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Updated: May 8, 2025
Between the Peris and the Divs there was always war; but the Divs were too powerful for the Peris, and used to capture them and hang them in iron cages from the tree-tops, where their companions came and fed them with perfumes, of which the Peris are very fond, and which the Divs very much dislike, so that the smell kept the evil spirits away.
The Peris are very beautiful beings, usually represented as women with wings, and charming robes of all colours. The Divs are painted as demons of the most frightful kind.
Originally set upon the earth by Ormazd in order to maintain the good creation, he was liable to the continual temptations and seductions of the divs or devas, who were "wicked, bad, false, untrue, the originators of mischief, most baneful, destructive, the basest of all things."
But now we must leave the Peris and the Divs, and look at the jinns, of the Arabian stories. These also dwell in the mysterious country of Jinnestan, and in the wonderful mountains of Kaf; but they likewise spread themselves all through the earth, and they specially liked to live in ruined houses, or in tombs; on the sea shore, by the banks of rivers, and at the meeting of cross-roads.
"But," broke in Darius, "Rustem, the great hero, came and conquered Erscheng and the other bad spirits, freed the captives and restored sight to the blind, by dropping the blood of the slaughtered Divs into their eyes. And so it will be with us, my friends! We shall be set free, and the eyes of Cambyses and of our blind and infatuated fathers will be opened to see our innocence.
"Probably the king has ordered a hunt, in order to deaden the pain which he feels at seeing you suffer." "Oh, no. I know better what it means. Oropastes taught me, that whenever a Persian dies dogs' are brought in, that the Divs may enter into them." "But you are living, my mistress, and . . ." "Oh, I know very well that I shall die.
"But don't you remember the legend of the Div, who took the beautiful form of a minstrel and appeared before king Kawus?" "Of course," cried Araspes. "Cyrus had this legend so often recited at the banquets, that I know it by heart. "Kai Kawus hearkened to the words of the disguised Div and went to Masenderan, and was beaten there by the Divs and deprived of his eyesight."
Vendid. Fargard. "Then Bartja has deserved death. Lead him away, guards, and strangle him! Take him away! Be silent, wretch! never will I listen to that smooth, hypocritical tongue again, or look at those treacherous eyes. They come from the Divs and delude every one with their wanton glances. Off with him, guards!"
Now all these stories mean the same thing: they are only the old Aryan Sun-myths put into another form by the poets and story-tellers: the Peris are the rays of the sun, or the morning or evening Aurora; the Divs are the black clouds of night; the hero is the sun who conquers them, and binds them in the realms of darkness; and the death of Rustem is the sunset Zohrab, his son, being either the moon or the rising sun.
Aryan myths were no more than poetic fancies about light and darkness, cloud and rain, night and day, storm and wind; and when they moved westward and southward, the Aryan races brought these legends with them; and they were shaped by degrees into the innumerable gods and demons of the Hindus, the divs and jinns of the Persians, the great gods, the minor deities, and nymphs, and fauns, and satyrs of Greek mythology and poetry; the stormy divinities, the giants, and trolls of the cold and rugged North; the dwarfs of the German forests; the elves who dance merrily in the moonlight of an English summer; and the "good people" who play mischievous tricks upon stray peasants amongst the Irish hills.
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