Chapter M: S. Reinach’s opinion that in Totemism is to be found the secret of (2)

The Parsis hold that the whole Avesta was the work of Zoroaster. Much of the original material has disappeared, and although Western writers are disposed to throw all the blame on the Moslem invaders, the steady Persian tradition which accuses “Alexander the Rûman” of having caused the destruction of an important part of it, cannot be well answered by saying that such barbarism was not likely to be committed by the Macedonian conqueror. When Persepolis was reduced to ruins some of the sacred books “written with gold ink on prepared cow-skins” may have been destroyed by accident, but as it was certain that the Zoroastrian priests would do all they could to foment resistance to the hated idolater, we cannot be too sure that the deed was not done on purpose. The way of disposing of the dead set the Greeks against the Zoroastrians, and they even thought or affected to think that the dying as well as the dead were given to dogs. The Arabs, no doubt, burnt what they could lay their hands on of what was left, and it tells much for the devotion of the faithful few, the persecuted remnant in Persia, and the band of exiles who found a happier fate in India, that nevertheless the Avesta has been preserved in a representative though incomplete form, to take its place in among the sacred literatures of the world. When the Parsis return, as they hope to do, to a free Persia, they may carry the Avesta proudly before them as the Sikhs carried the Granth to the prophet-martyr’s tomb at Delhi: they have done more than keep the faith, they have _lived it_.

The present Avesta consists of five books. The Gâthâs or hymns alone really claim to have been composed by Zoroaster himself, and this claim is admitted by European scholars who disagree with the Parsis in denying that the other four books are by the same author. They are: the “Yasna,” a ceremonial liturgy, the “Vispered,” a work resembling the “Yasna,” but apparently less ancient; the “Vendîdâd,” which contains the Mazdean religious law, and the “Khordah Avesta,” a household prayer-book for the laity. The original text was written in an Aryan dialect related to Sanscrit; after a time, this tongue was understood by no one but the priests and not much by them; it was decided, therefore, to make a translation, which was called the “Zend,” or “interpretation,” or, as we should say, “the authorised version.” At first Europeans thought that “Zend” meant the original tongue in which the work was written. Curiously enough, the language into which the Scriptures were rendered was not Iranian or Old Persian, but Pahlavi, a _lingua franca_ full of Semitic words, which had been coined for convenience in communicating with the Assyrians and Syrians when they were under one king. Pahlavi was also used for official inscriptions, for coinage, for commerce; it was a sort of Esperanto. The text and the translation enjoyed equal authority, but the former was called “the Avesta of Heaven” and the latter “the Avesta of Earth.”

The first fragment of the “Avesta” that reached Europe was a copy of the “Yasna” brought to Canterbury by an unknown Englishman in 1633. Other scraps followed, but no real attempt to translate it was made till the adventurous Anquetil Duperron published in 1771 the version which he had made with the assistance of Parsi priests and which was rejected in unwise haste by Sir William Jones as a _supercherie littéraire_, chiefly on the score that its contents were for the most part pure nonsense, and hence could not be the work of Zoroaster. Germany at once was more just than England to the man who, though he had not succeeded in making a good translation, deserved the highest honour as a pioneer.

Even now that better translations are available, the Avesta is apt to dishearten the reader on his first acquaintance with it. Many passages have remained obscure, and the desire to be literal in this as in some other Oriental works has hindered the translators from writing their own languages well. It needs a Sir Richard Jebb to produce a translation which is a classic and is yet microscopically accurate. I once asked Professor F. C. Burkitt why the Septuagint did not make more impression on the Hellenic and Roman students of Alexandria by mere force of the literary power of the Bible? He replied that he thought it was to be explained by the poor degree of literary skill possessed by the Greek translators or by most of them. Another reminiscence comes to my mind here: I recollect that eminent scholar and deeply religious-minded man, Albert Réville, saying to me: “The Bible is so much more amusing than the Koran!” I am afraid one must confess that the Koran is so much “more amusing” than the Avesta. It is a good rule, however, to approach all religious books with patience and with reverence, for they contain, even if concealed under a bushel, the finest thoughts of man.

When we have grown accustomed to the outward frame of the Avesta, the inner sense becomes clearer. It is like a piece of music by Tschaikowsky: at first the modulations seem bizarre, the themes incoherent; then, by degrees, a consecutive plan unwinds itself and we know that what appeared meaningless sound was divine harmony.

The essential teaching of the Avesta is summed up in the text: “Adore God with a pure mind and a pure body, and honour Him in His works.” Force, power, energy, waters and stagnant pools, springs, running brooks, plants that shoot aloft, plants that cover the ground, the earth, the heavens, stars, sun, moon, the everlasting lights, the flocks, the kine, the water-tribes, those that are of the sky, the flying, the wild ones—“We honour all these, Thy holy and pure creatures, O Ahura Mazda, divine artificer!”

“The Voice said: Call My works thy friends.”

If the lyric note of great religious expression is rarely reached (only, perhaps, in a few pieces, such as the noble hymn to the sun-symbol), the sustained exposition of life is so reasonable and yet so lofty that to contemplate it after gazing at the extravagances of pillar-saints and Indian Yogi, signals, as it were, a return to sanity and health after the _nuit blanche_ of fever.

The “Khordah Avesta” contains this counsel or good wish: “Be cheerful; live thy life the whole time which thou wilt live.” Man is not asked to do the impossible or even the difficult: he is asked to _enjoy_. To the extreme spirituality which shrank from making even a mental image of God is joined a “this worldliness” which saw in rational enjoyment a religious duty. Instead of choosing poverty, man was ordered to make good use of wealth; instead of mortifying the flesh, he was to avoid calumny, evil-speaking, quarrels, to give clothes to the poor, to pray not only for himself but for others. If he does wrong, let him repent honestly in his heart and do some practical good work as a pledge of his repentance. The soul which grieves for its wrongdoing and sins no more comes back into the light of “God the giver, Forgiver, rich in Love, who always is, always was, always will be!” When it was asked, “What is in the first place most acceptable to this earth?” the answer came: “When a holy man walks on it, O Zarathustra!” Good men work _with_ God, who, sure of ultimate triumph, is yet Himself struggling now against the Power of Darkness. There is no religion without a good life: “All have not the Faith who do not hear it; all hear it not who are unclean; all are unclean who are sinners.” God did not send calamities to His servants, but He compassionates them in their trials: “The voice of him weeping, however low, mounts up to the star-lights, comes round the whole world.” It is no sin to desire riches: “Thy kingdom come, O Ahura, when the virtuous poor shall inherit the earth.” In spite of the sufferings of good people, even on this fair earth there is more of pleasantness for the good than for the wicked, and in the next world there is bliss eternal. I do not think that Robert Browning studied the Avesta, but to the thoroughly Zoroastrian line quoted above I am tempted to add this other which is not less so:—

“Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph.”

For the individual, as for the universe, Right must triumph. If the prophet of optimism has a harder task than the oracle of despair, it is, perhaps, a more profitable task.

The Parsi repeats daily, as his ancestors did before him, the so-called Honover or “Ahuna-Vairya,” or _logos_ which brings God down to man as the Gayatri lifts man up to God: “One Master and Lord, all holy and supreme; one teacher of His Law, appointed by God’s almighty will as shepherd to the weak.” The Mazdean “law” was a thought-out system to prevent idolatry and atheism, and to make men lead good lives. There is no racial exclusiveness in it: the Mazdeans had no shibboleth or peculiar sign; Zoroaster, himself a foreigner, did not appeal to a chosen people or to a miraculously evolved caste: he only knew of good men and bad. A really good man, truthful and charitable in all his ways, had three heavens open to him even though he “offered no prayers and chanted no Gâthâs”; only the fourth heaven, a little nearer the presence of God, was reserved for those who had devoted their lives to religion. Temperance was enjoined, as without temperance there could not be health. The family was sacred and marriage meritorious: children, the gift of Ahura Mazda, were recruits for the great Salvation Army of the future. Immorality was severely censured, but the victims of it were befriended. Stringent and most humane religious laws protected the _fille-mère_ from being driven “by her shame” to destroy herself or her offspring. Girls were married at sixteen: the address to young brides may be compared with that in the Rig-Veda: “I speak these words to you, maidens who wed. I say them unto you—imprint them on your hearts. Learn to know the world of the Holy Spirit according to the Law. Even so, let one of you take the other as the Law ordains, for it will be to you a source of perfect joy.”

At the time when Zoroastrianism was the State religion, the Sásánian period, we find that the kings frequently had harems. It is certain, however, that if in this as in other things the priests were complacent, they were untrue to orthodox Zoroastrian doctrine and custom, which only permitted the taking of a second wife in some rare cases, as when there was no issue by the first.

Even then, it does not seem to have been encouraged. The blot on Avestic morality is the strange recommendation of consanguineous marriages, which the Parsis interpret as far as possible in a figurative sense, but it must have been intended to be followed, though it is plain that such unions were never popular. The declared object was the hypothetical maximum purity of race: exactly the same object as that contemplated in the union of Siegemund and Siegelind in the Nibelungenlied—a curious parallel. To my mind, the desire to keep agricultural property together may have had something to do with it. The present moral ideas of the Parsis do not differ from those of Europeans, and when they requested to be placed under the English instead of the Hindu marriage law, their wish was granted.

In Avesta times the priests both married and toiled like the rest of the people. When their prosperity under the Sásánians tended to make them a class apart, they seem to have become less faithful to the ideals of their master, less stern in opposing evil in high places. It is a common experience of history. Originally they were true citizen-priests, mixing with the people as being of them. There was no life better or holier than the common life of duty and work. Isolation of any kind was contrary to the central Zoroastrian view of man as a social being. Among the wicked souls in hell, each one thinks itself utterly alone: it has no sight or knowledge of the host around it. Nothing could illustrate more powerfully than this the saying of a great French writer: “_Seul a un synonyme: mort!_” Solitude is the death of the soul.

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VII

ZOROASTRIAN ZOOLOGY

NO investigator of early Iran can afford to neglect the _Shahnameh_ of Firdusi, which was as good history as he could make it; that is to say, it was founded on extremely old legendary lore collected by him with a real wish to revive the memory of the past. Firdusi sang the glories of the “fire-worshippers” with such enthusiasm that one cannot be surprised if, when he died, the Sheikh of Tús doubted whether he ought receive orthodox Moslem burial: a doubt removed by an opportune dream in which the Sheikh saw the poet in Paradise. In Firdusi’s epic we are told that the earliest Persian king (who seems to have been not very far off the first man) lived in peace with all creation. Wild animals came round and knew him for their lord. He had a son who was killed by demons and a grandson named Húsheng, who, as soon as he was old enough, made war on the demons (Turanians?) to avenge his father’s murder. Every species of wild and tame beast obeyed Húsheng:—

“The savage beasts, and those of gentler kind,
Alike reposed before him and appeared
To do him homage.”

In his war on the demon’s brood, Húsheng was helped by wolf, tiger, lion, and even by the fowls of the air. All this while mankind had lived on fruit and the leaves of trees. Húsheng taught his people to bake bread. He was succeeded by his son Taliumen, in whose reign panthers, hawks, and falcons were tamed. The next king introduced weaving and the use of armour. His successor was remembered for having kept a herd of 1,000 cows whose milk he gave to the poor. Then came Zorák, who owned 10,000 horses. Zorák was seduced by Iblís, the evil spirit, who, in order to accomplish it, became his chief cook. Iblís was the real founder of the culinary art; till then, people lived still almost entirely on bread and fruit, but the king’s new _chef_ prepared the most savoury dishes, for which he used the flesh of all kinds of birds and beasts. Finally, he sent to table a partridge and a pheasant, after which Zorák promised the devil to grant him any request he might make.

_Photo:_ _J. Dieulafoy._
KING FIGHTING GRIFFIN WITH SCORPION’S TAIL.
Palace of Darius.
(_By permission of M. Marcel Dieulafoy._)]

Here there are fugitive reminiscences of parallel legends in the _Bundehesh_, a Parsi religious book belonging to post-Avestic times. The first human couple served God faithfully till, for some unexplained reason, they were induced to ascribe creation and supreme power to the daevas. This was the “unforgivable sin,” the ascription of the miraculous power of God to the devil. Ahriman rejoiced at their treason, though it is not said that he was the cause of it: man could choose between good and evil. After their defection, the man and the woman clothed themselves in leaves and took to hunting. Ahriman put it into their heads to kill a goat and then to light a fire by rubbing two sticks: they blew on the fire to fan the flame and roasted a piece of the goat. One bit they threw in the air as a sacrifice to the Nature spirits, saying, “This for the Yazatas!” A kite flew past and carried off the sacrifice. Afterwards, the man and woman dressed in skins and told innumerable lies. Going from bad to worse, they engendered a large family whence sprang the twenty-five races of mankind.

How this story got into the _Bundehesh_ I do not know, but I am sure that Zoroaster would have disowned it. He knew of no collective “fall of man,” whether in connexion with partridges, pheasants, or goat-flesh.

The Avesta, in its sober cosmogony, is content to speak of the proto-man, Gayo Marathan (mortal life), and the proto-good-animal, Geus Urva, from whom all human beings and all animals of the good creation are derived. Nevertheless, Ahura Mazda is described frequently as _creating_ each animal; the proto-creature was only the _modus operandi_ of the divine power. As in biology, divided sex was a secondary development. From the bull, Geus Urva, proceeded first his own species, and then sheep, camels, horses, asses, birds, water-animals.

The distinguishing qualification given him of _good and laborious_ is the most striking proof of the originality of Magian ideas: instead of the strong bulls of Basan roaring in their might, the bull we have here is one with the ploughing ox:—

“T’amo, o pio bove; e mite un sentimento
Di vigore e di pace al cor m’infondi....”

—the patient, the long-suffering, the gentle, though strong-limbed helper of man in his daily toil, good in his vigour, good in his mildness, but good most of all in his labour, for Zoroaster called labour a holy thing. The animal which did most to cultivate God’s earth and make the desert flower like a rose, was the paragon of creatures. It must not be thought that to the Geus Urva or his kind was ever rendered the homage due to their Creator. If there was one thing more abhorrent, to the Zoroastrian mind than idolatry it was zoolatry: when Cambyses killed a new Apis with many of his followers in Egypt, he had no reason to fear Mazdean criticism.

The soul of the bull receives _dulia_ not _latria_. “We honour the soul of the bull ... and also our own souls and our cattle’s souls who help to preserve our life; the souls by which they exist and which exist for them.” So runs one of the Gâthâs, one of the hymns of Zoroaster himself. “We honour the souls of the swift, wild animals; we honour the souls of just men and women in whatever place they are born, whose pure natures have overcome evil. We honour saintly men and saintly women, living immortal, always living, always increasing in glory—all man and woman souls faithful to the Spirit of God.”

In this song of praise we have brought before us vividly a fundamental doctrine of the Avesta which pervades every page of it: the belief in the Fravashi, the soul-partner, the double or angel, which exists before birth as during life and after death. This belief has a great interest for us as it would seem that it was only by chance that it did not pass into the body of Christian dogma. The Jews of the new school had held it for quite two hundred years before Christ. Besides other allusions, are the three distinct references to the soul-partner in the New Testament. Christ Himself speaks of the angels of the children who are always in the presence of God and who complain to Him if the children are ill-treated. Secondly, when Peter issued from prison, those who saw him said, “It is his angel.” Thirdly, it is stated that the Sadducees believed that there was no resurrection, “neither angel nor Spirit,” but that the Pharisees, of whom Paul was one, “confessed both.” These three references become intelligible for the first time after reading the Gâthâs. True it is that he who knows only one religion, knows none.

Ahriman inflicted every sort of suffering on the primal creature—this was the beginning of cruelty to animals. At last, he caused its death. The soul of the Bull dwells in the presence of God, and to it, as intercessor, all suffering creatures lift their plaints. Why were they made to suffer wrath, ill-usage, hunger? Will no one lead them to sweet pastures? The creature-soul carries the cry of the creatures to God. Ahura Mazda promises the advent of Zoroaster, redresser of all wrongs. But the Bull-soul weeps and complains: how can the voice of one weak man avail to help? It invokes stronger and more effectual aid.

The hymn is really a litany of suffering animals, the grandeur of the thought flashing across obscurities which make it almost impossible to translate. Very mysterious is the expression of incredulity in the efficacy of the help of Zoroaster, an expression which stands quite alone, and in which some have seen a proof that this hymn was not written by the Prophet. But would any one else have dared to question his power or to call him “one weak man”? Can it be that Zoroaster was distressed to find his efforts to prevent cruelty so unavailing, and that he here covertly invokes the “strong arm of the law” to do what he had failed in doing?

In the pages of the Avesta everything is tried to enforce humanity: hopes of reward, threats of punishment, appeals to religious obedience, common gratitude, self-interest. It cannot but appear singular that among an Eastern pastoral and agricultural people such reiterated admonitions should have been needful. The cow and the horse, “animals manifestly pure which bring with them words of blessing,” inflict terrible anathemas on their tormentors:—

The cow curses him who keeps her: “Mayest thou remain without
posterity, ever continuing of evil report, thou who dost not
distribute me food, and yet causest me to labour for thy wife,
thy children and thy own sustenance.”

The horse curses his owner: “Mayest thou not be he who harnesses
swift horses, not one of those who sit on swift horses, not one
who makes swift horses hasten away. Thou dost not wish strength
to me in the numerous assembly, in the circle of many men.”

The cow which is led astray by robbers calls to Mithra “ever with unlifted hands, thinking of the stall,” and Mithra, here figuring as the vengeance of God, destroys the house, the clan, the confederacy, the region, the rule of him who injured her. She is the type of prosperity: “O thou who didst create the cow, give us immortal life, safety, power, plenty.” She is dear to her Creator: “Thou hast given the earth as a sweet pasture for the cow.” She is praised because she furnishes the offerings, flesh, milk, and butter.

This reminds us of the differences of point of view between the Persian and the Indian humanitarian. The Indian, in theory at least, simply forbade taking animal life. He had the great advantage of the argument of the straight line. The Zoroastrian was handicapped by his moderation. It is easier far to teach extraordinary than ordinary well-doing; every moralist who has set out to improve mankind has found that. Zoroaster had not the smallest doubt about his contention that man has imperative duties in regard to what used to be called “the brute creation.” Man could not live as man at all without it: we who have harnessed steam and trapped the electric spark might entertain such a possibility, but to Zoroaster the idea would have seemed absurd. As we owe so much to animals, the least we can do is to treat them well. Yet, though he included wanton and useless slaughter in “ill-treatment,” he allows the killing of animals for food. Herodotus remarked that, unlike the Egyptians, the Magian priests did not think it pollution to kill animals with their own hands—except dogs and oxen.

It is to be supposed that the framers of Zoroastrian law believed that animal food was necessary for man’s health and strength, perfect health being the state most acceptable to the Creator. Believing this, they could not forbid the temperate use of it. Gargantuan feasts were not dreamt of; if they had been, they would have received the condemnation given to all excesses. We are apt to fall into the way of thinking of sacred books which is that of their own adepts; we think of them as written by unpremeditated impulse. But commonly this was not the case. The Avesta, especially, bears signs of conclusions reached by patient reasoning. While, however, the Magians permitted the slaughter of animals, they bowed to the original scruple which has no race-limits, by ordering that such slaughter should be accompanied by an expiatory rite without the performance of which it was unlawful. This was the offering of the head of the animal to Homa: regarded, in this instance, as the archetype of the “wine of life”—the sacred or sacramental juice of the plant which has been identified with the Indian Soma. The Homa juice was much the most sacred thing that could be eaten or drunk; if it is true that it contained alcohol, the little jet of flame that would start upwards as it was thrown on the sacrificial fire might seem actually to bear with it the spirit of the offering. Whatever was the exact idea implied by the dedication of slaughtered animals to Homa, the fact that they were killed for food did not, of course, in any way affect their extra-mortal destiny. The “souls of our cattle”—their archetypes—could not suffer death.

As a careful observer, which he is now allowed to have been, Herodotus remarked that not only might the priests take animal life, but that they thought it highly meritorious to take the life of certain animals such as ants, serpents, and some kinds of birds. It required no profound knowledge of the East to notice something unusual in this. Even the Jews, with their classification of clean and unclean beasts, cast no moral slur on the forbidden category, and if the serpent of Eden was cursed, later snakes regained their character and inspired no loathing; the snake-charmer with his crawling pupils was a well known and popular entertainer. Farther East, every holy man respected the life of an ant as much as of an elephant. Zoroaster alone banned the reptile and the major part of the insect world. No penance was more salutary than to kill ten thousand scorpions, snakes, mosquitoes, ants that walk in single file, harvesting ants, wasps, or a kind of fly which was the very death of cattle. The innocent lizard suffered by reason of his relationship with the crocodile; the harmless frog and tortoise excited a wrath which they had done nothing to merit. Among mammals, the mouse is singled out for destruction: although the wolf is a legionary of Ahriman, he is more often classed with the “wicked two-legged one”—perverse man—than with the evil creation properly so called. In one place Ahriman is said to have created “devouring beasts,” but on closer examination these devouring beasts proved to be only the harvesting ants which were reckoned deadly foes of the agriculturist. Any one who has seen how much newly-sown grass seed these favourites of Solomon will remove in a shining hour will understand the prejudice, though he will not, I hope, share it. Roughly speaking, the diligent, old-fashioned gardener who puzzles his pious mind as to why “those things” were ever created, is a born Zoroastrian. To tell him with Paul that “every creature of God is good” does not comfort him much. Zoroaster’s answer is as philosophically complete as it is scientifically weak. Certain creatures are noxious to man; a good Creator would not have made creatures noxious to men, ergo, such creatures were not made by a good Creator. Besides the scientific objection to any hard-and-fast line of division between animals, there is another: the pity of it. I wonder that some velvet-coated field-mouse, approaching softly on tip-toe as Zoroaster lay in his grotto, did not inquire with its appealing eyes: “Do you really think that I look as if I were made by the Evil One?” In spite of the numerous advantages of a theory which, in a literal sense, makes a virtue of necessity (a sad necessity to some of us), the theological ban of creatures for no other reason than that they are inconvenient to man detracts from the ideal beauty of Zoroastrian faith.

Darwin, in a letter to Asa Gray, the American botanist, said that the sufferings of caterpillars and mice made him doubt the existence of “a beneficent and omnipotent Creator.” How often does doubt seem more religious than belief!

The eschatology of the creatures deemed of darkness is not clear, but I believe there is no mention of their Fravashis: it is permissible to suppose, therefore, that, all along, they are rather appearances than realities: things that cannot feel, though Ahriman feels defeat in their destruction. For the rest, though Zoroaster treated wasps or mice much as Torquemada treated heretics, he made it no merit to torment them: he simply desired their extermination as every fruit-grower or farmer desires it to this day.

Students of Zoroastrianism have been mystified by the seeming detachment of the dog from the other “good” animals and the separate jurisdiction designed for it. In my opinion this arose only from the fact that the dog was not a food-providing animal. Hence it could be made penal (by religious, not by civil, law, it must be remembered) to kill a dog, and it was natural that his body should be disposed of in the same way as a man’s. What else could be done with it? It was natural also that since his death was inflicted by Ahriman (since it came of itself), purification ceremonials should be performed to remove the pollution. The religious scope of such ceremonials was like that of reconsecrating a church in which suicide or murder has been committed. That the dog was highly appreciated, that he was valued as an essential helper in the existing conditions of life, is amply proved, but that he was “reverenced” more than some other animals—_e.g._, the cow—is open to doubt. The dog was recognised as more human which made him more liable to err. It was the celebrated chapter on the dog which convinced Sir W. Jones that Anquetil Duperron’s translation was a forgery. It should have struck him that this was not how a European would have made Zoroaster speak about the favoured animal. In the comparisons of canine qualities with those of certain human beings, there is more of satire than of panegyric. The whole Fargard XIII. has been interpreted as purely mystical: the dog symbolising the “will,” a meaning which, according to this argument, fits the term “Dog” in all passages of the scriptures of Iran. This is a hard saying. More reasonable is the supposition that Fargard XIII. formed part of a treatise on animals and got into the Vendîdâd by chance. However that may be, the “eight characters” of the dog show observation though not reverence: he loves darkness like a thief, and at times has been known to be one; he fawns like a slave, he is a self-seeker like a courtezan, he eats raw meat like a beast of prey. The words relative to his “chasing about the well-born cow” have been interpreted to mean that he chased her back home when she had strayed, but I seem to have seen dogs chasing about well-born cows from no such benevolent motive. Some of the comparisons are neither flattering nor critical but descriptive: the dog loves sheep like a child, he runs here and there in front, like a child; he dodges in and out like a child.

THE REAL DOG OF IRAN.
Louvre.
(_By permission of Messrs. Chapman & Hall, Ltd._)]

The _jeu d’esprit_ of the “eight characters” is followed by what appears to be a serious statement of how to treat the dog which misconducts himself. There is no capital punishment, nothing like the stoning of the ox which gores a man or woman, in the Bible. If a dog attacks man or cattle he is to lose an ear; if he does it a third time his foot is to be cut off, or, as Bleeck humanely suggests, he is to be rendered so far lame that it is easy to escape from him. The “dumb dog” of vicious disposition is to be tied up. If a dog is no longer sane in his mind and has become dangerous on that account, you are to try and cure him as you would a man, but if this fails, you must chain him up and muzzle him, using a sort of wooden pillory which prevents him from biting. This passage is curious, because, while it seems to allude plainly to hydrophobia, it contains no hint of the worser consequences to man than a simple bite.

We find that there were four if not more breeds of dogs, each of which was carefully trained for its work. The house-dog, the personal dog (which may have been a blood-hound), sheep and herd-dogs are all mentioned, but there is no mention of sporting-dogs or of sport in the Avesta. The dogs must have been powerful, as they were required to be a match for the wolf, “the growing, the flattering, the deadly wolf,” which was the dread of every homestead in Iran. There were also “wolves with claws” (tigers), but they were comparatively few. The kinship of wolf and dog was recognised, and there was an impression that the most murderous wolf was the half-breed of a wolf and a bitch. Perhaps the wolf of dog-descent came more boldly to the dwelling of man, having no instinctive fear of him. It is said, too, that the deadliest kind of dog was the dog that had a wolf-mother. Possibly such cross-breeding was tried experimentally in the hope of obtaining dogs which could best resist the wolf.

If the dog is never represented as a creature of faultless perfection, it yet remains an established truth that “dwellings would not stand fast on the earth created by Ahura Mazda were there not dogs which pertain to the cattle and to the village.” It is the Lord of Creation who says: “The dog I have made, O Zarathustra, with his own clothing and his own shoes; with keen scent and sharp teeth, faithful to men, as a protector to the folds. For I have made the dog, I who am Ahura Mazda!” To attack the dog was like an attack on the police. Slitting the ear of the house or sheep-dog out of malice, or cutting off his foot, or belabouring him so that thieves got at the sheep, were not unfrequent crimes and they are dealt with no more severely than they deserve. Who killed a house-dog outright, or a sheep-dog or personal dog or well-trained dog, was warned that in the next world his soul would go howling worse than a wolf in the depths of the forest; shunned by all other souls, growled at by the dogs that guard the bridge Chinvat. Eight hundred blows with a horse-goad are adjudged to the wretch who so injures a dog that it die. To strike or chase a bitch with young brings a dreadful curse. Much is said about the proper care of the mother and the puppies. To give a dog too hot food or too hard bones is as bad as turning apostate. His right food is milk and fat and lean meat. “Of all known creatures that which ages soonest is the dog left foodless among people who eat—who seeks here and there his food and finds it not.”

As a rule unnamed wild animals may be supposed to have been protected. The fox was considered a powerful daeva-scarer, which shows that not only in China did the fox seem an “uncanny” beast. In Iran his supernatural services made him highly esteemed. There seem to have been no cats though so many mice. The later Iran was destined to be a great admirer of cats, witness the praise of them by Persian poets, but it is not easy to fix the date when they were introduced. Monkeys were known and were attributed by a post-Avestic superstition to the union of human women and daevas. Vultures were sacred because they devoured good Mazdeans. On the whole, not much attention was paid to wild nature, with one striking exception: the extraordinary respect for the water-dog, beaver or otter. Suddenly the solid utilitarian basis of Zoroastrian zoology gives way and we behold a fabric of dreams. We might understand it better could we know the early animistic beliefs of Iran, though the trend of the Avesta apparently ran _counter_ to old popular credences far more than with them. It should be remembered that water was only a little less sacred than fire in the Zoroastrian system; the defilement of rivers was strictly forbidden. The Udra, or beaver, became the “luck” of the rivers: to destroy it would provoke a drought. If it was found roaming on the land, the Mazdean was bound to carry it to the nearest stream. In later legend, the Udra, even more than the fox, was a daeva-foe. But by far its most important characteristic is its mythical connexion with the dog. To the question: “What becomes of the aged dog when his strength fails him and he dies?” follows the answer: “He goes to the dwelling in the water, where he is met by two water-dogs.” These are his conductors to the dogs’ paradise. A fair sward beneath the waters, cool and fresh in the summer heat, is at least a pleasant idea, but when the two water-dogs are described as consisting of one thousand male and one thousand female dogs, the myth seems to lose its balance which no proper myth ought to do. Myths have the habit of proceeding rationally enough in their own orbit. Later commentators reject this fantastic interpretation and suppose the verse to mean that the dog-soul is received, not by two, but by two thousand water-dogs, which in Oriental hyperbole would mean merely “a great many.”

Be this as it may, Udra-murder was a frightful sin, and frightful were the penalties attached to it. Besides undergoing the usual blows with a horse-goad (to be self inflicted?) the murderer must kill ten thousand each of some half-dozen insects and reptiles: this, at least, is how it looks, but as a matter of fact the long lists of penalties in the Vendîdâd must be taken not as cumulative, but as alternative. This is evident, though it is never stated, and it explains many things. A large number of the alternative punishments for beaver-killing take the form of offerings to the priests. Arms, whips, grindstones, handmills, house-matting, wine and food, a team of oxen, cattle both small and large, _a suitable wife_—the young sister of the sinner—these are among the specified offerings. The culprit may also build a bridge, or breed fourteen dogs as an act of expiation; in short, he may do any kind of meritorious deed, but something he must do, or it will be the worse for him in the world to come.

The Vendîdâd was not a code of criminal law enforced by the civil power, but an adjugation of penances for the atonement of sin. This was not understood at first, which caused the selection of punishments to appear more extravagant than it really is. For the most part the penances were active good works or things which were reckoned as such. Charity and alms-giving were always contemplated among the means of grace, and if they were not dwelt upon more continually, it was because there existed nothing comparable to modern destitution. Moreover, it was understood better than in other parts of the East that not every beggar was a saint: too often he was a lazy fellow who had shirked the common obligation of labour. The repetition of certain prayers was another practice recommended to the repentant sinner. But no good work or pious exercise was of any avail unless accompanied by sincere sorrow for having done wrong. The Law opened the door of grace, but to obtain it the heart must have become changed. God forgives those who truly desire His forgiveness. It is impossible to doubt that the spurious Mazdeism which got into Europe, distorted though it was, yet took with it the two great Mazdean doctrines of repentance and the remission of sin. Great ideas conquer, and it was by these two doctrines that Mithraism so nearly conquered the Western world—not by its unlovely rites.

On one or two points the human eschatology of Zoroastrianism is associated with dogs. A dog is brought into the presence of the dying man. This has been explained by reference to the dogs of Yama, the Vedic lord of death, and the European superstition about the howling of a dog being a death-portent is explained in the same way, but in both instances the immediate cause seems nearer at hand. An Indian officer once remarked to me that any one who had heard the true “death-howl” of a dog would never need any recondite reason for the uncomfortable feeling which it arouses. As regards the Zoroastrian dog, the immediate cause of the belief that he drives away evil spirits lies in the fact that he drives away thieves and prowlers in the night. Death being a pollution as the work of Ahriman, evil spirits beset the dying, but they flee at the sight of the dog, created by Ahura Mazda to protect man. The dead wander for three days near the tenantless body: then they go to the bridge Chinvat, where the division takes place between the good and the wicked. The bridge is guarded by dogs, who drive away all things evil from the path of the righteous, but do nothing to prevent bad spirits from tripping up sinners so that they fall into the pit.

The good go into light, sinners into darkness, where Ahriman, “whose religion is evil,” mocks them, saying: “Why did you eat the bread of Ahura Mazda and do my work? and thought not of your own Creator but practised my will?” Nothing is told of the punishment of Ahriman—the doom of Evil is to be Evil—but in the end he will be utterly extinguished. Through time, _but not_ through eternity the wicked remain in his power. In the Khordah Avesta it is said that God, after purifying all the obedient, will purify the wicked out of hell. In the words of a living Parsi writer: “The reign of terror, at the end of the stipulated time, vanishes into oblivion, and its chief factor, Ahriman, goes to meet his doom of total extinction, whilst Ahura Mazda, the Omnipotent Victor, remains the Great All in All.”

The Zoroastrian was as free as Socrates himself from the materialism which looks upon the body after death as if it were still the being that tenanted it. Some kind of renewed body the dead will have: meanwhile, this is not they! The hope of immortality was so firm that it was thought an actual sin to give way to excessive mourning: the wailing and keening of the Jews seem to be here condemned, though they are not mentioned, there being no direct allusion to the religions of other peoples in the Avesta. There is a river of human tears which hinders souls on their way to beatitude: the dead would fain that the living check their tears which swell the river and make it hard to cross over in safety. The same idea is to be found in one of the most beautiful of Scandinavian folk-songs.

The small work known as the Book of Ardâ Vîrâf is a document of priceless worth to the student of Mazdean eschatology, and it is also of the greatest interest in its relation to ideas about animals. If printed in a convenient form, every humane person would carry it in his pocket. Like the vision of the Seer of Patmos this work is purely religious; it attempts no criticism of life and man such as that embodied in the “Divina Commedia,” but in spite of this difference in aim, there is an astonishing resemblance between its general plan and that of the poem of Dante. Without going into this subject, I may say that I cannot feel convinced that with the geographical, astronomical, and other knowledge of the East which is believed to have reached Dante by means of conversations with merchants, pilgrims and perhaps craftsmen (for that Italian artists worked in India at an early date the Madonna-like groups in many a remote Hindu temple bear almost certain testimony), there did not come to him also some report of the travels of the Persian visitant to the next world.

The author of the Persian vision was a pious Mazdean whose whole desire was to revive religious feeling amid growing indifference. He is supposed to have lived not earlier than 500, and not later than 700 A.D. The former is the likelier date. Had the assault of Islam begun, the book must have borne traces of the struggle with invaders who threatened to annihilate the faith. The author states that the work was intended as an antidote in the first place to atheism and in the second to “the religions of many kinds” that were springing up. This probably contains a reference to Christian sects, but it is not the way that allusion would have been made to propagandists with a sword in their hands. Christian sects managed to recover from the first persecution in 344 A.D., after which they were more often than not tolerated, though the Zoroastrian priesthood feared a Church that possessed an organisation so much like their own. They were accused, moreover, as at Rome, of being anti-national: everywhere the sentiment against the Christians took a form closely resembling the anti-Semiticism of our days. Such accusations can hardly fail to create, to some extent, the thing they predicate, and it is no great wonder if in the end the Persian Christians received the Moslem invaders with favour. Though the essence of Mazdeism is peace to men of good-will, it is to be feared that the Zoroastrian priests (like others) were less tolerant than their creed, and that the harassing of the Christians generally originated with them. They are known to have counselled this policy to Homizd IV., who gave them the memorable answer that his royal throne could not stand on its front legs alone, but needed the support of the Christians and other sectaries as well as of the faithful. It was one of the wisest sayings that ever fell from the lips of a king and more Mazdean than all the bigotry of Zoroastrian clericalism.

The author of Ardâ Vîrâf tried the perfectly legitimate means of persuasion in rallying his countrymen to their own religion. He tells the story of how, in an age of doubt, it was agreed that the best thing would be to send some one into the next world to see if Mazdeism were, indeed, the true religion. Lots fell on a very virtuous man named Ardâ Vîrâf, who was commissioned to make the journey in a trance-state produced by the administration of a narcotic. Even now, in India, children and others are given narcotics, sometimes of a dangerous sort, in order to obtain knowledge which is supposed to come to them whilst insensible. To a Mazdean the ordeal would be particularly terrible, because sleep, like death, was created by Ahriman. The calm fortitude with which Ardâ Vîrâf submits, while his family break into loud weeping, almost reminds one of the bearing of Socrates on the eve of a similar departure but one with no return. “It is the custom that I should pray to the departed souls and make a will,” he says; “when I have done that, give me the narcotic.” His body was treated as though dead, being kept at the proper distance from fire and other sacred things, but priests stayed near it night and day, praying and reading the Scriptures, that the powers of ill might not prevail.

At the end of seven days the wandering spirit of Ardâ Vîrâf re-entered his inanimate form, and after he had taken food and water and wine he called for a ready writer, to whom he dictated the tale of what he had seen. Guided by Srosh the Pious and Ataro the Angel (Virgil and Beatrice) the traveller visited heaven and hell. At the outset he saw the meeting of a righteous soul and its Fravashi. This soul crosses the Chinvat bridge in safety, and on the other side passes into an atmosphere laden with an ineffably sweet perfume which emanates from the direction of the presence of God. Here it meets a damsel more wondrously fair than aught it has beheld in the land of the living. Enraptured at the sight, it asks her name and receives the answer: “I am thine own good actions.” Every good deed embellishes the human soul’s archetype, every evil deed mars and stains it with the hideousness of sin. This poetic and beautiful conception was not due to the author of Ardâ Vîrâf: it is taken from the venerable pages of the Avesta itself.

In the abode of Punishment the most impressive penalties are those undergone by the souls which have tortured helpless infants or dumb animals. The mother who feeds another’s child from greed and starves her own, is seen digging into an iron hill with her breasts while the cry of her child for food comes ever from the other side of the hill, “but the infant comes not to the mother nor the mother to the infant.” Here the supreme anguish is mental: it is caused by the awakening of that maternal instinct which the woman stifled on earth. Has the _Inferno_ any thought so luminously subtle as this? The woman-soul will never reach her child “till the renewal of the world.” Till the renewal of the world! Across the hell-fog penetrates the final hope!

The unfaithful wife who destroys the fruit of her illicit love suffers a horrible punishment. It is strange that if we wish to find an analogy to these severe judgments on offences against infancy, we must go to a small tribe of Dravidian mountaineers in the Nilgiri hills, among whose folk-songs is one which describes a vision of heaven and hell. In this a woman is shown who is condemned to see her own child continually die, because she refused help to a stranger’s child, saying: “It is not mine!”

Those who treated their beasts cruelly, who overworked them, overloaded them, gave them insufficient food, continued to work them when they suffered from sores caused by leanness instead of trying to cure the sores, are seen by Ardâ Vîrâf hung up head downwards while a ceaseless rain of stones falls on their backs. Those who wantonly killed animals have a knife driven ceaselessly into their hearts. Those who muzzled the ox which ploughed the furrows are dashed under the feet of cattle. The same punishment falls to those who forget to give water to the oxen in the heat of the day or who worked them when hungry and thirsty. Demons like dogs constantly tear the man who kept back food from shepherds’-dogs and house-dogs or who beat or killed them: he offers bread to the dogs, but they eat it not and only tear the more.

Ardâ Vîrâf tells a story which belongs to the cycle of “Sultan Murad,” immortalised by Victor Hugo. A certain lazy man named Davânôs, who never did any other thing of good during all the years when he governed many provinces, once cast a bundle of grass with his right foot to within the reach of a ploughing-ox. Hence his right foot is exempted from torment while the rest of his body is gnawed by noxious creatures.

It is easy to imagine that the realistic picture of heaven and hell by a poet of no little power produced the deepest effect on the minds of people, who for the most part took it to be literally true. No Oriental work ever became more popular or was more widely read and translated. People still living can remember the time when it was the habit of the Parsis at Bombay to have public readings of Ardâ Vîrâf, on which occasions the audience, especially the feminine part of it, broke into violent sobbing from the excitement caused by the description of the punishment of the wicked. The Parsis have abandoned now the theory that the book is other than a work of imagination, but it may be hoped that they will not cease to regard it as a cherished legacy from their fathers and a precious bequest to their children.

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VIII

A RELIGION OF RUTH

AN Englishman who went to see a Hindu saint was deterred from entering the cave where the holy man lived by the spectacle of numerous rats. The hermit, observing his hesitation, inquired what was the matter? “Don’t you see them?” answered his visitor. “Yes,” was the brief reply. “Why don’t you kill them?” asked the Englishman. “Why should I kill them?” said the native of the land. Finding the whole onus of the discussion thrown on his shoulders, the English traveller felt that it would be difficult with his limited knowledge of the language to express a European’s ideas about rats. He thought to sum up the case in one sentence: “We people kill them.” To which the saint answered: “We people don’t kill them.”