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And, what was worse, he took the proper names in their modern Parsi forms, which often led him to comparisons that would have appalled Ménage. Thus Ahriman became a Sanscrit word ariman, which would have meant "the fiend"; yet Bohlen might have seen in Anquetil's work itself that Ahriman is nothing but the modern form of Angra Mainyu, words which hardly remind one of the Sanscrit ariman.
The inquiries which Aristotle caused to be made, towards the very close of the Empire, into the true nature of the Persian Religion, showed him Ormazd and Ahriman still recognized as Principles, still standing in the same hostile and antithetical attitude, one towards the other, which they occupied when the first Fargard of the Vendidad was written, long anterior to the rise of the Persian Power.
The legendary war between the powers of good and evil, God and Satan, Ormuzd and Ahriman, was a fable naturally devised, though the birth of the two powers and the division of existence between them is inconceivable. Can anything like a clear line be drawn between good and evil? Effort and resistance to temptation may seem necessary ingredients in the formation of a virtuous character.
Robert hardly ever had him out of his thoughts, and the boy's dog-like affection for the rector, struggling with his deathly weakness, was like a perpetual exemplification of Ahriman and Ormuzd the power of life struggling with the power of death. It was a fierce fight.
In the very centre of the dirt, he deftly whirls into a sitting position, and proceeds to redeem the time, maintaining, meanwhile, that silence which is the perfectest herald of joy. Ormuzd the Good has inspired him with this inclination. But the Minister of Ahriman the Evil is not far off.
The very idea of an archfiend Satan, which Christianity received from Judaism, seems either to have been suggested by the Persian Ahriman, or at least to have derived its principal characteristics from that source. There is no evidence that the Jews, previous to the Babylonish captivity, possessed the conception of a Devil as the author of all evil.
His creed consisted in the reverence of God and the non-reverence of Satan, in the obedience to good and in the prohibition of the evil, and in abstaining from unclean things. He said that light and darkness were two original principles which opposed each other antagonistically, and so were Yazdan and Ahriman and that both were the beginning of the created things in the world.
It had to be made clear to the ancient Persians that in man’s soul, so far as it is engaged in work and endeavor in the physical sense world, a conflict is going on between the power of the Light God and his adversary. It had also to be shown them how man must act so as not to be engulfed by Ahriman, and how to turn his influence to good through the power of the Light God.
"It is a devil of the mountains!" cried one. "It is Ahriman himself!" said another. "It is the soul of the priest of Bel whom the king slew at Babylon!" "It is the Evil Sprit of Cambyses!" "Nay," quoth one of the spearmen, rubbing his injured hand, "it was Zoroaster, the captain. I saw his face beneath that hood he wore." "It may be," answered his fellow.
According to some of the Gnostics this lowest aeon or emanation was identical with the Jewish Satan, or the Ahriman of the Persians, who is called "the prince of this world," and the creation of the world was an essentially evil act. But all did not share in these extreme opinions.
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