V. 164, IX. 30, that a wife who has violated her duty

towards her husband is born as a jackal. In another passage (VI. 63) we read of ten thousand millions of existences through which the soul passes after it has left this body. A BrahmaTia, we are told (XI. 25), who has begged any property for a sacrifice, and does not use the whole of it for the sacrifice, but keeps some of it for himself, becomes for a hundred years a vulture or a crow. In the last book of Manu this subject is most fully treated. We read there, XII. 39 :
I will briefly declare in due order what transmigra- tions in the whole world a man obtains through each of the three qualities. These qualities have been defined before (35-37) as darkness, activity, and goodness.
The Three Qualities — Darkness, Activity, and Goodness.
Acts of darkness are those of which a man feels ashamed.
Acts of activity or selfishness are those by which a man hopes to gain profit or fame in the world, but of which he need not feel ashamed. They may be called selfish acts, but, from a moral point of view, they are indifferent.
Acts of goodness are when a man desires knowledge, with his whole heart, and his soul rejoices, and there is no sense of shame.
Manu then continues :
Those endowed with goodness reach the state of gods, those endowed with activity the state of men,
JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. 163
and those endowed with darkness sink to the condi- tion of beasts ; this is the threefold course of trans- migration. But know this threefold course of trans- migration that depends on the three qualities to be again threefold, low, middling, and high, according to the particular nature of the acts and of the knowledge of each man.
The Nine Classes.
Immovable beings, insects both small and great, fishes, snakes, tortoises, cattle, and wild animals are the lowest condition to which the quality of darkness leads.
Elephants, horses, $udras, and despicable barbarians, lions, tigers, and boars are the middling states caused by the quality of darkness.
j&Taranas (probably wandering minstrels and jug- glers), Supamas (bird-deities) and hypocrites, Raksha- sas and Pisa/cas (goblins) belong to the highest rank of conditions among those produced by darkness.
(rAallas, Mallas, Na£as, men who subsist by despic- able occupations and those addicted to gambling and drinking form the lowest order of conditions caused by activity.
Kings and Kshatriyas (noblemen), the domestic priests of kings, those who delight in the warfare of disputants constitute the middling rank of the states caused by activity.
The Gandharvas, Guhyakas, and the servants of the gods, likewise the Apsaras, belong to the highest rank of conditions produced by activity.
Hermits, ascetics, BrahmaTias, the crowds of the Vaimanika deities (spirits moving in mid-air on their
M a
164 LECTURE V.
vimanas, or chariots), the gods of the lunar mansions and the Daityas form the first and lowest rank of the existences caused by goodness.
Sacrificers, the sages, the gods, the Vedas, the heavenly lights, the years, the manes, and the Sadhyas constitute the second order of existences caused by goodness.
The sages declare Brahma, the creators of the Universe, the law, the Great One, and the Undiscern- ible One to constitute the highest order of things produced by goodness.
Thus the result of the threefold action, the whole system of transmigrations which consists of three classes, each with three subdivisions, and which in- cludes all created things, has been explained.
This systematic statement of the different stages of transmigration is obscure in some points, particularly when not only living beings, but heavenly lights, the years, and even the Veda are mentioned as the result of acts of goodness. Wo shall hereafter meet with something very similar in the Hierarchies of Proclus and of Dionysius the Areopagite. The place assigned to certain classes of men, gods, and demi-gods is curious and instructive, as showing the estimation in which each of them was held at the time.
I am afraid it was rather tedious to follow Manu through all the nine classes of beings through which the human soul may pass. Yet these nine classes of Manu acquire some interest, if we remember that Plato also gives us a similar scheme of nine classes into which the human soul may be reborn.
This coincidence in the number nine need not be more than accidental. A comparison, however, of these two
JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. 165
lists (Enneads) is instructive, as showing the different estimation in which certain occupations were held in India and in Greece. In India the nine steps of the ladder of existences rise from the lowest animals to the world of human beings in their various occupa- tions, then to the demons, to the Vedas, the heavenly lights, the years, the Fathers, and the gods, in their various spheres of action, and lastly to the creator of the world and to Brahman himself. In this we are often reminded not only of the nine classes of Plato, but likewise of the nine stages of the so-called heavenly Hierarchy, as we find them in Proclus, and in Diony- sius the Areopagite. There also, the number is nine, nay the three triads are here, exactly as in India, sub- divided each into three stages, and room is made as in India, not only for animate beings, whether men or angels, but likewise for inanimate, such as Thrones, Powers, and Dominions. Whether these coincidences are too great to be accepted as mere fortuitous coinci- dences, we shall be better able to judge when we come to consider the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite, and their extraordinary influence both on the scholastic and the mystic, that is, the psychological theology of the Middle Ages.
Punishments of the Wicked.
Another important feature which marks the later date of Manu's Laws is his acquaintance not only with metempsychosis, but with punishments in- flicted on the wicked in places which we must call hells — for hells are a late invention in most religions. Thus we read (XII. 54), ' Those who have committed mortal sins (mahapatakas) having passed
166 LECTURE V.
through a large number of years through dreadful hells, obtain after the expiration of that term of punishment, the following births :
' The slayer of a Brahmana enters the womb of a dog, a pig, a camel, a cow, a goat, a sheep, a deer, a bird, a K&ndala,, and a Pukkasa.'
Here we have clearly the idea of punishment in hell, apart from the punishment entailed by simply being born again as a low animal. And what is curious is that Yama, who at first was only conceived as the ruler among the departed, as a kind deity with whom the Pitris enjoyed themselves, is now mentioned as inflicting torments on the wicked (XII. 17), a part which he continues to act in the later literature of India.
In the hymns of the Rig-veda we find very little that could be compared to the later ideas of hell. Nor is there any reason to suppose, as both Roth and Weber seem to do, that the Vedic Indians had realised the idea of annihilation, and that they believed anni- hilation to be the proper punishment of the wicked. As they spoke of the abode of the blessed in very general terms as the realms of light, they speak of the wicked as being thrown or falling into karta, a pit (Rv. II. 29, 6 ; IX. 73, 8-9). They also speak of a deep place (padam gabhiram, IV. 5, 5) and of lower darkness (adharam tama&, X. 152, 4) as their abode.
There are some more passages in the Rig-veda which may refer to punishment after death. Thus we read (II. 29, 6), ' Protect us, 0 gods, from being devoured by the wolf, or from falling into the pit.' And again (IX. 73, 8-9), ' The wise guardian of the law is not to be deceived; he has placed purifiers
JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. 167
(conscience) in the heart ; he knowing looks upon all things, and hurls the wicked and lawless into the pit.'
In the Atharva-veda the description of the abode of the wicked becomes more and more minute. We read (II. 14, 3) of a house (griha) for evil spirits, and even the modern name of Naraka for hell occurs in it. All this agrees with what we know from other sources of the chronological relation of Vedic hymns, Upanishads, and Manu's Laws. The Upanishads speak of a third path, besides the two paths that lead to the Fathers and to the Gods, and they say (Erih. Ar. VI. 2, 16) : ' Those who do not know these two paths become worms, birds and creeping things.' We also read in some Upanishads, that there are unblessed or asurya worlds, covered with blind darkness whither fools go after death. The Brahmarms are sometimes more explicit in their accounts of hell l, and in one passage of the $atapatha Brahma%a (XI. 7, 2, 33), we actually find a mention of the weighing of the soul, a concep- tion so well known from Egyptian tombs.
Bridges.
The more we advance, the fuller the details become about the two roads, the road leading to the Pitn's and the road leading to the Devas. I shall here call your attention to one passage only in the Mahabha- rata which is highly important, because the two roads are here for the first time 2 called Setus, or bridges (Anu-
1 Weber, Z. D. M. G., ix. p. 240.
2 How familiar the idea of a bridge between this world and the next must have been in Vedic times also, is shown by the frequent allusions to the Atman, as the true bridge from ScheintoSein; A'Mnd. Up. VIII. 4, 1, &c.
168 LECTURE V.
gita, XX. p. 316), bridges of virtue or pietj7. It was generally supposed that the idea of a bridge connect- ing this world with the next was peculiar to Persia, where the famous Kinv&t bridge forms so prominent a feature in the ancient religion. But the relation between the Veda and the A vesta is so peculiar and so intimate, that we can hardly doubt that the belief in bridges between this world and the next was either borrowed directly by the Persians from the Vedic poets, or that it was inherited by both from their common ancestors. It is quite true that the same idea of a bridge between this and the next world occurs in other countries also, where a direct influence of Indian thought is out of the question, as, for instance, among some North- American Indians l. But it is not a bridge of virtue or of judgment as in India and Persia. The idea of a bridge or a mere communica- tion between this and the next world is in fact so natural that it may be called the easiest and probably the earliest solution of the problem with which, though from a higher point of view, we are occupied in this course of lectures, the relation between the natural and the supernatural. When people had once learnt to believe in a Beyond, they felt a gap between the here and the there, which the human mind could not brook, and which it tried, therefore, to bridge over, at first mythologically, and afterwards philosophically. The earliest, as yet purely mythological, attempt to connect the world of men and the world of the gods is the belief in a bridge called Bi frost, lit. trembling rest, such as we find it in Northern mythology. It was clearly in-
1 Jones, Traditions of the North-American Indians, vol. i. p. 227.
JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTEB DEATH. 169
tended originally for the rainbow. We are told that it was created by the gods, and was called the bridge of the Ases or the gods, the As-bru. It had three colours, and was supposed to be very strong. But however strong it was, it is believed that it will break at the end of the world, when the sons of Muspel come to ride across it. The Ases or gods ride every day across that bridge to their judgment seat near the well of Urd. It has a watchman also, who is called Heimdall.
This is a purely mythological expedient to connect heaven and earth, for which Physical Religion chose very naturally the emblem of the rainbow.
In India and Persia, however, the case is different. First of all the bridge there is not taken from any- thing in nature. It is rather an ethical postulate. There must be a way, they argued, on which the soul can approach the deity or by which it can be kept away from the deity, — hence they imagined that there was such a way. That way in India was the Road of the Fathers and afterwards the Road of the Gods. But it is very important to observe that in India also this road (yana) was called setu, bridge, though it had not yet received a proper name. In the Veda, Rv. I. 38, 5, the path of Yama is mentioned, which is really the same as the Road of the Fathers, for Yama was originally the ruler of the Fathers. If therefore the poets say, Ma vo (/arita patha Yamasya gad upa, May your worshipper not go on the path of Yama, they simply mean, may he not yet die. When there was once a bridge, a river also would soon be imagined which the bridge was to cross. Such a river, though it does not occur in the hymns, occurs
170 LECTURE V.
in the Brahma?ias under the name of Vaitarawi, which simply means 'what leads on or what has to be crossed.' It is probably but another name for the river Vif/ara, the ageless, which, as we saw in the Upanishads, the departed had to pass.
You may remember that at the funeral ceremonies of the Vedic Indians a cow (Anustara^i) had to be sacrificed. This cow was supposed to carry the de- parted across the Vaitarani river, and later it became the custom in India, and, I am told, it is so now, to make a dying man lay hold of the tail of a cow, or, as among the Todas, of the horns of a buffalo. But though in India the belief in a Road of the Fathers and a Road of the Gods seems to have arisen from a moral conviction that there must be such a path to lead the departed, whether as a reward or as a punishment, to the world of the Fathers, and to the world of the Gods, that path was identified in India also not only with the rainbow, but likewise, as Pro- fessor Kuhn has tried to show (K. Z., ii. p. 318), with the Milky Way. In the Vishmu-pura?ia (p. 227) the Devayana is placed north of Taurus and Aries, and south of the Great Bear, which is the exact situation of the starting-point of the Milky Way. Professor Kuhn has pointed out a most curious coincidence. Let us remember that in order to reach the Devayana, supposed to be the Milky Way, the departed had to be carried across the Vaitarawi river by a cow. Is it not strange that in the North of Germany to the present day the Milky Way should be called Kaupat, that is, cow-path, and that the Slavonians should call it Mavra or Mavriza, which means a black speckled cow. Nay, in the poem of Tundalus (ed. Hahn, pp.
JOURNEY OP THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. 171
49-50), we read that the soul has to drive a stolen cow across that bridge. Such coincidences are very startling. One hardly knows how to account for them. Of course, they may be due to accident, but, if not, what an extraordinary pertinacity would they show even in the folklore of the Aryan nations.
However, though in some places the Devayana has been identified with the Milky Way, in others and more ancient passages it was clearly conceived as the rainbow, as when we read in the Brihad-ara-nyaka Upanishad IV. 4, 8 :
'The small, old path stretching far away (vitataA. or vitaraA) has been found by me. On it, sages who know Brahman move on to the Svargaloka (heaven), and thence higher, as entirely free.
' On that path they say that there is white and blue, 'yellow, green, and red ; that path was found by Brahman, and on it goes whoever knows Brahman, and who has done good, and obtained splendour.' We have here the five colours of the rainbow, while the Bifrost rainbow had only three.
The idea that the wicked cannot find the path of the Fathers or the Gods is not entirely absent in the Upanishads. For we read (Brih. Ar. IV. 4, 10) :
' All who worship what is not knowledge, enter into blind darkness ; ' and again, ' There are indeed those unblessed worlds covered with blind darkness. Men who are ignorant, not enlightened, go after death to these worlds.' Nay, in the $atapatha BrahmaTia I. 9. 3, 2, we actually read of flames on both sides of the path which burn the wicked, but do not touch the pure soul.
' The same path leads either to the Gods or to the
172 LECTUBB V.
Fathers. On both sides two flames are ever burning : they scorch him who deserves to be scorched, and allow him to pass who deserves to pass.'
There is also a line quoted in the Nirukta which may refer to this path, where women say :
negr gihmayantyo narakam patama. ' May we not walk crooked and fall into hell.'
It is, however, in the ancient religion of Persia that this bridge becomes most prominent. It has there received the name of Kinv&t, which can only mean the searching, the revenging, the punishing bridge, ki being connected with Greek ruo, rtrw, and runs.
Of this bridge we read in the Vendidad, XIX. 29 :
'Then the fiend, named Vizaresha, carries off in bonds the soul of the wicked Dae va- worshippers who live in sin. The soul enters the way made by time, and open both to the wicked and to the righteous. And at the head of the K'mv&t bridge, the holy bridge made by Mazda, they ask for their spirits and souls the reward for the worldly goods which they gave away here below.'
This bridge, which extends over hell and leads to paradise, widens for the soul of the righteous to the length of nine javelins, for the souls of the wicked it narrows to a thread, and they fall into hell1.
When we find almost the same circumstantial account among the Mohammedans, it seems to me that we shall have to admit in this case an actual historical borrowing, and not, as in the case of
1 Arda Viraf, V. 1. Darmestetor, Vendidad, S. B. E., iv. p. 212 note.
JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. 173
Indians and Persians, a distant common origin. The idea of the bridge was probably adopted by the Jews in Persia1, and borrowed by Mohammed from his Jewish friends. It is best known under the name of Es-Sirat. The seventh chapter of the Koran, called Al Aaraf, gives the following account of the bridge :
' And betwixt the two there is a veil, and on al Aaraf are men who know each (the good and the wicked) by marks, and they shall cry out to the fellows of Paradise : Peace be upon you ! They cannot enter it, although they so desire. But when their sight is turned towards the fellows of Fire, they say : 0 Lord, place us not with the unjust people ! And the fellows in al Aaraf will cry out to the men whom they know by their marks, and say, Of no avail to you were your collections, and what you were so big with pride about; are these those ye swore that God would not extend mercy to ? Enter Paradise, there is no fear for you, nor shall ye be grieved. But the fellows of Fire shall cry out to the fellows of Paradise, " Pour out upon us water, or something of what God has provided you with." :
When we find a similar account among the Todas in Southern India, it is difficult to say whether they derived it from the Brahmans or possibly from a Mohammedan source. It resembles the latter more than the former, and it might be taken by some ethnologists as of spontaneous growth among the Dravidian inhabitants of India. According to a writer
1 In the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century, Jewish doctors are known to have been all-powerful at the Sassanian court, under Sapor II and Yazdagard. Academy, Nov. 28, 1891. p. 483.
174 LECTURE V.
in the Nineteenth Century, June, 1892, p. 959, the Todas have a heaven and a hell, the latter a dismal stream full of leeches, across which the souls of the departed have to pass upon a single thread, which breaks beneath the weight of those burdened with sin, but stands the slight strain of a good man's soul.
In the Talmud, as I am informed by the Rev. Dr. Gaster, this bridge does not seem to be known. It is mentioned, however, in the 21st chapter of the Jana debe Eliahu, a work of the tenth century, but containing fragments of much earlier date. Here we read : ' In that hour (of the last judgment) God calls back to life the idols of the nations, and he says: "Let every nation with their god cross the bridge of Gehinom, and when they are crossing it, it will appear to them like a thread, and they fall down into Gehinom, both the idols and their worshippers." ' The passage occurs once more in the Yalkut Shim- eani, ii. § 500, ed. pr. (Salonica, 1526), f. 87 seq., and according to the best judges, the legend itself goes back to pre-islamitic times.
So far we are still on safe and almost historical ground. But the belief in such a bridge is not confined to the East ; and yet, when we are told that the peasants in Yorkshire spoke not so long ago of a ' Brig o' Dread, Na broader than a thread1/ we can hardly believe that this Brig o' Dread is the modern representative of the northern Bifrost bridge, because that bridge was never a very narrow bridge, to be crossed by the good only. I think we must here again admit a real his- torical communication. It is more likely, I think, that
1 J. Thorns, Anecdotes and Traditions, pp. 89-90 ; Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, p. 794.
JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. 175
the idea of this bridge caught the fancy of some crusa- der, and that he spoke or sang of it on his return to France, and that with the Normans the Brig o' Dread travelled into England. In France also the peasants of Nievre know of this bridge as a small plank which Saint Jean d'Archange placed between the earth and paradise, and of which they sing :
Pas pu longue, pas pu large Qu'un ch'veu de la Sainte Viarge, Ceux qu'savont la raison d' Dieu, Par dessus passeront, Ceux qu' la sauront pas Au bout mourront.
' Not longer, not larger than a hair of the Holy Virgin, those who know the reason of God (or the prayer of God) will pass over it ; those who do not know it, will die at the end.'
From the folk-lore of the peasants this belief in a bridge leading from this to a better world found its way into the folk-lore of mediaeval theologians, and we read of a small bridge leading from purgatory to paradise in the Legenda Aurea, c. 50 (De S. Patricio). and in other places l.
Is it not curious to see these ideas either cropping up spontaneously in different parts of the world, or handed on by a real historical tradition from India to Persia, from Persia to Palestine, from Palestine to France, and from France even to Yorkshire ? And at the root of all, there is that simple but ineradicable belief that the Human and the Divine cannot be separated for ever, and that as the rainbow bridges heaven and earth, or as the galaxy shows us a bright way through myriads of stars to the highest Empy- rean, there must be a bridge between Earth and
1 Cf. Liebrecht zu Gervasius, Otia imperialia, Hanover, 1856, p. 90.
176 LECTURE 7.
Heaven, between the soul and God ; there must be a Way, and a Truth, and a Life to guide the soul to its real home, or, as another religion expresses it, there must be a faith to take us home, and to make us all one in God. (Cf. St. John xvii. 21.)
LECTURE VI.
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE AVESTA. General similarities in Escliatological Legends.
I MENTIONED at the end of my last Lecture a number of traditions gathered from different parts of the world, and all having reference to a bridge between earth and heaven. Some of these traditions were purely mythological, and were suggested, as it seemed, by actual phenomena of nature, such as the rainbow and the Milky Way. Others, on the contrary, sprang evidently from a moral conviction that there must be a way by which the human soul could return to God, a conviction which, however abstract in its origin, could not altogether resist being likewise clothed in the end in more or less fanciful and mytho- logical phraseology.
When we have to deal with common traditions found in India, Greece, and Germany, we must generally be satisfied if we can discover their simplest germs, and show how these germs grew and assumed a different colouring on Indian, Greek, or German soil. I explained this to you before in the case of the Greek Charites, the Sanskrit Haritas. Here we find that the words are identically the same, only pronounced differently according to the phonetic pecu- liarities of the Greek and the Sanskrit languages. (4) N
178 LECTURE VI.
The common germ was found in the bright rays of the sun, conceived as horses in the Veda, as beautiful maidens in Greece. The same applies, as I showed many years ago, to the Greek Daphne. Daphne would in Sanskrit be represented by D ah ana, and this would mean the burning or the bright one. This root dah has yielded the name for day and dawn in German. In Sanskrit it has been replaced by Ah an a1. There is in the Veda a clear reference to the Dawn dying whenever the sun tries to approach her, and we have a right therefore to interpret the Greek legend of Daphne, trying to escape from the embraces of Phoebus, as a repetition of the same story, that the Dawn, when she endeavours to fly from the ap- proaches of the sun, either dies or is changed into a laurel tree. This change into a laurel tree, however, was possible in a Greek atmosphere only, where daphne had become the name of the laurel tree, which was called daphne because the wood of the laurel tree was easy to kindle and to burn.
The lessons which we have learnt from Comparative Mythology hold good with regard to Comparative Theology also. If we find similar religious or even philosophical ideas or traditions in Greece and in India, we must look upon them simply as the result of the common humanity or the common language of the people, and be satisfied with very general features ; but when we proceed to compare the ideas of the ancient Parsis with those of the Vedic poets, we have a right to expect coincidences of a different and a much more tangible nature.
1 See Hopkins, On English day and Sanskrit (d)ahan. Pro- eefdings of American Oriental Society, 1892.
THE ESCHATOLOOT OP THE AVESTA. 179
Peculiar relation between the Religions of India and Persia.
The exact historical relation, however, between the most ancient religions of India and Persia is very peculiar, and by no means as yet fully elucidated. It has been so often misconceived and misrepresented that we shall have to examine the facts very carefully in order to gain a clear conception of the real re- lationship of these two religions. No religion of the ancient world has been so misrepresented as that con- tained in the Avesta. We shall therefore have to enter into some details, and examine the ipsisaima verba of the Avesta. In doing this I am afraid that my lec- ture to-day on the Avesta and its doctrines touching the immortality of the soul, will not contain much that can be of interest to any but Oriental scholars. But what I have always been most anxious about, is that those who follow these lectures should get an accurate and authentic knowledge of the facts of the ancient religions. Many people are hardly aware how difficult it is to give a really accurate account of any of the ancient Oriental religions. But think how difficult it is to say anything about the real teaching of Christ, without being contradicted by some Doctor of Divinity, whether hailing from Rome or from Edinburgh. And yet the facts lie here within a very narrow compass, very different from the voluminous literature of the religions of the Brahmanist or Buddhists. The lan- guage of the New Testament is child's play compared to Vedic Sanskrit or Avestic Zend. If then one sees the wrangling going on in churches and chapels about the right interpretation of some of the simplest passages in the Gospels, it might seem almost hopeless
N 2
180 LECTURE VI.
to assert anything positive about the general cha- racter of the Vedic or Avestic religions. Yet, strange to say, it has happened that the same persons who seem to imagine that no one but a Doctor of Divinity has any right to interpret the simplest verses of the New Testament, feel no hesitation in writing long essays on Zoroaster, on Buddhism and Mohammedan- ism, without knowing a word of Zend, Pali, or Arabic. They not only spread erroneous opinions on the ancient Eastern religions, but they think they can refute them best, after having thus misrepresented them. If the Avestic religion has once been repre- sented as Fire-worship and Dualism, what can be easier than to refute Fire-worship and Dualism "? But if we consult the original documents, and if we dis- tinguish, as we do in the case of the New Testament, between what is early and what is late in the sacred canon of the Zoroastrians, we shall see that Zoroaster taught neither fire-worship nor dualism.
Zoroaster teaches neither Fire-worship nor Dualism.
The supreme deity of Zoroaster is Ahuramazda, not Atar, fire, though Atar is sometimes called the son of Ahuramazda l. Fire no doubt is a sacred object in all ancient sacrifices, but the fire, as such, is no more worshipped as the supreme God in the Avesta than it is in the Veda.
If we want to understand the true nature of the religion of Zoroaster we must remember, first of all, that the languages in which the Veda and Avesta are composed are more closely related to each other than any other language of the Aryan family, They are
1 Physical Relic/ion, p. 231.
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE AVESTA. 181
in fact dialects, rather than two different languages. We must also remember that the religions of Zoroaster and of the Vedic Bishis share a certain number of their deities in common. It used to be supposed that because deva in the Veda is the name for gods, and in the Avesta the name for evil spirits, therefore the two religions were entirely antagonistic. But that is not the case. The name for gods in the Veda is not only deva, but likewise asura. This name, if derived from asu, breath, meant originally the living, he who lives and moves in the great phenomena of nature, or, as we should say, the living God. Certain Vedic gods, particularly Varuwa, are in the Veda also called Asura in the good sense of the word. But very soon the Sanskrit asura took a bad sense, for instance, in the last book of the Rig-veda and in the Atharva-veda, and particularly in the Brahma?ias. Here we constantly find the Asuras fighting against the Devas. Deva, as you remember, was the common Aryan name for gods, as the bright beings of nature. But while Asura became the name of the highest deity in the Avesta, namely Ahuramazda or Ormazd, deva occurs in the Avesta always in a bad sense, as the name of evil spirits. These D evas (daevas),the modern Persian div, are the originators of all that is bad, of every impurity, of sin and death, and -are constantly thinking of causing the destruction of the fields and trees and of the houses of religious men. The spots most liked by them, according to Zoroastrian notions, are those most filled with dirt and filth, and especially cemeteries, which places are therefore objects of the greatest abomination to a true Ormazd worshipper l.
1 Haug, Essays on the Pams, p. 268.
182 LECTURE VI.
It is difficult to account for these facts, but we must always remember that while some of the prin- cipal Vedic deities, such as Indra *, for instance, occur in the Avesta as demons, other Devas or divine beings in the Veda have retained their original character in the Avesta, for instance Mithra, the Vedic Mitra, the sun, Aii*yaman, the Vedic Aryaman, likewise a name of the sun, a deity presiding over marriages. Bhaga, another solar deity in the Veda, occurs in the Avesta as bagha, and has become there a general name for god. This word must be as old as deva, for it occurs in the Slavonic languages as bog, god. It is known also from the name of Behistiin, the mountain on which Darius engraved his great in- scriptions, in cuneiform letters. The Greeks call it Bayaorara, i.e. the place of the gods. Other divine names which the Avesta and the Veda share in common are the Avestic Armaiti, the Vedic Ara- mati, the earth, Narasamsa, lit. renowned among men (a name of Agni, Pushan, and other gods in the Veda), the Avestic Nairyasa?*ha, a messenger of Ormazd. Lastly, we find that while Indra has become a demon under the name of Andra, one of his best- known Vedic epithets, namely, V7'2trahan, slayer of VHtra, occurs in the Avesta as Verethraghna, mean- ing simply the conqueror, the angel who grants victory. His name becomes in the end Behram, and one of the Yashts is addressed to him, the Behram Yasht. It has generally been supposed, therefore, that a religious schism took place, and that Zara- thushtra seceded from the worshippers of the Vedic
1 Also Saurva daova, i. e. Sarva, and Naonhaithya daeva, the Nasatyau.
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE AVESTA. 183
Devas. There is some truth in this, but though there was a severance, there always remained a common background for the two religions. Many of the Vedic deities were retained, subject only to the supremacy of Ahuramazda. It is the idea of one supreme God, the Ahuramazda, which forms the characteristic dis- tinction between the Avestic and the Vedic religions. Only Zarathushtra's monotheism does not exclude a belief in a number of deities, so long as they are not conceived as the equals of Ahuramazda. In his moral character Ahuramazda may really be looked upon as a development of the Vedic VaruTia, but the moral character of this deity has become far more prominent in the Avesta than in the Veda.
The Avestic religion, as we know it from its own sacred books, is in fact a curious mixture of mono- theism, polytheism, and dualism. Ahuramazda is no doubt the supreme God, the creator and ruler of all things, but there are many other divine beings who, though subject to him, are yet considered worthy of receiving adoration and sacrificial worship. Again, Ahuramazda, so far as he represents the good spirit, spenta mainyu, the spirit of light, is constantly opposed by Angra mainyu, best known in our times as Ahriman, the evil spirit, the spirit of darkness. But these two spirits were not originally conceived as two separate beings. In the ancient Gathas there is no trace as yet of a personal conflict between Ormazd and Ahriman. The enemy against whom Ormazd fights there, is Drukh, the Vedic Druh, 'the lying spirit.' Darius also in the cuneiform inscriptions does not yet mention Ahrimaii as the opponent of Ormazd.
184 LECTURE VI.
The Problem of the Origin of Evil.
Dr. Haug seems quite right in stating that Zara- thushtra, having arrived at the idea of the unity and indivisibility of the Supreme Being, had afterwards to solve the great problem which has engaged the atten- tion of so many wise men of antiquity and even of modern times, namely, how to reconcile the imperfec- tions discernible in the world, the various kinds of evil, wickedness, and baseness, with the goodness and justice of the one God. He solved this question philo- sophically, by the admission of two primeval causes, which, though different, were united, and produced the world of material things as well as that of the spirit. This doctrine may best be studied in the thirtieth chapter of the Yasna. The one who pro- duced all reality (gaya) and goodness is called there the good mind (vohu mano), the other, through whom the unreality (agyaiti) originated, bears the name of the evil mind (akem mano). All good, and true, and perfect things, which fall under the category of reality, are the productions of the ' good mind,' while all that is bad and delusive belongs to the sphere of ' non-reality,' and is traced to the evil mind. These are the twa moving causes in the universe, united from the beginning, and therefore called twins (yema, Sk. yamau). They are present everywhere, in Ahura- mazda as well as in men. These two primeval prin- ciples, if supposed to be united in Ahuramazda himself, are called spenta mainyu, his beneficent spirit, and angra mainyu, his hurtful spirit. That Angra mainyu was not conceived then as a separate being, opposed to Ahuramazda, Dr. Haug has proved from Yasna