[29] The Iranian mythology is summarized at length by Duncker, but the person of Zoroaster is altogether shadowy, and his date can only be fixed by conjecture. He is, of course, done away with altogether by some Orientalists, e.g. Darmsteter. In later times, as among the modern Persians (Parsees), the names of the opposing gods were abbreviated to Ormuzd and Ahriman.
[30] The Persian Bible is written in a language without a name, and, it may be added, without an alphabetical character. The name Zend, however, is now firmly attached to it among Western scholars through a mistake of the first investigators, who, always finding it coupled with Avesta, thought it must apply to the language of the sacred text. It actually means commentary. Zend is a sister tongue of that spoken in the same age across the Indus, and the oldest specimens (the Gáthas of the Avesta) by slight systematic alterations can be turned into good old Sanskrit. The alphabet applied to it, as now preserved, is that of the Middle Persian or Pahlavi, which was the language spoken by the Sassanians. Old Persian, the speech of Darius and Xerxes, was written in cuneiform (Behistun inscription, etc.), like the impressions on the well-known clay tablets, etc., of the long-previous literature of Babylonia. The Avesta originally consisted of twenty-one nasks or books, but less than a quarter is now extant. There is, however, an epitome of it in the Dinkard, a religious compilation of the eighth century. The book was unknown to the Greeks and Romans, but Pausanias (v, 27) mentions that the Magi had a volume from which they read. Darmsteter (Sacred Books of the East, Lond., 1895, Introd. to Vendidâd) considers that the composition is almost in its entirety of a date subsequent to Alexander. The sacred books of the Parsees, as far as they have been translated, are to be found in Max Müller's series (Lond., 1880, etc.), just mentioned, vols. iv, xxiii, xxxi (Zend-Avesta), and v, xviii, xxiv, xxxviii (religious treatises in Pahlavi).
[31] Mithra, so-named, long enjoyed a supremacy among the Aryans both in India and Persia. Spenta Aramaiti is one of the Amesha Spentas (later Amshaspands, that is, "Holy Immortals," or Council of Ormuzd, but, although they appear in the Avesta, Darmsteter (loc. cit.) argues a Platonic and, therefore, late origin for them. Thus Vohu Manô ("Good Thought"), their chief and the premier of Ormuzd, appears to be an exact counterpart of the Philonic Logos. Anahita stands for the Vedic Varuna, the waters of the sky, but the name is that of the Babylonian Venus, and her attributes are partly of the concupiscent type.
[32] The Vendidâd ("laws against the evil ones") is the nask which contains all the legislation respecting rites and ceremonies, offences, crimes, etc., punishments to be inflicted, means of expiation, etc. Like parts of the Pentateuch, it is all in the form of a dialogue between the prophet and the Deity.
[33] These Dakhmas, or "Towers of Silence," for the disposal of the dead are well-known to the Anglo-Indians who have resided at Bombay, which almost all Parsees, the present-day Zoroastrians, have adopted as their native city. They number about 60,000.
[34] This account is due to Agathias, ii, 23; cf. Herodotus, i, 138.
[35] Agathias, ii, 24; Herodotus, loc. cit. Contrary to former belief (Rawlinson, etc.), the Parthians were pious Mazdeites, as Darmsteter has shown. Thus, when Tiridates visited Nero, he and his retinue, including several priests, journeyed overland to avoid defiling the sea; Justin, xli; Pliny, Hist. Nat., xxx, 17.
[36] One Shah, Balâsh, was, in fact, dethroned by the Mohbeds (Magi) for having erected public bath-houses; Jos. Stylites, op. cit. (Wright).
[37] Xenophon, Oeconom., iv, 13; Xerxes, on his way to Greece, arriving at a handsome plane tree, adorned it with jewels of gold, and left one of his personal guards as a custodian of it; Herodotus, vii, 31.
[38] The Bareshnûm, or great ceremony of purification, lasted nine days and consisted chiefly in the systematic application of nirung or gomez (urine of kine) to different parts of the body; see West's translation of the rubric, Sacr. Bks. of the East, xviii, 431.