form Kavi into Kavd, as, for instance, Kava Vishtâspa, instead of Kavi Vishtâspa.1

Now this word Kavá became a party name, denoting the opponents of the Deva religion. And in this sense we find it unmistakeably employed in the ancient Vedic hymns. Kavâsakha or Kavári or Kavatnu, which all mean "followers of Kavâ or adherents of Kava," are names, given to the enemies of Indra and the despisers of his sacred drink (Soma). In one passage (Rv. v. 34, 3) Kavâsakha is even called a maghavâ, by which name the disciples and earliest followers of Zarathushtra are denoted in the Gâthas (see p. 169). Indra is there said to turn out the Maghava, who follows the Kava party, from his possession, which refers to the settlements (gaethas) of the Iranians.

That Zarathushtra's attacks were really directed against the Soma sacrifices of the Brahmans, undeniably follows from several passages of the Gâthas (see Yas. xxxii. 3; xlviii. 10). This is not to be wondered at, if we bear in mind that the Indian tribes, as described in the ancient hymns of the Vedas, never engaged themselves in their frequent predatory excursions for stealing cows, horses, sheep, &c., without having previously secured the assistance of Indra by preparing for him a solemn Soma feast. The Karapans dressed it in due manner, and the Kavis composed or applied those verses which were best calculated to induce Indra to accept the invitation. The Kavis were believed to recognise by certain signs the arrival of the god. After he had enjoyed the sweet beverage, the delicious honey, and was supposed to be totally inebriated, then the Kavis promised victory. The inroads were undertaken, headed by those Kavis who had previously intoxicated themselves, and they appear to have been in most cases successful. The Iranian settlers, who had to suffer so much from these attacks (see p. 173), ascribed the success to those Soma sacrifices, which, therefore, must

1 See further particulars in the author's work on the Gâthas, i. p. 179, 180, and ii. p. 238-41.

have been objects of abomination and horror to them. But the belief in the great efficacy of such a ceremony, as the solemn squeezing and preparing of the Soma juice, being too deeply rooted in the minds of the Iranians, as well as in those of the ancient Indians, the Iranians forsook only the old Aryan fashion of preparing the sacred drink, and invented one of their own, which was more in accordance with the spirit of their new religion (see p. 282). As we have seen, Spitama Zarathushtra himself never mentions this reformed Homa (Soma) ceremony in the Gâthas; it is doubtful, therefore, whether it existed in his time, or, if so, whether he approved of it. It is true, legends were afterwards circulated, to the effect that he himself had given his sanction to this ceremony, as the reader will have learned from the Homa Yasht (see p. 176).

Having established now, beyond any reasonable doubt, the fact that the Zoroastrian religion arose in consequence of a serious conflict of the Iranians with those other Aryan tribes which emigrated into Hindustan Proper, and whose leaders became in later times the founders of Brahmanism, the questions as to the cause of this religious schism, the leader of the seceding party, and the time at which this great event happened, have to be decided,

2.-CAUSES OF THE SCHISM.

The causes, which led to the schism, may be readily learned from the more ancient parts of the Zend-Avesta, especially from the Gâthas. They were of a social and political as well as of a religious nature. The Aryan tribes, after they had left their original home, which was in all likelihood a cold country (see the allusions to it in the first and second Fargards of the Vendidad), led mainly a pastoral life, and cultivated only occasionally some patches of land for their own support. In this state we find the ancient Aryan community throughout the earlier Vedic period, and the Brahmanical tribes were given to this nomadic life as long as they occupied the upper part

of the Panjâb, whence they afterwards emigrated into Hindustan Proper. Some of these tribes, whom we may style the Iranians proper, became soon weary of these constant wanderings, and after having reached such places between the Oxus and Yaxartes rivers and the highland of Bactria as were deemed fit for permanent settlements, they forsook the pastoral life of their ancestors and their brother tribes, and became agriculturists. In consequence of this change the Iranians estranged themselves from the other Aryan tribes, which still clung to the ancestoral occupation, and allured by the hope of obtaining booty, regarded those settlements as the most suitable objects for their incursions and skirmishes. How frequent these attacks of the Deva-worshippers upon the property of the Mazdayasnians must have been, the reader can learn from the formula, by which the Deva-worshippers abjured their religion, and entered the community of the Iranians (see p. 173), and from some verses of the Gâthas (especially Yas. xxxii. and xlvi.).

The success of the attacking Deva-worshippers was, as we have seen, mainly ascribed to spells (mantras) and sacrificial skill. Their religion, therefore, must have become an object of hatred in the eyes of the Iranians, although the latter were well aware that it was closely related to their own, or even to a certain extent identical with it. Their own religion, therefore, had to be totally changed, in order to break up all communication whatever with the devastators of their settlements. The Deva religion was branded as the source of all mischief and wickedness, and instead of it, the Ahura religion of agriculture was instituted, which separated them thenceforth for ever from their Brahmanical brethren.

If we ask who instituted this Ahura religion, we can hardly believe that it was the work of a single man only, though it is not to be denied that the peculiar form which it assumed was mainly due to one great personage, Spitama Zarathushtra.

3.-SPITAMA ZARATHUSHTRA.

In the Gâthas we find Zarathushtra alluding to old revelations (Yas. xlvi. 6), and praising the wisdom of the Saoshyañtô, "fire-priests" (Yas. xlvi. 3; xlviii. 12). He exhorts his party to respect and revere the Angra (Yas. xliii. 15), i.e., the Angiras of the Vedic hymns, who formed one of the most ancient and celebrated priestly families of the ancient Aryans, and who seem to have been more closely connected with the ante-Zoroastrian form of the Parsi religion than any other of the later Brahmanical families. These Angiras are often mentioned together with the Atharvans or fire-priests (which word, in the form athrava, is the general name given to the priest caste in the Zend-Avesta), and both are regarded in the Vedic literature as the authors of the Atharvaveda which is called the Veda of the Atharvângiras, or the Atharvâṇa, or Angirasa veda, i.e., the Veda of the Atharvans or Angiras.1 This work was for a long time not acknowledged as a proper Veda by the Brahmans, because its contents, which consist chiefly of spells, charms, curses, mantras for killing enemies, &c., were mostly foreign to the three other Vedas, which alone were originally required for sacrifices. On comparing its contents with some passages in the Yashts and Vendidad, we discover a great similarity.

Although a close connection between the ante-Zoroastrian and the Atharvana and Angirasa religion can hardly be doubted, yet this relationship refers only to the magical part, which was believed by the ancient Greeks to be the very substance and nature of the Zoroastrian religion.

In all likelihood, as the names Atharvana and Angirasa, or fire-priests, indicate, the worship of fire was a characteristic feature of this ancient religion.

The Saoshyantô, or fire-priests, who seem to be identical with the Atharvans, are to be regarded as the real predecessors of Spitama Zarathushtra, who paved the way for

1 See Max Müller's History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 448.

the great religious reform carried out by the latter. It is distinctly said (Yas. liii. 2) that the good Ahura religion was revealed to them, and that they professed it in opposition to the Deva religion, like Zarathushtra himself and his disciples (Yas. xii. 7; see p. 173). We must, therefore, regard these ancient sages as the founders of the Ahura religion, who first introduced agriculture and made it a religious duty, and commenced war against the Deva religion.

The struggle may have lasted for several centuries before Spitama Zarathushtra appeared in Iran, professedly by divine command, to strike a death-blow at idolatry, and to banish it for ever from his native soil. But however this may have been, the decisive step of completely separating the contending parties from one another, and establishing a new community governed by new laws, was taken by Spitama Zarathushtra. He has, therefore, many claims to be regarded as the founder of the true Mazdayasnian or Parsi religion, which absorbed the old Ahura religion of the ancient fire-priests. He himself was one of the Saoshyantô or fire-priests, because we find him, when standing before the sacred fire, delivering his speeches and receiving answers from Ahuramazda out of the sacred flames.

The events of his life are almost all enshrouded in darkness, to dispel which will be for ever impossible, should no authentic historical records be discovered in Bactria, his home. The reports regarding him, given by the Greeks and Romans (see the first Essay), are as unhistorical and legendary as those found in the majority of the Avesta books themselves. In the Vendidad and the Yashts (see p. 212) he is represented to us not as a historical, but as a dogmatical personalty, stripped of nearly everything that is peculiar to human nature, and vested with a supernatural and wholly divine power, standing next to God himself and being even elevated above the archangels. The temptations of the devil, whose whole empire was