, in order to give him strength for the victory over Apaosha (p. 120); to Ardviçura, that Zarathrustra may be obedient to him (p. 129); and to other gods of the old period. Beside him Mithra is praised in the old style as the highest power; he instructs Zarathrustra to invoke the old gods, who still continue in their traditionary activity. But we have express evidence that Auramazda belongs to the reform. "The first man," so the Avesta says, "who sacrificed to Auramazda was the sacred Zarathrustra."[227] In the transformation, however loose, of the divine nature into "the wise lord," with his change from a natural force to an ethical and intellectual power, and elevation to be the creator "of the heaven and the earth" (p. 87), lay the most decisive step taken by the reform; by these conceptions it had raised the ancient possession of the Arians of Iran to a new stage.