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Among the Chevsurs of the Caucasus, perhaps an Iranian people, a woman after her confinement, for which she lives apart, purifies herself by washing in the urine of a cow and then returns home. This mode of purification is recommended in the Avesta, and is said to be used by the few remaining followers of this creed.
In the Khordah Avesta, praise is offered to "the Moon which contains the seed of cattle, to the only begotten Bull, to the Bull of many kinds." Perhaps the most widely diffused and universally adored representation of the ancient female Deity in Egypt was the Virgin Neit or Neith, the Athene of the Greeks and the Minerva of the Romans. Her name signifies "I came from myself."
As for Islam, the Koran is looked upon as communicated to Mohammed by the angel Gabriel, even as Zoroaster in the Avesta claims to have received certain communications in conversation with Ahuramazda.
The very first notices of the religion of the Avesta represent it as monotheistic. Ahura Mazda, even when opposed by Ahriman, is supreme, and in the oldest hymns or gathas of the Yasna, Ahriman does not appear; there are references to evil beings, but they have no formidable head; Persian dualism, therefore, was of later growth.
The tenth century B. C. is the latest date which will account for all the phenomena involved in the case, and with this result we must be satisfied. Even on this showing, the Iliad and Odyssey appear as the oldest existing specimens of Aryan literature, save perhaps the hymns of the Rig-Veda and the sacred books of the Avesta.
These existed, in a more or less incomplete state, down to the ninth century of our era, to which century the Pahlavi work "Dindard" belongs. The Avesta which exists to-day may be divided thus: I. The strictly canonical parts, including the following, which will be more fully described in connection with the summaries. Yasnas, including the Gathas. 2. Vispereds. 3. Vendidads.
Zoroaster composed the commentary on the Avesta which he called the Zend, and which in the eyes of his followers was revealed to him by God. He subsequently translated it from Pahlavi into Persian. Zoroaster, further, prepared a commentary on the Zend and called it Bazend.
Grose's Travels to the East Indies, 1772. 2 vols. 8vo. Zend Avesta. Par Anquetil du Perrin. Paris, 1771. 3 vols. 4to. M. Anquetil has prefixed to his translation of this supposed work of Zoroaster, an account of his travels in the East Indies, in which there is much valuable information, especially on antiquarian subjects.
I read in the Zend Avesta, "No earthly man with a hundred-fold strength speaks so much evil as Mithra with heavenly strength speaks good. No earthly man with a hundred-fold strength does so much evil as Mithra with heavenly strength does good." And now leave Persia and Zoroaster, and come down with me to our own New England and one of our old Puritan preachers.
The date of Zoroaster or Zarathustra the former is the Greek, the latter the old Iranian form of the name, contracted in Persian to Zardusht can only be fixed very approximately. He stands at the very beginning of the Avesta literature, and the developments in religion to which that literature testifies must have occupied a long period.
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