[307] Theopomp. Fragm. 71, 72, ed. Müller.
[308] "Yaçna," 19, 16-18.
[309] "Yaçna," 26, 32; "Farvardin Yasht," 135.
[310] "Aban Yasht," 21-23; "Farvardin Yasht," 157; "Ashi Yasht," 24; "Zamyad Yasht," 26.
[311] "Ram Yasht," 11; "Zamyad Yasht," 28.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE PRIESTHOOD OF IRAN
In the form in which we have them the books of the Avesta are the work of the priests of Eastern Iran. According to the evidence repeatedly furnished by them, there were three orders in Sogdiana and Bactria: priests, warriors, and husbandmen. This sequence, which is uniformly preserved both in the invocations and in the book of the law, shows that the priests had risen above the warriors, and claimed to be the first of the three orders.[312]
In considering the civilisation of the Bactrian kingdom we found ourselves compelled by the proximity of the nations of the steppes to assume, that when the Arians had become established there, the tribes which had a capacity or love for battle, undertook the protection of the land, the flocks and fields, against the incursions of the nomads of the north, and made battle and strife their special vocation. Such attacks increased with the increasing culture of Bactria, and led to a consolidation of powers; these clans raised one of their number distinguished in battle to be their leader, or followed him, and thus was laid the basis for the foundation of a great state. The importance ascribed in the Avesta to the splendour of majesty—we find the personification of good government in the Avesta among the Amesha Çpentas—in combination with the battles which, as we learn from the book, the princes of Bactria carried on against the Turanians, and with the statements in the West Iranian Epos about the kingdom of the Bactrians, together with the later condition of the country, allowed us to draw the conclusion that at one time the kings of Bactria were not without power and importance. They reigned, surrounded by the families of the warriors, who were enabled by their possessions in lands and flocks, to devote themselves to the practice of arms and to battle. The invocations to Mithra, Verethraghna, and Vayu, bear upon them very evident traces of a war-like spirit (p. 110, 114). That the spirits of the sky, which once fought with the cloud-dragons, have become mortal heroes in the Avesta, also proves—since even among other nations the Epic poetry which follows periods of warlike excitement transforms shapes of the sky into heroes of old time—that once on a time Bactria had experienced a period of warfare, when difficulties arose which it was mainly the business of the monarchy and the nobles to settle. The Avesta can tell us of arms and robes as well as of palaces with pillars and turrets; of earthen, iron, silver and golden vessels; of mats, carpets, and adornments of gold,[313] such as are found among noble families; and those hecatombs of horses, cattle, and sheep which the heroes in the Avesta sacrifice to Anahita and Drvaçpa, in order to obtain their favour by victory, are no doubt borrowed from the sacrifices which princes and nobles were wont to offer in cases where the numbers must be enlarged in honour of the heroes. Yet we see that Xerxes orders a thousand oxen to be sacrificed at one time. We have already shown (IV. 390), how important and pre-eminent was the position which the races of the warriors, "the princes," occupied on the Indus and the Ganges, and what respect they commanded among "the free Indians" in the Panjab, even in the fourth century B.C. That a warlike nobility of a similar character, attitude, and position, existed in Eastern Iran, is the less to be doubted, as the order of warriors in the Avesta is denoted by a name (rathaestar) which goes back to the chariots of war. The husbandmen, who were settled beside and among them, bear in the Avesta the name of Vaçtrya,[314] but the word Vaeçu is also used for them, which simply repeats the name of the Indian Vaiçyas.